text
stringlengths 627
100k
|
|---|
Supercars are supposed to lose weight over their life cycles, right? Not so the GT-R. It has hovered at, around and sometimes above the 1700kg mark for a while (the current version clocks in at 1740kg, the Nismo GT-R at 1720kg), and it’ll likely stay that heavy.
According to the GT-R’s ‘father’, Kazutoshi Mizuno, anyway. A while back he animatedly told TG that the legendary supercar had to be that heavy.
“All journalists say GT-R is heavy, heavy, heavy - it should be lighter, lighter, lighter! I say, journalists need to develop a more professional level of thinking! More study! More thought! The GT-R needs to be this weight. A car with less weight does not handle. Lighter weight can be dangerous, and it will not be driveable by all customers.”
He uses downforce as an example. “An F1 car weighs 560kg, more than 600kg with the driver,” he says. “How much downforce does an F1 car generate? Around 1300kg. So what is the total weight? 1860kg. A GT1 racing car weighs between 1200kg and 1300kg, plus downforce of 600kg, the actual weight on the car is 1800kg…”
With road cars unable to generate such vast downforce figures, that means we’re looking at a hefty kerbweight. “But with performance accessible to all customers. I have a big responsibility to the customer,” he once told us.
Top Gear talks to the ‘father’ of the GT-R |
Newly christened Funcom CEO Ole Schreiner recently spoke with GamesIndustry.biz regarding the fickle world of MMO development and the future of conspiracy-fest The Secret World. He said the studio "definitely has the tools" to install a free-to-play system into The Secret World if needed, but didn't confirm any solid plans to do so.
"We tried leaving our options open during development so that we could launch with a different model should we have decided during development that's what we wanted, but eventually we did settle on the subscription model and that's what informed much of the game's design," Schreiner said. "That said, we definitely have the tools to turn The Secret World into a free-to-play game -- or even hybrid -- should we decide to do that somewhere down the line."
As part of the dwindling camp of subscription-based MMOs, The Secret World still receives content updates and regular patches despite Funcom's layoff struggles earlier this month . Schreiner also recognized the competitive challenge free-to-play presents to subscription models, saying:
"I do think that as free-to-play offerings keep raising the bar in terms of quality and longevity, it's becoming more and more difficult for subscription games to live up to player's expectations. If you're demanding a monthly fee from someone, they obviously expect more value than they get from a similar free-to-play offering. There is no way getting around the fact that a growing number of gamers expect MMOs to be free-to-play, or at least buy-to-play (such as Guild Wars 2), so is building a successful subscription-based MMO becomes more challenging." |
WASHINGTON — Sean Spicer held the press briefing from the White House Monday. The press secretary answered questions on why Donald Trump’s son-in-law is in Iraq right now and reports that Susan Rice requested the unmasking of Trump transition officials.
On why Jared Kushner is in Iraq
Donald Trump’s son-in-law is visiting Iraq currently with Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who serves as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“I don’t think it’s a binary choice in this case,” Spicer said when asked why Kushner is there and not Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “Both Kushner and [Tom] Bossert are on the trip at the request and invitation of Gen. Dunford. He believed it was an opportunity for both of them. He was invited by Dunford to see the work being done there firsthand. I don’t think that translates to, ‘He’s overseeing Iraq.'”
Spicer said Kushner will be briefed on our military effort there and will express the commitment of the U.S. government to Iraq.
On reports that Susan Rice requested the unmasking of names of Trump transition officials
“I will say there is a troubling direction some of this is going in. We are going to let this review go on before we jump to [conclusions]..I think it is interesting in the lack of developments we’ve seen.”
“Me getting to the motives assumes certain things as fact.”
On the H1-B visa program
“The White House acknowledges that there are issues with the program as it stands. Several laws on the books went unenforced in the last administration. As the Department of Justice made clear, the Trump administration will enforce laws protecting American workers from discriminating hiring practices.”
On where the president’s paycheck is going
As a candidate, Trump said he would not accept a paycheck if elected. Because he is legally obligated to get paid, Spicer announced that Trump will donate his first quarter paycheck — some $78,000 — to the National Parks Services.
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke made an appearance to accept the paycheck.
On the explosion at a Russian metro station
Spicer called it “reprehensible” and said the United States is prepared to offer assistance if needed.
On the ‘nuclear option’ for Neil Gorsuch
“The president said a week ago that this is something he would support. It’s up to Mitch McConnell. Make no mistake, Neil Gorsuch will be voted as the next Supreme Court justice.” |
The left-wing media’s attack on Donald Trump is also an attack on anyone who doesn’t hew the progressive line.
Life is rich, especially when you can watch the progressive media have a meltdown over the success of Donald Trump — even if it’s a faux meltdown.
Colbert King writing in The Washington Post quotes, approvingly, Amanda Taub writing on Vox, who says Donald Trump is an authoritarian. E. J. Dionne also plays the authoritarian card in a February column. The gist of the Vox piece is reminiscent of the 1964 Fact magazine article that proclaimed: “1,189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater Is Psychologically Unfit to be President!”
What are the authoritarian supporters of Trump accused of wanting? The Taub piece says policies such as “prioritizing military force over diplomacy against countries that threaten the United States; amending the Constitution to bar citizenship for children of illegal immigrants; imposing extra airport checks on passengers who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent; and requiring all citizens to carry a national ID card to show a police officer on request.”
Not everyone will agree on the desirability of those four proposals, but it’s not clear how approving of them is evidence of authoritarianism. Reasonable people may differ on the question of birthright citizenship, but the better argument is that the Fourteenth Amendment does not confer U.S. citizenship on the children of illegal aliens. For a short debate on the issue, see here.
But Progressivism Is Inherently Authoritarian
Even if all the policies cited were evidence of authoritarianism, they are hardly more authoritarian than the 82,000-page Federal Register, which imposes a burden on the American people of $1.8 trillion a year, according to Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Or President Obama’s mandate that everyone must buy health insurance. Or that Roman Catholic nuns must have health insurance that covers contraceptives and abortifacients. Or that disoriented boys who see themselves as girls must be allowed to shower with girls. And what about former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s war on sodas and other sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces?
Even if all the policies cited were evidence of authoritarianism, they are hardly more authoritarian than the 82,000-page Federal Register.
Progressivism — the proper name for the governing philosophy of those people who used to be called “liberals” — is inherently authoritarian, and its primary products are lamentation, and mourning, and woe.
The Washington Post complains that Trump “applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit First Amendment freedom of the press.” But has The Washington Post objected to the proposal of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) to have the U.S. Department of Justice use RICO (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) against people who deny climate change — the First Commandment of progressivism? Or Hillary Clinton’s proposal to amend the First Amendment in order to curtail individual contributions to political campaigns?
Trump Represents What the Left Thinks of the Right
You have to marvel at Timothy Egan’s comment that Trump “wants to apply a religious test for entry into a country whose founders were against any such thing.” Appealing to the American Founders is like turning a light on and off. What would Egan say about the Founders’ thinking on, say, the tangled web of sexual pathologies progressives celebrate, or abortion, which they refer to as reproductive rights?
This from the people who are salivating to have Hillary Clinton elected—Hillary Clinton, the most corrupt person on the planet.
And you have to love this from The Washington Post editorial team. Beating up on Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Pribus, who had said “Winning is the antidote to a lot of things” the Post wrote: “So it falls to other leaders to decide if their party will stand for anything other than winning. A political party, after all, isn’t meant to be merely a collection of consultants, lobbyists and functionaries angling for jobs. It is supposed to have principles….”
This from the people who are salivating to have Hillary Clinton elected—Hillary Clinton, the most corrupt person on the planet — with the possible exception of Equatorial Guinea President Teodorin Obiang Nguema Mbasogoea, Africa’s longest-serving ruler. He has ruled the tiny, oil-rich West African country since he overthrew his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, in a bloody coup d’état in 1979, the year Carolyn Moffet, a legal secretary in Little Rock, Arkansas, said she was sexually abused by Bill Clinton.
Here’s what Republicans and conservatives need to understand: the left-wing media’s attack on Trump is not just an attack on Trump. It’s really an attack on anyone who doesn’t hew the progressive line. A March editorial in The New York Times gave the game away: “Last week Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, elected to the Senate partly on their appeal to extremists, seemed….” Catherine Rampell wrote in The Washington Post, “Is Donald Trump really so much crazier or more extreme than the other Republicans presidential candidates?”
A man who’ll accuse President Reagan of racism will — does it need to be said out loud? — accuse whoever the Republican nominee is of racism.
Dionne wrote, the Republican Party “has subtly and not so subtly played on racial resentment —…Ronald Reagan’s famous ‘welfare queen’ — for decades.” A man who’ll accuse President Reagan of racism will — does it need to be said out loud? — accuse whoever the Republican nominee is of racism, and probably also of wanting to take us back to the darkest days of history — and you know what that means.
These comments are not an endorsement of Trump. Why would a conservative endorse Trump when the rightwardmost viable candidate since Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan is a major contender, and now doing better than ever? This is simply a reminder to conservatives, and Republicans, that whatever the progressive media are saying about Trump today they will be saying tomorrow about the Republican nominee, whoever he is. And as Mary McCarthy said of Lillian Hellman, everything they say is a lie, including the words “and” and “the.”
They’re all-in for Hillary — the second most-corrupt person on the planet, just after Equatorial Guinea President Teodorin Obiang Nguema Mbasogoea.
Life will be a lot less rich, if Hillary Clinton is elected president, for those who are already suffering under the policies of progressivism and authoritarianism, the socialist twins. That will be true even if Hillary does not engage in her hallmark corrupt practices, and even if she is only the 242nd most corrupt person on the planet. |
HB2, which restricts bathroom options for transgender people and overrides local laws to protect LGBT people from bias, has left residents furious
Prospects for North Carolina repealing its divisive “bathroom bill” in the near future are fading rapidly as the year draws to a close, amid a fresh outbreak of anger and recrimination reflecting anything but a seasonal spirit of peace and reconciliation in the state.
An attempt to repeal the hot-button law, which restricts bathroom options for transgender people in a way opponents have called “inhuman”, ended in tatters after a special session of the legislature on Wednesday.
Fresh efforts to get rid of the law, known as HB2, are now expected to be made as soon as the state assembly reconvenes in January, but neither Democrats nor Republicans who support repeal expect success for those attempts in the short term.
Trans people are terrified of what lies ahead. We must look out for one another | Hannah Simpson Read more
However, Republican state senator Jeff Tarte, who belongs to the state GOP minority that supports repeal, told the Guardian on Thursday that he was optimistic that the law could be gone by the summer.
“It was bad legislation. It was a mistake and when you make a mistake you need to own it and you need to correct it,” he said.
Tarte insisted that any discrimination against transgender people in North Carolina was “an unintended consequence” of the law.
He added that the failure to repeal it during the special session of the state general assembly on Wednesday in Raleigh was “excruciatingly frustrating”.
Democratic state senator Jeff Jackson called Wednesday’s legislative session “a debacle”.
Tarte lamented that the failure to repeal the bill would continue to have economic repercussions for the state.
The legislation has already cost the state at least $630m in lost business since it was passed last March, according to estimates by Forbes.
“It will have a further impact on jobs,” Tarte said.
House Bill 2 (HB2) was passed last March and dictates that transgender people in North Carolina must use the public bathroom that matches the gender stated on their birth certificate – not the gender they identify as. That includes all public sector bathrooms, such as in government buildings, public universities, public schools and libraries across the state.
“At least 70% of people in North Carolina now believe that HB2 hurts the state and they don’t agree with it,” Tarte said on Thursday, citing recent opinion polls.
The legislation was introduced in response to the city of Charlotte passing a local anti-discrimination law designed to protect gay and transgender people from bias, including allowing everyone to use the public bathrooms that matched their gender identity. HB2 overrode the Charlotte law, and prohibited such LGBT anti-discrimination laws statewide. The legislation also blocked local areas from raising the minimum wage above the state level.
The new statewide law, also known as the “bathroom bill”, brought recriminations, lost business, and resulted in music boycotts and protest tours.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Republican state senator Norman Sanderson holds his head during a failed attempt to repeal HB2 in Raleigh, North Carolina Wednesday. Photograph: Jonathan Drake/Reuters
Dennis Edwards, chief executive of the greater Raleigh convention and visitors bureau told the Guardian on Thursday: “The result in the legislature on Wednesday was very disappointing. Every day that the law is in place it’s tarnishing the reputation of the entire state. This is not who we are. We have always been a welcoming and inclusive community and this is giving out the wrong message.”
The compromise deal this week involved the city of Charlotte, state Democrats and Republicans and both the outgoing and incoming state governors. It was expected to lead to the repealing of HB2 in the legislature on Wednesday night.
But after much deliberation behind closed doors, the attempt failed, with Democrats and Republicans accusing each other of breaking their side of the bargain.
Some who support repeal confidently forecast on Thursday that the legislature will have another go at getting rid of the controversial law in the next assembly session in January.
But they predicted it will not be quick to succeed.
Jackson has already sponsored a bill to repeal HB2 and is prepared to sponsor another one to put before the legislature in January, but admits that Republicans won’t consider a bill devised by Democrats; the one that failed on Wednesday came from the GOP.
Democrats are already reeling from another special session of the state assembly last week during which the dominant GOP passed a law stripping incoming Democratic state governor Roy Cooper of key powers. Cooper narrowly beat Republican incumbent governor Pat McCrory after the race took a month longer election night to decide.
“We have to vote fully to repeal HB2, there are enough Democrats and moderate Republicans to do that,” said Jackson. “HB2 loosed a witch hunt and has emboldened those who see transgender people as inferior. That’s just wrong.”
Jackson said there had never been a single reported incident in the US of a problem with, for example, male sexual predators posing as transgender people as an excuse to enter female public restrooms and harass women and girls, as some supporters of HB2 argued was a legitimate risk the law was designed to guard against.
“It has never happened,” Jackson said.
As Republicans lose their grip on North Carolina, they deal one final blow Read more
Tarte said that people were using HB2 to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and “that’s a mistake”.
He predicted that the chances of repealing HB2 quickly in another special session of the assembly early in 2017 were unlikely, but if properly examined and debated through the full legislative process could result in a repeal by the summer.
“If not, North Carolina is going to continue to suffer unnecessarily. But I think in the end reasonable minds will prevail,” he said.
James Esseks, national director of the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT and HIV project, described the impact of HB2 on the queer and trans community of North Carolina as “inhuman and devastating”.
But he added: “I’m fundamentally optimistic that all the debate over this is going to lead to less division in the longer term and greater progress for transgender people in our society.” |
Luciano Spalletti broke the habit of a lifetime on the eve of Roma’s trip to Porto, revealing that Kevin Strootman will play in the game at the Estadio do Dragao.
“Strootman will start,” began the Giallorossi coach, before giving his take on Roma’s goalkeeping situation: “I don’t see why we can’t pick the keeper one game at a time like with other positions. I don’t have an answer. It’s simple, the guy on form plays.”
A busy summer transfer window continued earlier with confirmation of the signing of Bruno Peres.
“He’s a player we were chasing," Spalletti added. "First of all because he’s a good footballer. Roma want to be a top side and for that we need a strong team with equally good options on the bench. Bruno Peres is quality. He’s a great player and will join up with other excellent footballers.
"He has very specific attributes, he gets up and down the flank and because of the injuries we’ve sustained, we were lacking someone who can do that – someone who gives us the option of playing down both sides. His attributes gives us an added dimension.”
How have Roma changed compared to the side you took over in January?
“Some good players left and they have been replaced by equally accomplished ones. Above all guys who had a lot of experience at big clubs. I believe this has brought a touch more professionalism to the dressing room, along with experience. When you have all of those attributes, character comes as a result. We’re a strong side in every area of the pitch and we’re ready for this big match.”
Will Edin Dzeko have a job to do defensively too?
“I expect that from every player who I pick to start. I want my players to be completely involved in the match. Often when we think about team selection we tend to focus on a piece of skill or a goal but if you consider that the ball is in play for on average 55 minutes and there are 22 players on the park, everyone touches the ball for around 90 seconds. Yet they still have to do something for the rest of the time.
"Being good on the ball is not enough. That’s why I expect him to defend if he starts, that he performs well and puts in the effort to help out his team-mates.”
Are you considering adding Bruno Peres to your UEFA squad list for this tie?
“We’d like to include him in our squad for the second leg, although in terms of the paperwork we could technically pick him for tomorrow. We won’t bring him with us this time but he’ll be involved next week.”
Will the Brazilian allow you to consistently pick a three-man defence?
“No, we won’t always play with three at the back. Peres can operate as both a genuine full-back and a wing-back. He’s a good player with ability and still has to improve but we’ll try to use both formations. We were lacking someone who could play this position and give us a Plan B.
"We have four massive matches in the space of 11 days and tomorrow’s game is hugely important for the club, me and the players, above all for their careers. Then, however, there’s another equally important fixture [Roma v Cagliari]. It’s not easy to recover, we need 20 good players and he gives us a different option. We’ll have to see how they all work together. Everyone has to work hard in training, even if they’ve been left out.
"That makes the difference in the long run. Everyone must give 100% and get involved.” |
AT LEAST four newly formed groups are working towards registering as political parties ahead of the next general election.
The groups were formed in recent months and are at very early stages of development. The membership of each falls short of the 300 required by the Register of Political Parties.
All are holding meetings this month to boost membership and draw up policies. One group, Fís Nua, or New Vision, said it has close to 100 members.
Fís Nua is a splinter group of the Green Party and two of its most prominent personalities, former MEP Patricia McKenna and Pat Kavanagh, are former Green Party members who became disillusioned with the party after it entered Coalition.
The other groups were formed to address what they claim are “democratic deficits” in the political process.
The main platform of Direct Democracy Ireland, which held a meeting in Dublin last night, is to allow citizens to petition for a referendum to allow Government decisions be negated.
It also wants mechanisms introduced to grant the electorate the power to sack TDs and Senators who are not performing satisfactorily. The group’s founder is Raymond Whitehead. He came to prominence in the 1980s when he owned a restaurant in Temple Bar and organised local residents and businesses to campaign against over-development of the district.
“People would like to be either consulted or have a mechanism where they could call a referendum if they felt strongly over an issue,” he said.
Others associated with the group are environmental campaigner Vincent Salafia and a community activist Bernard Kenny.
A former local election candidate is also trying to form a party to replace Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Leo Armstrong ran as an Independent candidate in Clane, Co Kildare, last year, but was unsuccessful. A meeting to form a new party will be held in Kilkenny on July 21st.
A Cork businessman, Michael Murphy, describing himself as an “ordinary Joe Soap”, hopes to set up the Reform Party to effect a “democratic revolution”. |
AP There's a new interview with George Soros out in the popular Hong Kong newspaper the South China Morning Post.
A lot of the interview is about the Chinese development model, Chinese stocks, real estate, etc.
There's also an interesting section about gold.
Q: What is your view on gold?
A: That's a complicated question. It has disappointed the public, because it is meant to be the ultimate safe haven. But when the euro was close to collapsing in the last year, actually gold went down, because if people needed to sell something, they could sell gold. Therefore they sold gold. So gold went down together with everything else.
Gold was destroyed as a safe haven, proved to be unsafe. Because of the disappointment, most people are reducing their holdings of gold. But the central banks will continue to buy them, so I don't expect gold to go down. If you have the prospect of a crisis, you will have occasional flurries or jumps. So gold is very volatile on a day-to-day basis, no trend on a longer-term basis.
This explanation for gold's weakness isn't one that we've heard before (most explanations involve the lack of volatility and the increase in US real interest rates).
That being said, his point about how gold is not a safe-haven is spot on. During overall weakness, when central banks are trying to push down real interest rates, gold seems to benefit. But in a real panic, people sell gold to raise cash.
Read the full SCMP interview here --> |
A rendering of a proposed project at 4156 Shelbyville Road that features apartments, retail and restaurant space. (Photo: Courtesy Investment Property Advisors, LLC)
Plans for a $40 million retail and apartment project on Shelbyville Road are on hold, pending an effort by the developer to appease some neighbors' concerns.
Investment Property Advisors recently asked the St. Matthews City Council to delay acting on its pending development plan until it can get more input from residents.
A community meeting for discussion of revisions has been scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 5, at the St. Matthews Community Center on Ten Pin Lane.
The developer plans the project at 4156 Shelbyville Road, land it currently has under contract — a site long occupied by the Tafel Motors luxury auto dealership.
Read this: Historic synagogue near St. Matthews to be torn down for luxury apartments
Tafel plans to relocate to a suburban site near Old Henry Road and the Gene Snyder Freeway. The Tafel buildings would be demolished. The adjacent Mini of Louisville dealership at Hubbards Lane would remain.
The plan for developing the Tafel site features an eight-story building, with 276 apartments on the upper seven floors and about 15,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space on the ground level.
The site already carries the correct zoning for the IPA development. The plan was recently recommended for approval by the Metro Planning Commission, after which the plan was forwarded to the St. Matthews council for final review.
Background: Large apartment complex coming to old Tafel Motors site in St. Matthews
Related: Tafel Motors details plan to move Mercedes-Benz dealership to suburban site
But Jonathan Baker, the attorney for the developer, said in an interview Friday that some significant concerns were raised by residents before the St. Matthews council. They focused on traffic congestion and access to Church Way.
Baker said the developer asked the council to hold off on considering the plan until after the neighborhood meeting.
"We want to take a step back. We want to see if there is some way to accommodate" some of the residents' concerns, he said.
NEWSLETTERS Get the Breaking News newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Breaking news alerts Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-866-2211. Delivery: Varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Breaking News Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
Investment Property Advisors was founded in 2004 and the company specializes in developing student housing.
The proposed St. Matthews project calls for the apartment amenities to include a pool, an exercise room, and 18,000 square feet of green roof space.
The apartments will range from one- to three-bedroom units and have "high-end finishes" with washers and dryers, the initial plan filing with metro regulators said. The units will rent for around $1,100 a month.
Reporter Sheldon S. Shafer can be reached at 502-582-7089, or via email at [email protected].
Read or Share this story: http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2017/09/01/st-matthews-apartment-complex-shelbyville-road-on-hold/624731001/ |
OS X Yosemite is the latest version of the Mac operating system, complete with an overhauled user interface and a variety of new features that are sure to make your Mac experience better and more productive.
While OS X Yosemite is a free download and arrives as a simple to use installer from the Mac App Store, you’ll want to prepare your Mac before jumping into the update to OS X 10.10. That’s what we’re going to cover here with five simple tips to get everything squared away, updated, and ready to go.
1: Should you update your Mac to Yosemite?
This is a valid question many users have after experiencing some of the issues with prior versions of OS X and iOS, notably the weirdness that was Lion to the variety of bugs and annoyances brought to iOS 8 mobile devices with the more recent iOS launch.
Based upon a fair amount of testing, I would generally say yes, most Macs should update to OS X Yosemite. Performance wise Yosemite appears to be at least the same as Mavericks, and stability wise, it’s about as stable too. That’s a really good thing, most users will be able to update to OS X Yosemite and go right along their business, all while enjoying the new features brought to their Macs.
Perhaps the only reasons not to update to Yosemite would be due to compatibility reasons with some particular app (though if it runs in Mavericks, it will run in Yosemite), an unusually strong dislike for the redesigned user interface (which isn’t too different, just brighter and whiter), or, perhaps a more important potential issue related to the user interface, a readability issue with the thin system font which can be challenging to view on smaller screen Macs. For example, reading the Helvetica Neue system font on a MacBook Air 11″ gives me eyestrain, but that same font looks fine on 22″ monitor, and the font reads fine on any Mac with a Retina display. If you’re sensitive to that sort of thing and you primarily use a smaller screen Mac, it’s at least worth a thought. You can get an idea of what it would look like by downloading a full resolution screenshot of OS X Yosemite like this one and making it full-screen on your MacBook. If you can read everything fine, you should have nothing to be concerned about in terms of the new font. Any font readability issue will likely only impact a small number of users who have less than ideal eyesight and who use Macs with the smallest displays.
2: Confirm System Requirements Compatibility
System requirements for OS X Yosemite are quite generous, and if the Mac is capable of running OS X Mavericks then it can also run OS X Yosemite. The minimum hardware list as determined by developer versions is as follows:
iMac (Mid-2007 or newer)
MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or newer)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or newer), (15-inch, Mid / Late 2007 or newer), (17-inch, Late 2007 or newer)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
Mac Mini (Early 2009 or newer)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
Xserve (Early 2009)
Those Macs or newer, which all have a Core 2 Duo or better processor, will run OS X Yosemite. You’ll also need at least 15GB of disk space available to download the update from the App Store and then install Yosemite, but realistically you should have more than that avaialble for performance reasons.
3: Update Apps & Install Lingering Software Updates
It’s always good practice to regularly update your Mac apps, system software, and the other occasional updates that come through to OS X, but many of us ignore these things. Before updating to a major new release of OS X, it’s a good idea to update all of this stuff though.
Head to the Apple menu and choose “Software Update” Install whatever updates are waiting within the Updates tab of the Mac App Store
As usual, if any core system updates are in there, be sure to back up the Mac before installing them.
4: Perform General System Maintenance
Performing some general system maintenance is always a good idea, so try to make it a habit. We’ve touched on some easy maintenance tips before, and they still apply here.
If your Mac is low on hard drive space, free up disk space so that you have enough available storage to install the update and be sure that OS X has space to run well (that means plenty of room for caches, virtual memory, your own files and apps, etc).
Also, if you have some old Mac apps that are sitting around collecting dust and never being used, you may want to consider uninstalling them to free up some space and reduce overhead for functions like Software Update.
5: Back Up the Mac
You’re almost ready to install Yosemite! But before doing so, you absolutely must back up your Mac. This should not be considered optional, without a backup you could lose your stuff if something goes wrong. Don’t risk it, just back up your Mac. Time Machine is so easy to use, runs automatically and routinely, and external hard drives are cheap . Seriously, there’s no excuse and the risk is not worth it, always have backups.
Remember to start a backup with Time Machine right before you begin the actual installation with Yosemite, this insures that if a disaster happens, you can resume to exactly where you were right before the problem happened. Do not skip this!
6: Download Yosemite & Install
Checked everything off the list and you’re ready to go? Head to the App Store, start the download on your Mac, and update to OS X Yosemite, and enjoy!
Remember that to utilize the full feature set in OS X Yosemite, you’ll also want the latest version of iOS (iOS 8.1 or newer) on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, this allows for features like Handoff, Continuity, and the ability to make phone calls from your Mac. |
Click and drag to scroll this panoramic view of Rio Del Mar.
The coastal community of Rio Del Mar can be found along the eastern edge of Soquel Cove, in the northern part of Monterey Bay. It is just a short drive from downtown Santa Cruz, and includes the waterfront and hillside housing developments of the city of Aptos. Rio Del Mar is one of the area’s most serene shore-side destinations, and a must-visit for anyone touring the California central coast.
As a low-key village, many of Rio Del Mar’s lodging options can be found in the nearby cities of Aptos and Capitola. However, two good local options are the Rio Sands Hotel and the Seascape Resort, both of which are within walking distance to spectacular beaches. If staying at the Rio Sands, try the casual Cafe Rio or even more casual Pixie Deli.
If staying at the Seascape Resort, you will want to try Sanderling’s Restaurant, which is located in the resort. Also consider the nearby Palapas Restaurant & Cantina located in the Seascape Village Shopping Center. All of these dining options are close to the beach, making it easy to walk straight to the shore after enjoying your meal (or vice versa).
With smooth sand and a clear view of the sea wherever you look, Rio Del Mar’s picturesque beaches are idyllic places for outdoor fun and relaxation. Rio Del Mar State Beach is long and family-friendly with numerous picnic tables, free parking, and a laid back atmosphere. Seacliff State Beach is just a 10 minute walk to the north via a bridge over Aptos Creek, or you can drive to the park entrance in about the same amount of time (fee for parking). At the end of the Seacliff Pier you will find the ruins of the SS Palo Alto, a huge concrete ship that rests as a historic landmark, and a favorite perching spot for the local seagulls and pelicans.
At Rio Del Mar’s southern end, Seascape Park offers lovely views of the water from lush hilltops. Families will also find plenty to do here, thanks to the presence of a picnic area, playground, restrooms, and benches artfully carved with images of the resident wildlife. To get down to the beach, look for the well-graded paved trail that leads from the resort north of the park.
If it’s open beaches, clear skies, and breathtaking sunsets you’re in need of, look no further than Rio Del Mar! |
Something special happened in Northern Ireland
If you think that people affecting by autism can’t excel, you need to think again… and again.
Kaylee Rodgers, a 10-year-old girl from Northern Ireland, Donaghadee, has amazed the entire world with her fantastic performance at the school’s Christmas show when she sang the choirs’ version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
Kaylee suffers from autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but apparently, her amazing voice is helping her to gain confidence.
Colin Millar, the principal of Killard House, commented
“For a child who came in P4 and wouldn’t really talk, wouldn’t really read out in class, to stand and perform in front of an audience is amazing. It takes a lot of effort on Kaylee’s part.”
We are speechless. Well done Kaylee! |
Running etcd in Docker Containers
• By Rob Szumski
Update: This blog post refers to functionality in an older version of etcd, 0.4.x. Check out the updated Docker guide for up-to-date information.
etcd is a highly-available key value store for shared configuration and service discovery. Running etcd within a docker container is a convenient way to deploy etcd or test out a sample cluster. Etcd containers are very easy to run — you just need to manipulate a few of the flags to make the networking work correctly. You can grab the etcd container or have docker download it automatically.
Start Containers
We're going to start three containers that use port 500x for the client communication and port 800x for the intra-cluster/raft communication. A few of the flags need to be modified per container:
-name needs to be unique
-peer-addr and -addr need to contain the IP where the machine can be reached on the outside of the container and a unique port number
-peers needs to contain a list of current members of the cluster and the port for server/raft communication ( 800x ). The first container doesn't need the -peers list since it will be the master.
In this example, all three of these containers will be running on the same machine. Here are the three docker run commands that will get the cluster up and running. First, export a variable with your public IP address:
export PUBLIC_IP=54.196.167.255
And then start up our leader + two followers:
docker run -d -p 8001:8001 -p 5001:5001 quay.io/coreos/etcd:v0.4.6 -peer-addr ${PUBLIC_IP}:8001 -addr ${PUBLIC_IP}:5001 -name etcd-node1
docker run -d -p 8002:8002 -p 5002:5002 quay.io/coreos/etcd:v0.4.6 -peer-addr ${PUBLIC_IP}:8002 -addr ${PUBLIC_IP}:5002 -name etcd-node2 -peers ${PUBLIC_IP}:8001,${PUBLIC_IP}:8002,${PUBLIC_IP}:8003
docker run -d -p 8003:8003 -p 5003:5003 quay.io/coreos/etcd:v0.4.6 -peer-addr ${PUBLIC_IP}:8003 -addr ${PUBLIC_IP}:5003 -name etcd-node3 -peers ${PUBLIC_IP}:8001,${PUBLIC_IP}:8002,${PUBLIC_IP}:8003
Testing the Cluster
You should be able to test the cluster by curling any of the machines in the cluster or viewing the dashboard in a browser. Let's request /stats/leader which should indicate that all of our followers connected successfully:
curl -L 54.196.167.255:5001/v2/stats/leader
You should see something that looks like:
{ "leader" : "etcd-node1" , "followers" :{ "etcd-node2" :{ "latency" :{ "current" : 1.33342 , "average" : 1.6575929235264224 , "standardDeviation" : 0.8596793375097724 , "minimum" : 1.034932 , "maximum" : 27.428239 }, "counts" :{ "fail" : 4 , "success" : 3936 }}, "etcd-node3" :{ "latency" :{ "current" : 1.448973 , "average" : 1.7457679780163597 , "standardDeviation" : 2.3964311316740465 , "minimum" : 1.063433 , "maximum" : 86.745084 }, "counts" :{ "fail" : 14 , "success" : 3912 }}}}
As you can see, etcd-node1 is the current leader and etcd-node2 and etcd-node3 are successfully connected as followers. You can check out the dashboard module at /mod/dashboard but you'll need to launch etcd with -cors='*' to make the cross-origin requests work.
Flags
Below is a quick description of the flags we used in this example and some other common ones: |
Mylan CEO faces the (congressional) heat
Does your EpiPen cost a fortune? Blame Mylan for that. Anger and bipartisan disgust toward Mylan, the drugmaker that sells the EpiPen, increased after the company hiked up prices to $608 for a two-pack, up from about $100 in 2009. The company is also under fire for other shady practices involving the CEO’s mother. But Mylan's chief executive says not so fast."I think many people incorrectly assume we make $600 off each EpiPen. This is simply not true," CEO Heather Bresch told a House committee in Washington. Missing from Bresch’s testimony: an apology. She instead defended her $18 million compensation package. The public isn’t buying it.
Another day, another shooting
If this past summer wasn’t enough, America is now dealing with two more police shootings that killed black men: one in Charlotte, the other in Tulsa. The response remains the same: Police say they felt threatened and were forced to take lethal action; the families disagree. In Charlotte, Keith Lamont Scott was shot and killed Tuesday by Officer Brentley Vinson. Police thought Scott was holding a handgun, but witnesses say he was holding a book. Yet Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney said at a news conference that a gun was recovered by detectives. In Tulsa, police said they were responding to an abandoned car in the middle of the road Friday, when officers shot Terence Crutcher as he held his hands in the air and walked away. Crutcher's twin sister, Tiffany Crutcher, wants charges pressed against police officer Betty Shelby, who shot her brother. Police Chief Chuck Jordan said he called in the Justice Department to ask for an investigation. Cue more "Hands up, don't shoot,"Black Lives Matter protests.
The Fed rate is unchanged. But it was a close call.
Good news for financial markets and investors. They dodged the rate-hike bullet for now. The reason? There was simply too much dissension among Fed policymakers Wednesday amid an uncertain economic outlook. Instead, a divided Federal Reserve opted to leave interest rates unchanged. Fed Chair Janet Yellen said at a news conference, "The economy has a bit more running room than might have been previously thought." But she added, "We don't want the economy to overheat.” Most officials expect the Fed to increase interest rates later this year, likely in mid-December. What does that mean for the average American? Winter is coming, and so are rate hikes.
Forecast in 'Future', new Nikes make tying laces a thing of the past
Forget handheld computers. Hoverboards? Yawn. The REALLY important prediction from Back to the Future Part II — self-lacing sneakers — is almost a reality. "Power laces! All right!," Marty McFly exclaimed in the 1985 film, and now Nike says its battery-powered HyperAdapt 1.0 will arrive Nov. 28, the Monday after Thanksgiving "at select Nike locations." In addition to being a cool gimmick that may fetch big bucks, Nike says being able to tighten and loosen laces on the fly is a real performance upgrade. Wearers will adjust the laces by pressing a "+" button by the tongue of the shoe to tighten, and a "-" button to loosen. In the future — the real future — the laces will tighten automatically, according to Nike.
Say hello to Allo.
Move over Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Snapchat and iMessage, Allo has arrived. Google’s new messaging app, Allo (pronounced aloe, not all-o), was announced in May during Google’s I/O conference. But it debuted Wednesday in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Allo is Google’s answer to the new wave of messaging apps dominated by Facebook. It’s also a coming out party for the A.I.-driven Google Assistant. Allo gives you smart reply buttons and more than two-dozen stickers to express yourself. It has a Snapchat feature that lets you send private end-to-end, encrypted messages that can be made to disappear after they've been read. Google has designs on taking down Amazon with its Google Home, Daydream and Android Instant apps.
Extra Bites
Fall starts Thursday. College football is ready.
#Brangelina is over. We hope their kids get through this.
Please stop using the N-word. Please.
Want the Short List delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up!
This is a compilation of stories across USA TODAY.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2dkBfxH |
'We Don't Talk Like That': Reflecting on 'Fargo' 20 years later
Diane Richard and Todd Melby at 'Fargo' screening Courtesy of Todd Melby
When Joel and Ethan Coen's "Fargo" hit theaters in 1996, it was a bloody sensation. It grossed $60 million at the box office, and was nominated from multiple Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Frances McDormand took home an Oscar for her role as the unshakeable Brainerd police chief, Marge Gunderson.
The film's reception in Fargo, though, was a little frostier.
It reduced life in the North to a caricature, some complained: Nothing but parkas and overblown accents.
"We don't talk like that," some grumbled.
That's where documentarians Diane Richard and Todd Melby, of 2 Below Zero, took their cue for their documentary celebrating the 20th anniversary of the film. "Fargo" turned 20 this spring, and Richard and Melby produced an in-depth look at film in "We Don't Talk Like That: 'Fargo' and the Midwest Psyche."
They interviewed everyone from William H. Macy, who plays the blundering and permanently down-on-his-luck Jerry Lundegaard, to the dialect coach, Liz Himelstein, who gave "Fargo" its trademark long vowel sounds.
The Coen brothers, who were raised in St. Louis Park, Minn., emphasized the accent in their original script, Himelstein said: "That really allowed for the dialect to almost be another character."
Macy, who originally hails from Georgia, had to pick up not only the accent but also other tell-tale Minnesota mannerisms, like stomping your boots every time you come inside, and that iconic frustration that comes from scraping ice off a windshield.
For that famous scene, Macy recalls in the documentary, the Coen brothers told him to really cut loose.
"I think I ended up breaking two or three ice scrapers," Macy laughed.
To listen to the full documentary, "We Don't Talk Like That: 'Fargo' and the Midwest Psyche," from 2 Below Zero, use the audio player above. |
MIT electrical engineering and computer science professor Anant Agarwal was a guest on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” a few years ago. He told host Stephen Colbert about his online learning site, edX, saying, “You can take these great courses from MIT, from Harvard … and it’s free.”
The comedian quipped, “[If] I go to an elite university — let’s say I go to your Harvards or your MITs or your Berkeleys out there — I get to say ‘I went to Harvard.’ That’s half of what you’re paying for!”
Humor aside, the exchange touched on a controversy that has been raging for years now about distance learning programs.
About a decade ago, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) generated tremendous excitement over the idea that anyone with an Internet connection could learn anything they wanted for free. The hype eventually gave way to hard questions about quality and effectiveness. Studies done in 2013 by the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and by the U.K.’s Open University reported MOOC course completion rates at only around 4% to 7%. But more recently, pundits have been opining that the low completion rates don’t really matter if people are still benefitting from substantial amounts of the content.
Big questions remain, however: Is it better to learn online for free than break the bank (or your parents’ bank) to go to college? Is higher education about acquiring knowledge and skills, or about acquiring an elite university degree that can get you a foot in the door with an employer?
“The power of technology, the power of software, is that we can give it away for free. Free is powerful.”
At the recent Reimagine Education conference at Wharton, Agarwal said that edX — a non-profit online learning destination founded in 2012 by Harvard and MIT — is trying to take MOOCs to a new level, and represents the future of education. In addition to being the CEO of edX, Agarwal is a serial entrepreneur, having co-founded several companies including Tilera Corporation, which created the Tile multicore processor. In 2012, he was included in Forbes’ list of the top 15 education innovators.
Free Education All Over the World?
Agarwal himself taught the first edX course — an MIT class on circuits and electronics –which drew 155,000 students. (He noted that 155,000 is “larger than the total number of alumni of MIT in its 150-year history.”) Today, according to Agarwal, edX has six million learners, “from every single country in the world,” and more than 19 million course enrollments. Currently offered in several languages are 838 courses in 31 subject areas, from architecture and business to physics and the social sciences.
“We partner with great institutions all over the world to offer content,” said Agarwal. edX’s 100-plus institutional partners make up an impressive, global list that includes Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Princeton, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Australian National University, Delft University of Technology, McGill, Peking University, Seoul National University, and the Sorbonne, to name a few.
edX makes its platform freely available as open-source. Agarwal noted that several countries have adopted it to build national infrastructures for online learning, including France, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, China, Hong Kong and Korea. “Most excitingly … Russia in early September launched Open Edu.ru, which is Russia’s national platform using Open edX. How cool is that?”
Agarwal emphasized that there is no charge to use edX. “These courses can be taken by people all over the world, and the cost per incremental learner per course is virtually zero,” he said. He was asked about edX’s overall expenses as a non-profit organization, and acknowledged that substantial fixed costs do exist. “That’s true for software as well,” he commented. “It’s extremely expensive to produce software, but the cost to stamp out a download is virtually zero.”
He said that having a low marginal cost per student means that the current in-person higher educational model — in which each student typically shells out thousands of dollars for an education — can be completely changed. “The power of technology, the power of software, is that we can give it away for free. Free is powerful Twitter ,” he said.
Agarwal talked about some of his “favorite students,” including a 25-year-old Pakistani woman who was married when she was in ninth grade and had to leave school. “She discovered these courses and she tells us that she’s now been learning online…. Her husband is very supportive.” He noted that the first course she took was “Justice,” an introduction to moral and political philosophy that is considered one of the most famous courses taught at Harvard.
“These courses can be taken by people all over the world, and the cost per incremental learner per course is virtually zero.”
Another notable learner was a former American soldier who wanted to continue his education after two tours of duty. He also took a Harvard course, edX’s Introduction to Computer Science. With the help of LaunchCode, an edX partner in St. Louis that places people with non-traditional credentials in technology jobs, he got a job at the creative studio Yellow Brick. He directly credits the edX course for helping him get the position, said Agarwal.
Instant Gratification for a Younger Generation
Commentators speculate on whether online learning can ever measure up to traditional on-campus education. But in Agarwal’s view, it might actually be better, especially for younger people.
He said it’s important to consider how our children are learning today and how it differs from years ago. “[Kids are] used to 140-character conversations; Snapchat — where, unless you look at something, it instantly goes away; WhatsApp, YouTube, the list goes on and on.” These sites provide the user with instant information and instant gratification, he said.
He contrasted this with the conventional educational system. “When I went to school, I would do my work, and if I was lucky, two weeks later I would get some grades back…. Think about how we tolerated that and how we still tolerate it.” He said that today’s technologies give learners quick feedback that can improve educational outcomes.
Moreover, the technology continues to improve, yielding possibilities that Agarwal said he could not have anticipated when the organization was founded only four years ago. “These technologies are not your grandfather’s online learning. We have gone so well past [just] videos and multiple choice, it’s not even funny.”
He said a videotaped lecture, for example, could be replaced by a “a learning sequence”: a series of short videos interweaved with interactive exercises such as quizzes, discussions and other forms of interaction between the instructor and the students, or even among the students. edX also offers gamification and virtual labs. “Students can come in and sketch out molecules … play around and get graded for things like that. It enables students to learn by physically doing things.”
Electronic grading itself is evolving, too, said Agarwal. “With technology we can do all kinds of grading. We can grade formulaic responses … we have drag and drop; we have image response.” What about essays? edX uses peer evaluation. “The beauty of peer evaluation is that for each student who comes in to write an essay, that student may also serve as a grader,” he said. “So in some sense, each customer also becomes a supplier. And using this crowdsourcing technique, you can then get scale.”
In the testing phase now is a second technique: AI grading. He explained that in this scenario, the professor grades the first 100 submitted essays using a rubric. That process serves to train a machine learning model so that all subsequent essays can be graded by the computer.
“These technologies are not your grandfather’s online learning. We have gone so well past [just] videos and multiple choice, it’s not even funny.”
Agarwal and his colleagues have some other ideas and improvements in the works. One is “teams,” or study groups that could bring together students from all over the globe virtually. Another is cohorts, such as alumni from a particular university or employees in a corporation, who might receive special material from the professor and have a private shared discussion area. This could be a potential revenue stream for edX, he noted.
The Final Frontier: Academic Credits
edX is just now beginning to launch courses that grant academic credit for students who pass. Agarwal characterized this as “the one big driver for us…. Credit is that ultimate threshold.”
For a while now, the organization has also been awarding certificates. Agarwal described the impact that change had on users. He noted that when edX first got started, the pass rate was only 6%. Then the platform introduced verified certificates: For a fee of about $50, people would receive a certificate if they passed the course. (Certificates can be used, for instance, to “highlight skills on your resume or LinkedIn profile,” according to the edX site.)
The pass rate of people signed up for that benefit shot up to 60%. “This is the [same as the] average six-year pass rate for all the universities across the U.S. Not a bad number,” says Agarwal. To date, over 580,000 certificates have been earned.
All this was well and good, commented one audience member, but would employers ever come to accept micro-credentials — individual certificates of digital accomplishment — in place of a bachelor’s or master’s degree?
“Large employers are looking at these credentials as a way to either promote people or hire people,” Agarwal responded. He noted that edX has collaborated with organizations such as Aspiring Minds, an Indian company that connects learners to employment. Plus, he said, MIT is in discussion with a number of employers who are interested in the idea of a “micro-master’s” credential.
He said that to truly alter the educational and employment ecosystem, edX would need to increase its successes, demonstrate that the course quality was good and show that learners were “learning about the same, or more, or close enough to what they would get in a campus education…. Once the press begins talking about it, and cost pressures continue beating up on everybody, I think there is a path forward.” |
At the time, I had been working on Cox’s team for only four months and had just been promoted to chief of the task force investigating obstruction-of-justice allegations against Nixon. It was one of five such task forces that Cox organized to carry out his broad mandate. Although Nixon ordered the special prosecutor’s office abolished and commanded the FBI to seize our office and files, we remained employed by the Justice Department. Homeless, leaderless, and dazed by our proximity to the explosion the president had detonated in our midst, we brushed ourselves off and vowed to continue our work in whatever capacity we could.
It was only a matter of days, though, until the firestorm of public and congressional outrage over Cox’s firing forced Nixon to reverse course and promise to obey court orders that compelled his release of eight tape recordings. We returned to our office and were reunited with our files, and a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, was soon appointed to lead the Watergate inquiry. Amid all the furor—which didn’t end there—the public correctly asked the question “What was Nixon hiding?” The answer was not long in coming: a lot. The tapes proved Nixon was not only a liar, but also an early leader of a plot to obstruct the investigation of those who organized and financed the DNC break-in. Nixon’s choice was either to face the music—likely impeachment, conviction, and removal from office—or resign.
In Watergate’s aftermath, I thought the unique circumstances that led to Nixon’s resignation in disgrace could never be replicated. But after just six months in office, the comparisons between Presidents Trump and Nixon are mounting:
Watergate involved political espionage and electronic wiretapping by the Republican candidate’s campaign committee against the DNC. “Russiagate” involves political espionage by the Russians against the Democrats, with possible collusion by members of the GOP candidate’s campaign or advisers.
Watergate saw the president’s firing of a special prosecutor. In Russiagate, FBI Director James Comey was fired after, in the president’s own words, the bureau’s investigation had put “great pressure” on him.
Nixon called the Senate Watergate hearings a “witch hunt,” and Trump repeatedly uses the same term to criticize the ongoing special-counsel investigation.
Nixon ordered CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters to tell Acting FBI Director Pat Gray to back off the investigation tracing cash found on the arrested burglars at the scene of the crime. According to Comey’s sworn testimony before the Senate, Trump told him to go easy on former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who is being investigated in part for lying about his contacts with Russian officials.
Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of a secret White House taping system in Senate testimony. Trump once suggested that he may have covertly taped his conversations with Comey, though on Thursday he denied doing so. |
LINCOLN SQUARE — Police are warning of robberies of businesses in the area, citing three cases where offenders with guns escaped with cash from registers.
The robbberies all occurred on Jan. 20th.
"In these casesm two offenders or three offenders entered the business, displayed a blue steel handgun and demanded money from the register," police said in an alert. "The offenders moved the victims to the rear of the store or into a storage area and took money, alcohol, cigarettes and other property."
The Jan 20th incidents occurred:
• 4900 block of north Damen Avenue at 7:53 p.m.
• 2500 block of west Lawrence Avenue aty 9:45 p.m.
• 4600 block of north Kedzie at 9:55 p.m.
Police describe the suspects in the first case as three black men, 19 to 22 years old, 5'8 to 5'10 and wearing dark clothes, gloves and a covering over their face. In the two other cases, the suspects are black men, 17 to 25, 5'6 to 5'8. They also wore dark clothing and gloves and had their faces covered, police said.
The Damen robbery was reportedly Windy City Liquors. Surveillance camera footage obtained by ABC7 showed the robbers storming into the business and overwhelming the clerk.
Brazen armed robbery caught on video in Ravenswood: https://t.co/gkhREaT252 pic.twitter.com/b8fAMz9C1T — ABC 7 Chicago (@ABC7Chicago) January 22, 2016
Police urge anyone who may have information about the crimes to contact the Bureau of Detectives - Area North at 312-744-8263.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here: |
After the pro-transparency group WikiLeaks released the intellectual property chapter of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “trade” regime, the outcry around the world and across the political spectrum was swift and brutal. Among the many problems highlighted by critics of the scheme: the assault on national sovereignty and self-government; the threat to free expression, privacy, whistleblowers, and freedom of information; the generous handouts to Big Business cronies in everything from pharmaceuticals to Hollywood; conscripting Internet Service Providers (ISPs) into serving as agents of the transnational TPP regime; and much more.
Opponents say there are so many radical, lobbyist-inspired dangers lurking in the leaked text that passing it will be tough, even despite the GOP selling out their base and handing Obama "Trade Promotion Authority," restricting Congress' ability to stop the scheme. Still, with the text of what opponents are ridiculing as “ObamaTrade” set to remain officially secret until after it is imposed, the Obama administration is apparently hoping to ram through what it calls the “most progressive” trade regime in history with the help of establishment Republicans — all while keeping Americans in the dark about it.
Virtually everything that is known about the controversial scheme thus far has come from leaks. The latest shoe to drop in the saga came late last week when WikiLeaks leaked what it said was the TPP chapter governing intellectual property as of October 5, just days before the negotiations among the 12 governments behind the scheme were reportedly concluded in Atlanta. The New American has featured extensive coverage of other TPP provisions leaked previously. Those chapters outline, among other elements, radical immigration provisions, the establishment of international kangaroo courts purporting to have the power to overrule state and federal laws and courts in the United States, the push for empowering regional and international governance, the creation of unaccountable transnational regulatory bureaucracies, and much more.
The latest chapter to leak is likely to pour fuel on the fire as opposition to the scheme grows around the world. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which champions privacy, free expression, and innovation and describes itself as the “leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world,” was among the many groups to lambaste the relevant section of the TPP agreement. It said the new leak “confirms our worst fears about the agreement, and dashes the few hopes that we held out that its most onerous provisions wouldn't survive to the end of the negotiations.” Acknowledging that the chapter might come across as “quite balanced” to the untrained observer, the group said “that's how it's meant to look, and taking this at face value would be a big mistake.” Upon digging deeper, EFF said, the rights of the public are all “non-binding,” while almost everything that benefits owners of intellectual property is binding.
In some cases, EFF continued, the penalties for copyright infringement under the TPP regime can even include jail time. That has traditionally been the case where infringing parties are operating a business of commercial piracy. “But under the TPP, any act of willful copyright infringement on a commercial scale renders the infringer liable to criminal penalties, even if they were not carried out for financial gain, provided that they have a substantial prejudicial impact on the rightsholder,” EFF explained, blasting the lack of “fair use” protections. The TPP regime would also criminalize anyone who gains unauthorized access to a trade secret in a computer system — without any mandatory exceptions when the information is accessed or disclosed in the public interest by whistleblowers or journalists. The EFF said that provision mirrors U.S. statutes used to “persecute hackers for offenses that would otherwise have been considered much more minor.”
And unfortunately, it is all bad news, the group said. “The TPP is the archetype of an agreement that exists only for the benefit of the entitled, politically powerfully lobbyists who have pushed it through to completion over the last eight years,” EFF explained in its wide-ranging critique of the latest leaked chapter. In fact, the deal is so bad when it comes to intellectual property, the EFF found “nothing” for users and innovators to support, but plenty to fear — “the ratcheting up of the copyright term across the Pacific rim, the punitive sanctions for [Digital Rights Management] circumvention, and the full frontal attack on hackers and journalists in the trade secrets provision, just to mention three.” However, while the leak confirmed EFF's “greatest fears,” it also strengthened the groups resolve to “kill this agreement for good once it reaches Congress.”
The far-left U.K. Guardian, which absurdly characterized conservative opposition to the scheme as centering on it not doing “enough for business,” highlighted another major problem that could harm whistleblowers and give greater powers to governments to stop embarrassing information going public. According the the British paper, the treaty purports to grant signatory governments the authority to curtail legal proceedings if the information that would be disclosed might be “detrimental to a party’s economic interests, international relations, or national defense or national security.” In other words, The Guardian reported, “if a trial would cause the information to spread.”
The paper also quoted Evan Greer, campaign director of an Internet activist group called “Fight for the Future,” who said the TPP's intellectual property regime “poses a grave threat to global freedom of expression and basic access to things like medicine and information.” “But the sad part is that no one should be surprised by this,” he added. “It should have been obvious to anyone observing the process, where appointed government bureaucrats and monopolistic companies were given more access to the text than elected officials and journalists, that this would be the result.” Another source quoted in the article, Michael Wessel, who reportedly served as a U.S. government advisor on portions of the TPP, added that the TPP does nothing for Americans and would threaten U.S. jobs.
A major concern among elements of the opposition surrounds intellectual property protections for Big Pharma, which critics say are far too generous and will threaten the ability of people worldwide to access affordable drugs far into the future. “Many harmful provisions still remain in the final chapter, bearing out the concerns of public health advocates,” wrote public health expert Dr. Deborah Gleeson with La Trobe Universtity, highlighting a number of provisions in the leaked text that she said were alarming. “The outcome of this suite of obligations will be delayed competition from follow-on generics and biosimilars — which means delayed access to affordable medicines, placing them out of reach altogether for many people in developing countries.”
“If the TPP countries [governments] ratify the deal, Big Pharma will have succeeded in cementing intellectual property standards that will stymie access to medicines for up to 800 million people in the short term, and more if additional countries sign up in future,” she added. “Furthermore, the TPP’s intellectual property chapter sets a new norm that is likely to become the template for future trade agreements: its implications are global as well as regional.... The governments of TPP countries have been complicit in a global health disaster of unimaginable proportions — a deal that will prevent untold numbers of people from obtaining medicines that those in many developed countries take for granted.”
Perhaps even more important than all of the criticism outlined above, however, is the full-blown frontal assault on American independence and self-government. John F. McManus, president of The John Birch Society, the constitutionalist group credited by the architect of the North American Union with killing the anti-sovereignty scheme (the parent organization of The New American), noted in a recent column that the TPP has been marketed as a “trade” agreement that would help the U.S. economy, protect the environment, and more. “But a close examination of what is known about this pact (no copies have been made available, other than what has leaked out) reveals that it is far more than a mere trade pact,” McManus said. “Instead, it should be viewed as the beginning of a process similar to the one employed to create the European Union.”
Despite the establishment media's careful efforts to conceal the facts, with each new leak of information, the TPP suffers another major blow. Whether the intellectual property segment will serve as the straw that breaks the camel's back remains to be seen. But if Americans hope to retain their rights and independence, it is crucial that they educate their elected representatives on the threat so that it can be quashed when the TPP is presented to Congress for approval.
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Related articles:
WikiLeaks Offers $100k Bounty for Secret ObamaTrade TPP Scheme
The Pacific Trade Agreement is an Attack on Sovereignty
WTO Ruling Blasts U.S. Sovereignty; TPP Threatens More of Same
Obama-GOP “Trade” Scheme Includes “Unrestricted Immigration”
Leaked Obama “Trade” Pact Exposes Assault on Self-government
Leak of Secret Trade Doc Reveals Sovereignty-destroying Courts
Establishment GOP Plots to Empower Obama on “Progressive” Trade
Trans-Pacific Partnership To Facilitate U.S.-China Merger
GOP Leaders Plot Pseudo-Free-Trade Schemes With Obama
Activists Rally to Stop Obama’s “Free Trade” Schemes
The EU: Regionalization Trumps Sovereignty
Trans-Pacific Partnership (NAFTA on Steroids) Threatens Sovereignty
The “Free Trade” Agenda Threatens Our Rights
Members of Congress Call for TPP Transparency |
Jeremy Corbyn has today unveiled plans to “extend democracy in Britain” by overhauling the ways the UK constitution, economy and Labour Party work.
The Labour leader has hit out at the manner in which “decisions in Britain are overwhelmingly taken from the top down” and says he wants the country to work for “the millions, and not just the millionaires”.
As ballots begin to go out in the leadership contest today, Corbyn reveals how he wants to extend devolution through online democracy and opening up local referendums on the outsourcing of public services.
He also says that he wants to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with an elected second chamber, and start “citizens’ assemblies” to help shape political accountability. The plans also include a radical extension of trade union and workers’ rights, including mandatory collective bargaining for companies with 250 or more employees, requiring the election of employee representatives to executive remuneration committees and taking action to ensure women’s equality in the workplace.
But his vision also sees big changes to the way the Labour Party operates, by handing policy-making power to the women’s, BAME and youth conferences for the first time, creating a charter of rights for party members, and moving to “widen representation” on the NEC to reflect the huge increase in party membership.
“I am determined to democratise our country from the ground up, and give people a real say in their communities and workplaces,” Corbyn said. “We need to break open the closed circle of Westminster and Whitehall, and of the boardrooms too.
“Decisions in Britain are overwhelmingly taken from the top down. And that’s crucial to why our country is run in the interests of a privileged few.
“That has to change – so that the country works in the interests of the millions, and not just the millionaires.
“I believe in the wisdom of ordinary citizens. That’s why we are launching proposals to extend democracy in every part of public life: in national politics, communities, the economy and the workplace – and in our own party.
“Labour under my leadership will listen to ideas from the bottom up – and take radical action to transform and rebuild our country so that no one and no community is left behind. We need nothing less than a democratic revolution in our politics, communities and workplaces.” |
Mars Direct is a proposal for a human mission to Mars which purports to be both cost-effective and possible with current technology. It was originally detailed in a research paper by Martin Marietta engineers Robert Zubrin and David Baker in 1990, and later expanded upon in Zubrin's 1996 book The Case for Mars. It now serves as a staple of Zubrin's speaking engagements and general advocacy as head of the Mars Society, an organization devoted to the colonization of Mars.[1]
The Habitat Unit and the Earth Return Vehicle on Mars.
History [ edit ]
Space Exploration Initiative [ edit ]
On July 20, 1989, George H. W. Bush – then President of the United States – announced plans for what came to be known as the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). In a speech on the steps of the National Air and Space Museum he described long-term plans which would culminate in a manned mission to the surface of Mars.[2]
By December 1990, a study to estimate the project's cost determined that long-term expenditure would total approximately 450 billion dollars spread over 20 to 30 years.[3] The "90 Day Study" as it came to be known, evoked a hostile Congressional reaction towards SEI given that it would have required the largest single government expenditure since World War II.[4] Within a year, all funding requests for SEI had been denied.
Dan Goldin became NASA Administrator on April 1, 1992, officially abandoning plans for near-term human exploration beyond Earth orbit with the shift towards a "faster, better, cheaper" strategy for robotic exploration.[5]
Development [ edit ]
While working at Martin Marietta designing interplanetary mission architectures, Robert Zubrin perceived a fundamental flaw in the SEI program. Zubrin came to understand that if NASA's plan was to fully utilize as many technologies as possible in support of sending the mission to Mars, it would become politically untenable. In his own words:
The exact opposite of the correct way to do engineering.[4]
Zubrin's alternative to this "Battlestar Galactica" mission strategy (dubbed so by its detractors for the large, nuclear powered spaceships that supposedly resembled the science-fiction spaceship of the same name) involved a longer surface stay, a faster flight-path in the form of a conjunction class mission, in situ resource utilization and craft launched directly from the surface of Earth to Mars as opposed to be being assembled in orbit or by a space-based drydock.[6] After receiving approval from management at Marietta, a 12-man team within the company began to work out the details of the mission. While they focused primarily on more traditional mission architectures, Zubrin began to collaborate with colleague David Baker's[7] extremely simple, stripped-down and robust strategy. Their goal to "use local resources, travel light, and live off the land" became the hallmark of Mars Direct.[4]
Mission scenario [ edit ]
First launch [ edit ]
The first flight of the Ares rocket (not to be confused with the similarly named rocket of the now defunct Constellation program) would take an unmanned Earth Return Vehicle to Mars after a 6-month cruise phase, with a supply of hydrogen, a chemical plant and a small nuclear reactor. Once there, a series of chemical reactions (the Sabatier reaction coupled with electrolysis) would be used to combine a small amount of hydrogen (8 tons) carried by the Earth Return Vehicle with the carbon dioxide of the Martian atmosphere to create up to 112 tonnes of methane and oxygen. This relatively simple chemical-engineering procedure was used regularly in the 19th and 20th centuries,[8] and would ensure that only 7% of the return propellant would need to be carried to the surface of Mars.
96 tonnes of methane and oxygen would be needed to send the Earth Return Vehicle on a trajectory back home at the conclusion of the surface stay; the rest would be available for Mars rovers. The process of generating fuel is expected to require approximately ten months to complete.
Second launch [ edit ]
Some 26 months after the Earth Return Vehicle is originally launched from Earth, a second vehicle, the Mars Habitat Unit, would be launched on a 6-month long low-energy transfer trajectory to Mars, and would carry a crew of four astronauts (the minimum number required so that the team can be split in two without leaving anyone alone). The Habitat Unit would not be launched until the automated factory aboard the ERV had signaled the successful production of chemicals required for operation on the planet and the return trip to Earth. During the trip, artificial gravity would be generated by tethering the Habitat Unit to the spent upper stage of the booster, and setting them rotating about a common axis. This rotation would produce a comfortable 1 g working environment for the astronauts, freeing them of the debilitating effects of long-term exposure to weightlessness.[4]
Landing and surface operations [ edit ]
Upon reaching Mars, the upper stage would be jettisoned, with the Habitat Unit aerobraking into Mars orbit before soft-landing in proximity to the Earth Return Vehicle. Precise landing would be supported by a radar beacon started by the first lander. Once on Mars, the crew would spend 18 months on the surface, carrying out a range of scientific research, aided by a small rover vehicle carried aboard their Mars Habitat Unit, and powered by the methane produced by the Earth Return Vehicle.
Return and follow-up missions [ edit ]
To return, the crew would use the Earth Return Vehicle, leaving the Mars Habitat Unit for the possible use of subsequent explorers. On the return trip to Earth, the propulsion stage of the Earth Return Vehicle would be used as a counterweight to generate artificial gravity for the trip back.
Follow-up missions would be dispatched at 2 year intervals to Mars to ensure that a redundant ERV would be on the surface at all times, waiting to be used by the next crewed mission or the current crew in an emergency. In such an emergency scenario, the crew would trek hundreds of kilometers to the other ERV in their long-range vehicle.
Components [ edit ]
The Mars Direct proposal includes a component for a Launch Vehicle "Ares", an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) and a Mars Habitat Unit (MHU).
Launch Vehicle [ edit ]
The plan involves several launches making use of heavy-lift boosters of similar size to the Saturn V used for the Apollo missions, which would potentially be derived from Space Shuttle components. This proposed rocket is dubbed "Ares", which would use space shuttle Advanced Solid Rocket Boosters, a modified shuttle external tank, and a new Lox/LH2 third stage for the trans-Mars injection of the payload. Ares would put 121 tonnes into a 300 km circular orbit, and boost 47 tonnes toward Mars.[9]
Earth Return Vehicle [ edit ]
The Earth Return Vehicle is a two-stage vehicle. The upper stage comprises the living accommodation for the crew during their six-month return trip to Earth from Mars. The lower stage contains the vehicle's rocket engines and a small chemical production plant.
Mars Habitat Unit [ edit ]
The Mars Habitat Unit is a 2- or 3-deck vehicle providing a comprehensive living and working environment for a Mars crew. In addition to individual sleeping quarters which provide a degree of privacy for each of the crew and a place for personal effects, the Mars Habitat Unit includes a communal living area, a small galley, exercise area, and hygiene facilities with closed-cycle water purification. The lower deck of the Mars Habitat Unit provides the primary working space for the crew: small laboratory areas for carrying out geology and life science research; storage space for samples, airlocks for reaching the surface of Mars, and a suiting-up area where crew members prepare for surface operations. Protection from harmful radiation while in space and on the surface of Mars (e.g. from solar flares) would be provided by a dedicated "storm shelter" in the core of the vehicle.
The Mars Habitat Unit would also include a small pressurized rover that is stored in the lower deck area and assembled on the surface of Mars. Powered by a methane engine, it is designed to extend the range over which astronauts can explore the surface of Mars out to 320 km.
Since it was first proposed as a part of Mars Direct, the Mars Habitat Unit has been adopted by NASA as a part of their Mars Design Reference Mission, which uses two Mars Habitat Units – one of which flies to Mars unmanned, providing a dedicated laboratory facility on Mars, together with the capacity to carry a larger rover vehicle. The second Mars Habitat Unit flies to Mars with the crew, its interior given over completely to living and storage space.
To prove the viability of the Mars Habitat Unit, the Mars Society has implemented the Mars Analogue Research Station Program (MARS), which has established a number of prototype Mars Habitat Units around the world.
Reception [ edit ]
Baker pitched Mars Direct at the Marshall Spaceflight Center in April 1990,[10] where reception was very positive. The engineers flew around the country to present their plan, which generated significant interest. When their tour culminated in a demonstration at the National Space Society they received a standing ovation.[4] The plan gained rapid media attention shortly afterwards.
Resistance to the plan came from teams within NASA working on the Space Station and advanced propulsion concepts[citation needed]. The NASA administration rejected Mars Direct. Zubrin remained committed to the strategy, and after parting with David Baker attempted to convince the new NASA administration of Mars Direct's merits in 1992.[4]
After being granted a small research fund at Martin Marietta, Zubrin and his colleagues successfully demonstrated an in-situ propellant generator which achieved an efficiency of 94%.[4] No chemical engineers partook in the development of the demonstration hardware.[4] After showing the positive results to the Johnson Space Center, the NASA administration still held several reservations about the plan.[4]
In November 2003, Zubrin was invited to speak to the U.S. Senate committee on the future of space exploration.[4] Two months later the Bush administration announced the creation of the Constellation program, a manned spaceflight initiative with the goal of sending humans to the Moon by 2020. While a Mars mission was not specifically detailed, a plan to reach Mars based on utilizing the Orion spacecraft was tentatively developed for implementation in the 2030s. In 2009 the Obama administration began a review of the Constellation program, and after budgetary concerns the program was cancelled in 2010.[11]
There are a variety of psychological and sociological issues that could affect long-duration expeditionary space missions. Early human spaceflight missions to Mars are expected by some to have significant psycho-social problems to overcome, as well as provide considerable data for refining mission design, mission planning, and crew selection for future missions.[12]
Revisions [ edit ]
Since Mars Direct was initially conceived, it has undergone regular review and development by Zubrin himself, the Mars Society, NASA, Stanford University and others.
Mars Semi-Direct [ edit ]
Artist's rendering of Mars Semi-Direct/DRA 1.0: The Manned Habitat Unit is "docked" alongside a pre placed habitat that was sent ahead of the Earth Return Vehicle.
Zubrin and Weaver developed a modified version of Mars Direct, called Mars Semi-Direct, in response to some specific criticisms.[13] This mission consists of three spacecraft and includes a "Mars Ascent Vehicle" (MAV). The ERV remains in Mars orbit for the return journey, while the unmanned MAV lands and manufactures propellants for the ascent back up to Mars orbit. The Mars Semi-Direct architecture has been used as the basis of a number of studies, including the NASA Design Reference Missions.
When subjected to the same cost-analysis as the 90-day report, Mars Semi-Direct was predicted to cost 55 billion dollars over 10 years, capable of fitting into the existing NASA budget.
Mars Semi-Direct became the basis of the Design Reference Mission 1.0 of NASA, replacing the Space Exploration Initiative.
Design Reference Mission [ edit ]
The NASA model, referred to as the Design Reference Mission, on version 5.0 as of September 1, 2012, calls for a significant upgrade in hardware (at least three launches per mission, rather than two), and sends the ERV to Mars fully fueled, parking it in orbit above the planet for subsequent rendezvous with the MAV.
Mars Direct and SpaceX [ edit ]
With the potentially imminent advent of low-cost heavy lift capability, Zubrin has posited a dramatically lower cost manned Mars mission using hardware developed by space transport company SpaceX. In this simpler plan, a crew of two would be sent to Mars by a single Falcon Heavy launch, the Dragon spacecraft acting as their interplanetary cruise habitat. Additional living space for the journey would be enabled through the use of inflatable add-on modules if required. The problems associated with long-term weightlessness would be addressed in the same manner as the baseline Mars Direct plan, a tether between the Dragon habitat and the TMI (Trans-Mars Injection) stage acting to allow rotation of the craft.
The Dragon's heatshield characteristics could allow for a safe descent if landing rockets of sufficient power were made available. Research at NASA's Ames Research Center has demonstrated that a robotic Dragon would be capable of a fully propulsive landing on the Martian surface.[citation needed] On the surface, the crew would have at their disposal two Dragon spacecraft with inflatable modules as habitats, two ERVs, two Mars ascent vehicles and 8 tonnes of cargo.
Other Studies [ edit ]
The Mars Society and Stanford studies retain the original two-vehicle mission profile of Mars Direct, but increase the crew size to six.
Mars Society Australia developed their own four-person Mars Oz reference mission, based on Mars Semi-Direct. This study uses horizontally landing, bent biconic shaped modules, and relies on solar power and chemical propulsion throughout,[14] where Mars Direct and the DRMs used nuclear reactors for surface power and, in the case of the DRMs for propulsion as well. The Mars Oz reference mission also differs in assuming, based on space station experience, that spin gravity will not be required.
Mars Analogue Research Stations [ edit ]
The Mars Society has argued the viability of the Mars Habitat Unit concept through their Mars Analogue Research Station program. These are two or three decked vertical cylinders ~8 m in diameter and 8 m high. Mars Society Australia plans to build its own station based on the Mars Oz design.[15] The Mars Oz design features a horizontal cylinder 4.7 m in diameter and 18 m long, with a tapered nose. A second similar module will function as a garage and power and logistics module.
Mars Direct was featured on a Discovery Channel programs Mars: The Next Frontier in which issues were discussed surrounding NASA funding of the project, and on Mars Underground, where the plan is discussed more in-depth.
Alternatives [ edit ]
"Mars to Stay" proposals involve not returning the first immigrant/explorers immediately, or ever. It has been suggested the cost of sending a four or six person team could be one fifth to one tenth the cost of returning that same four or six person team. Depending on the precise approach taken, a quite complete lab could be sent and landed for less than the cost of sending back even 50 kilos of Martian rocks. Twenty or more persons could be sent for the cost of returning four.[16]
In fiction [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading |
In recent years, Bahais were forced to choose Islam, Christianity or Judaism in the religious denomination slot in order to receive identification documents. Some of them went to court, arguing that they should be allowed to leave the ‘religion’ slot blank rather than choose a faith that is not theirs. The move elicited the fury of Muslim conservatives who dissimssed Bahais as heretics and opposed any attempt to recognize the Bahai faith in official documents. In Iran, Bahais face other aspects of persecution .
“We greatly welcome the decision. We are very pleased that this is the end of the legal battle,” Soha Abdelaty, Deputy Director of Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, told The Times.
After years of legal hurdles, Egypt’s High Administrative Court upheld a verdict granting the minority Bahai community the right to be themselves, at least when it comes to official documents.
Previously, several verdicts had been handed down in favor of Bahais, however, they were not implemented, which leaves many Bahais cautiously optimistic about today’s ruling. "What I hope is to see this verdict immediately implemented," Wafaa Hindy, a Bahai woman told The Times. "This verdict can mark the start of a new era, but we should not jump to conclusions until the verdict is enforced."
There is no official record of the number of Bahais in Egypt; however, they are estimated at 2000.
"There is no community in the world that faced the civil death we have been facing; our children cannot have birth certificates and we cannot have identification cards. We are fed up," Hindy said.
The Bahai faith emerged in Iran from the heart of Shiite Islam in the mid-19th century, founded by Bahaullah, whom adherents recognize as the most recent in a line of prophets, including Jesus and Muhammad. The world’s more than five million Baha’is believe in one God and the unity of all major religions. One of the remarkable tenets of their faith is the belief in continuous and progressive divine revelations. According to Bahais, humanity will still receive more prophets.
— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo
Photo: The shrine of Bahaullah, founder of the Bahai faith in the Israeli city of Haifa, Credit: Bahai Media Bank/Nelson Ashberger |
Tis the season for draft rumors, so we're going to go ahead and push this awesome story by Ted back up to the top for everyone to read again, or read for the first time if you missed it last year. -Chris
A couple of weeks ago, SB Nation contributor Steven Godfrey wrote one of the best pieces I have ever read about any sporting topic, anywhere. It was about the college football bag man, the guy who delivers the under the table cash and benefits to top notch recruits at big time college football programs. No kidding, whether you're a college football fan or not, go read that article. Seriously, like right now, because it's some of the best writing you'll find anywhere on the Internet.
This will be the exact opposite of that. This piece explores the seedy underbelly of NFL rumor mongering, and how teams do everything they can to get a guy to drop into their lap on draft day.
And it's obviously a parody, as fictitious as skinny knees or thick tonsils.
_______________________________________
The Rumor Man excuses himself to make a call outside, on his "other phone," to finalize an anonymous rumor about a top ten draft pick. The player is rated No. 1 at his position and is expected to be long gone by the time his team selects. We're sitting in a popular restaurant near the stadium almost a week before Draft Day, talking about how to start rumors for potential draft picks.
"Nah, there's no way he'll be there when we go on the clock, but you still have to do it," he says. "It looks good. It's good for down the road. Same reason my wife watches Real Housewives of Atlanta. It's all bullshit, all made up. All of it. These scouts and GM's talk to each other. It's a waste of Internet bandwidth, but they're doing the same thing to our guys right now in [divisional rival's town]. Cost of business."
Technically, this conversation never happened, because I won't reveal this man's name, or even the town I visited. Accordingly, all the other conversations I had with different rumor men representing different NFL teams over a two-month span surrounding Draft Day didn't happen either.
Even when I asked for and received proof -- in this case a phone call conversation that became a tweet about a former SEC football player -- it's just rumors hitting the Internet. When things are done correctly, there's no proof more substantial than one man's tweet over another. That allows for plausible deniability, which is good enough for the coaches, general managers, coordinators, and scouts. And the man I officially didn't speak with was emphatic that no one really understands how often and how well it almost always works.
These men are fans who believe they're leveraging football success one skinny knee or short armed rumor at a time. I can't show you the medical records, and neither can anyone else. You might think you see the medical records -- a flash of a phrase like ''watery eyeballs", or "really chapped lips" -- but that's just a random tweet.
This is the arrangement in high-stakes NFL draft subterfuge, though of course not every player is anonymously criticized. Providing rumors and bogus arrest reports about players is not a scandal or a scheme, merely a function. And when you start listening to the rumors, you understand the function can never be stopped.
"Last week I got a call. We've got this offensive lineman we really want. And he's country strong. The [offensive line coach] calls me and tells me he's watching tape of this kid against [big time college team]. Says he never got owned by the d-lineman, not once. Now, how do you get a possible first round pick to drop into the middle of the second round? I just go dig out in my garage and find an old medical report from five years back when he had a frankel, braces on his teeth, a whole shit ton of mouth work to correct a set of snaggle teeth. I call a scout of mine and mention that [this players] braces will be permanent, and there's so much wiring in his goddamn mouth it will interfere with the calls into the quarterback. He's also a chronic masturbator that's developed calcium deposits in his elbow that will prevent him from bending his arms at more than a 24 degree angle."
"I don't view what I do as a crime, and I don't give a shit if someone else does, honestly."
This is how you become an NFL Draft rumor man.
"I think it took me seven years. I knew some guys. They knew some older guys. And before, I really didn't believe any of this happened. Then I start coming around different events, parties, tailgates, and I make some smart ass tweets. After a while one guy says, 'Oh hey, I know him. It's okay, he loves the [team], got a great imagination' and we start talking. I make a smart ass comment about a running back having a wide ass and affecting his center of gravity, and the next thing I know I was a part of it. I wanted to be."
Once properly vetted, your imagination usually buys you first or secondhand fictional information most coaches and GM's go apeshit over as the draft gets closer: player run-ins with Filipino tranny hookers, severe flatulence that could require a locker room fumigation, and most importantly: ridiculous, mysterious medical maladies that cause top players to sink like the Titanic come draft day.
From these general categories, narratives are developed and stories are created, but over time specific rumors are shaped by the rumor men. It's a somewhat fluid situation, at least over long amounts of time.
Regardless of the team, rumor men gravitate towards two centers of power: Twitter and the team message boards, the latter because of population, the former because of power. Regardless of where top-dollar rumor men might live, the Internet serves as the primary center of operations. After all, that's where the disinformation is.
Rumor men tend to operate in plain sight. And while there might be a kind of cabal of guys with particularly rich imaginations who direct operations at private meetings, there aren't dungeons and robes or some kind of "X-Files" syndicate in a smoky boardroom.
"No basement at Mom's house, although a couple guys have some pretty ridiculous-looking man caves. I mean, we're shooting the shit about college football players that have declared for the draft. That in and of itself isn't a crime. Sometimes we go to Caribou Coffee."
The rules of rumoring tend to follow your typical sleeper cell or drug-dealing outfit. Talk in person as much as possible, preferably in group settings. Don't use email. Never interact with the media directly and avoid the team's public relations department whenever possible.
And make shit up. Lots of shit.
"It's the craziest thing. We make up the craziest rumors, use 'em for a while, then toss 'em. The worst part was convincing my wife it wasn't the beginning of dementia or just general stupidity, because none of the stuff we would throw out there would make any sense to anyone. Except scouts and GM's. Then it's on the front page of [team hometown newspaper and website]. My wife just rolls her eyes and shakes her head in amazement."
Rumors are seasonal and used mostly around the height of draft season, when local rumor men need to communicate quickly with other scouts across the NFL. Later on they'll be used to communicate directly with coaches and GM's.
I can call up a guy in personnel and say, 'Hey man, we're hearing Jimmy Garoppolo is a better quarterback than Teddy Bridgewater. What do you think?'
"The first player is the comparative value and a decoy. Here, it's Jimmy Garoppolo. The rumor is that he's better than Teddy Bridgewater, the guy we really want. In this example, Garoppolo is okay, but no one REALLY thinks he's better than Bridgewater. I mean for the love of Jerry Fuckin' Burns just look at the tape. But put out just enough doubt and it starts to spread like wildfire, and the closer you get to the draft, we might as well be a league that's a forest fire waiting to happen, man."
"I don't know shit about football. I know even less about the human body, injuries, and physiology. But everyone believes me."
He leans in and looks me directly in the eye.
"Everyone."
There's a weird code of personal conduct for a rumor man. It's okay to throw out flashy rumors, but within the limits. Set up your ridiculous medical rumor, run with the one about a guy having trouble with authority, float something about the player flipping off a kid in a hospital. After all, you're passionate enough to be rumor mongering, so you might as well enjoy yourself.
But while drawing attention to your rumor is fine, attaching long lasting damage to the player because of the rumor is forbidden. It's a fine line to walk, but you don't want the rumor blowing up in your face.
"Look, at the end of the day we all want these kids to get drafted. And after the draft is over, the rumor men like to get together and laugh our asses off about which rumor was the best and did the most yet least collateral damage."
Extenuating factors to consider when putting together a plan:
What's the climate of the league?
Is this a medical rumor or coachability one? How fast will this rumor spread? Or is someone already starting another rumor about this player, meaning you're the competition?
Any criminal history? Could other rumors (money laundering, grand theft auto) be arranged if proposed rumor flops?
Who is the one person that can be trusted to take that rumor about the player and keep it in the public view for as long as possible by getting the most retweets and shares on social media?
Remember, your job as a rumor man isn't to hide the rumor. It's to hide the truth. At an event as passionate as the NFL draft, there's no real moral outrage when new rumors about players appear, especially if the player you started a rumor about ends up getting drafted by your team.
This system and the men operating it want you to know that they don't succeed so often and raise the stakes so fearlessly because they're that good. It's because so many people care so much. There might not be a cultural mandate, but describing the buildup to the draft as a culture accepting of this behavior would be a raging understatement.
If you believe any of this happens with the frequency and level of organization described, you might assume that such practices surely couldn't go entirely unnoticed, that surely someone not involved in a conspiracy to spread the most ridiculous things about college-aged athletes would expose the plot. It's happened before, after all.
"It happens, yeah, but now we start to ask, ‘Who would do that?' You try your damnedest to say as much shit about as many people for a long as you can. Look at how much everyone cares about these stupid rumors. Think about how much of a pariah any one of us would become if we spoke out, especially with no real evidence about any of the rumors we start."
And with that, the cell phone rings. The rumor man takes it. It's another rumor man, wanting to float a trial balloon. |
Travis Hamonic credited with hit on Jussi Jokinen in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Kyle Okposo saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 36 ft)
Shot missed by Shane Prince, Wide of Net(Backhand 20 ft)
Calvin de Haan credited with hit on Shawn Thornton in defensive zone
Johnny Boychuk credited with hit on Michael Matheson in defensive zone
Johnny Boychuk credited with hit on Reilly Smith in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Calvin de Haan saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 30 ft)
Matt Martin credited with hit on Dmitry Kulikov in offensive zone
Steve Bernier credited with hit on Dmitry Kulikov in offensive zone
Shot missed by Frans Nielsen, Wide of Net(Snap 25 ft)
Shot on goal by Josh Bailey saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 12 ft)
Shot missed by Matt Martin, Wide of Net(Snap 40 ft)
Shot on goal by Kyle Okposo saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 30 ft)
Shot missed by Travis Hamonic, Wide of Net(Wristshot 58 ft)
Travis Hamonic credited with hit on Vincent Trocheck in defensive zone
Travis Hamonic credited with hit on Dmitry Kulikov in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Calvin de Haan saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 63 ft)
Shot missed by Alan Quine, Wide of Net(Tip-In 17 ft)
Kyle Okposo credited with hit on Dmitry Kulikov in offensive zone
Matt Martin credited with hit on Shawn Thornton in defensive zone
Matt Martin credited with hit on Garrett Wilson in neutral zone
Steve Bernier credited with hit on Shawn Thornton in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Frans Nielsen saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 31 ft)
Shot missed by Frans Nielsen, Wide of Net(Backhand 15 ft)
Shot missed by Marek Zidlicky, Wide of Net(Slapshot 61 ft)
Shot missed by Casey Cizikas, Wide of Net(Wristshot 15 ft)
Casey Cizikas credited with hit on Erik Gudbranson in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Frans Nielsen saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 17 ft)
Johnny Boychuk credited with hit on Aleksander Barkov in defensive zone
Travis Hamonic credited with hit on Reilly Smith in defensive zone
Shot missed by Johnny Boychuk, Wide of Net(Slapshot 74 ft)
Shot missed by Kyle Okposo, Wide of Net(Snap 52 ft)
Casey Cizikas credited with hit on Logan Shaw in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Thomas Hickey saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 52 ft)
Shot missed by Travis Hamonic, Wide of Net(Snap 33 ft)
Shot on goal by Shane Prince saved by Roberto Luongo(Backhand 26 ft)
Shot on goal by Casey Cizikas saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 45 ft)
Johnny Boychuk credited with hit on Jaromir Jagr in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Kyle Okposo saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 17 ft)
Shot missed by Travis Hamonic, Wide of Net(Snap 57 ft)
Thomas Hickey credited with hit on Garrett Wilson in defensive zone
Cal Clutterbuck credited with hit on Shawn Thornton in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Steve Bernier saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 35 ft)
Shot on goal by Kyle Okposo saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 41 ft)
Casey Cizikas credited with hit on Logan Shaw in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Kyle Okposo saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 38 ft)
Alan Quine credited with hit on Aleksander Barkov in defensive zone
Calvin de Haan credited with hit on Jaromir Jagr in defensive zone
Nikolay Kulemin credited with hit on Alexander Petrovic in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Casey Cizikas saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 119 ft)
Travis Hamonic credited with hit on Garrett Wilson in neutral zone
Alan Quine credited with hit on Erik Gudbranson in offensive zone
Steve Bernier credited with hit on Alexander Petrovic in offensive zone
Alan Quine credited with hit on Erik Gudbranson in defensive zone
Casey Cizikas credited with hit on Dmitry Kulikov in neutral zone
Nick Leddy credited with hit on Logan Shaw in defensive zone
Travis Hamonic credited with hit on Logan Shaw in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Calvin de Haan saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 38 ft)
Shot on goal by Frans Nielsen saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 12 ft)
Shot missed by John Tavares, Wide of Net(Snap 36 ft)
Shot missed by Casey Cizikas, Wide of Net(Snap 57 ft)
Shot missed by Johnny Boychuk, Wide of Net(Slapshot 63 ft)
Steve Bernier credited with hit on Brian Campbell in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Cal Clutterbuck saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 17 ft)
Shot on goal by Nick Leddy saved by Roberto Luongo(Slapshot 60 ft)
Nick Leddy credited with hit on Reilly Smith in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Cal Clutterbuck saved by Roberto Luongo(Backhand 18 ft)
Steve Bernier credited with hit on Jussi Jokinen in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Kyle Okposo saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 37 ft)
Shot on goal by Kyle Okposo saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 51 ft)
Shot on goal by Travis Hamonic saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 53 ft)
Matt Martin credited with hit on Brian Campbell in offensive zone
Johnny Boychuk credited with hit on Garrett Wilson in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Johnny Boychuk saved by Roberto Luongo(Slapshot 55 ft)
Casey Cizikas credited with hit on Brian Campbell in offensive zone
Shot on goal by John Tavares saved by Roberto Luongo(Slapshot 51 ft)
Shot on goal by Brock Nelson saved by Roberto Luongo(Backhand 12 ft)
Shot on goal by Brock Nelson saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 9 ft)
Shot on goal by Nikolay Kulemin saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 33 ft)
Shot missed by Calvin de Haan, Wide of Net(Slapshot 61 ft)
Shot on goal by Nikolay Kulemin saved by Roberto Luongo(Backhand 10 ft)
Casey Cizikas credited with hit on Brian Campbell in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Nikolay Kulemin saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 9 ft)
Shot on goal by Steve Bernier saved by Roberto Luongo(Backhand 10 ft)
Shot missed by Nick Leddy, Wide of Net(Wristshot 44 ft)
Shot missed by Kyle Okposo, Wide of Net(Tip-In 13 ft)
Thomas Hickey credited with hit on Erik Gudbranson in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Thomas Hickey saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 77 ft)
Shot on goal by Nick Leddy saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 55 ft)
Shot on goal by Matt Martin saved by Roberto Luongo(Tip-In 12 ft)
Shot on goal by John Tavares saved by Roberto Luongo(Backhand 12 ft)
Shot on goal by Kyle Okposo saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 12 ft)
Matt Martin credited with hit on Alexander Petrovic in offensive zone
Shot on goal by John Tavares saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 48 ft)
Shane Prince credited with hit on Jussi Jokinen in neutral zone
Alan Quine credited with hit on Alexander Petrovic in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Matt Martin saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 34 ft)
Matt Martin credited with hit on Aaron Ekblad in offensive zone
Matt Martin credited with hit on Aleksander Barkov in neutral zone
Shot missed by John Tavares, Wide of Net(Wristshot 20 ft)
Shot on goal by Brock Nelson saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 26 ft)
Shot missed by Shane Prince, Wide of Net(Wristshot 12 ft)
Shot on goal by Brock Nelson saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 28 ft)
Shot missed by Kyle Okposo, Wide of Net(Tip-In 12 ft)
Shot on goal by Steve Bernier saved by Roberto Luongo(Slapshot 24 ft)
Shot on goal by Matt Martin saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 41 ft)
Shot on goal by Brock Nelson saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 23 ft)
Shot missed by Casey Cizikas, Wide of Net(Wristshot 30 ft)
Shot missed by Travis Hamonic, Over Net(Slapshot 59 ft)
Shot missed by John Tavares, Wide of Net(Wristshot 30 ft)
Shot on goal by Alan Quine saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 32 ft)
Cal Clutterbuck credited with hit on Michael Matheson in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Nick Leddy saved by Roberto Luongo(Snap 28 ft)
Shot missed by Frans Nielsen, Wide of Net(Wristshot 23 ft)
Shot on goal by Nick Leddy saved by Roberto Luongo(Slapshot 87 ft)
Shot on goal by Shane Prince saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 15 ft)
Matt Martin credited with hit on Brian Campbell in offensive zone
Shot on goal by John Tavares saved by Roberto Luongo(Wristshot 23 ft)
Michael Matheson credited with hit on Steve Bernier in defensive zone
Aaron Ekblad credited with hit on Cal Clutterbuck in defensive zone
Shot missed by Shawn Thornton, Wide of Net(Snap 73 ft)
Alexander Petrovic credited with hit on Josh Bailey in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Brian Campbell saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 55 ft)
Shot on goal by Vincent Trocheck saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 31 ft)
Logan Shaw credited with hit on Calvin de Haan in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Reilly Smith saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 33 ft)
Shot missed by Alexander Petrovic, Wide of Net(Wristshot 59 ft)
Shot missed by Jaromir Jagr, Over Net(Snap 43 ft)
Garrett Wilson credited with hit on Calvin de Haan in offensive zone
Vincent Trocheck credited with hit on Alan Quine in offensive zone
Shot missed by Aaron Ekblad, Wide of Net(Snap 18 ft)
Shot missed by Jaromir Jagr, Wide of Net(Snap 40 ft)
Vincent Trocheck credited with hit on Thomas Hickey in defensive zone
Dmitry Kulikov credited with hit on Steve Bernier in defensive zone
Dmitry Kulikov credited with hit on Thomas Hickey in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Michael Matheson saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 37 ft)
Shot missed by Jonathan Huberdeau, Goalpost(Wristshot 15 ft)
Derek MacKenzie credited with hit on Marek Zidlicky in offensive zone
Aaron Ekblad credited with hit on Frans Nielsen in neutral zone
Aleksander Barkov credited with hit on Calvin de Haan in offensive zone
Dmitry Kulikov credited with hit on John Tavares in offensive zone
Erik Gudbranson credited with hit on Casey Cizikas in defensive zone
Jussi Jokinen credited with hit on Calvin de Haan in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Derek MacKenzie saved by Thomas Greiss(Slapshot 44 ft)
Shot missed by Vincent Trocheck, Over Net(Snap 43 ft)
Shot on goal by Aleksander Barkov saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 22 ft)
Vincent Trocheck credited with hit on Johnny Boychuk in offensive zone
Aaron Ekblad credited with hit on Casey Cizikas in defensive zone
Shot missed by Aaron Ekblad, Wide of Net(Snap 58 ft)
Shot on goal by Jonathan Huberdeau saved by Thomas Greiss(Tip-In 12 ft)
Shot missed by Michael Matheson, Wide of Net(Snap 56 ft)
Shot on goal by Jussi Jokinen saved by Thomas Greiss(Backhand 27 ft)
Shot on goal by Jussi Jokinen saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 13 ft)
Shot missed by Jaromir Jagr, Wide of Net(Wristshot 32 ft)
Shot missed by Dmitry Kulikov, Wide of Net(Snap 52 ft)
Shot on goal by Jonathan Huberdeau saved by Thomas Greiss(Tip-In 12 ft)
Shot on goal by Alexander Petrovic saved by Thomas Greiss(Slapshot 46 ft)
Shot on goal by Garrett Wilson saved by Thomas Greiss(Tip-In 20 ft)
Shot missed by Derek MacKenzie, Wide of Net(Slapshot 45 ft)
Shot on goal by Jiri Hudler saved by Thomas Greiss(Backhand 20 ft)
Shot on goal by Jiri Hudler saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 55 ft)
Shot missed by Jiri Hudler, Wide of Net(Snap 61 ft)
Shot on goal by Jonathan Huberdeau saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 44 ft)
Erik Gudbranson credited with hit on Alan Quine in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Dmitry Kulikov saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 11 ft)
Aleksander Barkov credited with hit on Marek Zidlicky in offensive zone
Alexander Petrovic credited with hit on Calvin de Haan in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Jaromir Jagr saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 40 ft)
Alexander Petrovic credited with hit on Frans Nielsen in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Reilly Smith saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 32 ft)
Shot missed by Jussi Jokinen, Wide of Net(Snap 50 ft)
Logan Shaw credited with hit on Casey Cizikas in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Vincent Trocheck saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 44 ft)
Shot missed by Garrett Wilson, Wide of Net(Backhand 19 ft)
Garrett Wilson credited with hit on John Tavares in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Derek MacKenzie saved by Thomas Greiss(Slapshot 58 ft)
Shot on goal by Brian Campbell saved by Thomas Greiss(Slapshot 56 ft)
Shot on goal by Jonathan Huberdeau saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 45 ft)
Logan Shaw credited with hit on Cal Clutterbuck in defensive zone
Aaron Ekblad credited with hit on Cal Clutterbuck in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Aleksander Barkov saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 30 ft)
Shot on goal by Logan Shaw saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 33 ft)
Shot on goal by Jaromir Jagr saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 43 ft)
Shot on goal by Jonathan Huberdeau saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 52 ft)
Shot on goal by Reilly Smith saved by Thomas Greiss(Backhand 25 ft)
Shot on goal by Logan Shaw saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 40 ft)
Vincent Trocheck credited with hit on Kyle Okposo in offensive zone
Derek MacKenzie credited with hit on John Tavares in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Jonathan Huberdeau saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 41 ft)
Shot on goal by Jonathan Huberdeau saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 35 ft)
Alexander Petrovic credited with hit on Nick Leddy in defensive zone
Teddy Purcell credited with hit on Thomas Hickey in neutral zone
Derek MacKenzie credited with hit on Nikolay Kulemin in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Logan Shaw saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 10 ft)
Shot missed by Brian Campbell, Wide of Net(Snap 63 ft)
Shot on goal by Dmitry Kulikov saved by Thomas Greiss(Slapshot 85 ft)
Dmitry Kulikov credited with hit on Frans Nielsen in neutral zone
Brian Campbell credited with hit on Matt Martin in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Aleksander Barkov saved by Thomas Greiss(Slapshot 57 ft)
Shot missed by Erik Gudbranson, Over Net(Snap 33 ft)
Aaron Ekblad credited with hit on Casey Cizikas in defensive zone
Reilly Smith credited with hit on Travis Hamonic in offensive zone
Logan Shaw credited with hit on Thomas Hickey in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Aaron Ekblad saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 19 ft)
Shot on goal by Jonathan Huberdeau saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 15 ft)
Vincent Trocheck credited with hit on Alan Quine in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Derek MacKenzie saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 34 ft)
Shot on goal by Aaron Ekblad saved by Thomas Greiss(Slapshot 60 ft)
Shot missed by Aaron Ekblad, Wide of Net(Slapshot 55 ft)
Shot on goal by Jaromir Jagr saved by Thomas Greiss(Backhand 12 ft)
Shot on goal by Reilly Smith saved by Thomas Greiss(Snap 26 ft)
Shot on goal by Brian Campbell saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 29 ft)
Logan Shaw credited with hit on Marek Zidlicky in offensive zone
Logan Shaw credited with hit on Shane Prince in neutral zone
Reilly Smith credited with hit on Nick Leddy in neutral zone
Shot missed by Vincent Trocheck, Wide of Net(Wristshot 17 ft)
Shot missed by Jussi Jokinen, Wide of Net(Wristshot 37 ft)
Shot missed by Jiri Hudler, Wide of Net(Snap 40 ft)
Shot on goal by Logan Shaw saved by Thomas Greiss(Wristshot 7 ft)
Shot missed by Brian Campbell, Wide of Net(Snap 37 ft)
Shot missed by Erik Gudbranson, Wide of Net(Slapshot 48 ft)
Shawn Thornton credited with hit on Casey Cizikas in offensive zone |
A few days ago, when it was announced that Sam Bradford wouldn’t play against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, I wrote a piece chronicling the trials and tribulations Mike Zimmer has endured since he became the Vikings coach.
I might have missed the most amazing stat in all of that.
Mike Zimmer has coached 51 games for the Vikings, is 28-23 overall, and won the NFC North in 2015. He has done that with his quarterback of choice starting only 20 games.
Wait, what?
Yeah, let’s break it down.
In 2014, we all know the Vikings moved up to draft QB Teddy Bridgewater with the last pick in the first round. But the Vikings plan was for Teddy to sit behind Matt Cassel, presumably for the year, to let him learn the craft under the tutelage of a seasoned NFL veteran.
That lasted all of three games, as Cassel broke multiple bones in his foot during a game in New Orleans. From then on Bridgewater started 12 games, and Christian Ponder started one.
In 2015, Bridgewater was named the starting quarterback, and started all 16 games. The Vikings went 11-5, and won the NFC North.
Last year, as we know, Bridgewater’s knee exploded when ISIS planted a bomb on Teddy and detonated it between his ACL and MCL. He was out for the season and then some, and the Vikings traded for Sam Bradford. Yes, Bradford is a starting-caliber QB, and would start for most NFL teams. Still, he wasn’t supposed to be the starting QB for the Vikings, and as Mike Zimmer has said more than once, he never thought he’d have another QB besides Teddy. So Shaun Hill started week one, and Bradford started the remaining 15.
This year, Bradford came in as the starter while Bridgewater still rehabs his knee. Bradford made it exactly one week until his twice-surgically repaired knee began acting up, and Keenum has been pressed in to service the past two weeks, going 1-1 in that time.
So, to recap:
2014: 3 of 16 games, 7-9 record
2015: 16 of 16 games, 11-5 record
2016: 0 of 16 games, 8-8 record
2017 (so far): 1 of 3 games, 2-1 record
So with having the quarterback he planned on initially playing in only 39% of his tenure, Mike Zimmer and the Vikings have managed to go 28-23 in that time.
I don’t know if that’s some kind of weird NFL record, or just a bizarre confluence of circumstances, but there’s only one way I can properly express myself when I figured this all out earlier today: |
The most important under-investigated story of the presidential campaign could ultimately become the greatest political scandal in U.S. history: how the Trump administration may have conspired with top Russian intelligence officials, and perhaps Vladimir Putin himself, to interfere in the election, get Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE elected President, and undermine U.S. foreign policy. As revelations about these Russian contacts slowly leak out, some legal scholars are beginning to suggest that Trump campaign officials might have broken the law or even committed treason.
That sounds like partisan hyperbole, but it may eventually become an inescapable legal conclusion that Democrats and Republicans alike will need to face. Consider what we now know.
According to The New York Times, phone records and intercepted calls show that senior members of the Trump campaign, his transition team, and his associates were in regular contact with Russian intelligence officials throughout 2016. This should not surprise anyone, given that National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is actually the third top Trump staffer who has had to resign because of ties to Russia, following former campaign manager Paul Manafort and campaign advisor Carter Page.
ADVERTISEMENT
Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence agencies definitively concluded weeks ago that the same Russian intelligence operation that was communicating with the Trump campaign deliberately hacked the emails of the Democratic National Committee and senior members of the Clinton campaign and leaked those emails to the public. Moreover, according to our intelligence agencies, this effort was ordered by Putin himself with the explicit aim of helping Trump win the election.
We also now know that Flynn continued speaking with Russian officials after the election, providing back-channel information to the Russians in order to undermine then-President Obama’s sanctions on Russia for the very same hacking that was orchestrated on Trump’s behalf.
To be sure, there is, so far, no proof that any of these communications happened under Trump’s orders or with his knowledge. Yet, it is hard to believe that so many interactions by such high-level members of Trump’s campaign or his administration could possibly have occurred without Trump’s knowledge or his tacit or explicit consent.
In addition, we now know that when Acting Attorney General Sally Yates reported on Flynn’s illegal conversations, Trump not only did not fire Flynn, he instead fired Yates, four days later. And even now, the White House states that Flynn was fired for being untrustworthy with his superiors, not for breaking the law by conspiring with the Russians in the first place.
These ongoing Russia connections might also help explain other mysteries of the past year. For example, why has Trump continued to refuse to release his financial records? Would those records, as Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) suggested on Wednesday, provide evidence of deep financial ties to Russia, or even direct payments? And why has Trump himself been so strangely unwilling to criticize Putin despite being given many easy opportunities to do so?
We don’t have the answers to these questions. But they clearly require bipartisan investigation and an independent counsel with no ties to Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report Ex-Trump aide: Can’t imagine Mueller not giving House a ‘roadmap’ to impeachment Rosenstein: My time at DOJ is 'coming to an end' MORE or the administration. After all, if the Trump campaign used back channels to secretly conspire with the Russians to impact the election and undermine the sitting president of the United States, it is not only improper, it is the definition of treason. Moreover, it suggests that this administration might now owe more allegiance to Putin than to the U.S. Constitution it is sworn to protect and defend.
Such an allegation is chilling, particularly at a time when Russia is deploying missiles in violation of its treaty obligations, leaving a compromised Trump administration without a credible response. Indeed, any allegation of treason seems almost unfathomable. Yet, that is the unfortunate state we are in. The fall of Michael Flynn is only the beginning of the slow unraveling.
Paul Schiff Berman is the Walter S. Cox Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School and the author of Global Legal Pluralism, published by Cambridge University Press in 2012.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill. |
Journalism with real independence and integrity is a rare thing. Truthout relies on reader donations – click here to make a tax-deductible contribution and support our work.
The advance word is that inequality is going to be the central theme in President Obama’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday. That’s certainly good news, since it is a huge problem. The question is whether President Obama is prepared to talk about inequality in a way that gets to the core of the problem as opposed to just clipping away at the edges.
It’s a safe bet that we will see the latter. Obama has indicated that he will redouble his efforts to push for a $10.10 minimum wage. This is good news. This will mean a substantial increase in the wages for people at the bottom of the income ladder. The bulk of the gains from a higher minimum wage will go to people who really need it.
The days are long over when minimum wage workers were high school kids from middle class families picking up spending money working after school. The workers who will benefit from a minimum wage hike are overwhelmingly adults, many of whom are supporting children. The higher minimum wage will also put a substantial dent in the poverty numbers, reducing the share of the population in poverty by 1-2 percentage points, close to 5 million people.
Anyone who thinks a $10.10 minimum wage is too high should consider that from 1938 to 1968 we raised the minimum wage in step with productivity growth. If we had continued with this practice the minimum wage would be over $17 an hour today.
A higher minimum wage is great, but it won’t benefit most people, for the rest of the population we’ll have to look for other items on the president’s agenda. One of these is likely to be universal pre-kindergarten. This is a good policy that Obama has pushed in the past. It’s a proven winner in terms of the benefits to children. It’s also important as a form of child care for working parents. But as a way to address inequality, universal pre-kindergarten is at best limited and certainly long-term. It will not have a noticeable impact in this decade or possibly even the next.
There are some items on President Obama’s agenda that push in the wrong direction, most notably his plans for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This is wrongly billed as a “free-trade” agreement. In reality it has very little to do with free trade.
The TPP is about imposing a regulatory structure that will give corporations more power over the political process. It will make effective health, safety, and environmental regulation more difficult. It may also shield the financial sector from efforts to rein in the sort of abuses that led to the financial crisis. And, it will make drugs more expensive. The TPP is about redistributing income upward; it has no place on a serious inequality agenda.
It is possible to envision a trade agreement that would reduce inequality. If a deal focused on opening the doors to more foreign doctors and other highly paid professionals, it would lead to lower incomes for many in the top one percent and lower cost health care, legal services, and other serviced provided this overpaid group. We could also open the door to low-cost generic drugs, saving tens of billions of dollars annually on prescription medicine.
Trade agreements can also be an avenue for reducing our chronic trade deficit. If we used a deal to negotiate a drop in the value of the dollar against the currencies of our trading partners, it could move us toward balanced trade. If we were to eliminate the trade deficit completely, it would directly create over 4 million jobs, the bulk of which would be relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs. Adding in the indirect jobs created from these workers’ spending, the increase in employment would be over 6 million, getting us most of the way back to full employment.
Getting back to full employment really should be at the center of any inequality agenda. Full employment matters not only for the unemployed workers who would get jobs and the underemployed workers who could work more hours, it also leads to tighter labor markets. As a result, workers at the middle and bottom of the pay ladder would be able share in the gains of economic growth as they did in the late 1990s boom.
Unfortunately, full employment does not seem to be on anyone’s agenda right now. The budget cuts that slowed the economy and cost us millions of jobs over the last three years are now largely behind us, but no one seems prepared to push an investment agenda or the sort of trade policy that can bring us back to full employment any time soon.
That means we will see little real progress in addressing inequality based on President Obama’s agenda. An increase in the minimum wage is an important goal with substantial benefits but it should not be confused with an inequality agenda. |
sure there must be
Today or yesterday was the one year anniversary of the Stimulus package and everyone was marveling at the conservative hypocrisy epitomized by Republicans fighting against the Stimulus bill before it was passed and lying about its impact since then (especially this week), while sandwiched in between, something like a hundred of them demanded some of that money for their pet projects back home-- and even touted the benefits as though they had passed the legislation!Disgraced former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough, now one of MSNBC's right-wing talking heads, invited Howard Dean and Sam Stein onto his show yesterday to discuss the anniversary. Dean, though effectively and justifiably bashing the Republicans for their crass obstructionism, didn't make any friends at the White House. He forcefully pointed out that the Obama is coming across as weak and incompetent. I'mopen to the possibility that there might possibly be some people who disagree with the proposition that Obama is one gigantic disappointment... but I've never met one. The best I ever hear about him is that he's better than the alternatives.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.
Yet I’m guessing you don’t think of the stimulus bill as a big success. You’ve read columns (by me, for example) complaining that it should have spent money more quickly. Or you’ve heard about the phantom ZIP code scandal: the fact that a government Web site mistakenly reported money being spent in nonexistent ZIP codes.
And many of the criticisms are valid. The program has had its flaws. But the attention they have received is wildly disproportionate to their importance. To hark back to another big government program, it’s almost as if the lasting image of the lunar space program was Apollo 6, an unmanned 1968 mission that had engine problems, and not Apollo 11, the moon landing.
The reasons for the stimulus’s middling popularity aren’t a mystery. The unemployment rate remains near 10 percent, and many families are struggling. Saying that things could have been even worse doesn’t exactly inspire. Liberals don’t like the stimulus because they wish it were bigger. Republicans don’t like it because it’s a Democratic program. The Obama administration hurt the bill’s popularity by making too rosy an economic forecast upon taking office.
Moreover, the introduction of the most visible parts of the program-- spending on roads, buildings and the like-- has been a bit sluggish. Aid to states, unemployment benefits and some tax provisions have been more successful and account for far more of the bill. But their successes are not obvious.
...The case against the stimulus revolves around the idea that the economy would be no worse off without it. As a Wall Street Journal opinion piece put it last year, “The resilience of the private sector following the fall 2008 panic-- not the fiscal stimulus program-- deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the impressive growth improvement.” In a touch of unintended irony, two of article’s three authors were listed as working at a research institution named for Herbert Hoover.
Of course, no one can be certain about what would have happened in an alternate universe without a $787 billion stimulus. But there are two main reasons to think the hard-core skeptics are misguided-- above and beyond those complicated, independent economic analyses.
The first is the basic narrative that the data offer. Pick just about any area of the economy and you come across the stimulus bill’s footprints.
In the early months of last year, spending by state and local governments was falling rapidly, as was tax revenue. In the spring, tax revenue continued to drop, yet spending jumped-- during the very time when state and local officials were finding out roughly how much stimulus money they would be receiving. This is the money that has kept teachers, police officers, health care workers and firefighters employed.
Then there is corporate spending. It surged in the final months of last year. Mark Zandi of Economy.com (who has advised the McCain campaign and Congressional Democrats) says that the Dec. 31 expiration of a tax credit for corporate investment, which was part of the stimulus, is a big reason.
The story isn’t quite as clear-cut with consumer spending, as skeptics note. Its sharp plunge stopped before President Obama signed the stimulus into law exactly one year ago. But the billions of dollars in tax cuts, food stamps and jobless benefits in the stimulus have still made a difference. Since February, aggregate wages and salaries have fallen, while consumer spending has risen. The difference between the two-- some $100 billion-- has essentially come from stimulus checks.
Obama's biggest mistake was made on the second day after his election when he chose the Beltway's most over-hyped incompetent, Wall Street shill Rahm Emanuel to run his administration. There isWall Street could have done more effectively to sabotage that "hopey-changey thing" than placing one of their most dependable operatives right at the heart of the Administration. Emanuel spent his entire career doing three things: enriching himself, ingratiating himself to the richest and most powerful forces, and manufacturing a totally baseless image with the pathetically snookered sucker media in The Village. And Obama fell for it, lock, stock and barrel. Dean didn't-- which is why the most spectacularly successful head of the DNC was replaced by a colorless and failed conservative hack. Yesterday'ssaid all that is needed to be said about the results of the Stimulus package . Take my word for it-- it isn't what you'll hear parroted by the TV talking heads who reach far more people (and have a different agenda ).
Labels: Howard Dean, Obama's stimulus package, Rahm Emanuel |
Yum
Here’s a delicious chocolate and coconut truffle recipe. These treats are not only decadent and easy to make, but they are also suitable for a raw, vegan, gluten-free or paleo diet.
You probably already know that chocolate and coconut is one of my favorite combinations. This is optional, but I added some hazelnuts to the truffle mixture, and I think that they make the taste of the truffles special and indulgent. However, you can replace hazelnuts with any nuts or seeds you like, or you can just skip this step.
Lastly, if you don’t have coconut cream or full-fat coconut milk at hand, you can use a little bit of plant-based milk and some more coconut oil to get the right consistency.
Other dessert recipes you may like
Ingredients
4 tablespoons coconut cream (from a can of refrigerated coconut milk)
(from a can of refrigerated coconut milk) 1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 1/4 cup of desiccated coconut (1 cup for the mixture and ¼ for rolling the truffles)
4 tablespoons cocoa or cacao powder
3-4 tablespoons of maple syrup
¼ cup of hazelnuts
Instructions
Grind the hazelnuts in a blender or food processor. Add the rest of the ingredients and process until you have a homogeneous mixture. If the mixture feels too soft, put it in the fridge for 10-15 minutes.
Shape balls out of the mixture and roll them into desiccated coconut.
Keep the truffles in the fridge. They’ll need a few hours to harden up.
Enjoy! 🙂
Print Delicious Chocolate and Coconut Truffles Yield: 15 Ingredients 4 tablespoons coconut cream (from a can of refrigerated coconut milk)
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 1/4 cup of desiccated coconut (1 cup for the mixture and ¼ for rolling the truffles)
4 tablespoons cocoa or cacao powder
3-4 tablespoons of maple syrup
¼ cup of hazelnuts Instructions Grind the hazelnuts in a blender or food processor. Add the rest of the ingredients and process until you have a homogeneous mixture. If the mixture feels too soft, put it in the fridge for 10-15 minutes. Shape balls out of the mixture and roll them into desiccated coconut. Keep the truffles in the fridge. They’ll need a few hours to harden up. 5.0 https://www.myhealthydessert.com/recipes/chocolate-coconut-truffles/ © MyHealthyDessert
If you like the recipe, share it with your friends and if you try making these vegan truffles, please let me know how they turned out for you!
Don’t forget to follow me on Facebook and Twitter to know when a new recipe is up. ? |
Rugby player Haydn Peacock, 23, discussed a tackle during a match in February where a defender nearly ripped off his penis. Peacock said he played the rest of the half before receiving 11 stitches, and returned to play the next game without a protective cup. Photo by haydnpeacock1/Instagram
CARCASSONNE, France, March 15 (UPI) -- An Irish rugby player detailed the circumstances surrounding a tackle that he said nearly caused him to lose his penis.
Haydn Peacock, 23, shared a photo to his Instagram showing a defender pulling at the area as he played in a match for France's AS Carcassonne.
"[Rugby league] is definitely not a sport I recommend," he said of the incident that occurred in early February. "11 stitches later for the little fella but she'll be right."
About a month later Peacock has returned to the field and provided some insight on the injury in an interview with French Footy.
The injury occurred in a scrum during the first half of a match against the St. Esteve Catalans Dragons, when a player grabbed Peacock's penis and pulled it toward the ground as he attempted a tackle.
Peacock played out the rest of the half before inspecting the injury at half-time when he was taken in to receive stitches.
"They had to go and get the UTC doctor and he came in and checked it out and he was like, 'Oh man, you're going to have to go and get stitches,'" he said. "So I had to go to the clinic that night and they had to put 11 stitches around it to put the skin back together."
He remained relatively unfazed by the incident, joking with his teammates about it, and returning to play the next game without any kind of protective equipment.
"I remember I had to strap it all up for the next game. I just had to go around it. The coach wanted me to go out and buy a cup but I'm not going to play with a cup, I'm not going to be able to run," he said. "I just had to heavily strap it. It's all good [now]. I got the stitches out and it's all sweet. No dramas." |
Budget: When President Obama put out his "balanced" plan to avoid the automatic sequester cuts, no one noticed. Which is probably just as well for Obama, given how embarrassingly unbalanced it is.
Last week, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about how Obama "hasn't actually come up with a proposal to avert sequestration, let alone one that is politically plausible."
Turns out, Obama did have one, although Brooks can be excused for not knowing it, since the administration hasn't exactly been promoting this so-called plan.
That, too, is understandable, since it isn't a plan at all, just a list of numbers with little to back them up.
There are no details, for example, about the $200 billion in cuts to defense and domestic discretionary programs, other than that Obama wants them split evenly.
And while he offers $400 billion in "health savings," 30% are lumped in a bucket labeled "other."
Worse, Obama's "balanced" plan actually counts hundreds of billions of new revenues from taxes, fees and rebates as "spending reductions." Examples:
His plan to "strengthen" unemployment insurance is labeled as a cut, but it's really a $50 billion tax hike.
The $35 billion from the federal worker retirement programs involves boosting worker contributions.
Most of the $35 billion in Medicare savings comes from charging wealthy seniors more.
The $140 billion in "reduced payments to drug companies" are in fact rebates Obama wants drugmakers to pay Uncle Sam for selling drugs to poor seniors.
Then there's the $45 billion in spectrum fees and asset sales that Obama lists as spending reductions.
Viewed correctly, it turns out that more than $300 billion — about a third — of Obama's proposed "spending cuts" are actually revenue increases.
As a result, instead of $1.2 trillion in spending cuts called for by the sequester over the next decade, Obama would add more than $1 trillion in revenues, while cutting outlays only about $600 billion. And much of those aren't real cuts, but tiny reductions in projected spending growth over the next decade.
And in the end, his plan, such as it is, will do nothing to forestall the nation's oncoming debt crisis.
After four years, Obama's unseriousness as a president continues to surprise us.
RELATED:
So Much Government Growth, So Much Spending To Cut.
Is Obama Losing His Media Allies Over Sequester?.
Sequester Cuts Won’t Cause Flight Delays.
Obama’s Mayan Calendar Moment. |
Partial Results Show Iranian Moderates Poised For Big Wins In Tehran
Enlarge this image toggle caption Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images
Partial results from Iran's elections on Friday indicate that pro-reform moderates will win all 30 of Tehran's parliamentary seats — a victory for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and a blow to Iran's hard-liners.
Tehran's delegation is only a fraction of Iran's 290-seat parliament, and NPR's Peter Kenyon reports that conservative representatives are likely to do well in other parts of the country — but the gains in the capital are significant.
"Initial returns gave 29 of Tehran's 30 seats to reform and center-right candidates, with Gholamali Haddad-Adel the only hardliner. Now Iranian state TV says he too appears to be losing his seat," Peter reports from Tehran.
Reformists seem poised to win those 30 seats despite many pro-reform candidates being disqualified from the election before voting began. Moderate voters hoped that a heavy turnout would allow their relatively small number of candidates to edge out hard-liner opponents — and in the capital, at least, the strategy appears to have worked.
Moderate candidates also did well in Iran's other election, for the Assembly of Experts, which will someday choose the next Supreme Leader of Iran. "President Hassan Rouhani and former President Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, both of whom have been embraced by reformists, are the leading vote getters," Peter says.
Middle East Nuclear Deal Will Play A Role In Iran's Elections Nuclear Deal Will Play A Role In Iran's Elections Listen · 4:04 4:04
The election is the first since last year's landmark nuclear deal that required Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of international sanctions. Rouhani promoted the deal, in the face of hardliner opposition.
If the partial results hold and the moderates who supported the deal expand their presence in the legislature, the Associated Press writes, that could "pave the way for increased economic openness and greater cooperation with the West on regional issues like the war against the Islamic State group."
The gains would be a sharp change in Iran's parliament, the AP notes: "Reformists currently hold fewer than 20 seats and have been virtually shut out of politics since losing their parliamentary majority in the 2004 elections." |
John Galt
Activist Post
Australia continues trying to outdo America’s march toward authoritarian control over its population. The two countries seem to be trading salvos to see which can eradicate the rights of their citizens faster.
Australia appears to have taken the lead with their latest proposal to ban travelers who refuse being subjected to the full body microwave radiation scans that have proven to be a horrible invasion of privacy, as well as a legitimate threat to one’s health.
The list of assurances from the Australian government via its Orwellian-named Privacy Commission echo similar false guarantees issued by America’s TSA: passengers will not appear nude, and the images will be discarded. However, there is no mention of the cumulative negative health effects (particularly to children) of receiving a mandatory mega dose of radiation each time one exercises their right to travel by plane.
Australia’s transport minister, Anthony Albanese, cites the unsubstantiated claim that,
…the public understands that we live in a world where there are threats to our security and experience shows they want the peace of mind that comes with knowing government is doing all it can.
Adding for good measure that,
For this technology to work effectively, obviously there can’t be an option to refuse screening.
Obviously.
Download Your First Issue Free! Do You Want to Learn How to Become Financially Independent, Make a Living Without a Traditional Job & Finally Live Free?
Download Your Free Copy of Counter Markets
What is more obvious is the blatant disregard of a public which wants very little to do with this technology. The website Airport Body Scanner Truth, reveals the flawed polling techniques that have been used and manipulated by the corporate media and the tyrannical powers they serve.
In one CBS poll that revealed 81% of people approved of full body X-ray machines, their simplistic methods demonstrated that:
They asked a random sampling of Americans — not American flyers, or American frequent flyers. They did not follow up with questions regarding the likeliness of approval if the subject knew that the machines were potentially harmful, that graphic images were being stored, that they violated child pornography laws, that security experts believe they are ineffective and wasteful, that you may be subjected to sexual molestation even after using the machines, or that pilots and flight attendants recommend not to use them. (Source)
The devil is in the details once again.
When people are properly informed, instead of being subjected to fear mongering and hyperbole of an exceedingly rare event like a terror threat to airline travel, the results are far different, as seen in an Infowars.com poll, which revealed:
“…that over 90 percent of respondents will not use commercial airlines if airports continue to subject travelers to deadly radiation emitting naked body scanners. 92% said they would avoid airports while 8% said use of the devices would not stop them from flying.” (Source)
These results from an educated alternative media source with a global readership (and nearly 14 times the number of respondents as the CBS poll cited above, incidentally) is evidence that people the world over can see through the scam of the decade known as the global war on terror if they are permitted to properly evaluate available information that can lead them to a more rational conclusion.
Australia’s attempt at a “no scan, no fly” policy is surely to be cited as a precedent for global travel, including the United States, as the journey from “opt-out” to “mandatory” continues unimpeded.
Avoiding The Eye - Ships Free Today! We must continue to expose the corrupt authoritarians that are forcing this dangerous technology upon us even as we make our voices heard that we see through their lies and distortions. We must also reach out to airport workers who are being affected the most by these X-ray machines. The corporatist political structure will never stop without mass outrage, mass non-cooperation, and a mass stand-down by those on the front lines of the war against human dignity and human rights. Please help us combat censorship: vote for this story on Reddit — http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/pcjef/australia_becomes_first_to_ban_travelers_who/ Read other articles by John Galt here. var linkwithin_site_id = 557381; linkwithin_text=’Related Articles:’ |
Fight Club character, see This article is about the voice actor. For thecharacter, see Robert Paulson
Robert Fredrick Paulsen III (born March 11, 1956) is an American voice actor and singer who has done many voice roles in various films, television shows, and video games, including Raphael and Donatello from the 1987 and 2012 cartoons respectively of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; Yakko Warner, Dr. Otto Scratchansniff, and Pinky from Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain;[2] Carl Wheezer from Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius; and the title character in The Mask: Animated Series. In total, Paulsen has been the voice of over 250 different animated characters and performed in over 1000 commercials. He continues to play parts in dozens of cartoons as well as characters in animated feature movies.
Career [ edit ]
Early career [ edit ]
He began his voice-over career in 1983 with the mini-series G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, where he played "Snow Job" and "Tripwire". A few years later, his career launched into more roles such as "Cobra Slavemaster" and reprising "Snow Job" and "Tripwire" on G.I. Joe, "Corky" on The Snorks, "Marco Smurf" on the later seasons of The Smurfs, "Boober" on the animated version of Fraggle Rock, "Hadji" in The New Adventures of Jonny Quest and the title character – "Saber Rider" and the villain "Jesse Blue" on Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs.
Live action acting [ edit ]
During the 1980s, Paulsen also explored the field of live action films. His first movie was Eyes of Fire in 1983. He played supporting roles in Body Double, Stewardess School, Warlock, and Mutant on the Bounty. He appeared in television shows during this time as well, such as MacGyver and St. Elsewhere. He mentioned in an interview, regarding his role in Body Double, that he would not want his child (who was very young at the time of the interview) to see the movie, so he could not really be proud of his work.
Advertising [ edit ]
Paulsen became more prevalent in the world of advertising as well. In the 1980s, he had been the announcer for the sitcom Cheers and continued to secure roles as an announcer. He appeared as the voice of "Mr. Opportunity", spokesman of Honda commercials on TV and radio, the announcer for Buffalo Dick's Radio Ranch, and the spokesman for Lucky Stores, a West Coast grocery store chain, before it was acquired by Albertsons in 1998. He provided the voice of "Dog" in the Taco Bell kids meal commercials from 1996 to mid-1997, with Eddie Deezen as the voice of "Nacho" the cat.
However, Paulsen's most famous advertising role was in the original commercial of the now ubiquitous Got Milk? campaign. The famous commercial, Who shot Alexander Hamilton in that famous duel?, aired in 1993, and launched the Got Milk? campaign into a monstrously successful enterprise. Paulsen continues to be one of the most sought-after commercial voice actors in the industry.
He can be currently heard as the voice of singing Mr. Mini-Wheat in the Mini-Wheats commercials in Canada.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [ edit ]
From 1987 to 1995, Paulsen voiced Raphael and various supporting characters in the original 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Originally starting as a five-part miniseries, the series continued for ten seasons and 193 episodes. It was a great success and became an instant pop culture symbol. Paulsen has said that Raphael's voice is very similar to his natural voice.
He returned to the franchise as Donatello for the new 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series on Nickelodeon.[3] Paulsen will serve as the voice director for the 2018 series, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.[4]
Animaniacs; Pinky and the Brain [ edit ]
Rob Paulsen with Pinky at Anthrocon 2007
Throughout the early 1990s, Paulsen continued to co-star in animated series, which allowed him to branch further into radio and television announcements and dropped live action acting from his repertoire. In 1993, he voiced "Antoine D'Coolette" in ABC's series Sonic the Hedgehog, and "Arthur", an insecure accountant in a moth costume (wings included), in the superhero series The Tick in 1995, replacing Micky Dolenz, who had originally played Arthur.[citation needed]
In 1993, he starred as the title character in both Mighty Max and The Mask. Also at this time, he starred in what became one of his most popular roles, "Yakko Warner" of Animaniacs. Paulsen also provided the voice of "Pinky" from both Animaniacs and its spin-off Pinky and the Brain, a show which won him several Annie Awards and a Daytime Emmy in 1999.[citation needed] He also did a number of characters in Tiny Toon Adventures, including "Fowlmouth", "Arnold the Pit Bull", and "Concord Condor". In the direct-to-video movie Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation, he did the voices for "Banjo Possum", "Mr. Hitcher" (who would also appear in other episodes), and "Johnny Pew".[citation needed]
Roles [ edit ]
Animation [ edit ]
Paulsen has provided voices for a great number of characters, among which are Yakko Warner, Dr. Otto Scratchansniff and Pinky in Animaniacs, Steelbeak in Darkwing Duck, "Brick" and "Boomer" in The Powerpuff Girls, Atchan in Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost in The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper, Ogden O. Ostrich in Channel Umptee-3, Hathi in Jungle Cubs, "Jack Fenton", "The Box Ghost", "Nicolai Technus", and "The Vulture Ghosts" in Danny Phantom, "Carl Wheezer", "Butch" and "Skeet" in Jimmy Neutron, "Mark Chang", "King Grippulon", "Happy Peppy Gary" and "Bucky McBadbat" in The Fairly OddParents, Peck the Rooster in Barnyard and Back at the Barnyard, and "Gordon" in the Nickelodeon cartoon Catscratch.
He was also the voice of "Rothchild" in the early episodes of Samurai Jack. Additionally, Paulsen provided the voice of "P.J. Pete" in Goof Troop, A Goofy Movie, and An Extremely Goofy Movie, as well as the voices of Ratchet and Dr. Debolt in the TaleSpin pilot episode and introductory TV movie Plunder & Lightning. He also did the voices of Boober Fraggle, Sprocket, and Marjory the Trash Heap in the animated version of Fraggle Rock, as well as Gwizdo in the Dragon Hunters movie.
He also voiced "Zeek" and "Joshua" in K10C: Kids' Ten Commandments, Rude Dog in Rude Dog and the Dweebs, and Archie the Raccoon, A.K.A. Ze Archer, in "Mask of the Raccoon" on The Penguins of Madagascar. He reprised his role as "Throttle" in the 2006 Biker Mice from Mars, and also provided the voices of 2T Fru-T, Mike Ellis, Dark Comet and Ronald in the 2001 cartoon series Butt-Ugly Martians.
He portrayed the voice of Chomper and Strut in The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure, Spike and Rinkus in The Land Before Time sequels and Spike in the TV series, but Spike was played anonymously in the original The Land Before Time. Paulsen also played Mo in The Land Before Time IX: Journey to Big Water. Paulsen also voiced the robot "D.E.C.K.S." in the early 1990s TV series Wake, Rattle, and Roll. Paulsen also voiced Prescott A. Wentworth III in the Jem episode The Fan.
Paulsen was best known to Transformers fans as the voices of the Autobots Air Raid, Chase, Haywire, Fastlane and Slingshot in The Transformers.
Video games [ edit ]
In video games, much voice talent has bled over from television and radio voice actors. Paulsen has appeared in video games such as Doom 3 and ClayFighter 63⅓. He played Fluffy, the Chinese-crested dog, in 102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue, an Irish-talking pubtender in the 1996 video game Toonstruck, and Morte, a floating, talking skull, in Planescape: Torment, as well as Anomen Delryn in Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn and Gray Fox in Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes and both Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as an Assist Trophy. He provided the voice for Erik the Swift of The Lost Vikings in its second installment. He portrayed Tobli and Lian Ronso in the English version of Square Enix's Final Fantasy X-2 and has played the lead character in Bubsy. Although an extremely minor role, Paulsen has also done the voice for the Greek soldiers in God of War. He voiced Jaq and The Grand Duke from the Cinderella world in Square Enix's and Disney's Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep.
In the video game The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge, he did the voice of Igor. He also reprised his role as Yakko Warner, Dr. Otto Scratchansniff, and Pinky in Animaniacs: The Great Edgar Hunt. Rob Paulsen voiced the lead character, Lazarus Jones, in the PS2 game Ghosthunter, and played The Duck Avenger in Disney's PK: Out of the Shadows. Rob also voiced Alfredo Fettuccini, Bob the Ghost Pirate, Lookout and Ghost Priest in The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. He voiced the Fox and the Mouse in the Green Eggs and Ham PC game. He also voiced Tlaloc in Tak and the Power of Juju. Most recently he has voiced The Riddler in Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, a role he reprised in Lego Batman: The Movie – DC Super Heroes Unite. Rob is the voice of talking alien dog Beak-Beak in Armikrog. Paulsen also voices Smash Hit in Skylanders: SuperChargers and Skylanders: Imaginators.[5]
Other [ edit ]
Paulsen is also the off-camera voice of the syndicated television series Funniest Pets & People, which is seen on Superstation WGN and other television stations throughout the United States and abroad.[citation needed]
Current roles [ edit ]
Rob Paulsen at the 2006 Annie Awards.
It was not long before Paulsen returned to Warner Bros. Animation, which had diverged into a new era of television serials (following what is sometimes referred to as the "Silver Age of Animation"). Paulsen appeared as "Rev Runner" of the new show Loonatics Unleashed and starred in Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island. He was also the voice of the character "Squeeky" on the TV show Danger Rangers. He voiced "Ichabeezer" and "Tom Celeriac" (a play on Tom Selleck) in VeggieTales in the House for Netflix. Paulsen also provides the voice for the Honda character "Mr. Opportunity." In the Rob Zombie animated film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, Paulsen voiced the characters "El Gato" and "Commandant Hess", among some others. He also has a role as "Ditto", one of the alien forms on Ben 10, as Rhomboid Vreedle of the Vreedle Brothers and Baz-El in Ben 10: Alien Force, two characters that he reprised, along with a new character, Magister Patelliday on Ben 10: Ultimate Alien and Ben 10: Omniverse.[citation needed]
Paulsen is also the current voice of classic Disney character "José Carioca". Rob became the new voice of "Prince Eric" of Disney's The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea since Christopher Daniel Barnes failed to reprise the role in 2000, though Barnes did return to voice the character in the Kingdom Hearts series when Paulsen was unavailable.[6] Another Disney character he is currently the voice of is Toodles from the kids show "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse". From season 3, he voiced Toodles in Happy Birthday Toodles, Road Rally, and Space Adventure, as well as every episode of season 4. He is also the voice of Peck the Rooster and other minor characters in the Nickelodeon computer-animated series Back at the Barnyard and various characters on the Disney Channel animated series The Replacements. He is the voice of Bobble in the Tinker Bell movies. Paulsen also played the titular character for an animated web series based on the video game Bravoman for Namco Bandai's ShiftyLook division.[7]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
Paulsen has been nominated for an Annie Award for his role of Pinky for 4 consecutive years, which he won in 1996, 1997, and 1999. In 1999, he also won the Daytime Emmy Award for voicing Pinky.[citation needed]
In 2004, he was nominated for his role of the Troubadour in Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, and in 2005, he was nominated for his role in The Happy Elf.[citation needed]
Public appearances [ edit ]
Paulsen at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con International
Paulsen has been a regular industry guest and featured panelist at San Diego Comic-Con International over the past several years. He has also appeared at animation industry-related events, such as the World Animation Celebration Online in 1998, among many others. He has also been a guest at several anime conventions, including JACON, Mikomicon, and Anime Overdose. Paulsen was a guest of honor at Anthrocon in 2007. He has recently started doing "Rob Paulsen Live" seminars across the U.S. to talk of his career, sign autographs, and talk with fans.
Sometimes, people in attendance would request him to sing the famous Yakko's World number, where he sings all the nations of the world with his Yakko voice in a fast-paced delivery without rehearsing.
In May 2011, working with social media and web producer Chris Pope, Paulsen rolled out a brand new website RobPaulsenLive.com, as well as a weekly audio podcast called Talkin' Toons with Rob Paulsen, which is managed and deployed by The Tech Jives Network.[8] Episodes are currently recorded before a live audience at The Improv in Hollywood, California on a biweekly basis.
In June 2011, Paulsen made announcements that he was taking his show on the road with his "Lots of laughs and autographs" tour. Working closely with a team that included Chris Pope, his publicist, and others he made his first successful tour in Atlanta, Georgia, which happened on July 30, 2011, and another in Dallas, Texas on September 17, 2011, that required two seminars, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, as they were so popular.[9]
Personal life [ edit ]
Paulsen was born in Detroit, Michigan to Lee Paulsen. He is married to Parrish Todd and has one son, Ashton "Ash" Paulsen, who himself is a gaming journalist on GameXplain. In an interview with a Chicago TV station, Paulsen described himself as "a singer who decided to become an actor." Growing up in Grand Blanc, Michigan,[10] Paulsen sang in choirs throughout his youth and adolescence and began performing in plays in grammar schools. However, his idol growing up was Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings; he considered the arts to be a secondary career choice, primarily interested in becoming a professional hockey player.
Paulsen has long supported charity organizations and donated considerably for cancer research. He has worked a lot for GOALmodels, a program for adolescents, and is a sponsor of Camp Will-A-Way, a camp for mentally and physically disabled children. Paulsen also donates funds from autographs to the Wounded Warrior Project and Operation Smile.
In February 2016, Paulsen was diagnosed with Stage III throat cancer. Paulsen has since undergone treatment, and his cancer is now in remission.[11]
Filmography [ edit ]
Paulsen voices most of the characters with his original accent which is American, but he used a British accent to voice Strut in The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure and Brunch in Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf while using a Scottish accent to voice Bobble in the Tinker Bell movies. In his role as Pinky, Paulsen used an exaggerated Cockney accent, especially in earlier episodes. He even used a Brooklyn accent for Reuben (Experiment 625) in Lilo & Stitch: The Series.
Television [ edit ]
Film [ edit ]
Video games [ edit ]
Internet [ edit ]
Theme parks [ edit ] |
RESPECTED election analyst Antony Green is predicting the Coalition will get the seats it needs to form government.
While the official seat count still sits at 63 for the Coalition, the ABC analyst said he thought he could “pretty accurately predict” the Coalition would achieve between 75 to 77 seats.
“All the seats which are in doubt are starting to trend towards the Coalition so 76 may be an underestimate, it may be 77, we’ll see,” Mr Green said during an appearance on the ABC 7pm news bulletin.
He said the Coalition definitely had 73 seats and it needed to gain three of the six seats still in play, to form government.
The seats of Capricornia, Herbert and Flynn were the seats to watch as the Labor Party was well ahead in these seats a week ago, but they were all “line-ball” now.
“All the trend in the postal votes has been towards the Coalition and at this stage they will certainly overtake Labor on the remaining postal votes and then it comes down to absent and pre-polls,” Mr Green explained.
“At this stage it looks like the Coalition should get to 76 though I must say on the chamber it is 76 plus or minus one so we’re saying between 75 and 77.”
ABC’s election computer updated its seat election guide to predict the Coalition on 76 seats, compared to 69 seats for Labor.
ABC election analyst @AntonyGreenABC predicts Coalition will win between 75 and 77 seats #ausvotes https://t.co/yhsqQSI0PM — ABC News (@abcnews) July 8, 2016
Insiders host Barrie Cassidy also appeared and said Australians could now say the country had a government.
“Technically, even though Forde in Queensland is still in doubt, both sides of politics concede that Forde will go to the Coalition,” he said.
In another promising sign, the Australian Electoral Commission removed Forde from its list of close seats on Friday night.
“We can for the first time this week, tonight, we can say we have a Prime Minister, we have a Government,” Cassidy said, adding “we have one at this point relying on the independents Cathy McGowan and Bob Katter”.
The two independents have said they would back a Coalition government, ensuring Malcolm Turnbull will continue to be Prime Minister.
But Cassidy said if Mr Turnbull had been able to declare victory on Saturday night it would have avoided an uncertain and unstable week.
It comes as Labor’s lead in the seat of Flynn dropped to just seven votes, and its lead in Capricornia fell to 175 votes indicating the seats were likely to go to the Coalition.
The Coalition has already won 63 seats, and is ahead in one other. It only needs three more to form a majority government.
INDEPENDENTS GUARANTEE SUPPLY
While the Coalition is looking increasingly likely to hit its 76 seat target, Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership is looking secure after three independents said they would back him if the Coalition falls short.
Yesterday, independent Kennedy MP Bob Katter said he would guarantee supply and confidence for the Coalition if there was a hung parliament. Today he was joined by Indi MP Cathy McGowan. Denison MP Andrew Wilkie has also said he would not vote against a Budget supply bill.
Ms McGowan appeared before the media today after meeting with the PM and confirmed she would support the Coalition, although she will continue to vote on legislation based on its merits.
Andrew Wilkie released a statement saying: “I will continue to vote on parliamentary business on its merits, and consequently not support a vote against budget supply or confidence in the government unless clearly warranted, for example in a case of malfeasance”.
He said there was “no conceivable way” that Bill Shorten would be in a position to form government and his focus had turned to doing what he could to foster stable government.
“To be absolutely clear, I remain steadfast that I will not enter into any deal with any party in order to help them form government,” he said.
“But nor will I be destructive, especially at a time like this when more than ever the country needs level heads and certainty.”
Earlier Cathy McGowan, who defeated the Liberals’ Sophie Mirabella in the seat of Indi, said she would offer supply and confidence.
“While maintaining my complete independence, I am prepared to contribute to the stability of the 45th parliament by continuing with my past practice of supporting the government of the day,” Ms McGowan said.
This means she will guarantee supply and confidence for the government, but will still consider each piece of legislation on its merits.
When asked whether she had asked for anything in return for her support, Ms McGowan said: “I asked for goodwill, I asked for regularly being in touch with each other, I asked for good governance and stability,” she said.
ABC election analyst Antony Green said this morning there was no doubt Malcolm Turnbull would be returned as prime minister.
“Malcolm Turnbull is the Prime Minister and will continue as Prime Minister,” he told ABC.
“In that sense, they have won, it’s just simply a matter of whether they have got a majority or not.”
BILL SHORTEN HOLDS ON TO LEADERSHIP
Meanwhile, Bill Shorten has kept the Labor leadership after a vote today.
The Labor caucus passed a motion of confidence in Mr Shorten and his leadership team.
The motion, moved by Anthony Albanese at a meeting in Canberra on Friday, also authorised the leadership team to “negotiate with crossbench members to advance Labor’s agenda in the 45th parliament”.
It applauded Mr Shorten and the Labor team for holding the coalition to account “for their extreme right wing agenda” while also advancing Labor’s positive agenda.
Earlier Mr Shorten named the remaining “close counts” as being in the seats of Hindmarsh, Capricornia and Herbert.
“This caucus can gather in a spirit of some reasonable optimism,” he said.
“We are united, we are determined and we are most certainly positive. Unlike our opponents, we fought this election as a team.”
He said the campaign had delivered the second-biggest swing against a first-term government in Australian history.
WHY THE COALITION IS ACTING SO COCKY
Looking at the seat count it all seems pretty close but numbers can be very misleading.
Even though the Coalition seems short of declaring victory, this didn’t stop one minister from trumpeting that the election was in the bag.
“We have won again. That’s our sixth victory out of eight in the last 20 years,” Mr Pyne declared on Channel 9’s Today this morning.
“We will form a majority Government and we’re also making arrangements with some of the crossbenchers for supply and confidence, so we will have a solid Government.”
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has not repeated the claims, although he has always maintained confidence in the Coalition forming a majority government.
The two party preferred count this morning showed there were just eight votes separating the Coalition and Labor. While this has grown to 450 votes, it still seems very close.
But ABC election analyst Antony Green has explained why the Coalition has reason to be confident.
According to the ABC election calculator, the Coalition has 73 seats in the bag.
On paper that’s three seats short of a majority and there’s only six seats still in play. Even more worryingly, Labor is ahead in all of these seats except the Queensland seat of Forde.
So why the bluster?
In three of the seats where Labor is leading, it does so by less than 700 votes. So with postal and other votes favouring the Coalition, it could get over the line in the Queensland seats of Capricornia, Flynn and Herbert.
It only needs to win two of these three seats to form government.
Then there’s the independent factor.
The veteran north Queensland MP Bob Katter met with Mr Turnbull on Thursday and said he would support the Coalition for budget supply and confidence when parliament returned in August.
He was joined by Indi MP Cathy McGowan and Denison MP Andrew Wilkie today.
This basically means they will support the Coalition in forming government, and puts three extra votes in their pocket.
As Mr Green pointed out, if the Coalition is leading in the seats of Capricornia, Flynn and Herbert by the end of today’s counting, it all but guarantees a majority government.
“I have 73 seats (for the Coalition), I have them ahead in another and I have them well on track to win — possibly winning two of the other three seats which would give them majority,” he said.
“Maybe if they win all three, it would be 77.”
CURRENT SEAT COUNT
Here is the current vote count as of Friday 7.57pm AEST from the Australian Electorate Commission website:
• Forde, Queensland — Liberal National Party’s lead has doubled to 783 votes
• Flynn, Queensland — Labor’s lead of 674 votes has dropped to just seven votes
• Herbert, Queensland — Labor leading by 348 votes
• Capricornia, Queensland — Labor’s lead of 476 votes has dropped to 175 votes
• Cowan, Western Australian — Labor’s lead narrowed to 488 votes
• Hindmarsh, South Australia — Labor’s lead has grown to 177 votes
Although Cowan and Hindmarsh are also close, the postal and other votes are not strongly swinging to the Liberal party.
WHAT DOES GUARANTEEING SUPPLY MEAN?
Two independents have publicly supported the Coalition forming government, saying they will “guarantee supply and confidence”.
This means they will vote with the Coalition on key bills authorising the government to spend money and keep paying its staff.
They will also vote to support the Coalition if a “no-confidence motion” is introduced by the Opposition. If the government doesn’t survive a no-confidence motion this means the PM has to resign or call for the House of Representatives to be dissolved.
PYNE 19
Mr Turnbull’s leadership may be safe today, but could a new challenger for his crown have already emerged?
On Today on Friday morning, host Ben Fordham suggested the success of the ‘Kevin 07’ election campaign could be repeated with ‘Pyne one-nine’. Albo even got in on the joke holding up a poster emblazoned with Pyne 19 and claiming Parliament was plastered with them.
Hottest item in #auspol is #Pyne19 shirts. If you want 1 tell us how much you adore @cpyne 140 characters or less pic.twitter.com/Azr33Ke3XA — BenFordham (@BenFordham) July 7, 2016
Asked if he might consider a challenge to whoever was Liberal leader in 2019, Mr Pyne said: “I am a very loyal team man. I strongly support Malcolm Turnbull going forward as Prime Minister and I look forward to being part of his team in the leadership group in Canberra.”
It may have been a dry answer but even Mr Pyne couldn’t help but eventually chuckle at the prospect of Pyne one-nine.
‘BACK AT THE POLLS SOON’
A brutal Labor Opposition is likely as Mr Turnbull prepares to create a minority Government or one with a puny majority.
And senior Labor figures are warning the instability is likely to produce yet another election — soon — as the Coalition struggles to deal with the cross bench member and its own internal dissent.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we are back at the polls very soon,” Labor front bencher Anthony Albanese told ABC radio. “Definitely much, much sooner than three years, because of (the Coalition’s) failure to provide that leadership.”
Labor Deputy Leader Tanya Plibersek said “a very unstable” Turnbull Government would probably be returned.
“This is a pretty great result” from the election for Labor, Ms Plibersek told ABC radio.
She said: “We’ve got a deeply divided unstable Government and we need to be
prepared to back to the polls sooner rather than later.”
LABOR LEADERSHIP
Mr Shorten’s position as Opposition Leader is expected to be reconfirmed on Friday as the Labor caucus meets in Canberra in a sign the party is close to conceding it will not be able to form Government.
Party rules dictate that the leadership is thrown open in the event of an election loss and a ballot of grassroots and caucus members is held if there are two contestants.
Despite speculation immediately after Saturday’s election that Mr Albanese might challenge, he now won’t be standing and will instead throw his weight behind Mr Shorten.
However, Mr Shorten will face pressure to deliver the Left an extra frontbencher.
In preparation for opposition, Labor figures are threatening to treat a minority Turnbull administration in the same way the Labor Government of Julia Gillard was treated after the 2010 election.
She was ranked the head of an “illicit image” administration without authority by the Coalition Opposition of Tony Abbott.
On Thursday, Mr Shorten also acknowledged that a Coalition Government was shaping up as the most likely outcome.
“What I am making very clear here is that if Mr Turnbull is dragged across the line narrowly, his problems, and unfortunately Australia’s, are only just beginning,” he said.
KEY INDEPENDENT BACKS TURNBULL
Despite increasing confidence he can reach the magic 76 number, Mr Turnbull is still preparing for a hung parliament.
On Wednesday, he met with potential kingmaker Nick Xenophon in Sydney and yesterday spoke to re-elected MP Bob Katter and other independents in Queensland, also taking the time to pose for selfies with Brisbane locals — a smile we haven’t seen in days.
On Thursday, Mr Katter declared his support for the government after “amicable” talks with Mr Turnbull. But the independent said he maintained his right to change his position at any time and his support depended on several political issues.
Asked if he thought Mr Turnbull was listening to him yesterday, he laughed: “When you’re on 74 seats and you need 76, I thought he was listening very closely.”
His promise will make the Prime Minister feel even more comfortable in his position.
CREDIT RATING CONCERNS
“I am very confident, very confident indeed that we will form ... a majority government in our own right, but I am, of course, talking to the crossbenchers as well,” Mr Turnbull told reporters, referring to the independent and minor party politicians who sit between the two main parties and could hold the balance of power in a divided parliament.
“But so far the counting trends are very positive from our point of view.”
Whether other independent MPs will support the Coalition is not yet certain. Senator Xenophon told the ABC that he, Katter and Jacqui Lambie, “share a concern about Australian jobs and Australian manufacturing and Australian farming land ... when it comes to our foreign investment.”
Counting in the Senate also continues with a possible outcome looking like the Coalition on 30 seats, Labor 27, Greens nine, Nick Xenophon Team three and other independents seven.
The state of the nation is still far from stable, with Standard & Poor’s downgrading Australia’s triple-A long term credit rating outlook to negative on Thursday, thanks to growing fiscal vulnerabilities.
Mr Shorten said the S & P statement was a vote of no confidence in the PM.
Treasurer Scott Morrison, who has said he’s confident the Coalition won’t need crossbenchers to form a minority government, admitted yesterday that “the report has been issued on the basis of the election, they have made that very clear.”
Nevertheless, Mr Morrison insisted the government’s focus on a strong economy was the correct response.
“It would not be the responsible thing to do in this environment to take policy decisions that increase the deficit,” he said, in a clear dig at Labor’s budget. “I have no intention of postponing the pace of fiscal consolidation.
“What the Australian people want to be reassured of is that there is a clear plan.”
Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen saw it differently, saying the report was “a vote of no confidence in this Government’s ability to deal with the Budget situation.”
He also criticised Mr Turnbull’s decision to call a double dissolution election, saying it had increased the likelihood of political instability.
— with AAP |
Successful people lead their lives on purpose with uplifting truths, empowering habits, and strong principles. Their life of success is a direct result of their conscious choices and healthy habits.
Here are 20 habits people unintentionally pick up, that successful people make it a point to consciously avoid.
1. They Don’t Define Success With Money.
Most successful people define their success with happiness, inner peace, and positive contributions – more than money. Being financially secure certainly can help open opportunities, relieve stress, and offer some piece of mind. But successful people realize that all the money in the world cannot make you happy if you are unable to feel happiness from within.
2. They Don’t Start Their Day Without a Purpose or a Plan.
Not only do successful people have crystal clear short and long-term goals, they also know exactly what they must accomplish each day to feel fulfilled as well as bring them closer to their goals. They also take full advantage of the “Golden Hour” which is the first hour after you wake up in the morning. What you do mentally, physically, and spiritually during this first hour, sets the tone for the entire day.
3. They Don’t Set Perfection as a Goal.
Successful people practice progress over perfection. The danger in focusing on perfection is, you become so consumed in finding imperfections to fix, you will have little or nothing to show for in the end except unfinished, imperfect work. By understanding it’s not about achieving one perfect goal, but the skills you develop from reaching several goals, you allow yourself to make constant improvements while living a life of accomplishments you can learn from and be proud of.
Advertising
4. They Don’t Surround Themselves With Negative People.
There is energy in everything, and that includes human beings. As such, it’s fairly easy to absorb negative energy when you are around toxic people who are always complaining, procrastinating, and making excuses. Instead, successful people surround themselves with other positive and proactive people who inspire them to achieve great things and live full out.
5. They Don’t Focus on the Negatives.
Successful people don’t entertain self-defeating negative thoughts. When faced with difficulties, they’re quick to identify the benefits from the experience and remind themselves they’ve successfully overcome many hurdles before, so they can certainly overcome it again. Successful people don’t focus on what “could” go wrong, but on what they must do to succeed, as well as the lessons they will gain from the experience to help improve their lives.
6. They Don’t Dwell on Failures.
Successful people accept that failure is an essential part of growth. They look at these bumps as opportunities to learn, grow, and become even better for an even bigger win ahead! They know that no matter how many times you’re knocked down, as long as you get right back up and use your new strength and knowledge to improve, you haven’t really failed.
7. They Don’t Dwell in Problems
When you focus on the problems you’re facing, your behavior agrees with the resulting stress, hindering your progress while bringing on even more problems. However, focusing on actions to better your current situation produce clarity and positive thoughts, opening you to the possibilities of new solutions. Successful people don’t dwell on problems. They quickly process any negative feelings and move on, because they know they’re most effective when they focus on solutions.
Advertising
8. They Don’t Concern Themselves With How Others Judge Them.
Successful people do not base their worth on how others think of them because they’ve set their own values, goals, and principles without having to depend on anyone to validate them. Everyone sees through eyes of personal life experience and individual interpretation. As such, successful people understand that when someone makes a judgement about you or your life, it doesn’t make it a reality unless you agree with it.
9. They Don’t Make Excuses.
Successful people are proactive – they get things done. While they realize outside forces may interrupt their flow, successful people take full responsibility for the attitude they choose in situations over which they have no control. They look forward to the pleasure and benefits of accomplishing their daily tasks and life goals and they do whatever it takes to avoid the pain of falling through and giving up success.
10. They Don’t Get Jealous Over Other People’s Victories.
Successful people believe that there is enough supply of “wins” for everyone. They know that the more successful and happy people there are on our planet, the stronger, more positive energy our world will be filled with. If another person succeeds at something they have not yet been able to achieve, successful people show gratitude for their win because it can now serve as added motivation for them to reach that goal as well!
11. They Don’t Take Their Loved Ones for Granted.
Successful people agree that work is important, but never as important as experiencing life with the people you love most. Success starts from within, so make time to give your undivided attention to those who mean most to you – including yourself!
Advertising
12. They Don’t Underestimate the Power of Fun.
What’s the point of all the hustle if you’re always left feeling exhausted and frustrated? Successful people know how to relax and have fun. They know the importance of taking breaks to recharge their batteries by enjoying all that they have in their life right now.
13. They Don’t Neglect Their Health.
With good health comes the freedom and energy to fully enjoy one’s life. Successful people are aware that unless they’re mentally, physically, and emotionally healthy, they cannot perform at their very best when serving those who count on them.
14. They Don’t Set Blurry Goals
Successful people set clear, specific, and measurable goals. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there, and crafting a clear plan of action helps declutter your thoughts and relieve some stress as you move towards the results you want. Having clear goals and actions also allows you to measure how far you’ve come and how much more you have to go, so you’re not left wondering when you’re supposed to begin seeing some results.
15. They Don’t Make Flimsy Decisions
Successful people decide what they want, then burn the boat. Once they make a decision, they set their minds to do whatever it takes to make it happen. This habit also helps build confidence in a person by proving to themselves that they’re dependable and have the ability and drive to make things happen just as they said they would.
Advertising
16. They Don’t Allow Themselves To Be Victimized
When affected by someone else’s poor choices, successful people quickly process any negative thoughts and feelings, then choose to free themselves from the damaging energy by forgiving and letting go. They place a high importance to their right to happiness and inner peace, and understand they have complete control of their thoughts and actions, and ultimately responsible for their own happiness and victories.
17. They Don’t Live in the Past
Successful people realize the past has already happened and that moment no longer exist. If you keep dwelling in what was, you will be unable to fully be present for what is, thus negatively affecting what’s to come. If you suffered in the past, try to recognize that you are here today, and you are OK. Your past does not define you or limit what is possible for you to achieve from this moment on. Practice your freedom and power to proactively design a better future that you so deserve.
18. They Don’t Resist Change
Plans, strategies or tactics might change, but instead of getting upset and frustrated, successful people quickly shift paths because they know there is more than one way to reach their goal.
19. They Don’t Stop Learning
Successful people have mentors or coaches to inspire and motivate them when challenged, and keep them accountable to their decisions and goals. They are always learning and keep themselves open to making improvements in themselves and their lives.
20. They Don’t End The Day Without Giving Thanks.
Successful people are grateful for both the big and small blessings in their lives. Reflecting on the positive things from each day before going to bed can boost your mood, motivate you to keep going, and help you unwind.
Have you ever unknowingly picked up a habit that did nothing but drain you of time, energy, and happiness? Are there more you’d add to the list? Share in the comments below! |
Putting solar panels on your rooftop just became way more affordable: Customers can now pay for just the power they get from the solar panels.
A new law took effect Wednesday that allows financing for residents who want to lease rooftop solar panels.
Bo Finau, vice president of business development with Creative Solar USA in Kennesaw, expects his business to double by the end of the year.
“They wouldn’t be paying for the installation, the labor, for the actual panels themselves, and also the insurance,” Finau said. “So there’s quite a few things that are covered and protected while this third-party leasing is in effect.”
Finau said people will likely save around 15 percent off their current utility bills by leasing panels.
Julie Hairston, of the Georgia Solar Energy Association, said the law is a major step in a state where financing was not allowed.
“It’s hard to deny that we have abundant sunshine and that we should be putting it to work for us, and we are now beginning to realize that potential.”
She says customers should be careful about who they choose to finance their solar panels.
Georgia Power also announced it would sell solar panel installation services to interested residential customers.
It is through a separate business unit called the Georgia Power Energy Services.
“It’s an unregulated part of the business, so that those costs are not borne by our rate payers or our regular customers,” said John Kraft, a spokesman with Georgia Power. |
Bethenny Frankel is an independent woman and she couldn’t be happier.
The Skinny Girl mogul opened up to PEOPLE about finally living the single life and how she doesn’t need a man to feel complete.
“I am living the single life. I never really lived the single life before, and I am enjoying it,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I have different things that I want now than I did 10 years ago and I don’t have any boxes to check.”
“I think women always want to check a box that they need to have a kid [or] it’s time to have a kid ... it’s time to get married and have someone financially support you - [but] I can check all the boxes for myself,” the Real Housewives of New York City star continues to say. “I very much have my own life, my own money, my own daughter and my own career. I don’t need a man to check any of the boxes.”
For more on Bethenny Frankel, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday
From Coinage: The True Cost of Famous TV Apartments
Frankel, 46, who finalized her contentious divorce battle with ex-husband Jason Hoppy last July, even joked that she doesn’t even need a man for sex.
“There are toys for that,” she laughs.
While on the topic of her divorce, the reality star explains that she finally feels a sense of relief and she no longer feels the need to hide.
“I feel so relieved. I feel so happy, so much more valid and so much more settled,” Frankel admits. “This whole situation has been despicable and I feel finally good. I didn’t know how badly I felt until I started to feel good. I feel balanced, calm, and happy and I feel like I’m participating in my own life.”
“I used to run out to the Hamptons and do yoga and hide, but now I’m traveling more and having fun,” she continues. “I am going out to dinner, and when I’m not with my daughter, I’m going out on dates. I’m just enjoying my life and I am participating in my life. I did not realize that I have not been doing that. I’ve been sort of hiding, but I am not hiding any more. I’m happy.”
The Real Housewives of New York City airs Wednesdays (9 p.m. ET) on Bravo.
This article was originally published on PEOPLE.com
Watch E! News Now on Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android. |
BEN BERNANKE, until last year the chairman of America's Federal Reserve, has started blogging. Not just a little bit, either. Mr Bernanke has in the space of a few posts embroiled himself in a weighty online debate with some of the titans of economics, and blogging. Both Paul Krugman and Larry Summers are scrapping with the former chairman on the live and important subject of secular stagnation.
Secular stagnation is an old idea which received an intellectual revival in 2013, when Mr Summers, who not long before was one of Barack Obama's chief economic advisors, began to deliver speeches on the topic. It describes a world in which there are lots of savings and comparatively few attractive places to invest them. The excess of saving over investment represents a shortfall in demand, and weak demand shows up in anaemic growth figures and low inflation.
Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
Normally a central bank would try to fix the imbalance between saving and investment by reducing interest rates (which should discourage saving and encourage borrowing). But in a weak enough economy with low enough inflation the interest rate needed to balance saving and investment might become negative—maybe even really negative. Given the difficulty of achieving a negative nominal interest rate, the central bank might find it hard to push an economy out of that sort of trap once it fell in.
Indeed, Mr Summers reckons there are generally two ways out, one bad and one good. The bad one occurs when a long period of very low interest rates leads to a bubble in asset prices. The bubble in asset prices can support consumer borrowing and spending, providing an economy with the sensations of a decent recovery while the good times last (after which things often look even worse than before). The good one occurs when governments recognise the problem and take direct action to fix it: by borrowing (to soak up excess saving) and investing the proceeds of that borrowing in demand-boosting investment. Mr Summers is an advocate for this approach; he would like America's government to borrow at historically low interest rates in order to tackle the country's many pressing infrastructure needs.
At his blog, Mr Bernanke worked through these arguments and then made an important, if not entirely original, point. Unless one assumes that the entire world is in secular stagnation, secular stagnation shouldn't really be much of a long-term problem. Old countries with poor growth prospects might accumulate lots of savings and have little need for big investments. But those countries shouldn't suffer from chronic weak demand. Instead, the excess saving should flow abroad in search of better returns. Capital outflows should weaken the domestic currency, and that should lead to rising import demand from abroad. A stagnating economy should be able to export its way to a healthy level of demand.
What it means to suffer from secular stagnation
Of course, Mr Bernanke allowed, the world could get into trouble if big, fast-growing economies like China decided to save huge amounts of money by buying rich-country debt, in order to depress the value of their currencies and boost their exports. If governments were interfering in the market like that then capital might not flow the right way and secular stagnation might stick around. But the way to solve that problem, he argues, is not through deficit-financed demand stimulus but by leaning on the Chinas of the world to knock it off.
Into the discussion, then, plunges Mr Krugman. He points out that China is only part of the problem. Europe is increasingly the source of the demand drain, and Europe is not out there accumulating American debt (as China's government did in the 2000s). Instead, the euro-area economy is falling into a Japan-like trap. It is stagnating secularly, suffering from weak domestic demand while stuck with interest rates near zero. But even though the euro has fallen a lot against the dollar, it probably hasn't fallen by enough to get Europe out of its trouble.
That is because euro-area inflation has also tumbled, raising the real, or inflation-adjusted return on money stashed in Europe. German government bonds don't look like an especially good investment; the return out to 10 years, Mr Krugman points out, is effectively zero. But German bonds are safe, and given the very weak outlook for euro-area inflation they offer a real return that, in this fallen world of rock-bottom yields, is not all that bad. Less money is therefore flowing out of Europe than one might anticipate given the crummy state of euro-zone growth prospects. And the euro zone will therefore putter along in future rather than hum at its economic potential. As the Japanese example demonstrates, this sort of stagnation can last for a long time. We should therefore expect Europe to be a demand suck for a long time, and we should consider a more Summersian policy response: deficit spending.
The debate is inching toward the right question: what sort of imbalance between saving and investment do we have here, anyway? Is the problem that the world has too much saving and too little investment? Or is it that the saving and the investment are stuck in different places?
It seems obvious that the world as a whole does not have too few investment opportunities. Much of the world is very poor relative to America, which suggests that much of the world is overflowing with profitable investment opportunities. It would not cost that much money to build massive new highway networks and ports in Africa, but one could easily imagine such investments paying off handsomely. And yet the savings that could finance such investments are not flowing toward them in anything like the quantities needed to address the world's imbalances.
That isn't that hard to understand. Should capital flow to China? Given the massive investment the country has experienced over the last 15 years the return on new capital might not be especially high; meanwhile, controls on capital flows into and out of the country still make investing there more of a challenge than investing in rich economies. Many of the emerging economies with financial markets that are developed enough to handle portfolio inflows are not obviously in a position to deliver high returns: think of Brazil or Russia, for example. In much of the emerging world large-scale portfolio investment is basically impossible; foreign-direct investment is the only real option, and FDI cannot be done well at scale. That is in some ways a good thing. In countries with weak institutions a tidal wave of foreign capital could cause more harm than good. And even the limited investment that is made is illiquid, and while returns may be good on average the variance is high.
So in one sense there is a geographic imbalance between savings and investment. But this imbalance is persistent and structural. It also isn't new. It is hard to rate this as the cause of secular stagnation. The transitory geographic imbalance of the 2000s—the China glut—is fading, and yet secular stagnation remains an apparent feature of the rich world. Perhaps worst of all, China may be slipping toward stagnation as its population ages and inflation rates tumble.
The imbalance is a global one, in other words. Its effects are more or less acute depending on which big economy one focuses on. But the problem, it seems to me, is that the industrialised world has a much greater capacity to produce things than an interest in buying things. The world is stuck with too little demand. So what ought to be done about it?
Mr Bernanke's solution, to lean on currency manipulators, is probably not going to do the trick. It isn't clear that Chinese consumers are capable of driving forward the global economy. America could ask Europe and Japan to halt their quantitative easing programmes, which should push their currencies higher relative to the dollar. But that move would almost certainly lead to galloping deflation in both economies and a serious recession (and possibly a break-up) in Europe. That seems a poor way to get Europeans splashing out on new goods.
Another option, which Mr Bernanke does not consider, is for America to do more monetary easing rather than less. One way of looking at the global economy is that it is in need of a source of excess demand and upward price pressure. Rich-world central banks with interest rates close to zero can only do so much to create their own demand. They will attempt to recover by siphoning off spending from the relative well-positioned American and British economies. If those economies—which also remain stuck with low interest rates—are not allowed to run hot then the demand drain and disinflationary pressure from abroad will slowly drag them back to general crumminess.
This can be put more simply: the world as a whole is not spending enough money. Large parts of the world economy are short-run incapable of spending more for political and economic reasons. Unless other parts take up the slack, then the too-little-spending problem will grow more serious and ever more of the world will slip into this monetary trap.
What else is there? The solutions that remain are all politically tricky to implement. There is the Summersian option of deficit spending in rich countries. This could be effective in closing the savings-investment imbalance but has two big problems. The first is that doing it adequately is almost certainly beyond the capability of the American political system. As Mr Summers repeatedly points out, the government has failed manifestly to tackle even the highest-return infrastructure projects available: like improvements to America's crumbling but critical JFK airport. Republican presidents have historically had more luck running massive deficits, so circumstances might change after 2016.
Yet even then, there is a second concern: that while there are lots of positive return investments not being made in America there probably aren't that many positive return investments not being made in America. American public infrastructure needs are enormous but probably amount to about $200 billion a year at the absolute most, which is less than the euro-zone current-account surplus. Directing money to uses beyond those would probably yield relatively low returns, at least in narrow financial terms. (If America wanted to borrow heavily to build a moon base that's its business.)
Congress could just hand the money out. There is much to recommend that solution (though not its politics). It has its downsides. Much of the proceeds would go toward consumption, on goods and services produced by companies that are already investing at close to optimal levels. Lots might go toward residential investment. But the spending should also create new labour demand in low-productivity sectors, adding to employment, adding to wage pressure and kicking the economy back into a better equlibrium.
Still, this is probably not the first best solution. We would not say that savings, in that case, were being mobilised to their most productive uses. Not while so much of the world is so poor.
There is another option available. The rich world could address the imbalance within its economies while simultaneously addressing the geographic imbalance. It could allow much more immigration. Investing in people in developing countries in hard and risky. But if those people wanted to come to America and were allowed to, then lots of things change. Investing in those people would not then require that money be sent abroad, to a different financial system in a different currency overseen by a different government. If the savings are in rich countries and the most productive investments are in poor ones, then the savings can move or the investments can move.
What this discussion should make clear is that secular stagnation isn't much of a puzzle. Rather, it is a dilemma. The ageing societies of the rich world want rapid income growth and low inflation and a decent return on safe investments and limited redistribution and low levels of immigration. Well you can't have all of that. And what they have decided is that what they're prepared to sacrifice is the rapid income growth. In aggregate that decision looks somewhat reasonable if not entirely right. But it is a choice with pretty significant distributional consequences. And the second era of secular stagnation will come to an end when political and demographic shifts allow the losers from this arrangement to say: enough. |
Kinnard Hockenhull is the founder of BitBox, a US-based exchange and provider of bitcoin-related services. The company is FinCEN registered and BitBox was accepted into the most recent class at Boost VC, a venture capital firm and startup incubator located in downtown San Mateo, California.
Boost VC’s Adam Draper has invested in Coinbase and has a focus on bitcoin-based businesses: of the 17 start-ups in Boost VC’s current summer class, seven are bitcoin-related startups.
Participants in the incubator such as Hockenhull live and work on the same block, which has its own living space in the form of a renovated hotel and is located across the street above Draper University, an affiliated school that focuses on entrepreneurship and accepts bitcoin for tuition.
During my visit to Boost, I talked with Hockenhull and heard his perspective on Mt. Gox, regulation and what the future of bitcoin might look like.
CoinDesk: Are you seeing a lot of business with what has been going on with Mt. Gox?
Kinnard Hockenhull: It’s really hard to say. There’s no way for us to do analytics on that sort of thing. We did conduct a survey and we found that most of our users have used one other bitcoin exchange before. It’s probably not always Mt. Gox, but my guess is more often than not, it is.
What is your competitive advantage as a bitcoin exchange?
KH: That’s kind of complicated and that’s where my job gets very difficult because we’re not actually an exchange. Being an exchange is just one of the things that we do. Some of the other things we are doing are a little bit more nascent and are in the works. From the beginning, our intention has been to build a firm that is vertically integrated into the economy. The reason why we chose to do an exchange first is one of the problems we saw was that people needed to get bitcoin.
One of the biggest problems in bitcoin is still actually obtaining it.
KH: There are things going on here at Boost that are going to make getting bitcoin a lot easier. We’re working with Gliph (another Boost startup), for example, to try and make it easier.
You indicate on your website that you are FinCEN compliant. What does that actually entail?
KH: You basically have to go to the FinCEN website and register as a money transmitter.
That’s it?
KH: It’s actually a fairly straightforward process. The complexity comes in on the state level, if the states do decide to consider bitcoin exchanges as money transmitters. There is a huge misconception that just because you’re a money transmitter on the federal level that doesn’t make you one on the state level. That’s where the difficulty and the massive regulatory costs come in.
Because you’d have to do something for every single state, based on whatever their laws are.
KH: Right, and pay a lot of money.
Is that a threat?
KH: Well, I think that I wouldn’t call it a threat, but I think it’s very much an impediment to doing business. Especially for startups. So coming up, for me, is what we estimate to be a $1.5 million cost to get money transmitter licenses in the states where it’s required, which is kind of absurd.
Just to start a business.
KH: Right, exactly. We’re not doing that much business yet. And the way the laws have been written, they are not commensurate with the amount of business that you’re doing. Even if you’re just doing $1,000 of business, you still need to go and get the $100,000 bond. So there’s a little bit of a disconnect there.
You introduced me to the company Standard Treasury. Banks are into something like that, aren’t they?
KH: Standard Treasure is still new. They just had a demo day a few weeks ago. So, we’ll see. But yes, hopefully they do like it, because otherwise dealing with them (banks) will be like hopping on a time machine. For example, the Internet Archive Credit Union: while they were very friendly to bitcoin companies initially, their technology was not a pretty sight.
It was old?
KH: Yes. It presents problems when you’re trying to do a service at scale. When you’re doing hundreds of deposits a day, or potentially more, you can’t enter them all by hand and provide a good service to your clients. The interfaces that exist right now broadly across the banking industry are not sufficient.
Why wouldn’t a bank just hire someone like Charles Lee, the founder of Litecoin, and build a system just like Bitcoin inside of the bank?
KH: I think that there is the potential for that sort of thing. I’ve actually talked to some people at the US Treasury about something called Fedcoin but what it really comes down to is that bitcoin is a currency of choice and people will only use it if they find value in it. So I think there are certain issues that could come up as a result of a government having an unfair advantage.
Do you think that bitcoin is actually something that I’m going to be able to go down to the store and use without having to think about it? Or is the banking system going to go, “This is a good idea, let’s use that money-moving component of it”?
KH: Banks may not have that choice. Most of the world’s population at this point is unbanked. And more and more of these people are going to have cell phones. They aren’t going to need a bank. They aren’t going to ever imagine getting on the time machine and going back to the period where they would need a bank. Africa is probably the best example.
[All of the Boost VC startups will be having their demo day on September 19. Thanks to Kinnard Hockenhull of BitBox for taking the time to give this interview. – Ed]
What do you think about bitcoin and the banking industry? Do you think that banks and bitcoin can coexist? What about the challenges that bitcoin startups face when working with the banking industry? |
A featherweight bout has been added to UFC on FUEL TV 9 on April 6th in Sweden as Diego Brandao meeting Pablo Garza.
UFC officials announced the fight booking on Monday and the fight is likely to take place on the main card on FUEL TV.
Brandao (15-8) won The Ultimate Fighter 14 featherweight tournament in 2011 and has won two of his three fights in the organization. After winning the reality show, he lost to Darren Elkins at UFC 146 by decision and defeated Joey Gambino by decision at UFC 153.
Garza (12-3) has won three of his five fights in the UFC and is coming off a win over Mark Hominick at UFC 154 in Montreal. The win over Hominick snapped a two fight losing streak and two of his three wins in the UFC have come by stoppage.
UFC on FUEL TV 9 takes place on April 6th from the Ericsson Globe Arena in Stockholm, Sweden and will be headlined by Alexander Gustafsson meeting Gegard Mousasi in a five round light heavyweight bout. |
NEW YORK — Shares of Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. fell on Monday, after one of the company’s employees, Edward Snowden, stepped forward as the person who last week leaked information about secret government surveillance programs to several news media outlets.
Shares fell 61 cents, or 3.4%, to US$17.39 in midday trading, a slight recovery from a 5% drop earlier in the session. That’s closer to the high end of the stock’s 52-week trading range of Us$11.85 to US$19.23.
In a statement Sunday, the McLean, Va.-based company said it has employed Snowden for less than three months on a team in Hawaii. It added that it is working with clients and authorities to investigate the leaks.
“News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm,” the statement said.
Booz Allen Hamilton is a consultant to government and corporate clients. About 23% of its revenue, or US$1.3-billion, came from U.S. intelligence agencies last year. The company has said in SEC filings that security breaches could materially hurt results.
Private equity firm The Carlyle Group took the company public in 2010 and owns 67% of the stock.
Stifel Nicolaus analyst William Loomis said in a note to investors that the incident is “embarrassing” for Booz Allen, but not likely to have a lasting impact, since it was just one employee who was employed there only briefly.
He kept a “Hold” rating on the stock.
Associated Press |
This post has been updated
Dozens of nurses filled a Multnomah County courtroom Friday afternoon to watch the sentencing of a woman who hurt one of their own.
Sierra McDonald, 25, was given five years probation for assaulting a nurse -- breaking her arm "like a chicken wing" -- and harassing a doctor. The medical professionals in attendance, many still dressed in blue scrubs, said the case illustrates the need for stricter laws and better enforcement when patients behave badly.
"It happens way more than you think it does, "said Bill Schueler, an emergency room nurse at Legacy Meridian Park Medical Center. "We all know it's a very bad problem."
Schueler, immediate past president of the Oregon Emergency Nurses Association, said the association is pressing for the passage of Senate Bill 132. Speaking for the association but not on behalf of Legacy, Schueler said the bill which would make assaulting a healthcare worker providing services in a hospital a Class C felony. A conviction would carry a maximum five years in prison, a $125,000 fine or both.
Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Amanda Nadell asked Judge Thomas Ryan to impose a 36-month prison sentence on McDonald, who is currently serving time in the county for a prior conviction.
"The only way to keep the community safe is to incarcerate Miss McDonald," she said. "This is a woman with substantial anger problems."
Barbara Ward, a nurse at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, was caring for McDonald in September when she was assaulted. McDonald broke her left arm "like a chicken wing," Ward said, and co-workers had to pull McDonald off of her. The attack occurred in front of McDonald's two young children.
"I would not feel safe if she were released," Ward told the court Friday, "nor would the roomful you see here."
Ian McKenna, an emergency room doctor at Randall Children's Hospital, said McDonald called him repeatedly and threatened to harm his wife and family. He said he'd provided medical care for McDonald many times and took her threats seriously.
"It's impairing our ability to take care of a lot of other patients as well," he said. "We're not in a position to protect ourselves in the hospital."
A third nurse said McDonald had yelled at her while providing her medication in prison.
McDonald sat quietly during the testimony, at times wiping her eyes with a tissue. She said she's been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, and the pain and stress cause her to lash out. She also apologized to her victims and said she thinks therapy is already helping.
"I am genuinely sorry for causing them to be scared, scarred and traumatized," she said. "That's not who I am."
Chris O'Connor, McDonald's lawyer, said his client has worked hard to earn a high school diploma and is motivated to regain custody of her two children.
McDonald's father and brother were among her supporters in the courtroom. Charles McDonald apologized to his daughter's victims and said he'd like to see her get the support and help she needs.
Ryan sentenced McDonald to five years probation and warned her that she'll face prison time for violating any conditions. Her probation terms include completing 104 hours of community service, anger management courses and health evaluations. McDonald also is banned from Legacy Emanuel facilities and must pay about $6,000 in restitution.
"Take it to heart," Ryan said. "I hope to see you somewhere as a success."
After the hearing, McKenna said he worries that health care providers are still vulnerable to out-of-control patients. If SB 132 becomes law, he said, the threat of a stiffer penalty might lead to more patients acting appropriately.
"The current system is inadequate," he said. "Immediately, we need protection for hospital workers."
--Laura Frazier
503-294-4035; @frazier_laura
This post was updated with additional information about the OENA. |
Asked to name one other Conservative apart from David Cameron, members of a focus group hesitated. Then one suggested: “Ed Miliband.” Another agreed, saying: “Oh, yes, that’s right – and his brother, Ed Balls.”
The story may raise a grim smile about the ignorance of the … er … plebs. Yet for voters to name two (unrelated) Labour luminaries as Tories is one small sign of the profound and growing disconnect between politicians and the public. The late Philip Gould, Labour’s brilliant political strategist, used to compare politicians to footballers playing in empty stadiums: the spectators have all lost interest and gone home.
A new book out this week shows how Gould, the first man to make systematic use of focus groups and the first to use the term New Labour, managed not only to breathe life into Labour but also to save the Conservative Party. The account of how he did so in Philip Gould – An Unfinished Life, edited by Dennis Kavanagh, includes tributes from David Miliband, Peter Mandelson and Andrew Cooper, currently David Cameron’s director of strategy. Yet the book also chronicles what is surely the slow death of politics as we have known it and the impotence of our political leaders to halt the decline.
Gould recognised that voters, whose party allegiances were once firmly based on class, were becoming less ideological, more aspirational and much more fickle. They were changing, but the politicians were not. The battle to force change on the major parties was one of attrition. In the book, uber-moderniser Lord Mandelson talks of how he designed a new batch of Labour membership cards and “forgot” to include Clause IV – Labour’s historic commitment to nationalise just about everything. The party dinosaurs ordered the cards to be pulped and reprinted with the magic words.
Cooper, now seen by some as a lonely moderniser in today’s No 10, writes that things were no better in the Tory party after its 1997 defeat. Focus groups showed that the public saw the Tories as “old-fashioned, out of date, irrelevant”. True-blue stalwarts continued to blame media bias and Labour spin.
Under the tutelage of Gould – who, as George Osborne notes, was always willing to set aside partisan conflict and who became friends with Cooper in particular – Labour won three elections on the trot. And the Tories, having borrowed Gould’s blueprint, almost won in 2010, with their biggest increase in seats since 1932.
Yet it is hard not to see these victories as short-term advances in the long retreat of national politics. The phrase “posh boys who don’t know the price of milk” was not around in 1998, but if it had been you can bet that voters then – as now – would have ticked it as an apt description of the Tories, who are still widely viewed as out of touch. Nor is Labour much more highly regarded. It may be way ahead in the polls, yet there is no enthusiasm for the party leader – even assuming the voters know who Ed Miliband is.
As political parties continue to shrivel, politicians themselves are acutely aware of the system failing. As David Miliband notes: “While there has been a lot of talk about the radical wave of democratisation in the Middle East, there has not been much reflection on the sense of disempowerment that people feel in Western countries – not just from the political process but from key decisions that affect their lives.”
He says that you cannot have the worst economic crisis in 80 years, as we had in 2007/8, and “expect politics to carry on as before”. He also gives some riveting figures – China is creating a new economy the size of Greece every twelve and a half weeks and one the size of Spain every 16 months. Yet he says that neither the Left nor the Right of the political spectrum has shown the imagination to respond to this shock to the system. The Right, he says, has reached for austerity while the Left “has struggled to turn anger into answers”.
All our politicians are struggling to find answers. They are losing power to the markets, to the big global corporations, to the emerging economies and to the media, notably to the social media made possible by new technology. Philip Gould himself believed that the revolution was never finished. He was also an optimist. Yet, as the ancien régime decays, it is hard to see how our politics is going to be revived.
----------
The saga of the Chief Whip, Andrew “Thrasher” Mitchell, continues to unfold, feeding public perceptions of out-of-touch Tory toffs. I understand the Downing Street police aren’t the only people he has upset. He was not popular with officials in his previous job at the Department for International Development. They gave him marks for competence, but it seems that his private office was “not a happy place”. Staff turnover there was brisk, Civil Service high-flyers did not want to work for him and if they couldn’t avoid it, they left as soon as decently possible.
Apart from a propensity for swearing – which we know about – Thrasher, who is ex-Army, had a tendency to bark out instructions like: “Go and get us some tea.” When one official mildly pointed out that tea-making was not her job, he glared at her and repeated his order for tea. His civil servants had been fervently hoping he would be reshuffled, but they wanted him replaced by his junior minister, Alan Duncan, who is seen as charming, articulate, a good manager and in tune with people – or as one insider put it, “everything that Mitchell is not”. |
Cops very likely to surprise the shit out of people by materializing out of nowhere in civilian-looking vehicles.
Phasing out the Crown Victoria.
Ken Kamami Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 22, 2017
If you can’t identify this as an undercover detective from a mile away, surrender your criminal license right away.
Let’s face it. Law enforcement has had a tough time this past decade trying to melt into traffic and launch surprise attacks on speeders or other more sinister actors. I used to be able to make out cops zigzagging half a mile behind me on the highway desperately trying to clock lead footers. I could tell the frustration on their faces and felt bad for whichever poor souls that couldn’t spot them on time. At the time, radar detectors were very popular. I loved the ones that scrambled the cop ones and made them spew out incomprehensible or unrealistic readings.
Nighttime cognito mode. Woe unto you if you couldn’t recognize these unmistakable headlights.
“Surely, that asswad can’t be doing 590.08 km/ hr? What’s km even? I’m getting too old for this.”
Those were king until they made the ones that even offered to pay speeding tickets if you could prove you were using them when you got busted. So traffic cops resulted to relying heavily on actually getting behind you and watching their speedometer. I was NEVER caught this way. And I ALWAYS sped. What’s the point of investing in a stick shift Honda Prelude or an Acura Integra if you won’t speed? That’s like buying a submarine and using it as a sightseeing canoe.
Speed is not the only offense frowned upon on the road. There’s the drug dealer who kidnapped a rival kingpin’s wife and is tugging at her hair while jetting down the freeway at breakneck speeds…and yelling at her. Before, he’d immediately stop doing that having easily discerned the iconic Ford’s grill. Now, these guys show up in Mustangs, Chargers and supercharged Explorers. So even if you see them in time and decide to make a run for it, they still end up reeling you in. |
WASHINGTON — In the first few months of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, if recent history is any guide, intelligence officials will meet to discuss a terrorism suspect living abroad. This suspect might become the next target for the nation’s not-so-secret drone force. Or maybe, Mr. Trump’s advisers could decide, he is worth trying to capture.
Under President Obama, security officials have followed a familiar script once they have taken someone into custody. They ask an allied country to conduct the interrogation, or instead question the suspect aboard an American warship using military interrogation techniques, then turn him over to the Justice Department for prosecution in a civilian court inside the United States.
Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to bring back waterboarding, a banned method previously used by C.I.A. interrogators, and allow unspecified practices he called “a hell of a lot worse.” The president-elect said in an interview last week that he had heard compelling arguments that torture was not effective, though it is not clear whether he intends to retreat from his position.
If he moves ahead to fulfill his campaign pledge, it will not be easy. Federal law, international pressure and resistance from inside the C.I.A. stand in his way. Even if he overcomes those obstacles, the toll of America’s agonizing treatment of captives has left a legacy of harm that will make it harder for Trump administration lawyers to justify resuming use of the tactics. |
Michael Bird is Lecturer in Theology at Ridley College in Melbourne.
Social Progressives in Australia proudly cling to two badges.
First, there is LGBTI rights - something observed in their advocacy for marriage equality.
Second, there is their opposition to Islamophobia - something evidenced by their stand against hostile attitudes towards Muslims, particularly those currently detained in detention centres.
These are the two causes - being for LGBTI rights and being against Islamophobia - that have defined social progressives in recent years.
However, I can't help but wonder why no one seems to have noticed the seeming contradiction at work in these two causes. The fact is that Muslims are, for the most part, opposed to the LGBTI cause. They shun homosexual behaviour in their communities. Most Muslim nations shockingly imprison and execute LGBTI men and women every year.
When I see a pro-progressive protest at an Australian Christian Lobby event for their stance on marriage equality, I'm always bemused that the same people are not also out there protesting in the front of the embassies of Saudi Arabia and Iran over the capital punishment of LGBTI people.
Let us remember that Australia's Grand Mufti Ibrahim Abu Mohamed is on record for saying that homosexuality and lesbianism are a "sexual perversion." In fact, you don't have to look far in Muslim websites to find evidence of Muslims decrying homosexuality as a disease of the West and calling for severe penalties against it. Sadly, the events unfolding in Orlando are proof that radicalised Muslims will even seek out and target LGBTI people. While it is undoubtedly wrong to associate this action with all Muslims, nevertheless it does evidence a link between Islamic extremism and violence towards innocent LGBTI men and women - violence that should make us mournful as enraged at such evil.
This is the unresolved paradox of the social progressives: advocating for LGBTI communities and for Muslims who generally do not share in the values of the West's sexual revolution and regard homosexuality with either indifference or disdain. Maybe the paradox exists because both groups are victims of prejudice and intolerance which enables social progressives to live with but never resolve the tension. Even so, I do wonder how long social progressives can turn a blind eye to Muslim indifference and/or hostility to LGBTI people.
Well, we might not have to wait much longer because the subject of removing religious exemptions from section 37 of the Sex Discrimination Act is now a serious topic of discussion. What is more, the removal of the exemption has huge repercussions for religious freedom. The Greens have officially taken the position that they will remove the exemption and faith communities can simply deal with the consequences. Somewhat more benign is Bill Shorten who announced Labour's position: "We are not interested in telling religious organisations how to run their faith-based organisations" - but with the curious caveat, "at this point in time." So watch this space.
Would federal and state governments force faith-based charities, schools and even worship communities to exclude religious qualifications for employment with the threat of litigation and the prospect of any state funding being cancelled? It is not likely at this moment, but it is hardly an unrealistic scenario for the future.
So let us imagine that religious exemption laws are repealed. And consequently a Muslim school, charity, or mosque finds itself in a legal dilemma because, well, it only hires Muslims who hold to Islamic beliefs and follow the Muslim way of life. What happens next? Does anyone really expect Australian Muslims en masse to alter their deeply held religious beliefs about family and marriage and just get with social progressive program? Would this cause Muslims to feel even more resented by society than they already are? I think we already know the answers to both questions.
I sense that social progressives are positively drooling at the prospect of unleashing a legal apocalypse and financial judgment on Catholic and Christian institutions for their discriminatory hiring practices. But I'm wondering if they have the stomach to do the same thing to Muslim schools, charities and mosques? And why stop there? What about Jewish synagogues and associations or even the Baha'i communities and their charities? The rub is you can't just penalize churches and leaves the mosques and the synagogues untouched. If you are going to go after religion by repealing the religious exemption laws, then you have to go after every single religion in society.
So do the Greens and their social progressive base have the desire to be the first Western democracy to prosecute or close Islamic schools, charities and institutions for being, well, Islamic? If so, where is your anti-Islamophobia badge now?
At the risk of being shouted down in vehement rage by social progressive in the comments section below, can I ask for a few moments of indulgence to explain why I think the religious exemption laws should not be repealed.
First, the state cannot dictate to faith communities what they believe and whom they appoint to undertake services. Only by the most Erastian of policies can the state arrogate itself to such a position. The constitution supports freedom of religion and the separation of church and state, which should entail the freedom of faith communities to determine who is fitting to serve as representatives for their religious, social and charitable services.
Faith communities do, after all, make a positive contribution to society through education, charities, as well as pastoral and chaplaincy services. While the Salvos, World Vision and the Red Crescent might not have done much for you personally, they do a great deal for a good many people all over the world. The Catholic Church is one of the largest employers in the country. Many Christian schools provide affordable private education to families who otherwise could not afford it. Out of the largest 25 charities in Australia, at least 23 of them are faith based. Do the social progressive really want to go nuclear on these faith-based charities for simply doing what they've been doing since federation? (If the answer is "yes," I suggest you start using the hashtag #ErastianismNow!)
Second, diversity in a multi-cultural society entails diverse views about sexuality, family, gender and child-rearing. This is the thing that frustrates me the most about social progressives. They are all for diversity, pluralism, and tolerance. Yet they have scowling contempt for persons whose views do not line up with their social progressive values. Forgive me for saying the painstakingly obvious, but embracing diversity means embracing a society where people are genuinely ... different. Diversity means the freedom to be different without fear of reprisal. That includes different political views, different social convictions and different ethical beliefs - even on matters of sexuality.
You might not find other people's views persuasive, agreeable, or tasteful. You have the right to criticize and even mock those beliefs. But the moment you say that certain people no longer have the right to hold and live by their beliefs, you are then rejecting diversity as a value and instead are insisting on the dogmatic imposition of your own beliefs as the sole acceptable position in the public domain.
No one knows how the social progressive paradox of supporting LGBTI rights and opposing Islamophobia is going to play out. I suspect that they will bumble along together for some time yet with social progressives playing innocent to the tension.
If, however, the religious exemption laws are repealed, and if Islamic communities face litigation or lose funding for schools and charities, at least the paradox will have been settled. Should that time come, then social progressives will have finally embraced ideology over tolerance, succumbed to secularizing zeal over religious freedom, and chosen leftie dogma over genuine diversity.
Michael Bird is Lecturer in Theology at Ridley College in Melbourne. |
In Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul, Jaroldeen Edwards recounts the day her daughter, Carolyn, drove her to Lake Arrowhead to visit a daffodil garden. [1]
“Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, ‘Mother, you must come see the daffodils before they are over.’ I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead”.
Despite her reluctance, Jaroldeen agreed and made the two-hour drive in the rain and fog with Carolyn. When they arrived at the daffodil garden, Jaroldeen couldn’t believe her eyes:
“We turned a corner of the path, and I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight. It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it down over the mountain peak and slopes . . . There were five acres of flowers”.
There were daffodils are far as the eye could see.
On the land, was a house with a poster that read: “Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking”. The first answer was: “50,000 bulbs”. The second answer was: “One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and [a] very little brain”. The third answer was: “Began in 1958”.
This woman had adopted what Jaroldeen would call “The Daffodil Principle”: a lifelong commitment to a goal by taking one action every day.
The Daffodil Principle
Whenever you hear about someone who’s achieved an extraordinary goal, rarely, if ever, do you hear about the process they used – that is, the ordinary actions they did consistently that helped them – you only hear about the outcome.
You hear about the entrepreneur who took his business public but not how many “no’s” he heard when he was building his business. You read about the dieter who lost 28 pounds in 30 days but not how close they were to relapsing.
We’re lead to believe that extraordinary successes are a result of one-off extraordinary actions, but they’re not – they’re a result of (1) ordinary actions done consistently (such as planting daffodil bulbs one bulb at a time) and (2) regular feedback (noticing what’s working, what isn’t and improving the former to maximise your results).
The woman who planted 50,000 bulbs not only had to plant them; she had to learn how to plant them in a way that constantly moved her towards her outcome.
Action Needs Continuous Improvement
If you want to achieve a goal, it’s not always enough to just take action (how do you know it’s the right action?); you have to constantly improve the process you’re using as well (this helps you ascertain whether it’s the right action or not).
To quote Dr. Marshall Goldsmith: “What got you here what get you there”.
If you’re unemployed and you goal is to find a job, emailing five random companies every day may feel like progress (and to an extent, it is; action is better than inaction), but if you’re not refining your resume, tweaking your cover letter and researching companies you and your skill set are best suited for – in other words, improving your process—you’re unlikely to meet your outcome.
With that in mind, you may want to consider improving your process by 1 percent every day.
A 1 percent improvement may feel insignificant (and, on its own, that may be true) but when you improve by 1 percent—in the long-term—that 1 percent compounds on itself and produces results you never could’ve imagined.
The Difference 1 Percent Makes
Figure 1 explains the difference between improving and regressing by 1 percent every day for 1 year.
As you can see, a 1 percent improvement every day for one year equals to 37.8. In other words, that’s a 3,680 percent improvement! On the other hand, a 1 percent regression equals to 00.3 – a 97 percent regression. [2]
Maybe time doesn’t allow you to improve by 1 percent every day, but what about if you improved by 1 percent every week?
As you can see from Figure 2, even a 1 percent improvement every week for 1 year is still a 67 percent improvement.
The complicated math aside, let’s discuss how you can apply this. [3]
The Daffodil Principle in Practice
The Daffodil Principle isn’t applicable to all processes on a daily basis (you don’t want to over-train with exercise for example) but it certainly is on a weekly basis.
Your 1 percent improvement can also be measured in one of two ways: (1) qualitative improvement or (2) quantitative improvement.
Let’s look at a few examples of applying The Daffodil Principle on a weekly basis with both qualitative and quantitative improvements:
If your goal is to write a book, a qualitative improvement to your process could be improving your knowledge of writing, grammar, and syntax by practicing and judging what feels right to you. A quantitative improvement could be writing 1000 words a week (200 words every weekday) and writing 1 percent more every week.
If your goal is to run a marathon, a qualitative improvement to your process could be improving your diet, observing how you feel (both before and after) and replacing any negative habits you have (like smoking). A quantitative improvement could be improving your personal best by 1 percent every week.
If your goal is to find a romantic partner, a qualitative improvement to your process could be improving how your feel about yourself using affirmations, practicing gratitude and dressing better. A quantitative improvement could be talking to 10 new people every week and improving your conversation skills by 1 percent every week.
Maybe practicing The Rule of Five can account for your 1 percent improvement every day or week. Tracking this on Excel will help motivate you when you feel challenged.
A Final Word
Granted, determining what a 1 percent improvement is for you may be difficult to track if it’s qualitative, but it’s usually up to your own assessment.
I prefer a qualitative improvement in my processes and my rule of thumb is to ask myself: “Do I feel like I’ve improved in (process) today?” For example, if I’m focusing on improving my writing, that can be proofreading my work more thoroughly, using a new word I’ve learned or double checking a grammatical rule. In other words: “Did I take an action I wouldn’t have usually taken?” If I feel like an article I’ve written is better than the one that preceded it, I feel like I’m improving.
Improving by 1 percent every day or week is achievable – regardless of your circumstances. If you’re currently encountering resistance with your goals, remember the words of Karen Lamb: “A year from now, you will have wished you’d started today”.
What can you start now? |
With the Dissidia Final Fantasy NT beta now upon us, many people have been clamoring for a move list for each character. Fear not, we’ve got you covered with move lists for each character in Dissidia Final Fantasy. Now that the game is available and out of beta, all characters and attacks are free for players to use, and you’ll find all of the available attacks below for each character. Make sure you have these Dissidia character move lists up and ready to look at so you know what attacks to use and when.
Move List Basics
Most characters have a ground and aerial attacks. That means pressing the same button on the ground may give you a different attack in the air. If you need some assistance knowing the difference between the various attack types, we’ve already covered that in another article. Here you’ll find each characters Brave Attacks, HP Attacks, and EX Skills which we also covered how to acquire in a separate article.
Ace
Bartz Klauser
Cecil Harvey
Cloud of Darkness
Cloud Strife
Emperor
Exdeath
Firion
Garland
Golbez
Jecht
Kain
Kefka
Kuja
Lightning
Noctis
Onion Knight
Ramza
Sephiroth
Shantotto
Squall Leonhart
Terra Branford
Tidus
Ultimecia
Vaan
Warrior of Light
Y'shtola
Zidane Tribal
For more on the game, including beginner tips, be sure to check out our Dissidia Final Fantasy NT game hub! |
$\begingroup$
When you fit a regression model such as $\hat y_i = \hat\beta_0 + \hat\beta_1x_i + \hat\beta_2x^2_i$, the model and the OLS estimator doesn't 'know' that $x^2_i$ is simply the square of $x_i$, it just 'thinks' it's another variable. Of course there is some collinearity, and that gets incorporated into the fit (e.g., the standard errors are larger than they might otherwise be), but lots of pairs of variables can be somewhat collinear without one of them being a function of the other.
We don't recognize that there are really two separate variables in the model, because we know that $x^2_i$ is ultimately the same variable as $x_i$ that we transformed and included in order to capture a curvilinear relationship between $x_i$ and $y_i$. That knowledge of the true nature of $x^2_i$, coupled with our belief that there is a curvilinear relationship between $x_i$ and $y_i$ is what makes it difficult for us to understand the way that it is still linear from the model's perspective. In addition, we visualize $x_i$ and $x^2_i$ together by looking at the marginal projection of the 3D function onto the 2D $x, y$ plane.
If you only have $x_i$ and $x^2_i$, you can try to visualize them in the full 3D space (although it is still rather hard to really see what is going on). If you did look at the fitted function in the full 3D space, you would see that the fitted function is a 2D plane, and moreover that it is a flat plane. As I say, it is hard to see well because the $x_i, x^2_i$ data exist only along a curved line going through that 3D space (that fact is the visual manifestation of their collinearity). We can try to do that here. Imagine this is the fitted model:
x = seq(from=0, to=10, by=.5) x2 = x**2 y = 3 + x - .05*x2 d.mat = data.frame(X1=x, X2=x2, Y=y) # 2D plot plot(x, y, pch=1, ylim=c(0,11), col="red", main="Marginal projection onto the 2D X,Y plane") lines(x, y, col="lightblue")
# 3D plot library(scatterplot3d) s = scatterplot3d(x=d.mat$X1, y=d.mat$X2, z=d.mat$Y, color="gray", pch=1, xlab="X1", ylab="X2", zlab="Y", xlim=c(0, 11), ylim=c(0,101), zlim=c(0, 11), type="h", main="In pseudo-3D space") s$points(x=d.mat$X1, y=d.mat$X2, z=d.mat$Y, col="red", pch=1) s$plane3d(Intercept=3, x.coef=1, y.coef=-.05, col="lightblue")
It may be easier to see in these images, which are screenshots of a rotated 3D figure made with the same data using the rgl package.
When we say that a model that is "linear in the parameters" really is linear, this isn't just some mathematical sophistry. With $p$ variables, you are fitting a $p$-dimensional hyperplane in a $p\!+\!1$-dimensional hyperspace (in our example a 2D plane in a 3D space). That hyperplane really is 'flat' / 'linear'; it isn't just a metaphor. |
14 Min read time Share:
Is digital life soulless or the site of a new transcendence?
Photo: Ars Electronica
Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age
Sven Birkerts
For years now there has been talk of a schism between the respective tribes of book and screen, between those whose medium relies on diligent, contemplative immersion and those who favor the more frictionless rewards of speed. In this conflict, the literary community has more often found itself on the defensive. Yes, the literati thrive online, but these communities are too often redolent of a bookstore “gifts” aisle, where expressions of tenderness for reading and writing—mugs, tote bags, #amwriting—displace the thing itself. There is more writing than ever, thanks to the ease of online- and self-publishing, but, partly as a result, what has long been a profession has come to feel more like a hobby.
Among the early signs of this mounting sense of imperilment was critic Sven Birkerts’s 1994 book The Gutenberg Elegies. Birkerts was alarmed by the emerging effect of new technologies on his beloved books and book reading, as digital distractions threatened to replace immersive narrative with contextless, fast-flying information. Twenty-one years later, much of what Birkerts feared has come to pass: electronic media have become all but inescapable in the developed world and, increasingly, beyond it. As Birkerts puts it in a new essay collection, Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Digital Age, the digital now has the appearance of a “common cognitive environment,” a pervasive climate or atmosphere escapable only via the kind of enforced digital diet that leaves one open to cries of “Luddite!” Birkerts still does not have a cell phone, let alone a smart one; uses email sparingly; and is awed and baffled by the GPS he rarely employs.
In the new collection, Birkerts adopts the vocabulary of the battlefield—“strike a blow,” “strengthen one’s position,” “strategized,” “hard won”—and embodies the role of a Mathew Brady, observing the fray from a not-too-distant hill and poignantly documenting his own side’s losses. He recognizes that the other camp holds most of the tangible assets—ease, utility, ready access to information—leaving his kind to defend something ambiguous, unknowable, and unquantifiable, the value of which lies in it being exactly so.
Most of the essays explore how technology has changed the spatial, affective, neurological, and transcendent elements of individual identity—what Birkerts calls the “phenomenology of digital living.” This, in turn, has bearing on the fate of imagination and inwardness, qualities that are the foundation of literature and art. The crisis is an ontological, even spiritual one.
Birkerts is concerned, in other words, about our souls, which may not survive when every moment of contemplation is ruptured, every immanence mediated, and the very concept of the unknown undone by Google. But there may yet be a way to preserve our souls, to make space for the transcendent even in the midst of our busy, digital lives.
• • •
On its face, Birkerts’s critique is a fairly common one. Perhaps he knows this and so trades sweeping judgments for interrogations of his own vague sense of anxiety, his email use, his skimming of articles online. The pronouns are often plural, suggesting universalism, but the arguments are subjective: “The existence of the medium has created an unremitting low-intensity neural disquiet that we somehow feel only the medium can allay,” he writes. “We are on the run from the anxious vibration of our living.” Close-reading his own responses, though, he finds himself groping to describe what he is running toward.
Still, it is hard to argue with the changes Birkerts sees. There is little doubt that technology alters our thinking: studies have shown a decreased ability to concentrate for sustained lengths of time, and, conversely, an increased tendency to multitask, with physical effects on the brain. That technology has an effect on our being is not a revolutionary claim. As David Lochhead, a theologian interested in media, wrote, we “take our technology into the deepest recesses of our souls. Our view of reality, our structures of meaning, our sense of identity—all are touched and transformed by the technologies which we have allowed to mediate between ourselves and the world.” This is true of any technology, from spades to books and telescopes. But the pace of change—and level of mediation—is inarguably greater today. So great that it may constitute a difference in kind.
Birkerts resists a mechanized world. There are other ways to save our souls.
“In a grievance-venting mood, I can have a field day,” Birkerts writes. “How few are the unmediated interchanges, how rare the direct contacts, or even voice contacts—what a mess of procedure is now installed between the self and most anything.” These broad-stroke criticisms are familiar enough: critics as diverse as Jaron Lanier and Evgeny Morozov have noted the diminishment of tangible, tactile connections to people and processes; a decline in the “specific gravity” of things; and the shift from an Enlightenment ideal of the striving individual toward a hive mind thinking in hierarchies pre-determined by the likes of Apple and Google.
More interesting is what happens when Birkerts submits the present to the kind of close reading at which he excels. Sitting on a bench next to someone conversing on a cell phone, he notes how “the technology stains the moment with its disconcerting transmission of ‘elsewhere,’ removing the talker from the realm of closed-off immediate presence, affecting the whole environment. . . . I register that something deep in human ecology has been disturbed.” One might see here the symptoms of advanced technophobia, but it is worth noting how rarely we subject these now-banal encounters to this kind of phenomenological attention. Part of Birkerts’s deeper point is that such attention is more and more difficult to access, drawn as we are along constantly available, constantly expanding pathways of links, pics, vids, and other elsewheres that encourage rapid movement from one to the next.
As Birkerts sees it, the movement of the digital mind is lateral, directed at what is just over the horizon, along a trail laid for us by corporate interests. The digital mind uses information as a means to approach conclusion or synthesis. The movement of the Enlightenment mind, in contrast, is vertical, penetrating, profound, and inward-looking. The difference, in short, is between the mind that thinks for the sake of thinking itself and the mind oriented toward practical solutions. There is no doubt which Birkerts prefers: “Contemplation is not a subset category, not just one kind of thinking among many,” he writes. “It is the point of thinking, its alpha and omega.” This is a rather astonishing claim, but Birkerts answers that only contemplation gets at the existential, that it is “what almost inevitably follows as soon as we allow the possibility that existence is neither trivial nor incidental.” Unlike goal-directed analysis, contemplation is intransitive and for-itself, a form of experience that is both means and ends. It dabbles in the “terrain that lies to either side of certainty,” sublimating the world through the imagination.
What becomes of the contemplative mind, Birkerts wonders, when we let “the assumption of solvability take the place of what had always been a more provisional—possibly more investigatory—relation to our surroundings”? If the route can be easily found and followed, the answer easily called up, the right mate tabulated, the appropriate soundtrack predicted, what becomes of the “power of the immense unknown”? The iPhone fiddlers on a subway car may be doing business, filling the time, or, as Birkerts generously allows, engaged in a form of exploration. What they are not doing, though, is confronting the “unknown not just as what we don’t or can’t know, but as a philosophical premise of being—and ultimately the basis for seeing life as spiritually grounded.” Others—including the comedian Louis CK in a much-shared 2013 segment of Conan O’Brien’s TV show—have made more-or-less the same point. But Birkerts’s primary interest is in what happens to the imagination, that “mode of processing reality that is not amenable to statistics or calculations,” in a world where the unknown has been hidden away.
A techno-optimist will contend that, once everything is connected and automated—once the refrigerator can reorder our favorite beer and robots handle our dangerous tasks—humanity, relieved of tedium and hazard, will find itself free to live a life of productive artistic leisure, dedicated to family, to philosophy, to pursuing, as Birkerts puts it, “those soulful dialogues that, when they happen, feel like the ultimate point of our living.” But this techno-utopian future forces a rather embarrassing question: If every challenge is removed, if the for-itself of experience is replaced by means and ends, what is the point of living? What will our art be about? “To engage in such explorations requires massive inner resources,” Birkerts writes, “and to have soulful interchanges we must have soul. Where if not through the relentless abrasions of the unknown, in our responses to mystery and uncertainty, will we find that soul, or at least the inner materials we need?” This may echo grandma’s eat-your-broccoli, whatever-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger theory of character building, but that doesn’t mean it should be discounted. It draws, too, on the European Romantic tradition and its beautiful conception of soul as the burr produced on us by our friction against the world during our brief passage through. In this tradition, art’s intention is to redefine, as Keats wrote in an 1819 letter to his siblings, an earthly “vale of tears” as a “vale of soul-making.”
It isn’t surprising how near Birkerts’s critique comes to the domain of spirituality and religion. Although he dismisses “a mysticism of crystals and tarot packs,” what is at stake remains a kind of transcendence, the “above and beyond” of existence that surpasses our daily needs. It is a kind of transcendence that finds a ready home in the Romantic conception of art and literature, one that probes the “why” of existence. In his coup de grâce, Birkerts cites Rainer Maria Rilke’s incomparable Ninth Elegy. “Why,” Rilke asks in that poem, “have to be human”? Perhaps, he answers, we are here to bring the world into consciousness, for “saying: House, / Bridge, Fountain, Gate, Jug”:
Fleeting, they look for Rescue through something in us, the most fleeting of all. Want us to change them entirely, within our invisible hearts, Into—oh, endlessly—into ourselves! Whosoever we are. Earth, isn’t this what you want: an invisible Re-arising in us?
It is a powerful demonstration of how the existential unknowns of the world are sublimated through language into higher awareness. Not only does the poem speak of this form of transcendence, but it also evokes exaltation in the reader, the profound recognition of two subjectivities—Rilke’s and one’s own—vibrating at the same frequency. Needless to say, the connection is of a different order than that enabled by, say, Facebook.
Yet Birkerts recognizes, too, that this may seem rarefied: we are talking, after all, about a cell phone. But the threat, as he sees it, is not to daily reality but to those moments of supreme dread and exaltation that define the existential—and, yes, spiritual—boundaries of human life. After all, as Keats wrote, even “if [man] improves by degrees his bodily accommodations and comforts . . . he is mortal and there is still a heaven with its Stars above his head.”
To Birkerts, art is an act of attention, framing a piece of the world through the imagination, imbuing it with meaning. He draws on both Iris Murdoch’s sense of “loving attention” and Simone Weil’s idea of attention as a kind of prayer. In imagination-as-attention, Birkerts finds transcendence and morality, an “act of the spirit,” a way of turning the world into soul as Rilke instructed. Birkerts, here, comes close to the thought of the American Transcendentalists. Confronted by the rapid mechanization and industrialization of the early nineteenth century, Transcendentalists found meaning in and through unmediated attention to the natural world, recognizing the immanence of nature and the sacred in man. Birkerts identifies in our own digital revolution a need for a new Transcendentalism: a spiritual, aesthetic, and moral renewal achieved through contemplation, idleness, interiority, receptivity, the organic, and the unique. Such a movement would protest the digital status quo on behalf of the “seeking, self-apprehending” individual. “Each new age requires a new confession,” Emerson wrote, “and the world seems always waiting for its poet.”
Is there space for such a poet today? Birkerts is pessimistic. He despairs that what Emerson called an awareness of the “spiritual fact” cannot persist when digital technology has placed such a thick barrier between us and the world, replacing the sublime act of attention with a perpetual state of distraction. Besides, he writes, people simply don’t talk that way any more, outside of religion, and it all sounds a bit silly, “for we don’t credit the inward as a place for progress or gain, or anything much at all.” How do we create, Birkerts asks, if we cannot take ourselves seriously as souls?
Perhaps such pessimism is warranted in a world where “mindfulness” is little more than a buzzword and “soul” most commonly refers to a fitness craze. Where subjective judgment is superseded by data, the mental cathedral, as Nicholas Carr put it in The Shallows (2010) is replaced by a mental bazaar. The comparison is useful, as the activity conducted in both church and marketplace is a kind of search, which is of course central to what this technology is for: not just Google, but GPS, dating apps, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon—all guide us toward what they think we want. The shift from cathedral to bazaar represents a shift from search as contemplation to search as a way for capitalism to extract value, exploiting information as an energy company might an oil well. The purpose of the tools is a kind of hyper-capitalism in which freedom is freedom of commerce whenever and wherever, and, thanks to the increasing connectivity of mundane objects, often without deliberate participation.
Birkerts’s response is to opt out to the extent that he can. But we might also confront these challenges by encouraging a change in the terms of the search. As I see it, the task of a new Transcendentalism would be less to actively oppose digital technology or save us from it than to, as Rilke put it, “change it into ourselves,” bringing to it the same kind of transformative, sustained attention that the Transcendentalists brought to the natural world.
“Why should we not also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” Emerson wondered in his introduction to the essay “Nature.” “Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition?” One might put the same question to the connected world of today. Most of us will have to use these tools, like it or not; why let someone else decide our relation to them? Transcendentalism was as much about resisting imposed structures of control and interpretation as it was about resisting a mechanized world. Perhaps the role of art now, the way it can best fill the spiritual voids left by our immersion in the digital, is to create for us an “original relation” to it.
Birkerts, whose references lie mainly outside of contemporary art, may not have encountered it yet, but such art is being made, whether or not it jibes with one’s taste. While much so-called digital or “net” art merely mimics systems of interpretation already in place, there are those artists, now, whose interest is not in the strategies and selling-points of the system but in finding an honest relation to it. Far from Silicon Valley, there are tinkerers whose work more closely resembles a kind of folk art, whose objective is not the next billion-dollar app but the creation of soul-satisfying uses for and meaningful investigation of the digital tools and interactions that constitute daily life: Taeyoon Choi’s handmade computers, for instance, and Brian House’s “tanglr,” a shared browsing extension for Google Chrome. In works such as Addie Wagenknecht’s “Data and Dragons” sculptures, James Bridle’s rorschmap.com, Adam Harvey’s anti-surveillance fashions, Nick Briz’s “glitches,” and Tega Brain’s “eccentric engineering,” technology becomes more than a means to an end. These artists build circuits and programs and other objects for the sake of beauty and contemplation, approaching ones and zeros in the spirit of language. They find there, no doubt, a sensation akin to Nabokov’s “aesthetic bliss.”
Literature, at least that which is widely disseminated and read, lags behind these efforts. But it is not hard to see where it, too, could achieve this: perhaps not in the plot-driven, immersive novels Birkerts prefers, but in works that use the digital characteristics of fragment, association, connection, and speed to create not just meaning but a transcendence of the medium itself.
This would be an expansive, inclusive, nimble literature—the rhizome rather than the root tree. Interpreting and sublimating the digital world, such a literature could provide what Deleuze and Guattari meant by a “body without organs”: a deeper reality underlying the appearance of something complete and whole, which returns one to the freedom of original relation. This is the space reserved for the poet of today. |
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/LetsPlay/HATFilms
From left to right: Trott, Ross and Smith
Advertisement:
Hat Films are a trio of British gamers who became part of the Yogscast family in 2013. The trio, also sometimes called the "Sirs" are: djh3max (Ross Hornby), Trottimus (Chris Trott) and alsmiffy (Alex Smith or "Smiffy").
They have had several series on Minecraft and have also played, among other games, Trials, Worms and Grand Theft Auto V. They frequently partner and compete against Sips, Turpster and Lewis Brindley, and have played GTA 5 and Skyblock along with Garry's Mod Murder and Trouble in Terrorist Town among other members of the Yogscast on Sips' channel and the main Yogscast channel.
On top of their Let's Play gaming content, they have worked on official Minecraft trailers for Mojang, and produce an irregularly-updated animated machinima series: Filfy Animals.
They ALSO also do a podcast called HatChat, which can be found on their website, here .
They can be found here .
Aside from that, Trott is a cast member for High Rollers (2016).
Advertisement:
Tropes that pertain to the Sirs: |
SAN FRANCISCO, March 9 (UPI) -- San Francisco officials said the mess left by this year's massive Valentine's Day pillow fight has led them to take another look at the "flash mob" phenomenon.
The pillow fight, which marked its fourth year in February, involved an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 people at Justin Herman Plaza and left the city with thousands of dollars worth of damages and cleanup costs, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.
Lisa Seitz Gruwell of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department said organizers of the event must begin taking responsibility for the event, "otherwise we are going to have to find a way to shut it down."
However, officials said it is difficult to track down the organizers of the pillow fight since it is part of the flash mob fad, in which events are largely promoted through the Internet, text messaging and word of mouth. Flash mobs typically involve a large group of people gathering in a public place, engaging in unusual behavior and dispersing.
Mohammed Nuru, deputy director of the Department of Public Works, said the city had to dispatch 69 employees and an extra street sweeper truck to clean up after this year's pillow fight.
"It was quite a mess, much more than we have experienced in previous years," he said. "Everywhere was feathers." |
STEPHEN Baldwin may have been arrested for failing to file tax returns, but more importantly, he "blue steeled the s--t" out of his mugshot."
The image has gone viral after the actor sported a Zoolander-looking pout while posing for his close-up.
"Max Derek Zoolander should REALLY sue Stephen Baldwin," Twitter user Max said referring to the Ben Stiller character, "You can't steal "Magnum", use it in your mugshot, and then expect to get away with it."
Gawker called the snap "ridiculously good-looking," while Perez Hilton dubbed it the "best mug shot ever" and suggested he was "looking awfully smoldering for a man who could face four years in prison!"
The actor landed himself in trouble after failing to file returns for the years 2008, 2009, and 2010, reports TMZ.
Baldwin reportedly owes the New York state more than $350,000 in back taxes.
The D.A told the website: “At a time when Rockland County and New York State face severe fiscal shortfalls, we cannot afford to allow wealthy residents to break the law by cheating on their taxes.”
Baldwin reportedly faces up to four years jail if he doesn't pay up. |
The incredible speed and volatility of cryptocurrency was on full display over the past few days with IOTA. At the start of November, IOTA was a relatively obscure coin that was trading at around $0.38. Today, its value is closing in on $5.
While there’s nothing unusual about minor cryptocurrencies experiencing huge spikes in their valuation, IOTA is exploding in a way that could only really be compared to Ethereum. IOTA has just leapfrogged veterans Litecoin and Dash to become the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market cap. And there’s no indication that it’s stopping there.
Why is IOTA going supernova?
IOTA is a revolutionary platform that solves the main issues which have affected other cryptocurrencies – fees, scaling limitations, and centralization.
Fees and scaling limitations are by far the biggest barrier to Bitcoin ever becoming the digital currency it was originally envisioned as. As the blockchain ledger recording Bitcoin transactions grows ever larger, speed decreases as each Bitcoin transaction requires total verification of the entire blockchain.
The verification process for Bitcoin is conducted by miners who require a fee each time a transaction is processed. Bitcoin users are able to specify the fee they are willing to pay when making a transaction, which creates a bidding war when the network is congested. Miners obviously opt to verify the highest-paying transactions first, so the more popular Bitcoin becomes, the less likely it is that Bitcoin can ever be used for everyday purchases.
For Bitcoin, the problem of fees and scaling limitations are completely entangled. Other cryptocurrencies have scaling limitations of their own, with Ethereum’s transaction fees slowing down considerably thanks to the viral success of the kitten-breeding game CryptoKitties.
Centralization is happening inadvertently with Bitcoin, with power becoming concentrated in powerful mining firms who essentially control whether transactions get verified. Centralization is one of the central criticisms of other emerging cryptocurrencies like Neo, which operate a small number of nodes that could conceivably be taken out by any manner of digital or real-world catastrophes.
The first reason for IOTA’s sudden success is that it’s seemingly solved all these issues with the Tangle. The Tangle moves beyond blockchain to execute all transactions peer-to-peer, without any transaction fees. Instead of miners validating transactions on the ledger as with Bitcoin, verification is built into the ledger itself. The more popular IOTA becomes, the more widespread the transaction-verifying Tangle. Where scaling and network congestion hamstrings Bitcoin and Ethereum, IOTA actually becomes faster the more people use it.
The second reason is that the Tangle has got some major tech players very excited. It’s no coincidence that IOTA’s explosion in value followed an announcement of a partnership with Microsoft. Microsoft are very proactive in the cryptocurrency space. They recently launched a development contest with Neo and they are one of the main players in the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance. The company responsible for making PCs user-friendly fared poorly in the smartphone space, with Windows Phone never coming close to rivalling Android or iPhone’s market share. Microsoft are keen to be at the front of the pack when it comes to the rapidly-evolving world of blockchain and cryptocurrency.
The third reason is speculation at its wildest. The cryptocurrency market is a hyper-charged version of the stock market where a slight bearish trend can become hysteria within hours. All-time highs generate headlines which generate speculation which generates more headlines, and the price starts increasing exponentially purely because the price is increasing exponentially.
How far can IOTA climb?
Speculation is still at the heart of all cryptocurrency investments and we may still be years from seeing the technology behind IOTA being used to its full potential. However, if it fulfils even a fraction of that potential, there’s almost no limit to how big IOTA can get.
While Bitcoin is increasingly referred to as digital gold, IOTA is positioning itself as the crypto equivalent of a major energy conglomerate. Central to IOTA’s potential is the idea that data is the oil of the digital economy. To take this metaphor to its logical conclusion, IOTA may have just invented the internal combustion engine.
IOTA’s combination of secure data transfer and zero transaction fees enable the sharing and monetization of data on a grand scale. IOTA’s vision is of a near-future in which data is freely and instantly amalgamated from smart devices connected to the Internet of Things.
We are already living in the early years of the data age, with an incredible amount of information on all of us existing on the internet and in the databases of the myriad companies we interact with every day. As IOTA points out on its website, 99% of the data that is currently generated is lost due to there being no real way to sync-up the data generated by every internet-connected device. The Tangle makes it easy for companies to automate the sharing and selling of this data.
Before Microsoft got on board, IOTA had already announced partnerships with Cisco Systems, Samsung, and Volkswagen. Its easy to see why the Tangle’s game-changing utilization of data would be incredibly interesting to major companies like this.
The suddenness of IOTA is surprising even by cryptocurrency’s crazy standards. The majority of trading volume is currently being conducted through Bitfinex and Binance. Korea’s largest exchange, Bithumb, will be adding IOTA soon, which could cause the value to rise even higher.
Cryptocurrency is so new, and IOTA is so different to every other player in the space, that there really is no guide by which to predict its future. The spikes and dips that have marked Bitcoin’s ascension can be plotted against trends experienced by other markets and technologies, allowing somewhat-educated guesses to be made about its future direction. But when something moves as suddenly as IOTA, all bets are off. The price could continue to sky-rocket or it could collapse tomorrow. The more speculation mounts, the more unpredictable things become.
But IOTA is undoubtedly an incredibly interesting project with almost unlimited potential. |
Notifications Suck
Doug Turnbull Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 7, 2016
I hate notifications with a passion.
Do you ever walk into a room and forget what you came in for? You probably got distracted by something else. Maybe a stray interesting thought, or maybe you saw something that reminded you of something else.
Well do you ever turn on your iPad and forget why you turned it on? You probably saw some red badge. And that badge got you sucked into a work email. Then before you know it you’re chewing over some big stressful thing. You may even try to hammer out a response.
Hell and that’s PRODUCTIVE! I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve tripped into social media arguments with people. Trump said what!?! Surely the commenters are as outraged as I am. Oh wait what did this idiot say. Surely I must respond to this wrong person on the Internet! My comment will resonate so loudly as to alter the course of human history.
Then you close the iPad. It’s an hour later. And you were going to read a book. Or learn something new. You got completely sidetracked by that thing you were going to do. The baby is now crying. Or it’s time to go somewhere. You lost an hour of internet-driven self discovery to distractions and arguing with wrong people in the Internet.
Repeat after me: Notifications are pointless interruptions! If you see the verb “notify” replace it with “distract” or “interrupt.” Really when you think about it, in the grand scheme of things you only care about being interrupted by a few really important things
The house is on fire Someone important calls you (it takes real work for them to call you) Maybe one or two people send you a text-based message (message from spouse)
That’s IT. However, some apps would have you be disrupted for items as trivial as
Someone you worked with 10 years ago has had a birthday Somebody moved a trello card There’s new flights to check out for that trip you were shopping for A random person liked your thing (tweet/post/blog article) on the Internet (somehow we’ve been conditioned to have this be extremely important) A random person posted a comment on a random forum I happen to have kept open in some tab
And while this information can sometimes be important, it’s not worth being interrupted for. It’s something you can check later, when you have time. You really don’t need to know when someone responds to you on Facebook. Knowing immediately that someone has retweeted you has almost no value to you.
Yet somehow we’ve bought into these notifications as having importance. Some tie into our work lives — important email I must respond too! Some tie into our sense of ego gratification: something valuable is happening now to you. “Did Rick Astley just retweet me? Holy crap! I’m important!” Others want to tie to the (rather stupid) idea that opportunity only knocks once. Some plane fare is cheap if I act in the next 20 minutes!? Others simply come along for the ride because, as we’ll discuss they’re desperately trying to get you to care about the app. Still many others simply think “notifications: why not?” (looking at you Discuss!).
Take an inventory of the notifications in your life. Are they *really* important? Even the important email can wait until tomorrow. If work is really on fire, someone should have your number — they CAN call you.
Point 2: Focus, not information, not responding quickly, FOCUS is your most precious resource.
Ok we get notifications distract. They interrupt. But sometimes they’re fun. It’s neat to see that someone enjoys what we’re saying. Or getting that cheap flight can also be fun. Why should we care about notifications?
Notifications damage our focus. They’re unhealthy. Why? Because they rob us of focus.
We already rob ourselves of focus when we check Facebook, Twitter, etc during a work day. Why drive the nail deeper by letting these apps have the ability to directly distract us? Its like trying to diet and constantly being shown a box of donuts. Want some donuts? They look good don’t they. Go on take just one!
Focus, not information, not the ability to react quickly, FOCUS is like gold. Its a rare resource. Its capital you can invest in something else. Focus means learning, solving problems, writing, producing. Only through focus and concentration do we grow.
If you can’t focus on learning anything, what’s the point in sitting in front of a device that holds the entire sum of human knowledge?
In fact, I’ve got a startup pitch for you. A totally notification (and distraction) proof tablet. Instead of the ability to switch between apps. Instead of being monitored and cajoled into certain behaviors, you take content you wish to learn and imprint it on a single-use screen. This screen cannot distract you. It’s physically impossible. It comes with a 100% concentration guarantee. There’s no icons, popups, badges, dancing bears, or anything! I’d pay real money for that!
Yeah no duh you’re saying, it’s called a book. It’s a subatomic particle of information in the vast ocean of knowledge available on the Internet. But it never takes away your focus. You’re never tempted to check twitter for retweets. You have a real chance of getting deep into the content. Of really focussing. You have no ability to accidentally find yourself in email or a chat room.
Sitting in front of an internet connected device to focus increasingly feels like futile dieting. It’s too tempting to get that little hit of dopamine. Apps sit too eager to notify you of some pointless affair that seems more fun than the mental exercise you sat down to do. Somebody liked your post or the silly joke you made on twitter! That’s a small bit of excitement that can fill you — just like eating that M&M. A small reward that builds up to larger pain.
I’m starting to wonder if, like obesity, ADD is the new disease of the affluent. Instead of that hard bit of mental exercise I end up hitting the reward lever, eating the mental equivalent of skittles for an hour.
Lately I’ve put the tablet away at bedtime. While I value it’s ability to explore every facet of human information, I often get far more than the 300 page linear algebra book at my bedside that I read (and really learn!) 2 pages at a time. Even with every notification turned off on my tablet, my concentration with a book deepens, my desire to find that little hit of dopamine removed. Just like dieting, environment control is key. You don’t regret not eating brownies when there’s no brownies around. If there’s nothing around but salad, fruit, and lean meats suddenly you eat well without a constant epic struggle of willpower.
If you want to experience this yourself, take a book on your next plane ride. (hurry before all airplanes have ubiquitous Internet too!) Suddenly your concentration comes back. Your ability to do hard mental work sinks in. You get a ton out of that book.
Protect your focus. It’s far too precious to waste.
Point 3: Notifications are a proxy for poor discovery and design
Notifications distract us, prompting us to make unhealthy choices with our attention. But why are they used for apps for even trivial things?
The reason many notifications exist to tell you stuff that perhaps the app sucks at telling you during normal usage. Spam exists because they need to get you back into the app. The app by itself isn’t sticky enough. It’s not leading you to the right places or the right content. GET BACK IN HERE PLEASE I HAVE THINGS TO SHOW YOU!1!1
If you’re creator of said app, and you think “I know I’ll send them a notification” please reconsider. Instead, think hard about your app:
Is it interesting?
Do you understand the value users want to get out of your app? Does that not line up with what you’re providing?
Are you recommending the right content/products/etc to users?
When readers search, do they find what they want? This is especially important, because users tell you in their own words what they think your app is
If I may pick on one candidate for this, it’d be LinkedIn. As a consultant, I use LinkedIn to connect professionally with a broad variety of folks. I want to enter the app and see if there’s any business opportunity for me. Secondarily, I want to see what others in my profession are sharing and discussing.
Recently LinkedIn updated their iOS app, and the following seem to be given equal weight as notifications:
someone had a birthday (really on a professional site?)
somebody posted a new post (ok that’s nice, but next)
somebody wants to connect (meh WAIT I BARELY NOTICED IT)
somebody switched jobs (ok that’s nice, but next)
somebody has a work anniversary (what is this the 60s? did they get a watch?)
somebody sent me a message about work (huh moving on, OH CRAP YES I WANT TO TALK TO YOU)
somebody in a group posted some crap
In reality I *care* about two things in this list, in order of priority
Somebody sent me a message about work Somebody wants to connect with me
LinkedIn lost what I am looking for in a sea of irrelevant information. They’ve probably noticed I’ve gone away and don’t use their app as much. So guess what the solution is: NOTIFY ME OF EVERYTHING IN THE ABOVE LIST.
What if instead of spamming me about people’s birthdays, interrupting my precious focus, and distracting me into a confusing app — what if they instead worked really really hard on the two things in my list above. How badass would that be?
Or to speak more broadly, what if LinkedIn focussed on the use case of pairing like minded folks with similar professional interests. This means
Helping matching me to like minded folks (probably through search and recommendations) Creating a way for us to communicate and share information
Do that, then trim the fat. Really trim it. I bet I’ll be in your app more, instead of being driven to it by the possible dopamine hit on the other side.
Instead I’m lost. More importantly I’m annoyed. My focus is sapped. I can’t get work done. Even a little bit of overspill of pointless events annoys me and makes my spam-dar go off. Stop doing it.
Parting Question: Is it possible to Design for Flow, Not Distraction?
To me one of the biggest antidotes to the candy-counter of ego-gratifying notifications are video games. Video games work very differently than most apps. They focus on flow. They calibrate the tasks and challenges carefully as to not overwhelm you. A good game combines an important goal, challenging tasks, and a sense of accomplishment.
To me video games have become a refuge for the sea of interruptions we find ourselves in. They train our brains back to a healthy task flow. I have no data to back this up, but I believe after an hour of gameplay I am more focus and goal oriented with my work than before. After a day of answering emails, being interrupted, being badgered by my devices I am able to relax and play through the game. Get to the next level. Move the ball forward.
Why aren’t normal apps more like games? Why do we design to bother people rather than help them get work done?
Perhaps more importantly, why aren’t our operating systems designed this way? Video games take over the whole screen to get you to that state of flow. Why do I have all these Windows each with an equal opportunity to bother me? If I was a woodworker and my hammer started buzzing to tell me something while my screwdriver did backflips because it wanted to tell me about a screw that needed tightening? I’d never get anything done.
I think this is the main reasons tablets are popular. With my iPad I use iOS’s settings to turn the notifications down to zero (still they sneak in on new apps; or apps which decided to add notifications). I’ve added a keyword. I sit in full screen mode. While I still check twitter and do other distracting activities, the full screen task-focused ability to consume and create is amazing.
I think this is also why the command line remains popular for programmers. Its task oriented. One serial line of thinking. One task to move the ball on. No gizmos, popups, or distractions.
I’m terrified of our Internet of Things future, not because of security issues, but because I don’t want my screwdriver connected to twitter. Focus is inherently unconnected and serial. Its flow.
My hope is we’ll begin to take focus & flow more seriously than reacting and raw information. |
Sasheer Zamata knows she’ll have her work cut out for her in the next few months.
The “Saturday Night Live” cast member will return for her third full season on the legendary late-night comedy show — although this year will be a bit different.
Along with losing cast members Taran Killiam, Jay Pharoah and Jon Rudnitsky, “SNL” will be cutting 30 percent of its commercials, allowing more time for more content.
“It will be exhausting I’m sure. It’s a lot to do every week and will mean more time at work and less time at home,” she said Tuesday afternoon by phone.
So how will she prepare for it? By heading out on the road to do standup comedy of course.
A mini-tour that has her performing seven shows in nine days stops Tuesday at The Milton Theatre. She will headline a night of laughs with local comedians Tom Sherman and Billy Peden and Philadelphia’s LaTice Klapa starting at 8:30 p.m.
The increased workload isn’t all bad. Doing standup and having more time with the show will allow her to get out what she’s been thinking about all summer.
“Whenever we’re off, things come to mind and then I think ‘Aww man.’ We can’t immediately talk about it when things happen. I have a hard time turning that part of my brain off. Now we’ll have more time to take advantage of it all,” she said.
It will be especially nice as the show heads into the homestretch of the presidential campaign.
“The show always gets a lot of attention in a political season. It’s such a politically driven show and we talk a lot about what’s happening of course and people will be watching to see what we’re going to do and say. That will be fun,” said the 30-year-old Indianapolis native, who was hired in the middle of the 2014-15 season to help add some diversity to the cast.
She has gone on to make a name for herself on the show, doing some memorable turns on “Weekend Update” and showing off impressions of such notables as Michelle Obama and singer Rihanna.
She has also appeared on Comedy Central’s “Inside Amy Schumer,” FX’s “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell” and on NPR’s “This American Life.”
Despite an already impressive comedy résumé, music was in the forefront when she was younger.
“I sang a lot growing up. I auditioned to be on my high school’s improv (comedy) team but it ran into show choir rehearsals so I had to drop it. Choir was always a priority whether it was in school or church. Even in college, I would end up doing more musicals than anything else,” she said.
“When I moved to New York after college, I thought I wanted to be a stage actor and I still might be. I would audition for plays but I kept seeing shows at UCB and started going in that direction.”
UCB, also known as Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, is the one of the country’s leading improvisational comedy schools in the country, with locations in New York and California. Many past and current “Saturday Night Live” cast members are graduates and one of the school’s founders is “SNL” veteran Amy Poehler. Ms. Zamata still performs there regularly.
Her interest in comedy started in middle school as an avid watcher of shows like “SNL,” “Mad TV” and “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”
“In middle school we had a teacher who would take us to different improv shows and I always thought it would be cool to be on something like that but I never knew anyone from Indianapolis who went on to do that and didn’t necessarily think it was a viable career,” Ms. Zamata said.
The comedy bug continued in college and she went on to become a founding member of the University of Virginia’s improv comedy troupe, Amuse Bouche.
Graduating in 2008, it was off to New York where UCB took hold.
“I took a class to see what it was all about and got hooked immediately. I went through the whole program and made a home there and realized that comedy was where I was headed,” she said.
Her life as a standup comedian blossomed around the same time.
“Most of the other people who I was doing improv with at the time were scared to try it but I like trying scary things. I tried it and didn’t die and found it really fun and challenging. I had been performing a good amount of my life and here was this new skill that I needed to develop in writing jokes and getting what’s inside of my brain outside and making it all understandable,” she said.
The Milton audience will undoubtedly hear her takes on relationships, family and, as she puts it, “grace and society.”
Ms. Zamata heads back to ‘SNL’ the last week of September to get ready for its 42nd season. She says working on the show, with all of its late-night writing sessions, subsisting on takeout food and jockeying for laughs, is an experience like no other.
“You can’t be prepared for it because there isn’t any other show that works like that. The environment is unlike any other environment there is,” she said.
“You have to adjust quickly to it. This will be my third full season and fourth season overall and I think I have a better idea of how things work. But I still don’t know how everything works and I don’t think I’m supposed to know.”
She still gets butterflies when the red light goes on at 11:30 p.m. and thinks she should.
“It means that I care,” she said.
But she doesn’t concentrate on the estimated 6 million people who watch the show every week on TV.
“I’m used to performing in front of a live audience. So all I’m thinking about are those 150 people sitting in front of me. That’s a much easier way to think about it.
“I also look to the crew and the people around the set. They have seen so much comedy over the past decades. I kind of base my humor judgment on them. If they laugh, I know I’m OK.”
Tickets for Tuesday night’s show are in limited supply but available for $15 by visiting miltontheatre.com or by calling (302) 684-3038.
The theater is at 110 Union St. in downtown Milton.
More at Milton
Bringing a nationally known comedian like Ms. Zamata to Milton will not be a one-time thing if promoter Todd Lesser and Milton Theatre executive director Fred Munzert have anything to say about it.
“I moved to Rehoboth last year from Baltimore, where I book concerts and live events,” said Mr. Lesser of Monozine Presents Inc.
“I have family in Milton, who gushed about the theater. After seeing it and meeting Fred, I loved the concept of bringing some events in. I had worked with Sasheer last year and it went great, so in lieu of bringing her back to Baltimore, we brought it here to see how it would do.”
“So far we’re very excited to see how it turns out and will hopefully bring more to town. With local support, this area and especially that room, has amazing potential for more.”
Fulkerson Fest IV
Fulkerson Fest IV, in memory of the late local musician Steve Fulkerson, will be held Sunday at 4 p.m. at Seafood City in Felton.
Proceeds raised will toward music lessons, rock camp and school music lessons for kids.
The day will include NFL tickets for raffle, Chinese auction items, 50/50 a moon bounce and face painting.
Items from Dover Homebrew, Bow Wow petique, Dynamic Dips and signed items by Deep Purple will also be up for grabs.
The event will also be livestreamed on Facebook.
The music will kick off at 4 p.m. with Jordan Amado followed by Hoochi Coochi, Kyle Offidani, The Blues Reincarnation Project and The Joey Fulkerson Trio with Tommy Alderson.
Seafood City is at 9996 S. DuPont Highway in Felton.
Kent arts funding
The Kent County Fund for the Arts recently awarded $21,300 in grants to 13 local arts programs in Kent County.
This year’s recipients were: Biggs Museum of American Art, CERTS Inc., Delaware Choral Society, Delaware Friends of Folk, Dover High School, Dover Public Library, Dover Symphony Orchestra, Inner City Cultural League, Mispillion Art League, Schwartz Center for the Arts, Delaware Children’s Theater, VSA Delaware and Wesley College.
The Kent County Fund for the Arts is a fund of The CenDel Foundation, in partnership with the Delaware Community Foundation.
For information, call 724-7538 or visit www.cendel.org.
Symphony signs Amado
It was announced this week that The Delaware Symphony Association and music director David Amado have entered into a new agreement that will extend through the 2022-2023 season.
That season will mark Mr. Amado’s 20th anniversary as music director of the Delaware Symphony Orchestra.
Mr. Amado was named music director of the Delaware Symphony beginning with the 2003-2004 season.
The orchestra will open its 2016-2017 season with a Sept. 23 Classics Series concert conducted by Mr. Amado in Copeland Hall at The Grand Opera House in downtown Wilmington.
The program features violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson performing André Previn’s Double
Concerto, a work he wrote for Mr. Laredo and Ms. Robinson. Mr. Previn will attend the performance and receive the DSO’s 2016-2017 Season A. I. du Pont Composers Award. The concert will conclude with Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler.
Single tickets for this performance are available through The Grand Opera House Box Office at 818 N. Market St. or by calling (302) 652-5577, or by purchasing at www.ticketsatthegrand.org.
Now showing
New this weekend in theaters is a remake of “Ben-Hur,” Jonah Hill in the comedy-drama “War Dogs” and the animated family film “Kubo the Two Strings 3D.”
On DVD and download starting Tuesday is Chris Hemsworth in “The Huntsman: Winter’s War,” Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in the suspense comedy “The Nice Guys” and the animated “Ratchet and Clank.”
Reach features editor Craig Horleman at [email protected] |
Riyadh Saudi Arabia is funding a $100m (Dh367,300 million) mosque and Islamic education centre in Kabul that will teach thousands of students a year and help bolster Saudi influence in Afghanistan as the west withdraws.
Work on the sprawling 30-hectare hilltop complex is due to be completed by early 2016, when Afghan security forces will likely be trying to hold off the Taliban with little Nato support.
“This Islamic centre has several aims, one is to ensure good relations between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia,” said the acting Saudi minister of Haj and Islamic affairs, Dr Dayi Al Haq Abed.
Afghanistan’s neighbours and allies have been jostling for power in the country for years; spending millions of dollars on aid, education, TV and radio channels.
Efforts to secure a stake in Afghanistan’s future are intensifying with the 2014 Nato withdrawal deadline looming, and a presidential election to chose the first new leader in more than a decade set for April that year.
But Abed said the centre was a decade-old project conceived by Saudi Arabia’s late King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz, not a hasty effort to bolster the state’s role in Afghan affairs.
“It’s not a political centre, its an independent centre,” he told the Guardian. “This centre will never try to work against the interests of Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. It is firstly a place for prayer and secondly for education.”
A university with a library, lecture halls, gym and dormitories for 5,000 students will sit on a hill overlooking Kabul, next to the tomb of the last Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir Shah. The nearby mosque will hold up to 15,000 worshippers, making it one of the largest in the country.
Saudi Arabia has been one of the key players in the turbulent decades since the Soviet invasion at the end of 1979, influencing both religion and politics in Afghanistan.
After the rise of the Taliban, Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries to recognise the hardline regime, but since its fall in 2001 it has remained a generous donor to the western-backed government of Hamid Karzai. More recently it helped lay the groundwork for efforts to negotiate an end to the war. Saudi diplomats have kept a lower profile than others though.
The new centre will likely have a large pool of applicants. Religious schools mostly funded by private individuals and Saudi institutions have spread the kingdom’s strict Wahhabi branch of Islam inside Afghanistan and Pakistan and all Afghans hope to travel there on the hajj pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime.
The Afghan government has donated the land, and basic engineering work is already completed. A joint committee of Saudi diplomats and Afghan officials from the ministry of Islamic affairs will oversee the centre once it is up and running.
“Its a big achievement for the Afghanistan government and the ministry of hajj and Islamic affairs,” Abed said, adding that he hoped it would pave the way for more Afghan students to further their education in Saudi Arabia. |
Guest post by artist Aaron Dysart:
Karl Unnasch’s The Ruminant (The Grand Masticator) towered like an odd cathedral in the cornfield — it’s fitting that a pilgrimage was required to view the work. Reversing the historical course of a serf’s travel to the city for the sake of a sacred spectacle, this required a journey, leaving the urban behind for the rural, for renewal. The Ruminant was made for the Farm D-tour — on view as part of The Wormfarm Institute’s Fermentation Fest in Reedsburg, Wisconsin from October 4 to 13. Unnasch’s monumental piece mashes up the histories of stained glass, comic books and farm machinery to create a funny, expansive re-telling of the harvest narrative.
Stained glass calls to mind houses of worship, often depicting saints and martyrs alongside the instruments of their torture and execution. Without sacrificing a reverence for that material, The Ruminant swaps in comic book references, both familiar and obscure, for those heroes of Christianity. Batman takes a knee while tending to a cabbage patch under a victory garden sign; another panel features little known comic hero Tony Chu, an FDA agent who empathically understands the whole life of things he eats. In turning saints to superheroes, Unnasch shows us the echoes connecting them, recalling Joseph Campbell’s hero with a thousand faces.
Smaller stained panels are placed on the head of the combine, the section of machine that reaps the corn and funnels ears into the machine. These panels each contain a central image of a hand tool, a nod to what the modern combine has replaced. Indeed, harvest time is inextricable from death, whether plant or animal: one organism survives by killing, and eating, another. Unnasch’s hand-tools aren’t just nostalgic images, they bring a measure of honesty to his representation of the reaping. The sharp angles of the panels, not to mention the sharp blades of the tools, highlight a sinister undercurrent to the machine’s operations referencing the savage foundation of our seasonal bounty.
There are such subtle story-lines throughout the piece. On the right side of the cab are a series of images: the first panel features a small image of a termite; the middle panel depicts a child eating crayons, and the last (at the front of the cab) shows a mustached man eating an ear of corn. Decoded: the termite “harvests” as it eats its surroundings; a small child mouths things as a way to understand and explore; and, after tens of thousands of years, humans finally figured out how to effectively combine the two impulses in the act of tending crops. Read from left to right the series gets further and further from direct interaction with one’s surroundings. More intriguing, when read from right to left the viewer gets more and more uncomfortable as it transitions from a normal meal, to a parent’s concern of germs, ending in the disgust that insects bring.
On the body of the harvester, there are images of vegetables with witty sayings and puns. The background of these panels, with their flowing arcs of color, add a sense of motion to the static machine and the little vignettes serve to propel the viewer around the work, but these one-off panels never quite rise above kitsch. They certainly don’t operate at the same level as the artist’s more complex layered sequences of narrative panels at the sides and front.
Nit-picking aside, the gleeful mixing of material and cultural references in Unnasch’s The Ruminant (The Grand Masticator) adds up to something gloriously unexpected — work that at once respects and stretches its appropriated references and their attendant histories.
The spectacle of the piece — and the pilgrimage necessary to see it — was disarming and effective. As viewers drove up, they had to stop and disembark from their cars, they had to leave the asphalt of the city behind and step onto the field to see the work.
About the author
Aaron Dysart is a sculptor who seeks to understand his place as an animal in the natural system. He currently lives and works in Northeast Minneapolis and is an adjunct professor at Anoka Ramsey Community College.
Viewfinder posts are your opportunity to “show & tell” about the everyday arts happenings, interesting sights and sounds made or as seen by Minnesota artists, because art is where you find it. Submit your own informal, first-person responses to the art around you to editor(at)mnartists.org, and we may well publish your piece here on the blog. (Guidelines: 300 words or less, not about your own event/work, and please include an image, media, video, or audio file, and one sentence about yourself.) |
Wanted: A name for the hypertrophied fear of Trump that’s overcome so many — maybe most — of his opponents. Do you really need examples? There was the ThinkProgress editor terrified of his plumber:
He was a perfectly nice guy and a consummate professional. But he was also a middle-aged white man with a Southern accent who seemed unperturbed by this weeks news. … I couldn’t stop thinking about whether he had voted for Trump, whether he knew my last name is Jewish … I couldn’t shake the sense of potential danger. I was rattled for some time after he left.
More recently, here’s Adam Gopnik in one of those New Yorker paragraphs so classily convoluted you don’t notice the embedded hooey:
Assaults on free speech; the imprisoning of critics and dissidents; attempts, on the Russian model, likely to begin soon, to intimidate critics of the regime with fake charges and conjured-up allegations; the intimidation and intolerance of even mild dissidence (that “Apologize!” tweet directed at members of the “Hamilton” cast who dared to politely petition Mike Pence); not to mention mass deportations or attempts at discrimination by religion—all things that the Trump and his cohorts have openly contemplated or even promised—are not part of the normal oscillations of power and policy. They are unprecedented and, history tells us, likely to be almost impossible to reverse. … [**]
The best way to be sure that 2017 is not 1934 is to act as though it were.
Of course, you don’t need these examples if you have Democratic Facebook friends. Just read their posts — alarms about journalists jailed and killed, brownshirts, ethnic cleansing, pervasive surveillance, people living in fear, exterminationist violence, the whole nein yards. They’re scared.
The thing is, they’re not poseurs — they’re sensible citizens. They are, many of them, my friends. They’re in no way ignorant. That’s why the dismissive label “Trump Derangement Syndrome” doesn’t seem an accurate description (in addition to being belittling and ineffective). If they see the seeds of authoritarianism in Trump’s “Hamilton” tweet — or more plausibly in his suggestion that he might pick and choose which reporters can attend briefings … well, sure. Those are seeds. There’ve been seeds before, of course. There were the seeds of authoritarianism in Truman bullying a press critic who panned his daughter’s singing. There were more than seeds in Roosevelt’s NRA, in Nixon’s wiretapping and J. Edgar Hoover’s longrunning COINTELPRO surveillance and harrassment of dissenters.
It’s not deranged to extrapolate from seed to tree, and to worry that the relative handful of alt-righters (50,000 ?) and smaller handful of anti-Semitic trolls (1,600?) might produce something very bad. You can imagine a world where Jews are attacked by their plumbers. My mother grew up in such a world (Frankfurt, Germany in 1933) and I’m here because her parents had the good sense to flee.
It’s thinking that such development–from seed to tree–is at all likely today that seems … well, wrong. Let’s call it wrong! We have strong counter-majoritarian institutions (including an independent judiciary) and a culture that supports them. The idea that Trump is going to mobilize some army of thuggish supporters to intimidate the press, the courts, the opposition party and half of his own party seems a fever dream, no less feverish because of its rational basis.
Yet those who adhere to this unnamed tendency — let’s call it ’34ism, unless you can come up with a better name *** –allow the power of their terrifying dream to overwhelm sober consideration of everything Trump does or intends to do, good or bad. We’re supposed to draw up sides — condemning (and ostracizing) those who are “complicit” in Trump’s administration and welcoming those who “stand on the right side of history” — even before we know whether the authoritarian seed will grow or wither, disregarding all the other positively auspicious seeds (reform of trade, control of borders, fewer foreign military adventures, ending the Republican threat to Social Security and Medicare, etc.) that might flourish instead. In Slate 34ist Yascha Mounk’s head it’s practically Life During Wartime already, with brave Trump critics fired from their jobs, sleeping on the couches of their secret colleagues in the Resistance. Keep the car running.
Suggested alternative: See what happens first! Don’t let the reaction to Trump be dominated by one extremely unlikely bad possibility, at the expense of nurturing the far-more-likely good possibilities.
Coming in next post: How does 1934ism go away? Is it enough that the brownshirts don’t appear? (Spoiler: Maybe not.)
__________
**– The Hooey: Gopnik says authoritarian measures against critics “are unprecedented and, history tells us, likely to be almost impossible to reverse.” This is fatuous on both counts. 1) Even direct assaults on free speech are far from unprecedented –e.g. the Sedition Act of 1798, passed not too long after our nation’s founding, or the imprisonment of Eugene Debs for opposing World War I. 2) They also haven’t been that hard to reverse. The Sedition Act was repealed in Thomas Jefferson’s term expired in 1801 after Jefferson campaigned against it and the House voted down an attempted renewal. It’s highly doubtful that Debs could be imprisoned under current First Amendment law — the opposite of what Gopnik declares “history tells us”.
*** — Better name ideas appreciated — just put them in the comments section below, or tweet them to @kausmickey. Thanks. |
My name is Pax Enstad, and I’m a high school junior, a son, a brother and a friend.
I’m also a transgender boy. When I tell people this, it seems like everyone wants to know: What’s the precise moment when you realized you are transgender?
The thing is, there was no single moment, no bolt of lightning that suddenly hit me. It was more of a process of admitting who I am to myself.
When I hit puberty, I felt really gross and unhappy with my body. I stopped swimming and doing things outside, and started wearing baggy shirts. I asked my parents for a chest binder, but I didn’t tell them it was to flatten the breasts I was getting. My body was a thing that I tried to forget about.
I’m close with my sister, Maya, who is two years older and in college now. When we realized we both liked girls, we decided to come out to our parents together. On the day that same-sex marriage became legal nationwide, Maya and I bought rainbow balloons and streamers. We went to the Pride parade with our parents and afterward, we gave them a rainbow card that said, “We’re gay.”
I had yet to confront my own fear of being transgender. I thought, maybe all these feelings will go away, but they didn’t. Existing in a body that didn’t feel like mine became increasingly unbearable. Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis, and the distress it caused me was severe; I panicked when I didn’t have my chest binder on. I put off telling my parents about my being transgender. I was embarrassed about it, and didn’t want to say anything until I was totally sure. By the time I finally told them, I knew I needed to have surgery to confirm the gender identity I’ve had all along.
What had been a years-long process for me was for my parents a sudden revelation. They love me and have done their best to be supportive of me. But PeaceHealth, my mom’s employer, refused to pay for the chest reconstruction surgery my doctor prescribed to treat my gender dysphoria, citing an exclusion for “transgender services.” It felt terrible to know that PeaceHealth, a nonprofit health care system, had decided that transgender people like me don’t deserve coverage for the same double mastectomy surgeries it will cover for others. It was treating essential treatment as something frivolous.
The possibility that PeaceHealth’s refusal to cover my surgery might lead to a delay in me receiving the surgery made me extremely anxious and desperate. I told my parents I could not wait. They could see this was not about making a “choice” to have surgery – this was something I needed to be me. To come up with the $10,000 to pay for it, my parents dipped into my college fund and took a second mortgage on our house.
After I had chest reconstruction surgery, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted.
After I had chest reconstruction surgery, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted. It was also literally true; I had lost six pounds. I felt so light and amazing. The relief was immediate, like, ‘Oh finally, that’s over!’
I went to homecoming with my best friend and was able to wear boys’ shirts I couldn’t wear before. I looked dapper and I felt proud.
But I’m still devastated by the fact that simply because I’m transgender I was refused coverage for the medical care that my doctor prescribed for me. With the help of the ACLU, we’re bringing a lawsuit against PeaceHealth because no one should be refused care because of who they are.
Gender dysphoria is real and serious. If left untreated, it can have terrible consequences, including suicide. Surgeries like the one I had are recognized as medically necessary treatment by every major medical association in America. Ensuring that transgender people get the health care they need will help save lives. |
http://gty.im/488840241
What Could Have Been If We Took Allen Robinson Over Eric Ebron In 2014.
With Allen Robinson coming back to his hometown of Detroit for the first time on Sunday I felt it appropriate to take a look back to 2014, and how close the Lions actually came to bringing him home long term. Prior to the 2014 draft I was one of the highest people out there on Allen Robinson despite the many criticizing his lack of breakaway speed. When the Lions took Ebron in the first round however, those hopes of drafting him were almost completely dashed when you combine that selection with the recent addition of Golden Tate in free agency and Calvin Johnson still looking as incredible as ever.
The front office went on to sell Ebron as their first choice all through the process, but that was not necessarily the case. Martin Mayhew throughout his time as Lions GM had multiple plans going at all times with his wheeling and dealing nature and those decisions could have had massive impacts on the franchise going forward. Lets examine a couple of those moves that almost were:
The First Round Tango
The 2014 draft was a fairly aggressive year for first round trades and the Lions were by no means out of this discussion. Since Terryl Austin was coming into town with the new coaching staff and wanted to use multiple defensive looks, the Lions absolutely needed to upgrade on that side of the ball. Namely at the linebacker position. Enter Anthony Barr. Lions fans all know him quite well now as one of the better versatile linebackers in the game today and defensive captain as the Minnesota Vikings, but he almost was the Lions starting middle linebacker.
While many get (maybe rightfully) frustrated that OBJ or Aaron Donald didn’t end up as a Lion, Barr going to a division rival was the real gut shot to Detroit due to the need they had for a player like him in their defence. The Vikings felt they were a sure lock to get him to the point that they actually traded down a spot with the browns to pick up extra resources in later rounds. What they may not have known though is that there was almost a deal that would have lost them out on their guy as it is rumoured that Mayhew was in talks with both the Falcons and Browns to trade up to either the number 3 or 6 spots.
The original talks for the number three spot fizzled rapidly once several teams entered the trade talks. The Bills ended up being willing to give up far more then the Lions were comfortable with for either Sammy Watkins or Khalil Mack, both early targets for Detroit. That led to the Lions plan B discussions with the Falcons at the number 6 overall pick. The Falcons were locked in on going for a tackle early but there was a split opinion on whether to go with the steady Jake Mathews or gritty Taylor Lewan.
At the point where the Falcons war room was almost content with either. This opened the option that they could make a trade down, as several of the next teams behind them (namely Cleveland and Minnesota), had no percieved need at the tackle position and Detroit was in on fairly deep discussions into that trade possibility. There are dissenting thoughts on what exactly was offered but it generally revolves on two day three selections and a day two pick the following year. The conversations fell apart however once the falcons held firm on the need for either a third round pick in 2014 plus some slight pick increases in the third rounders or a first rounder the following year.
Considering the Lions ended up giving up their 4th and 7th (with a 5th in return) to move up for Van Noy later on it brings up an interesting proposal. If the Lions did go through with the Falcons more likely request, lets say for the sake of argument it would have resulted in dealing the 3rd, 4th, and 6th round picks of 2016 (Travis Swanson, *dealt to SEA then to CIN resulting in Russel Bodine, and TJ Jones) as well as Eric Ebron who the Lions would have lost out on through dealing the 10th overall pick.
Second Round Ramifications
So where does Allen Robinson fit into this discussion? Well the Lions still would have had the need for a big Y-type receiver that could go deep without Ebron on the roster any longer, and Robinson was seen in the organization as the next best thing. While true he isn’t a tight end, Ebron is not necessarily a tight end either, and Joe Lombardi could accommodate a more early Sean Payton offense that had a lot more three wide receiver looks. The home town boy was seen as the natural plan B if Ebron was not the selection in the first round, due to his bigger frame and pre draft comparisons to Anquan Boldin.
Further, he would have been well within the Lions 45th overall original second round draft slot, going 61 overall to Jacksonville with many other highly praised college recievers in the second round mix pushing him and others like Jarvis Landry with some minor knocks down. Therefore if the Lions decided to go with the Falcons Barr trade in the first, Robinson was their second round pick.
Who’d you Rather Have?
Now of course I realize hindsight is 20/20. We will never know for sure how big of a possibility this actually was, but it brings around an interesting dilemma for Lions fans and which of the two options is better three years out if this scenario came true. Especially considering the late round guys the Lions would have lost out on (Nate Freese, Caraun Reid, and T.J. Jones) did not end up being significant contributors. The discussion really comes down therefore to which you would rather have: Eric Ebron and Travis Swanson, vs. Anthony Barr and Allen Robinson.
An above average to top end tight end and a potential long term top 5-10 center, or a potential long term top 5-10 linebacker, and wide reciever. While both the Lions that never were, had hot starts to their careers, they have tempered off in performance slightly this season (both due to individual play and situation). The Lions of the present have both been rapidly improving and growing as players. At this point fans might lean towards the what could have been (center is never the sexiest position and everyone loves the big names), but I think the jury is still out on this decision. Regardless they are all great pros and we should see where these guys end up down the road. |
Vice President Joe Biden has to get into the Democratic presidential race to prevent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination, political strategist Dick Morris toldon Thursday."I don't think there's any possibility that they will not let him run," Morris said of party officials in an interview with "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth."If he doesn't run, Bernie Sanders can beat Hillary [Clinton] and be the Democratic nominee — and that would be just unbelievably bad for the Democrats."Watch Newsmax TV onandGet Newsmax TV on your cable system —Morris is the co-author of The New York Times best-selling book,He added that Republican front-runner Donald Trump could end up on the better end in his battle with Fox News and chairman and CEO Roger Ailes."It'll hurt Fox. I don’t think it will hurt Trump," Morris said. "Fox is going to have to cover Trump as part of the news — and if they don't, nobody's going to watch their news."I believe that Fox is in the tank for Bush," he added, referring to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. "Roger Ailes was really [George H.W.] Bush's mentor and guide in politics."Morris worked with Ailes on the elder Bush's campaign against former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis' campaign in 1988."I do not think they would have let Megyn Kelly open their debate unloading on Trump if they were not trying to dampen Trump and bolster Bush," Morris said. |
The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) is a primarily UK Government-funded organisation which works in collaboration with scientists and research institutions “driving and funding innovation and technological developments that minimise the need for animals in research and testing, and lead to improvements in welfare where animals continue to be used”. They are the largest institution in the UK dedicated solely to developing and promoting the 3Rs, with Government funding of over £8 million.
Today they announced the winners of the 2015 international 3Rs prize, for the best papers developing an aspect of the 3Rs. There were two research papers jointly awarded the top prize. The first of the prizes was awarded to Dr Madeline Lancaster from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, for a paper (1) describing a 3D model of the embryonic human brain made from stem cells. This is the first time the early development of the human brain has been able to be modelled in vitro, and may help replace some animal studies when studying neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Watch the Tedx talk by Dr Lancaster below:
The second joint-winner was to Dr Laura Hall, from the University of Stirling, for her paper (2) on improving techniques for oral dosing in dogs, carried out with the support of AstraZeneca. The paper laid out a framework for assessing the welfare of lab animal dogs undergoing oral dosing based on their behaviour, health and psychological well-being. According to NC3Rs:
The framework was used to validate a refined procedure for administering substances to dogs during the testing of new drugs. Gavage – the use a thin tube temporarily inserted into the stomach via the mouth – is a common procedure for delivering drugs and this work has the potential to minimise stress in thousands of dogs used in testing worldwide.
Around 4,000 procedures on dogs are carried out in the UK each year (around 0.1% of the total), these are mainly for safety testing, with oral dosing being one of the more common procedures. Therefore, Dr Hall’s work has the potential to improve the welfare for many of these animals. Dr Hall has promoted her techniques through her Refining Dog Care website.
A third prize, for a highly commended paper, was awarded to Dr Hayley Francies, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, for her work (3) showing that colorectal cancer organoids from a biobank reflected the molecular features from the original tumour and could be used to test drugs. Such organoids have the potential to reduce the use of animals in cancer research.
Dr Francies said:
We hope this work will support the utility of organoids in drug development where organoid cultures could help bridge the gap between cell lines and rodent models by encompassing aspects of the tumour complexity generally found only in in vivo systems.
Such 3Rs work plays an important part in improving the way we conduct biomedical research worldwide. The NC3Rs prize aims to promote the 3Rs and recognise those whose research could help animal welfare by improving the way such research is conducted, or even replacing the use of animals in certain areas.
Speaking of Research
(1) Lancaster M et al. (2013). Cerebral organoids model human brain development and microcephaly. Nature 501(7497): 373-9 doi:10.1038/nature12517
(2) Hall LE, Robinson S, Buchanan-Smith HM (2015). Refining dosing by oral gavage in the dog: A protocol to harmonise welfare. Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods 72: 35-46 doi:10.1016/j.vascn.2014.12.007
(3) van de Wetering M, Francies HE, Francis JM et al. (2015). Prospective Derivation of a Living Organoid Biobank of Colorectal Cancer Patients. Cell 161(4): 933-45 doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.03.053 |
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. Former Editor-in-Chief of The Moscow News, he is author of the book, 'Midnight in the American Empire,' released in 2013.
Show me an American Neocon today and I will show you a pro-Clinton supporter. In fact, it is indicative of Hillary Clinton's particular brand of foreign policy that Republican hawks have fled the GOP standard to join ranks with the warmongering Democrats.
In order to guarantee another 4-8 years of US-led military aggression in the Middle East, and heightened tensions with Russia and China (all of which translates into lucrative defense spending), the Neocons have found it necessary to drag Russian President Vladimir Putin into the 2016 presidential race as a means of deflecting attention away from a devastating series of leaked emails, courtesy of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, that portray Clinton and her campaign team in less than glowing terms.
The latest Neocon to grease the wheels of Clinton's War & Wall Street political machine is Madeleine Albright, 79, the former US Secretary of State, who is perhaps most famous for two quotes, "What's the point of having this superb military... if we can't use it?" And second, when asked in a 1996 interview with the news program 60 Minutes if the price of UN sanctions against Iraq - which was half a million dead Iraqi children - was worth it, Albright unhesitatingly responded, "We think the price is worth it."
Albright opened her opinion piece in USA Today with a wicked curve ball: "Democrats have been renewing their call this week for the FBI to release more information on the connections among Donald Trump, his top advisers and the Russian government. But it is already clear that Russia's intervention in our election on Trump's side is the real scandal of 2016... "
Albright attempts to control the narrative, not to mention the history books, by instructing the reader that Russia's (unproven) intervention in the 2016 presidential election is the "real scandal" of the year, as opposed, of course, to Julian Assange's torturous, slow-drip outing of Hillary Clinton and her mind-boggling list of 'poor decision-making.'
"The Russian government has already hacked into the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in an effort to create confusion and turn voters off from politics," Albright wrote, essentially telling Americans 'nothing to look at here, please move on.'
Nowhere does Albright question the contents of the emails. This deliberate and glaring oversight explains why Albright and her fellow Neocons found it so necessary to drag Russia into this scandal. The allegations contained in the WikiLeaks emails are so potentially damaging to Clinton's chances at the White House that they required a diversion as large as Russia to conceal them.
Yet, even the FBI admits there is no convincing evidence linking the leaked emails as an effort by Russia to boost Trump's victory chances on Nov.8th. And judging by the tarnished reputations of the Republican and Democratic contenders, it should come as no surprise that Russia has no clear favorite in this American dog race, which make the hacking charges against Moscow all the more ridiculous.
But all this misses the main point, indeed as it is cunningly designed to do. With all of the spin going on, can anybody still recall what the released Clinton emails revealed?
Read more
Briefly, the leaked documents revealed that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had colluded with the Clinton campaign to ensure Hillary Clinton received the nomination ahead of other potential candidates, including the popular Bernie Sanders. That damning revelation led to the ouster of DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The Russians clearly had nothing to do with that.
Second, the woman who replaced Schultz, Democratic strategist and former CNN contributor, Donna Brazile, was found to have tipped off the Clinton campaign on the content of two questions ahead of the final Clinton-Trump CNN-hosted debate. The jaw-dropping implications of that explosive finding, which could have tipped the scales in favor of Clinton, deserves nothing short of a Watergate-style investigation.
By the way, the Russians had nothing to do with that bit of insider intrigue, either.
But that's mere child's play compared to documents that show how Clinton, as the Secretary of State, severely mishandled the 2012 Benghazi attack, which was orchestrated by a radical Islamic group. US Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens was killed in the attack. In an interview with Democracy Now, Assange said Clinton was even responsible for arming Islamic State fighters in Syria in an apparent effort to bring down the government of President Bashar Assad.
Clinton's leaky emails point to "the disastrous, absolutely disastrous intervention in Libya, the destruction of the Gaddafi government, which led to the occupation of ISIS of large segments of that country, weapons flows going over to Syria, being pushed by Hillary Clinton, into jihadists within Syria, including ISIS, that’s there in those emails," the WikiLeaks co-founder said. "There’s more than 1,700 emails in Hillary Clinton’s collection, that we have released, just about Libya alone," he added.
Nor did the Russians have anything to do with those decisions made by the Obama administration.
So why all the mindless media chatter about Russia?
There was yet another potential bit of 'collateral damage' in the ongoing WikiLeaks drama that has largely gone overlooked. Since it is preposterous to think that Russia would have any need or desire to influence the US elections, nor has there been a single piece of convincing evidence to support the claim, WikiLeaks somehow managed to get the leaked documents. Why not from a DNC insider? In fact, why not from Seth Rich, the director of voter expansion with DNC who would have had access to the incriminating emails?
We'll probably never know the answer to that question because Mr. Rich is no longer around to provide his testimony.
In the early hours of July 10th, Rich was shot multiple times in the back as he walked home alone from a Washington pub. Was Rich the victim of a robbery? If so, investigators were baffled as to why his wallet, credit cards, wrist watch and cellphone were not removed from his body.
Police Chief Cathy Lanier admitted at a press conference, “Right now, we have more questions than answers.”
Julian Assange, falling short of admitting Rich - as opposed to Russia - was the source of the leaked information, offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the individual(s) responsible for the premature death of Mr. Rich.
ANNOUNCE: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich. — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 9, 2016
Neverthless, Newsweek was just one of many media outlets that brushed off the incident as "yet another round of Clinton conspiracy theories, this one claiming that Rich was murdered—at dawn—as he was on his way to sing to the FBI about damning internal DNC emails."
Funny how the Western media regularly accuses foreign media of jumping on wild "conspiracy theories," yet they have no qualms saddling up their own highly dubious ideas about "Russian involvement" in the WikiLeaks.
Although it may be perfectly true that Mr. Rich died the victim of a robbery gone awry, there are still grounds to believe that he was the DNC whistleblower. Somehow the mainstream media, however, found it more expedient to pin the blame on a distant foreign power without a shred of evidence.
Indeed, Newsweek was apparently satisfied that it had performed due diligence by quoting an anonymous source that said: “There was no indication that any insider was involved in this... Every indication is this was a remote attack from a foreign government—the Russians."
When the Neocon defection began
When Donald Trump first announced he would scale back the size of America's global military footprint if elected president, neo-conservatives unleashed a collective howl of pain as they began fleeing en masse the ship of the Republican Party.
Robert Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a top Neocon ideologue, signaled the defection when he said a Trump presidency would herald in a new age of American-style fascism.
Today, the tattered flag of the Neocons is flapping high above the Clinton camp, distant fires glowing, as they continue to spearhead a scathing attack on Trump just days before the election. What is the source for this great defection against their own party? Quite simply, the Neocons have no allegiance except to individuals - like George W. Bush and, yes, Barack Obama - who pledge to continue America's wars of expansion and empire.
Clinton's past record in Iraq, Libya and Syria strongly suggests she will lead the Neocons to more foreign pillage and plunder; Trump has pledged to bring home the troops in order to "Make America Great Again." Neocons are not big fans of infrastructure projects, like filling potholes and rebuilding schools.
Trump alienated the Republican warhorses when he pledged to pursue, like a real disciple of the conservative political creed, a foreign policy that does not send American men and women off to distant battlefields to be killed and maimed in senseless military adventures.
Assange ‘sorry for Clinton as a personality’ (John Pilger exclusive, courtesy of Dartmouth films) https://t.co/6Yw748WCnbpic.twitter.com/Abf0VFg6zy — RT (@RT_com) 3 ноября 2016 г.
The following passage by Joseph A. Mussomeli - in the Washington Post, of all places - really nailed it as to why the Neocons hate Donald Trump: "Our cadre of neoconservative foreign policy experts, unhumbled after marching us into a reckless war in Iraq and a poorly conceived one in Afghanistan, who applauded as we bombed Libya and bitterly resent our having failed to bomb Bashar al-Assad in Syria, are frightened... But what really troubles them is [Trump's] generally level-headed and unmessianic attitude toward foreign affairs... Clinton is just another neocon, though wrapped in sheep’s clothing — just as on some foreign policy issues Trump is little more than Bernie Sanders in wolf’s clothing."
Anne Applebaum, perennial anti-Russia scaremonger and notable Neocon, tossed a smoke grenade into the WikiLeaks scandal, attempting to obfuscate Julian Assange's work with groundless accusations: "Russia will continue to distribute and publish the material its hackers have already obtained from attacks on the Democratic National Committee, George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, former NATO supreme commander Gen. Philip Breedlove and probably others. The point will be to discredit not just Hillary Clinton but also the U.S. democratic process and, again, the “elite” who supposedly run it."
Applebaum wants the distracted public to forget that the leaks already discredited Clinton. Moreover, the lesson between the lines of Applebaum's diatribe is that all the bad things Clinton has been connected with should be forgiven and forgotten because, well, big bad Russia allegedly had a hand in the mess.
Albright claimed that Russia seeks to "undermine Western leaders by making them seem corrupt or malicious." The reader may discern, based on what we already know about some Western leaders from Mr. Assange, the value of that statement for themselves.
So in closing, here we have the very same individuals that cheered when former Secretary of State Colin Powell shook a vial of fake anthrax in the UN General Assembly, spooking the world into believing Saddam Hussein was sitting on a hoard of WMDs, thereby triggering war against a sovereign state that has killed over 1 million Iraqis and counting, now would like us to believe Russia is behind the WiliLeaks emails that threaten to sink Clinton's rat-infested ship once and for all.
We would be fools to let them get away with such deliberate deception again.
@Robert_Bridge |
ON A business trip last month, Gulliver spent nearly 36 hours straight (minus sleep time) side by side with someone she had just met—sitting next to him in a car on a six-hour drive, eating meals together, conducting the work our mutual employer had sent us to complete, then driving another six hours and, finally, flying back home in adjacent seats.
While the stranger in question was as nice a person as one could hope to meet, by the time Gulliver boarded that last flight, she was all talked out. He probably was too. Yet, as everyone knows, avoiding conversation in the close quarters of an airplane can be difficult, especially when you don’t want to risk appearing rude.
Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
Egencia (Expedia’s corporate-travel wing) recently surveyed more than 400 business travellers on this very subject. Interestingly, a quarter of the respondents said they usually enjoy talking to people on planes. When conversation is not desired, though, 50% of the respondents said they pick up a book, while 38% said they listen to music and 15% pretend to sleep to avoid an unwanted chat.
Shutting out a stranger is one thing, but it’s trickier when you're elbow-to-elbow with a colleague. For her own flight, Gulliver tried a different strategy: breaking out a crossword puzzle. It worked like a charm. Doing a puzzle feels less exclusionary than reading—theoretically you might ask your neighbour for help with a tricky clue—and allows you to stare into space as if you’re pondering potential answers when you’re really just daydreaming. Has anyone else found a conversation-stopper that succeeds without giving offence? If so, please share, but maybe not with the person in the next seat.
(Photo credit: Alamy) |
Dear Supporters,
Today we have much to be thankful for. This week marks the first anniversary of the Georgia CARE Project – and it has been a success!
Twelve months ago Ron Williams and I (James Bell) agreed that Georgia Taxpayers Alliance, Inc. should form this project in an effort to move the cannabis reform issue forward. We saw that 20 states (D.C.) have medical laws and two state had just legalized. It was a sign to us that Georgia should be more engaged in the reform movement. We have accomplished many of our short term goals – take a look…
· A volunteer webmaster who is doing a great job in driving traffic and getting us organized
· Worked with various organizations in an effort to build a coalition around our issue
· Lobbied our legislators and secured some support for reform
· Participated in various public speaking events and forums – conferences / parade / collages
· Raised enough donations to purchase our basic needs – printing / internet / travel / merchandise
· Organizing in several cities around Georgia including a collage affiliate at University of Georgia
· Appeared on several radio & TV programs including Public Radio (WABE) (WRFG) (Cable Access)
· A donation of a new Desk top PC / folding table / banner
We are so thankful for all the support we have gotten from people around the state, nation and even internationally.
People have donated cash, created graphics, distributed literature, wrote letters to lawmakers, made phone calls, and just emailed us and called to say thank you for what we are doing. You have kept us inspired!
We would like to thank Sharon Ravert and Peachtree NORML for their diligence and help in our efforts.
A special thanks to the legislators who were inspired enough to call us and ask ‘how can we help”. We look forward to working with them and building more support.
What once seems a daunting task now seems very real and achievable. It will not be easy and it will not be done as fast as we want it too. But we are willing to dedicate our efforts for as long as it takes to achieve our goals. We hope you will continue to help us!
Now we are preparing for a very busy 2014. We have the momentum to move forward and set our goals even higher. But we need your help!
We have a big wish list which we must share with you. Take a look…
We need the following:
· Monthly pledge of $45.00 to cover our internet connection
· $200 for a new computer monitor
· $300 will buy a Windows Tablet for showing power point presentations and videos
· $400 per month (3 months) to cover expenses for lobbying at the state capitol
· $500 for printing brochures and cards ($500 will purchase 10,000 tri-fold brochures)
· $1000 will buy a line of merchandise that will raise $3000
These are some of the basic needs. We hope you will consider contributing to one of these project.
While we would obviously welcome a $1000 donation, a contribution in any amount would help tremendously. Go here and make a donation – $10 – $25 – $50 – $100 – $500 -$1000 – Other.
Also, we are working to organize in your town. If you are willing to be our representative we will help you get organized and hold your first meeting. We are also available for public speaking and media interviews.
Again, we are thankful we have your support. Without you we could not have accomplish what we have. We hope you have a great holiday season and we look forward to continuing our work in 2014.
Perhaps more importantly, we should not forget those who are incarcerated for marijuana and cannot be with their family and friends this holiday season. It is for them that we continue the fight and for ourselves that we will fight for our given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!
Are you ready for reform? We can do this!
All the best,
James Bell & Ron Williams
Georgia CARE Project – Campaign for Access, Reform & Education
404-271-9061 |
OAKLAND, Calif. — The plan was to finish construction on the new eastern stretch of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and open it on Labor Day. Then the existing bridge, which partly collapsed in 1989 during the last major earthquake here, would be demolished.
But problems surrounding seismic bolts in the new stretch and lingering questions about others have now presented California with two unattractive options for the most expensive infrastructure project in the state’s history. Under the assumption that the next major jolt could occur at any time, should the state delay the opening of the new bridge, which despite its imperfections is said to be more seismically resistant than its 77-year-old predecessor? Or should the opening go as planned, leaving some issues to be resolved later?
State transportation officials must decide by July 10.
“We are pushing for time against when the next earthquake will occur, and that’s why there’s this urgency about this,” said Amy Rein Worth, the chairwoman of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, one of the organizations involved in the construction, and the mayor of Orinda, a city in the East Bay. “At the same time, there’s a strong feeling from all of us involved that we want to get it right.”
Officials are also under political pressure to finally wrap up a project that over the years has suffered from several construction problems and delays because of budget woes and political disagreements. The cost of the new stretch of the Bay Bridge — which handles about 280,000 cars a day and ranks among the three busiest bridges in the nation — has ballooned to $6.4 billion. |
Hamilton has won great acclaim for many reasons, but the show’s decision to cast people of color in the overwhelming percentage of the roles definitely contributes to the production’s appeal. Broadway has historically been a majority-white, exclusive institution, and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s show not only stands out by virtue of being different, it also offers positive representation that many musical theater fans can’t find elsewhere.
However, the show is being criticized for language used in a recent casting notice for the upcoming tour that states the production is seeking “NON-WHITE men and women.” Attorney Randolph McLaughlin, of Newman Ferrara Law Firm, told CBS
What if they put an ad out that said whites only need apply? Why, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians would be outraged. You cannot advertise showing that you have a preference for one racial group over another. As an artistic question, sure, he can cast whomever he wants to cast. But he has to give every actor eligible for the role an opportunity to try.
Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller told CBS “I stand by it and believe it to be legal,” and a press representative for the show says the notice was approved by Actor’s Equity. However, the union general counsel denied that a notice with language like that would have been approved. Instead of calling for non-white actors, a recent Hamilton audition notice approved by Actors Equity instead calls for performers of “all ethnicities.”
New York has a history of fining businesses for using exclusionary language like “bus boys” (as opposed to “bus staff”) in job postings, but CBS reports that the New York Commission on Human Rights “would likely work with the Hamilton production team to help it comply with city law if it takes issue with the ad.”
As of now, the Commission has not received a complaint about Hamilton. Personally, I hope they never do. I imagine it would be easy for the Hamilton producers to adjust the language in that casting notice, but white people like myself have been represented and held up as the default and ideal on Broadway for so long—for someone to feel sincerely, unjustly excluded by this notice, they’d have to ignore the countless other ways in which their privilege as a white person benefits their career.
I’m reminded of the people who protested the all-Black cast of NBC’s The Wiz last year. The Wiz was originally written as a direct response to the all-white cast of the Wizard of Oz film; in order to sincerely object to the NBC production, you’d need to be ignorant both of the history of that specific show and to the history of systemic mistreatment and exclusion of Black performers in the entertainment industry overall.
Similarly, for a performer to take personal offense to this Hamilton notice, they’d need to take issue with the entire message of the show itself. Kendra James, who describes the show as “part musical, part protest music,” wrote for The Toast last October:
The cast of Black, Latina, and Asian American leads emphasizes not only the reality of who actually built and expanded America (“we all know who’s really doing the planting,” Hamilton spits at Jefferson during Act 2), but also how irrelevant the Founding Fathers’ whiteness is to their claim on the country. For in Miranda’s Hamilton,America is claimed not by white men, but by the people of color onstage: “I’m just like my country / I’m young, scrappy and hungry / and I’m not throwing away my shot.”
Hamilton is a show about immigrants of color “getting the job done.” Given that, it would seem like nothing but a waste of white actors’ time to specify “all ethnicities” on a casting notice (unless, of course, that notice was referring to the role of King George, who’s currently played by Jonathan Groff), when the show’s message is best served by casting non-white performers.
(via Jezebel)
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
Follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google+. |
Zack
The Game Boy Color was the first foray into portable gaming for many. Its simple, pocketable form and sturdy build made it the perfect entertainment device for kids. Its vast library of games made it the perfect companion for long car rides, birthday parties, a trip to grandmas, or Saturday mornings lounging on the couch. It was a major step up from its predecessors, the Game Boy and Game Boy Pocket, boasting improved processing speed and a glorious color display. However, the lack of a lit screen meant playing at night was a hassle, requiring you to sit directly under a light source or utilize one of the many available accessories, such as the infamous "worm light".
With back-lit screens coming standard with all modern portables, this first-world problem is a thing of the past, but there's something special about going back and playing the old classics. Sure, many can be downloaded on the 3DS virtual console or emulated on one of the many obscure handhelds being produced, but it just doesn't feel quite the same. And while the Game Boy Advance SP is wonderfully designed, there's no denying how great a Game Boy Color feels in the hands, not to mention the nostalgia it brings.
There were many copycats clambering to cash in on Nintendo's success, releasing all manner of knockoffs, many of which were nothing more than simple one-game machines with a shell made to resemble a Game Boy. However, there were a handful of respectable clones that played the original software, and a Chinese company by the name of Kong Feng were one such producer, cloning the Game Boy Pocket (GB Boy) and then the Game By Color (GB Boy Colour). They later came out with a GBA SP model, but it's just the GB Boy Colour with a different shell.
The GB Boy Colour, in addition to playing original Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges, supports multiplayer via link-cable, has a headphone jack, and can be powered via AC adapter. It does have an infrared lens, but there don't appear to be any infrared LEDs inside. Physically, it's practically identical to the real thing, though it is slightly bigger, and has a rectangular screen which distorts the graphics ever so slightly. The buttons don't quite live up to Nintendo standards, but clones never do. They're less mushy and more firm (which makes quickly rocking the D-Pad a little more difficult), but they're not terrible by any means and are quite comfortable. Unlike a lot of knockoff handhelds, this one is surprisingly well built. It's got some weight to it and doesn't feel like it'll crumble under the force of your thumbs. The battery life is excellent, giving enough playtime even on store-brand batteries to play through the majority of Link's Awakening, and the speaker is significantly louder than that on the original GBC. When they're almost out of juice, the system will repeatedly reset to the boot screen.
Aside from the back-lit screen, the biggest reason to hunt one of these units down is for the built-in games. The box touts a whopping 188 titles, but it's really 66 listed three times each. Unfortunately, not every GB Boy Colour out there comes with these on-board games for one reason or another, so make sure you know what you're buying if you do decide to pick one up. This handheld was produced in blue, green, yellow, crystal blue, crystal purple, and crystal green.
Whether you're a handheld enthusiast looking for the next cool toy for your collection or just want to experience those classic games from your childhood a second time around, the GB Boy Colour is well worth owning.
Update: I've finally got my hands on one with 188 built-in games. It should come as no surprise, but the list is only 66 games long, repeated 3 times. Even so, you can't go wrong for the low $30 price tag for a quality backlit GBC clone with 66 built-in games with the option of playing carts as well. Below is a list of the included games:
Contra
Super Mario Land
Bugs Bunny
Parasoru Hembei
Go Go Tank
Tenchiwokurau
Donkey Kong
Aladdin
Mario & Yoshi
Duck Tales
Pac-Man
Side Pocket
Kid Niki
Yar's Revenge
Yakuman
Bubble Ghost
Migrain
Othello
Honk Kong
Korodice
Master Karate
Shisensyo
Shanghai
Tennis
Trump Boy
Volley Fire
Alley Way
Pitman
Space Invaders
Asteroids
Battle City
Bomb Jack
Boxxle
Boxxle 2
Amida
Tetris
Brain Bender
Tic-Tac-Toe
Castelian
Centipede
Crystal Quest
Dragon Slayer
Drop Zone
Dr. Mario
Flappy Special
Flipull
Heiankyo Alien
Hyper Loderunner
Klax
Koi Wa Kakehi
Kwirk
Loopz
The Game Of Harmony
Minesweeper
Missle Command
Motocross Mania
NFL Football
Palamedes
Penguin Land
Pipe Dream
Pop Up
Q Billion
Serpent
Tesserae
World Bowling
Daedalian Opus
You can purchase a GB Boy Colour at Geek 'N Gamer Gear |
From the perspective of President Duterte and his advisers, there’s probably no better time than now to determine what else he can do, or how far he can go, as president of this country. Declaring martial law in Mindanao is his way of testing the outer limits of his political prerogatives. This course of action, as I’ll try to show, will put a stress on political legitimacy rather than on strict legality—on what the people appear to be willing to accept, rather than on what the law says.
Our current political milieu, I’m afraid, favors the populist language of willful leadership, of final solutions to festering problems, and of abiding trust in those who are prepared to break the rules in order to destroy the status quo once and for all. Accordingly, it sees the legal system as the last refuge of a dysfunctional Establishment. It regards all assertions of individual freedoms, and of civil and political rights, as selfish, mistaken, unpatriotic, and delusional.
ADVERTISEMENT
The detested “Establishment” includes everything and everyone Mr. Duterte and his followers have mocked since the 2016 electoral campaign: the political oligarchy led by the Aquinos that came to power after Edsa 1, the business elites that benefited from and supported the latter, the Catholic bishops, the mainstream media, the Western press, the global advocates of democracy and civil liberties, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations.
As a legal instrument in the hands of the chief executive, martial law itself is no longer what it used to be. The framers of the 1987 Constitution essentially stripped it of extraordinary powers by explicitly subjecting it to review by coequal branches of the state, namely the legislature and the judiciary.
But, as a political concept, ML draws its considerable sting not so much from its constitutional basis as from the remembrance of its past uses and abuses—its rationalization as a tool of last resort, memories of the unspeakable brutality it brought out among its enforcers, and the enduring terror it instilled in our people.
Was it a coincidence that the very first thing Mr. Duterte conjured after announcing ML in Mindanao was the image of martial law under Marcos? That, instead of assuring ordinary Filipinos of the continuing protection of their liberties in the face of a perceived threat against the state, he chose to warn them that he will be “harsh”? Hardly.
Speaking to the troops in Iligan City on May 26, three days after declaring ML in Mindanao, he said: “I am here to say to you, fight and I will pray for you, and I will answer for everything. Wag na kayo magalala. (Don’t worry.) During martial law, your commanders, you, can arrest any person, search any house, wala nang (no need for a) warrant.”
I am not a lawyer but, as far as I know, the 1987 Constitution does not give the President such powers under martial law. Nor does it free soldiers and police officers who act illegally—whether on orders of their superiors or not—from criminal liability. Martial law does not suspend the Bill of Rights, nor does it replace civilian courts with military courts. It obligates the President to report to Congress, and the latter to assess ML’s factual basis.
We have been assured that the guidelines issued by the Armed Forces of the Philippines are more mindful of the restrictive provisions of the new Constitution. Still, I am alarmed by the AFP spokesperson’s warning that they reserve the right to “censure” (sic) published material and restrict the freedom of expression. I don’t think the law allows them.
But, this is nothing compared to the way Mr. Duterte himself talks about martial law powers. Ironically, his portrayal of ML powers stands in sharp contrast to the careful legalistic language in which the 1972 proclamation of martial law is couched. Unlike Marcos, Mr. Duterte doesn’t seem to care what the rest of the world thinks. Who will dare check him if the Filipino public thinks he’s doing the right thing? Every opinion survey seems to confirm his continuing popularity, almost as if the public has given him blanket approval for every cause he chooses to champion.
He has sufficiently intimidated the Church, the mainstream media, the political opposition, and the business community. He has tamed the police and the military, charmed the armed Left by inviting its nominees to sit in the Cabinet while they resume peace talks, and silenced the organized Moro liberation groups by dangling the prospect of concluding a peace agreement with them. As the US and the West signal their gradual disengagement from world affairs in the face of their own domestic problems, Mr. Duterte basks in his newfound friendship with the powerful rulers of China and Russia.
ADVERTISEMENT
What better time, indeed, can there be for a Filipino autocrat to measure the metes and bounds of his actual powers?
It is wonderful to hear Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, and Justice Antonio Carpio speak up boldly on crucial issues of law. But, as influential as they may be, their voices constitute only a small particle in a still evolving legal system. And, as I said, the prevailing political climate is not exactly hospitable to legal arguments. What is to be done?
Let Congress and the high court debate the justification for martial law. But, as citizens of this republic, let us not waste our breaths supplying the reasons for why we need martial law. That is how we get accustomed to losing our freedoms. Let us remain focused instead on what we need to do to defend what remains of our democracy.
[email protected]
Read Next
LATEST STORIES
MOST READ |
*About our discount - our discount is also available for men. Just go ahead and buy with the discount applied or use the chat window in the corner to ask us more about Jane.
The travel Tips from Jane provided are for research and information purposes only, and does not constitute advice or recommendations. Any advice provided by us is general only and does not take into consideration your individual circumstances.
Benefits are subject to the terms and conditions (including the limits, sub-limits and exclusions) of the insurance policy. "Travel with Jane" is a trading name of Insured by Us (ABN 84 604 520 952) located at Level 5, 63 York Street, Sydney, NSW 2000.Please make sure to read the Product Disclosure Statement and Financial Services Guide to make sure that the product meets your needs. The policy is issued through YourCover Pty Ltd (ABN 35 169 038 466 AFSL 461299) Coverholder at Lloyd's underwritten by certain underwriters at Lloyd's. |
Pagano makes his NFL decision
Clemson junior defensive tackle Scott Pagano has officially made his decision to return to school for next season according to his Facebook account on Thursday.
"Tiger Nation, family, and friends last year at this time I was thanking you all for your support, friendship and faith with a very heavy heart," Pagano said. "I felt as if we had let you down. First I need to give God the biggest shout out ever for giving me this opportunity to play the game I love. This year is much different I thank you now for your faith, prayers, support, friendship and love of our team with a gratitude that is beyond anything I can put into words. In all my years here at Clemson you have redefined words like family, class, and unity. My football brothers past and present thank you for daring to dream and doing! My friends and family especially my parents, thank you for sacrificing so much in the name of the game. With that being said, GO TIGERS! CU IN AUGUST! National Champs!"
Clemson's defensive line will be stout again next year with several high-calibers including Pagano, Wilkins, Ferrell, Bryant, Lawrence, and others. |
A massive 14-pound lobster was caught during a fishing trip in Bermuda following a powerful category 4 hurricane that barreled through the region recently.
The lobster was caught “by accident” with a hook a line while the Sanctuary Marine Bermuda charter boat was out fishing for snapper, according to a Facebook post Saturday afternoon.
“Hurricane Nicole blew in some sea monsters,” the post read.
After taking photos of the mammoth crustacean, the lobster was released safely back into the ocean. Photos of the lobster that were posted on the Sanctuary Marine Bermuda’s Facebook page have been shared more than 6,000 times in less than 48 hours.
While appearing massive in size, the lobster is far from the bigger one ever caught; he Guinness Book of World Records lists a lobster weighing more than 44 pounds that was caught off of Nova Scotia, Canada, as the largest ever recorded, according to multiple reports.
Lobsters typically grow to be about 3 feet or longer in length, according to the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute. And while there is no way to determine the exact age of a lobster, experts say they can live to be up to 100 years.
Hurricane Nicole passed over Bermuda on Thursday and moved out to sea. The storm hit Bermuda with plenty of wind and rain but never officially made landfall.
“Bermuda did get into the eye,” he explained, “but when it involves an island, the center of the eye must go over the island.”
Nicole attained Category 4 status Wednesday night on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, the center said, but lost wind strength Thursday.
A storm surge was expected to raise water levels by 6 to 8 feet above normal tides, and 5 to 8 inches of rain are expected to fall over the island through Thursday evening, the hurricane center said.
Nick Warren of Boston and his wife, Nicole, told CNN they were spending the week at Tucker’s Point 5 resort when the storm hit. He said the weather changed from fierce storm to calm in a matter of about 15 minutes, apparently when the eye of the storm passed over, then picked up again. |
Plato famously wanted to abolish the family and put children into care of the state. Some still think the traditional family has a lot to answer for, but some plausible arguments remain in favour of it. Joe Gelonesi meets a philosopher with a rescue plan very much in tune with the times.
So many disputes in our liberal democratic society hinge on the tension between inequality and fairness: between groups, between sexes, between individuals, and increasingly between families.
I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally.
The power of the family to tilt equality hasn’t gone unnoticed, and academics and public commentators have been blowing the whistle for some time. Now, philosophers Adam Swift and Harry Brighouse have felt compelled to conduct a cool reassessment.
Swift in particular has been conflicted for some time over the curious situation that arises when a parent wants to do the best for her child but in the process makes the playing field for others even more lopsided.
‘I got interested in this question because I was interested in equality of opportunity,’ he says.
‘I had done some work on social mobility and the evidence is overwhelmingly that the reason why children born to different families have very different chances in life is because of what happens in those families.’
Once he got thinking, Swift could see that the issue stretches well beyond the fact that some families can afford private schooling, nannies, tutors, and houses in good suburbs. Functional family interactions—from going to the cricket to reading bedtime stories—form a largely unseen but palpable fault line between families. The consequence is a gap in social mobility and equality that can last for generations.
So, what to do?
According to Swift, from a purely instrumental position the answer is straightforward.
‘One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.’
It’s not the first time a philosopher has thought about such a drastic solution. Two thousand four hundred years ago another sage reasoned that the care of children should be undertaken by the state.
Plato pulled few punches in The Republic when he called for the abolition of the family and for the children of the elite to be given over to the state. Aristotle didn’t agree, citing the since oft-used argument of the neglect of things held in common. Swift echoes the Aristotelian line. The break-up of the family is plausible maybe, he thinks, but even to the most hard-hearted there’s something off-key about it.
‘Nearly everyone who has thought about this would conclude that it is a really bad idea to be raised by state institutions, unless something has gone wrong,’ he says.
Intuitively it doesn’t feel right, but for a philosopher, solutions require more than an initial reaction. So Swift and his college Brighouse set to work on a respectable analytical defence of the family, asking themselves the deceptively simple question: ‘Why are families a good thing exactly?’
Not surprisingly, it begins with kids and ends with parents.
‘It’s the children’s interest in family life that is the most important,’ says Swift. ‘From all we now know, it is in the child’s interest to be parented, and to be parented well. Meanwhile, from the adult point of view it looks as if there is something very valuable in being a parent.’
He concedes parenting might not be for everyone and for some it can go badly wrong, but in general it is an irreplaceable relationship.
‘Parenting a child makes for what we call a distinctive and special contribution to the flourishing and wellbeing of adults.’
It seems that from both the child’s and adult’s point of view there is something to be said about living in a family way. This doesn’t exactly parry the criticism that families exacerbate social inequality. For this, Swift and Brighouse needed to sort out those activities that contribute to unnecessary inequality from those that don't.
‘What we realised we needed was a way of thinking about what it was we wanted to allow parents to do for their children, and what it was that we didn’t need to allow parents to do for their children, if allowing those activities would create unfairnesses for other people’s children’.
The test they devised was based on what they term ‘familial relationship goods’; those unique and identifiable things that arise within the family unit and contribute to the flourishing of family members.
For Swift, there’s one particular choice that fails the test.
‘Private schooling cannot be justified by appeal to these familial relationship goods,’ he says. ‘It’s just not the case that in order for a family to realise these intimate, loving, authoritative, affectionate, love-based relationships you need to be able to send your child to an elite private school.’
In contrast, reading stories at bedtime, argues Swift, gives rise to acceptable familial relationship goods, even though this also bestows advantage.
‘The evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don’t—the difference in their life chances—is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t,’ he says.
This devilish twist of evidence surely leads to a further conclusion—that perhaps in the interests of levelling the playing field, bedtime stories should also be restricted. In Swift’s mind this is where the evaluation of familial relationship goods goes up a notch.
‘You have to allow parents to engage in bedtime stories activities, in fact we encourage them because those are the kinds of interactions between parents and children that do indeed foster and produce these [desired] familial relationship goods.’
Swift makes it clear that although both elite schooling and bedtime stories might both skew the family game, restricting the former would not interfere with the creation of the special loving bond that families give rise to. Taking the books away is another story.
‘We could prevent elite private schooling without any real hit to healthy family relationships, whereas if we say that you can’t read bedtime stories to your kids because it’s not fair that some kids get them and others don’t, then that would be too big a hit at the core of family life.’
So should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring?
‘I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,’ quips Swift.
In the end Swift agrees that all activities will cause some sort of imbalance—from joining faith communities to playing Saturday cricket—and it’s for this reason that a theory of familial goods needs to be established if the family is to be defended against cries of unfairness.
‘We should accept that lots of stuff that goes on in healthy families—and that our theory defends—will confer unfair advantage,’ he says.
It’s the usual bind in ethics and moral philosophy: very often values clash and you have to make a call. For Swift and Brighouse, the line sits shy of private schooling, inheritance and other predominantly economic ways of conferring advantage.
Their conclusions remind one of a more idyllic (or mythic) age for families: reading together, attending religious services, playing board games, and kicking a ball in the local park, not to mention enjoying roast dinner on Sunday. It conjures a family setting worthy of a classic Norman Rockwell painting. But not so fast: when you ask Swift what sort of families is he talking about, the ‘50s reverie comes crashing down into the 21st century.
‘When we talk about parents’ rights, we’re talking about the person who is parenting the child. How you got to be parenting the child is another issue. One implication of our theory is that it’s not one’s biological relation that does much work in justifying your rights with respect to how the child is parented.’
For Swift and Brighouse, our society is curiously stuck in a time warp of proprietorial rights: if you biologically produce a child you own it.
‘We think that although in practice it makes sense to parent your biological offspring, that is not the same as saying that in virtue of having produced the child the biological parent has the right to parent.’
Then, does the child have a right to be parented by her biological parents? Swift has a ready answer.
‘It’s true that in the societies in which we live, biological origins do tend to form an important part of people’s identities, but that is largely a social and cultural construction. So you could imagine societies in which the parent-child relationship could go really well even without there being this biological link.’
From this realisation arises another twist: two is not the only number.
‘Nothing in our theory assumes two parents: there might be two, there might be three, and there might be four,’ says Swift.
It’s here that the traditional notions of what constitutes the family come apart. A necessary product of the Swift and Brighouse analytical defence is the calling into question of some rigid definitions.
‘Politicians love to talk about family values, but meanwhile the family is in flux and so we wanted to go back to philosophical basics to work out what are families for and what’s so great about them and then we can start to figure out whether it matters whether you have two parents or three or one, or whether they’re heterosexual etcetera.’
For traditionalists, though, Swift provides a small concession.
‘We do want to defend the family against complete fragmentation and dissolution,’ he says. ‘If you start to think about a child having 10 parents, then that’s looking like a committee rearing a child; there aren’t any parents there at all.’
Although it’s controversial, it seems that Swift and Brighouse are philosophically inching their way to a novel accommodation for a weathered institution ever more in need of a rationale for existing. The bathwater might be going out, but they’re keen to hold on to the baby.
Family values Sunday 3 May 2015 Listen to this episode of The Philosopher's Zone to hear more from philosopher Adam Swift. More This [series episode segment] has image,
The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics. |
By Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News
National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre argued on NBC’s Meet the Press that “there weren’t enough good guys with guns" to confront the shooter responsible for last week's Washington Navy Yard rampage and he insisted that "when the good guys with guns got there, it stopped.”
In his first television interview since the mass shooting last Monday in which gunman Aaron Alexis killed 12 people, LaPierre, the executive vice president of the NRA, described the Navy Yard as a military facility that was “largely left unprotected.”
LaPierre said more personnel who work at military facilities, including retired military personnel, should be armed so they are able to stop attacks such as the one at the Navy Yard.
The NRA's Wayne LaPierre visits Meet the Press to reflect on the tragedy at the Navy Yard.
“We need to look at letting the men and women that know firearms and are trained in them, do what they do best, which is protect and survive,” he said.
LaPierre also vehemently criticized the flaws in the nation’s treatment of the mentally ill, especially of those mentally ill people who try to buy guns. “They need to be committed is what they need to be, and if they’re committed, they’re not at the Navy Yard,” he said.
“I’ve been into this whole (background) check business for 20-some years; I’ve said the system is broken for 20 years and nobody listens,” he said. “It’s broken in terms of our military bases…. On the gun check, the NRA supported the gun check because we thought the mental records would be in the (national instant check) system, we thought criminals would be in the system. And we thought they would be prosecuted.”
He said that the records of those adjudicated to be dangerous are not entered into the national instant check system for gun buyers. “So the Aurora shooter in Colorado gets checked and is cleared, the Tucson shooter gets checked and gets cleared, Aaron Alexis go through the federal and state check and gets cleared,” LaPierre said because the nation’s mental health system doesn’t detect a dangerous person such as Alexis.
LaPierre’s interview on Meet the Press mirrored his appearance on the program following the killings of 26 children and adults by Adam Lanza at a school in Newtown, Conn. last December, when LaPierre said, “If it’s crazy to call for putting police in and securing our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy.”
On Saturday night in a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's awards dinner, President Barack Obama urged gun control proponents to redouble their efforts.
He referred to the unsuccessful struggle of gun control advocates last April to persuade the Senate to pass broader background checks on gun buyers and new restrictions on sales of certain types of weapons.
“We fought a good fight earlier this year, but we came up short and that means we've got to get back up and go back at it because as long as there are those who fight to make it as easy as possible for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun, then we've got to work as hard as possible for the sake of our children,” Obama said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D- Nevada, said last week “we don’t have the votes” to pass expanded background check legislation.
While the policy debate after the Newtown shootings focused on proposals such as requiring background checks for private firearms transfers at gun shows and reinstating a ban on certain types of semiautomatic weapons, the focus after the Alexis shootings has primarily been on the procedures the Defense Department uses to do background checks on contractors such as Alexis with access to military bases and facilities.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last week that “something broke down” in the vetting procedures that allowed Alexis to enter the Navy Yard and kill 12 people, before being killed by police.
Hagel ordered Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter to lead an internal inquiry of the department’s procedures for granting security clearances.
Hagel also will create an independent panel to assess security clearance procedures and security at Defense Department facilities.
“Where there are gaps, we will close them. Where there are inadequacies, we will address them. And where there are failures, we will correct them,” Hagel told reporters last week.
The vetting process has been under scrutiny since the November 2009 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, in which Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan killed 13 people.
Virginia authorities said last week that Alexis had passed the required state and local background checks before buying the shotgun he used to begin his killing spree. He also used a handgun he took from a guard after killing him.
Alexis’s erratic behavior had been noticed by several people but apparently he hadn’t been treated for mental illness.
In his appearance on Meet the Press last December LaPierre warned that, “We have a mental health system in this country that has completely and totally collapsed. We have no national database of these lunatics.”
And he said many states don’t put their records of those adjudicated to be mentally ill into the national instant check system that is designed to screen out criminals and the mentally ill from buying guns.
In April the Senate rejected an amendment by Sen. Joe Manchin, D- W.V. and Sen. Pat Toomey, R- Pa., which would have required background checks for some intrastate firearms transfers between persons who aren’t licensed gun dealers. The Manchin-Toomey measure fell six votes short of the 60 votes it needed.
An alternate measure offered by Sen. Charles Grassley, R- Iowa, fell eight votes short. Grassley’s measure would have sought to improve background checks and would have enacted a uniform legal definition to prevent those adjudicated mentally incompetent by a court or committed to a psychiatric hospital from buying a gun. |
Home ~ Get The FREE Book ~ T Shirts ~ Contact Us We don't want to be locked into representation by agenda-driven political parties.
We believe that citizens should be able to guide their Representatives on how they want them to cast their district's house vote on every issue. To let the will of the people become the action of their Representative.
We believe Representatives should serve only three terms in the House and two terms in the Senate.
The only path to a transparent Democracy is by using technology to create a Direct Representative Democracy. Let the people rule the people!
Even after the election, everyone will still have an equal voice in our system.
In the 1700's when our forefathers drafted the Constitution, they never envisioned citizens having the ability to collectively communicate so easily with their Representatives.
Instead of letting our Representatives run wild for two years, let's use technology to collectively, as a community, guide them on how WE WANT them to cast OUR district's house vote.
If the people are going to live under a new law, they must have a say in the passing of that new law. YOUR ability to influence your Representative's actions should not end after Election Day.
It's no secret that the traditional political parties have developed rigid viewpoints. After an election, these parties get to decide who has access and control over their party's Representatives. This is why Congress frustrates us. They are failing the greater majority, the 7 out of 10 Americans who now feel that they have no representation in Congress - even those who voted for the "winners".
This philosophy is the culmination of five years of listening to hundreds of average people talking about their ideas on Democracy and how we're going to fix Congress. The Tech Party was born in Dania Beach and the philosophy was organized by one of the founding members Don Endriss . Tech Party members know one thing for sure, regardless of whether you agree with us or not, Direct Representative Democracy is coming. One way or another!
Help us to restore the joy of public service for the common good. YOUR opinion, YOUR voice, YOUR influence, should not end after Election Day! Together, with faith in our ability to focus on where Americans agree, strong ground will be created to move workable solutions forward.
If you believe in The Tech Party philosophy, please download and print the free PDF book and also e-mail the PDF to your family and friends.
It's time to combine something old with something new. Let's mix the original formula from 1776, with technology! Let the people rule the people!
Direct Democracy used in 435 individual districts creates
a perfectly transparent Direct Representative Democracy!
For more information:
[email protected]
Click here to help
www.TheTechParty.com © Copyright 2013 All Rights Reserved. |
Child Safety
Police said that the girl, found alone on the train at Kottayam, was handed over to Childline and eventually reunited with her family.
In a case that shocked fellow passengers and railway officials, a Kerala man mistakenly abandoned his four-year-old daughter, with whom he was travelling, on a train headed to Nagercoil.
The incident took place on Friday, according to railway officials. The man and his daughter had boarded the Shalimar-Nagercoil Gurudev Express from Salem, and were to get down at Palakkad. They were on their way to the man’s in-laws’ house in Wadakkanchery, which is near Palakkad.
The man, who was in an inebriated condition on the train according to officials, first missed the stop at Palakkad.
After realising he had missed his stop, the man hurriedly got off the train at the next station, and continued on to his in-laws’ home.
However, he forgot that he had left his daughter behind.
The child, who was sleeping on the train, began to cry when she woke up and did not see her father around.
"We found a four-year-old girl alone in the train at Kottayam and handed her over to Childline," an official said. He added that according to information later received from Childline personnel, the girl had been reunited with her parents. |
Kyle Kondik is managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political newsletter produced by the University of Virginia Center for Politics. He also directs the center’s Washington, D.C., office.
If Republicans capture control of the U.S. Senate, there will be many explanations for their victory: President Obama’s poor numbers, a great Senate map filled with attractive opportunities, a generally strong slate of candidates, the success of establishment-backed Republicans in primaries and others.
But one of the biggest factors will have hardly anything to do with the national political climate or, really, the campaign as a whole. Five Democrats, all of whom are old enough to be eligible for Medicare, decided not to run for another term in the Senate. Their decisions, all announced before May 2013, are a huge but largely forgotten boon to GOP hopes.
Story Continued Below
The five retirements were: Max Baucus of Montana, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Carl Levin of Michigan and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. (A sixth, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, had announced his retirement, but he later died: Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat, now holds the seat after a special election last year.)
Retirements present a challenge for the incumbent party because it’s easier for a party to hold a Senate seat when an incumbent runs for reelection. Significantly easier.
Over the past half-century, about 85 percent of incumbent senators running in the general election were reelected. In open seats, during the same time period, the incumbent party held the seat just about 60 percent of the time. So not having an incumbent in a Senate race substantially reduces the odds of victory.
The importance of open seats to GOP Senate hopes is particularly pronounced because of the party’s recent inability to defeat Democratic incumbents.
In 1980, Republicans beat an eye-popping nine Democratic incumbents on Election Day to capture control of the Senate for the first time in a quarter-century. Since then, the GOP has not defeated more than two Democratic Senate incumbents in any general election. The party’s best recent Senate years, 1994 and 2010, were built largely on winning open seats (six in 1994, and four in 2010). Democrats, meanwhile, have had more success: They beat seven and six incumbent Republicans, respectively, in recapturing the upper chamber in 1986 and 2006. The latter year, 2006, was notable in that Democrats did not capture a single open seat in netting the six seats they needed to eke out a narrow 51-49 Senate edge.
Republicans seem likely to beat more than two Democratic Senate incumbents this November for the first time in almost 35 years: Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas all have less than 50-50 odds of winning, according to the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ Crystal Ball ratings, which I help formulate. Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado is right at 50-50, and Sens. Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire are both in tough races too.
But in all likelihood, the foundation for this year’s GOP gains will be built on winning open seats. That’s why the Democratic exits loom so large in the upcoming election.
An election where these five senators chose to run for another term would look significantly different: There would probably be more competitive races, and Democrats would have a greater number of redoubts to hold off the Republican advance.
Let’s assume, for the purposes of this “what if” exercise, that all five retirees were healthy enough and eager enough to have run for reelection, which is of course a big assumption for a group whose average age is 74 years old:
West Virginia: Rockefeller might still be an underdog to Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R), who entered the race before the incumbent retired. But that race would have been much closer, presumably, than Capito’s largely sleepy contest against West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee would not have been able to just take a pass on the race, as it has this cycle. Capito’s strong performance as a candidate is an often overlooked bright spot for Republicans this cycle – she’s done so well, in a state where the GOP hasn’t won a Senate seat in more than a half century, that the race never became obviously competitive – but running in an open seat has made her job easier. The Crystal Ball rating here is Safe Republican; with Rockefeller in the race, we’d probably rate it just Leans Republican or maybe Toss-up. A few polls before Rockefeller retired suggested Capito would have started the race with a narrow lead, and Rockefeller did himself no favors by not being 100 percent pro-coal in recent years, a political problem in a state where coal is still king.
Montana: Baucus, like Rockefeller, would have been in for a very tough race in 2014 if he had run. The Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling found him trailing 49 percent to 44 percent in early 2013 against Rep. Steve Daines, who eventually became the GOP nominee. Baucus announced his retirement in April 2013, and then later resigned to become ambassador to China. Gov. Steve Bullock appointed then-Lt. Gov. John Walsh, a fellow Democrat, to fill the vacancy. Walsh’s campaign, of course, fell apart over the summer under the weight of plagiarism. Now Democrats are stuck with little-known nominee Amanda Curtis, a state representative, and Daines is a huge favorite. |
Review of Logitech G900 Chaos Spectrum Wireless Gaming Mouse
Boxing
G900 Chaos Spectrum
Cable
Wireless dongle
Sidebuttons/blockout pieces for left and right side
Adapter for micro USB to USB to allow using the dongle on the mouse cable
Warranty
Weight & Shape
Click below for side by side pictures
(Click to show)
G900 vs Mionix Castor
G900 vs G502
G900 vs Zowie ZA11
G900 vs G302
G900 vs G402
G900 vs Steelseries Sensei
G900 vs Razer Deathadder 3GG900 vs Mionix CastorG900 vs G502G900 vs Zowie ZA11G900 vs G302G900 vs G402G900 vs Steelseries Sensei
Sensor / Performance
(Click to show)
(Click to show)
(Click to show)
(Click to show)
Wireless latency tests
How it is done
Result
Click latency test
Wireless signal robustness testsWireless latency testsHow it is doneResultClick latency test
Buttons / Cable / Scroll Wheel
Build Quality
Conclusion
Here I will review the new wireless G900 Chaos Spectrum mouse by Logitech.This mouse is the new top of the line mouse Logitech offers, featuring the PMW3366, the best sensor currently available and a wireless connection that is claimed to be faster than competitors wired connections. It also is customizable in the layout of the sidebuttons, allowing you to have them on the left side, right side or none at all. So let’s jump right in and see what the mouse also offers.First things first, the boxing. Logitech steps away from their small, simple boxes that were used for the G302/3, G402 and G502 and now has a box that reminds me of the Mionix Castor box in a way, at least after removing the sleeve.What's included:Box:Promo Picture with the button optionsThe G900 is an ambidextrous mouse with a shape that is more bulky than a Sensei in the back and just a bit flatter than the ZA11. It has an overall higher profile than both of these. To me it looks kind of like an ambi G402, but the G900 feels bigger in my hand than the G402 overall.Weight: 107 grams (mouse only)Length: 130mmWidth: 67mmEstimated width at grip position: 58mmHeight: 40mmNumber of buttons: 6-11Some comparison pictures with different miceTo my hand the G900 is the best Logitech shape so far, mainly because I highly favor ambidextrous designs and also because its sides are more rounded than previous mice. My grip on it is more of a palm grip I guess, because my palm lies on the mouse while I curl my finger just ever so slightly to be in the best position to actuate the buttons. This is how I hold the G900My hand is around 20 cm from the tip of my middle finger to the base.My thoughts on the shape are mainly positive as stated above, however there is one point of critique for me, which is the gap between the mouse buttons and the mouse body. If you look at previous Logitech mice like the G402 and G502 you’ll see that they had a ledge to the sides of the buttons, so does my beloved ZA11 and FK1. Those ledges prevent my ring finger from getting in between the button and the shell. With the G900 this isn’t a huge problem, because under no circumstances did my finger block me from actuating m2, but it’s still irritating my finger.I also think the mouse would look better without the gap.Other than the gap there is nothing I would change about the shape of this mouse. It does not need to be wider because the height of the mouse offers enough support for my grip, similar to how the ZA11 offers a better grip over the FK1 for me.Of course shape is completely individual preference, so everyone has to try for himself in the end.Regarding the weight: this mouse feels light, especially wireless but also with the cable. However it is not as light as a FinalMouse or even a Zowie ZA11, which has to be expected if you have a 15g battery inside of it. But for anyone who played with a Deathadder or Rival or any similar mouse in that range for a longer time: the G900 feels lighter than that definitely.I’ll keep this short, as there is nothing bad to say at all about the G900 sensor performance. It works perfectly fine in any configuration. Of course the jitter test at 12000 cpi looks horrible, but that is mainly because the physical movements for that are soooo tiny.All the following tests are done wireless!The real cpi for each setting can be seen in the mouse tester print.400 CPI, 1000Hz, wirelesscl_showpos 1 shows the angular displacement, after every swipe back and forth I reset to "setang 0 0". Horizontal displacements are as follows:0.280.200.440.44Sensitivity in game is 1.833, roughly 60cm/360, the swipes covered a distance of about 45cm.I think those values speak for themselves, considering how big of a movement I make the angular error is almost non existant.LOD is under 1CD, so less than 1.2mm without any surface tuning.The battery lifetime is stated to be 32h without leds on run-to-die, which seems to be accurate. In my tests I recorded how long the battery lasts in normal gameplay (at the time I just bought FarCry 4 and was playing that) and one full charge with leds breathing lasted 34h.The mouse goes into sleep mode after 30 minutes of inactivity, after that it’s a very short time to wake it up (less than half a second) and have immediate full functionality again.As I have no means to accurately test the wireless functionality other than “it never failed me at all” I’ll post some comparative tests that Logitech did. So be sure to take this with a grain of salt, but I have no reason to assume anything about this was doctored. I’ve seen the anechoic chamber they have in Lausanne first hand, so they are definitely capable of doing said tests.If you know the G303 buttons then you know the G900 buttons, but the G900 feels even better to me because I don’t need to curl my fingers as much. All the buttons click excellently, even the sidebuttons feel nice and crisp.Here’s a picture of the pre-tensioning spring for the main buttonsThe scroll wheel as the same free scroll functionality as the G502 wheel, but this time the wheel is much lighter. Yet you can still make it spin for 10 seconds easily with a flick of the finger, so it keeps the benefits without the negatives. If you use the scroll in normal mode it has very defined clicks, I never once had a misscroll with this wheel in all the months I tested it.Regarding the cable: of course you don’t really need it, but if you have to use it you can be sure that the cable is a very good one, to me it’s an improvement over the G502 cable. It’s almost like a Zowie cable but braided. So even there Logitech did not cheap out.The overall build quality is as good as it gets. The material used feels awesome to the hand, it offers a good grip for sweaty and dry conditions, it doesn’t scratch easily and fingerprints do not show on it. Everything about this mouse feels like quality.If you want to be nitpicky then it should be noted that the main buttons can be move a bit left and right if try to do that, but this does not happen when holding the mouse in a regular way and it is only because of the mechanical pivot key design.If there were ledges to the side of the main buttons this wouldn’t happen either, but I guess there needs to be a negative to any mouse.I think it’s obvious that my feelings towards the G900 are generally very positive. This mouse delivers on all its promises in a stunning fashion. The shape is great, the weight is relatively low, the performance is through the roof…Anything that could be criticized with this mouse is down to personal preference, but objectively this is the best you can get right now.In this review so far I’ve only focused on the performance aspects really, I didn’t even go into customization options or software. I might add this later on. |
A Kipling poem hangs above my desk. I was still staring at it at 3 o’clock this morning, wide awake as the reactionaries relentlessly obsessed in the white noise of the internet. “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, / If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, / But make allowance for their doubting too …”
If I became chancellor, I’d swap that red box for a green one | Molly Scott Cato Read more
Contrary to what appears to be popular belief, I am not very organised, nor particularly good at “media”. Anyone who pointed out the sicked-up shrimp in my hair on BBC1’s Question Time will know that. Yet if I could have predicted even a tenth of the reaction to my exercising my democratic right to vote for whoever the hell I like, I might not have chosen my birthday to do it.
It was my 27th birthday, and I had left the Labour party. In fact, I had quietly left some weeks beforehand, and run away to look for the living wage, the social housing, the repurposing of abandoned buildings, free education and the NHS. I had left the Labour party to find the values that I thought that it once stood for, and I found them, in the Greens.
Like greeting old friends, I embraced the importance placed on a national health service, on public transport, on sustainable energy, on fair pay for fair work. Here you were, all the time. Oh, how I’ve missed you. I couldn’t see you for a moment for all the Ukip drawbridges and Labour tougher-on-welfares and Tory making-works-pays, but there you were all along.
Jack Monroe and electoral Labour pains | Letters Read more
My politics have not changed. I have been campaigning for the living wage for as long as I have been campaigning, and it was the Greens at their 2013 conference who made a commitment to it. I have been increasingly uncomfortable with the “drawbridges” rhetoric on immigration of the far right, and was horrified to see similar suggestions on leaflets under Labour party mastheads. I am deeply grateful to the Labour party for its commitment to the food bank debate in December 2013, but that petition was also widely supported and shared by Green party members and activists.
For a long time now I have found myself defending my membership of the Labour party while wondering what values of mine it defended any more. I didn’t leave the Labour party. It left me, and many others besides. Yet we, the “defectors”, are lambasted as traitors, since it’s easier to launch personal attacks than political arguments, easier to insult and scaremonger than to reflect on why so many core and loyal voters are edging away uncomfortably. “Vote Green and you’ll get Tories!” they shriek at me. I voted Labour last year. I got Tories. There are no guarantees in a first-past-the-post system that we get the government that represents us.
Jack Monroe joins Green party Read more
The joy of living in a free and democratic country is that you can work out what your fundamental ethics and values are and vote for someone who you feel represents them. Oh for proportional representation: perhaps politics would be less brutally tribal. Perhaps politicians, at all levels, would do better to focus on their policies and shout loudly about those.
Forget what I’m doing; my little ballot-paper cross means as much as the next person’s. The only person whose vote you should care about is your own. Because if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything – and many a glossy leaflet shoved through your front door over the next seven weeks will be relying on exactly that. |
VDARE.com note:
At the end of this column, Michelle asks "And where's the GOP "leadership" in this country? Doing the bidding of the
loving U.S
GOP "leadership" , House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, has just been Very true, but one member of the, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, has just been defeated in the Virginia primary.
A source tipped me off last week to a curious occurrence: It seems that two planeloads of illegal aliens were recently shipped to Massachusetts. The first reportedly landed at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford. According to my tipster, approximately 160 illegal immigrants arrived on that flight and stayed nearly a week before being transferred to a Department of Homeland Security site and then released.
The second flight reportedly was diverted from Hanscom to Boston's Logan Airport this past weekend. I am told that both Massachusetts and New Hampshire officials were on hand. I reached out to Hanscom AFB for confirmation, but did not receive a call back by my deadline.
Question: How many other military bases are stealthily being used to redistribute, house, process and release illegal border crossers?
What we do know for sure is that the Obama administration already has converted several other military bases across the country into outposts for tens of thousands of illegal aliens from Central and South America.
San Antonio's Lackland Air Force Base opened its doors as an illegal immigrant camp last month. Port Hueneme Naval Base in Ventura County, Calif., will shelter nearly 600 illegal border-crossing children and teens. The Fort Sill Army post in Lawton, Okla., was ordered on Friday to take in 1,200 illegal aliens despite the objections of GOP Gov. Mary Fallin, who blasted the White House, saying, "The Obama administration continues to fail in its duty to protect our borders and continues to promote policies that encourage, rather than discourage, illegal immigration."
A makeshift detention center in Nogales, Ariz., is being used as the central clearing station for the latest illegal alien surge. The deluge is a threat to national security, public safety and public health—not to mention a slap in the face to the law-abiding men and women in uniform on those bases and a kick in the teeth to law-abiding people around the world patiently waiting for approval of their visas.
Meanwhile, a law enforcement source in Texas tells me this week that countless illegal aliens are being released into the general public despite testing positive for tuberculosis. "The feds are putting them on public transportation to God knows where," he said.
Another source, working in the Border Patrol in south Texas, tells me: "Our station, along with every other station, is flooded with women and small children. One lady yesterday had a baby as young as 8 months. And they're coming over with pink eye and scabies. So getting them medically cleared becomes a priority. They'll be here for almost a week, so we provide them with formula and diapers. We have a catering service contracted to feed them because it's too many for us to feed on our own. And of course, they end up being released because every family housing facility is full. They're supposed to show up for immigration court at a later date, but they don't."
Same old, same old. I've reported for years on the feds' catch-and-release games and deportation Kabuki. The "notice to appear" letters—known as "run letters"—are a notorious joke in open-borders circles.
The latest "crisis" is a wholly manufactured byproduct of White House administrative amnesties, which are supported by a toxic alliance of ethnic-vote-seeking Democrats and cheap-labor-hungry Big Business Republicans. The flood comes just as Obama's DHS announced a two-year extension for beneficiaries of the "Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals" (DACA) program. A whopping 560,000 illegal aliens have been granted amnesty under DACA and also have received employment authorization.
As I've said for two decades, illegal alien amnesties guarantee two things: more illegal immigration and more Democratic voters. Now we have a White House forcing U.S. military bases to provide interminable benefits and services to illegal aliens for political gain, while said White House evades responsibility for allowing military veterans to die waiting for the most basic of medical services.
And where's the GOP "leadership" in this country? Doing the bidding of the amnesty-loving U.S. Chamber of Commerce and demonizing Republican candidates at every level who are sick and tired of giving away the store and the country.
God save us from bipartisanship. |
Computational Narratology
Last modified: 28 January 2013
Inderjeet Mani
[1] 1 Definition
[2]
Computational narratology is the study of narrative from the point of view of computation and information processing. It focuses on the algorithmic processes involved in creating and interpreting narratives, modeling narrative structure in terms of formal, computable representations. Its scope includes the approaches to storytelling in artificial intelligence systems and computer (and video) games, the automatic interpretation and generation of stories, and the exploration and testing of literary hypotheses through mining of narrative structure from corpora.
[3]
The use of the term ‘Computational Narratology’ covers several senses: (i) a ‘humanities narratology’ sense, used in Meister ( Meister, Jan Christoph (2003). Computing Action. A Narratological Approach. Berlin: de Gruyter. 2003 ) to designate a methodological instrument in the construction of narratological theories, from the standpoint of automatically extending narratological models to larger bodies of text, providing empirical testing of their predictions in actual corpora, and precise and consistent explication of concepts; (ii) a ‘cognitive computing’ sense, used as a title for a course (Goguen Goguen, Joseph (2004). CSE 87C Winter 2004 Freshman Seminar on Computational Narratology. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego. 2004 ) covering artefacts such as narrative texts, video games, and computational artworks, and integrating insights from semiotics, sociolinguistics and cognitive linguistics. Fox Harrell has characterized it further, as providing “techniques from computer science to provide a language to describe cognitive insights and to implement narrative effects of the type analyzed in discourse narratology” (Harrell Harrell, D. A. (2007). Theory and Technology for Computational Narrative. PhD Thesis, Departments of Computer Science and Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego. 2007 : 7); (iii) a ‘computational implementation of narratology’ sense (cf. Cavazza & Pizzi [ Cavazza, M. & D. Pizzi (2006). “Narratology for Interactive Storytelling: A Critical Introduction.” S. Gobel, R. Malkewitz, & I. Iurgel (eds.), Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment. Third International Conference. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4326. Berlin: Springer. 2006 ] and many others), referring to the importation of constructs from humanities narratology for implementation in computer systems that carry out storytelling, along the lines of computational linguistics, where formalisms from linguistic theories are implemented in systems.
[4] 2 Explication
[5]
Meister, Jan Christoph (2011). “Narratology.” Paragraph 1–81. P. Hühn et al. (eds.), the living handbook of narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg UP. 2011 ; As “a humanities discipline dedicated to the study of the logic, principles, and practices of narrative representation” (Meister → Narratology), narratology has a natural and substantial overlap with the (scientific and engineering) disciplines involved in the development of artificial intelligence systems aiming for human-like narrative behavior, as well as the (engineering and aesthetic) practices involved in the design of intelligent computer-based interfaces and game environments for interacting with narratives. In the course of developing such systems, researchers have mapped narratological constructs to computational ones and elucidated interactions among them, formulating (sometimes implicitly) theoretical and empirical approaches to narrative. Computational narratology has also been strongly influenced by linguistic theories.
[6]
Computational narratology is a fast-evolving field, motivated in part by the surge in popular interest in interactive games and entertainment and their promise of offering engaging narratives with life-like characters. The pervasiveness of computer technology and digital media in everyday life and cultural activity has substantially raised expectations about their future involvement. The advent of the new millennium has accordingly seen a spate of books, journal articles and conferences on topics related to this subject.
[7] 3 History of the Concept and its Study
[8] 3.1 Influences from Humanities Narratology
[9]
fabula versus sujet (Šklovskij Šklovskij, Viktor B. (Shklovsky, Victor) ([1917] 1965). “Art as a Technique.” L. T. Lemon & M. J. Reis (eds.), Russian Formalist Criticism. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 3–24. [1917] 1965 ; Tomaševskij Tomaševskij, Boris (Tomashevsky) ([1925] 1971). A Theory of Literature. Letchworth: Bradda Books. [1925] 1971 ) has provided a scaffolding for much of the computational narratology work in story generation, where the fabula is usually implemented – as in Genette ( Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. [1972] 1980 ) – as the events of the entire narrative in chronological and causal order prior to any verbalization thereof, and where the sujet is the final generated output. Here events ( Propp, Vladimir ([1928] 1968, 1988). Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd edn. Austin: U of Texas P. [1928] 1968 ), e.g., Grasbon & Braun ( Grasbon, D. & N. Braun (2001). “A Morphological Approach to Interactive Storytelling.” Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment, CAST '01, Living in Mixed Realities, Sankt Augustin, Germany, 337–40. 2001 ); Peinado & Gervás ( Peinado, Federico & Pablo Gervás (2006). “Evaluation of Automatic Generation of Basic Stories.” New Generation Computing 24: 289–302. 2006 ) as well as those of Bremond ( Bremond, Claude (1970). “Morphology of the French Folktale.” Semiotica 2: 347–275. 1970 ), e.g., Schäfer et al. ( Schäfer, L., A. Stauber & B. Brokan (2004). “Storynet: An Educational Game for Social Skills.” S. Göbel et al. (eds.), Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Second International Conference, TIDSE 2004, LNCS 3105. Berlin: Springer, 148–157. 2004 ); Cavazza & Charles ( Cavazza, M. & F. Charles (2005). “Dialogue Generation in Character-based Interactive Storytelling.” AAAI First Annual Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference, Marina del Rey, California. 2005 ). More coarse-grained accounts of the roles of characters in plot ( Freytag, Gustav (1900). Freytag's Technique of the drama : an exposition of dramatic composition and art. Translated by Elias J. MacEwan. Chicago: Scott, Foresman. 1900 ) and the heroic quest of Campbell ( Campbell, Joseph ([1949] 1990). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Harper & Row. [1949] 1990 ), have also inspired the design of many interactive narrative systems (Mateas & Stern Mateas, M. & A. Stern (2005). “Structuring Content in the Facade Interactive Drama Architecture.” Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE 2005), Marina del Rey. 2005 ; Gervás et al. Gervás, Pablo, Birte Lönneker-Rodman, Jan Christoph Meister & Federico Peinado (2006). “Narrative Models: Narratology Meets Artificial Intelligence.” Proceedings of the LREC-06 workshop Toward Computational Models of Literary Analysis, Genoa, Italy. 2006 ). In relation to the sujet, text information extraction systems (Mani et al. Mani, I., B. Wellner, M. Verhagen, C. M. Lee & J. Pustejovsky (2006). “Machine Learning of Temporal Relations.” Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Sydney, Australia, 753–60. 2006 ; Mani Mani, I. (2010a). The Imagined Moment. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. 2010a ) have been able to infer Genette’s ( Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell UP. [1972] 1980 ) temporal orderings ( Montfort, Nick (2011). “Curveship's Automatic Narrative Variation.” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG '11), 211–18, Bordeaux, France. 2011 ) have used rules that can express any of Genette’s orderings with a felicitous use of narrative voice, tense, and aspect. Research in computational narratology has absorbed and instantiated approaches from humanities narratology that specify formal and/or logical structure. The narratological differentiation ofversus(Šklovskij; Tomaševskij) has provided a scaffolding for much of the computational narratology work in story generation, where the fabula is usually implemented – as in Genette () – as the events of the entire narrative in chronological and causal order prior to any verbalization thereof, and where the sujet is the final generated output. Here → Event and Eventfulness) like other narratological constructs, are given a precise and specific computational representation, involving their participants, places and times, and in some cases their causes and effects. Focusing on fabula, algorithms to generate story have incorporated the narrative functions of Propp (), e.g., Grasbon & Braun (); Peinado & Gervás () as well as those of Bremond (), e.g., Schäfer et al. (); Cavazza & Charles (). More coarse-grained accounts of the roles of characters in plot ( → Character), such as the narrative arc of Freytag () and the heroic quest of Campbell (), have also inspired the design of many interactive narrative systems (Mateas & Stern; Gervás et al.). In relation to the sujet, text information extraction systems (Mani et al.; Mani) have been able to infer Genette’s () temporal orderings ( → Time) by having the computer learn from annotated corpora, while sentence generators such as Montfort () have used rules that can express any of Genette’s orderings with a felicitous use of narrative voice, tense, and aspect.
[10] 3.2 Influences from Linguistics
[11]
story grammars, (e.g., Rumelhart Rumelhart, David E. (1980). “On Evaluating Story Grammars.” Cognitive Science 4: 313–16. 1980 ), have been widely elaborated and applied in computational narratology, as in Bringsjord & Ferrucci ( Bringsjord, Selmer & David A. Ferrucci (2000). Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the Mind of BRUTUS, a Storytelling Machine. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 2000 ) and Lang ( Lang, R. (2003). “A Declarative Model for Simple Narratives.” M. Mateas & P. Sengers (eds.), Narrative Intelligence. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 2003 ). These notions, along with others arising independently out of AI, such as scripts (Schank & Abelson Schank, Roger C. & Robert P. Abelson (1977). Scripts, plans, goals, and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 1977 ), have also (despite their computational brittleness) influenced humanities narratology ( Salway, Andrew & David Herman (2008). “Digitized Corpora as Theory- Building Resource: New Foundations for Narrative Inquiry.” R. Page & B. Thomas (eds.), New Narratives: Theory and Practice. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. 2008 ), and in recent years, more advanced text mining techniques have allowed for large-scale empirical tests of literary hypotheses. For example, Elson et al. ( Elson, David K., Nicholas Dames, & Kathleen R. McKeown (2010). “Extracting Social Networks from Literary Fiction.” Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL’2010), 138–47. 2010 ) have been able to automatically extract conversational social networks from the dialogues between characters in 19th-century novels, disproving a claim by the literary critic Moretti ( Moretti, Franco (1999). Atlas of the European Novel, 1800–1900. London: Verso. 1999 ) that urban novels reflect the looser ties of city life, resulting in more characters sharing fewer conversations. Constructs which have emerged from linguistics, such as, (e.g., Rumelhart), have been widely elaborated and applied in computational narratology, as in Bringsjord & Ferrucci () and Lang (). These notions, along with others arising independently out of AI, such as(Schank & Abelson), have also (despite their computational brittleness) influenced humanities narratology ( → Schemata and → Cognitive Narratology). The contributions of corpus linguistics to narratology are also well-recognized (Salway & Herman), and in recent years, more advanced text mining techniques have allowed for large-scale empirical tests of literary hypotheses. For example, Elson et al. () have been able to automatically extract conversational social networks from the dialogues between characters in 19th-century novels, disproving a claim by the literary critic Moretti () that urban novels reflect the looser ties of city life, resulting in more characters sharing fewer conversations.
[12] 3.3 Computational Elaborations of Narratological Concepts
[13]
plot based on plot units (Lehnert Lehnert, W. G. (1981). “Plot Units: A Narrative Summarization Strategy.” W. G. Lehnert & M. H. Ringle (eds.), Strategies for Natural Language Processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 1981 ), which is derived, much as in Bremond’s account, from a representation of events that involves characterizing the motivations behind the actions of characters as well as their emotional outcomes. While systems use such models of plot in story generation, the inferential challenges involved in imputing motives to characters in narrative understanding are substantial enough to limit the ability of systems to fully extract a plot representation. However, Goyal et al. ( Goyal, Amit, Ellen Riloff & Hal Daumé III (2010). “Automatically Producing Plot Unit Representations for Narrative Text.” Proceedings of the 2010 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP’2010), 77–86. 2010 ) have developed, based on a corpus, a text understanding system that can infer characters’ emotions (or affect states) associated with events, identifying which outcomes are beneficial, harmful, or neutral for particular characters. More nuanced models of characters’ emotions have also been explored. For example, the interactive storytelling system of Pizzi ( Pizzi, D. (2011). Emotional Planning for Character-based Interactive Storytelling. PhD Thesis, School of Computing, Teesside University, Middlesbrough. 2011 ) is driven by plans that exploit an inventory of characters’ feelings listed in Flaubert’s preliminary studies for Madame Bovary; such a framework allows for a variety of sentiment-driven interactive retellings of the novel. Another interesting reformulation of a narratological construct is that of suspense. Cheong ( Cheong, Y. G. (2007). A Computational Model of Narrative Generation for Suspense. PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University. 2007 ) generates stories judged to be suspenseful by modeling the reader’s reasoning about limitations and conflicts involving a protagonist’s goals ( Gerrig, R. & D. Bernardo (1994) Readers as problem-solvers in the experience of suspense. Poetics 22: 459–72. 1994 ). Computational narratology has also developed its own accounts of key narratological concepts. An example is the fine-grained notion ofbased on plot units (Lehnert), which is derived, much as in Bremond’s account, from a representation of events that involves characterizing the motivations behind the actions of characters as well as their emotional outcomes. While systems use such models of plot in story generation, the inferential challenges involved in imputing motives to characters in narrative understanding are substantial enough to limit the ability of systems to fully extract a plot representation. However, Goyal et al. () have developed, based on a corpus, a text understanding system that can infer characters’ emotions (or affect states) associated with events, identifying which outcomes are beneficial, harmful, or neutral for particular characters. More nuanced models of characters’have also been explored. For example, the interactive storytelling system of Pizzi () is driven by plans that exploit an inventory of characters’ feelings listed in Flaubert’s preliminary studies for; such a framework allows for a variety of sentiment-driven interactive retellings of the novel. Another interesting reformulation of a narratological construct is that of. Cheong () generates stories judged to be suspenseful by modeling thereasoning about limitations and conflicts involving a protagonist’s goals ( → Reader), based on narratological insights from Gerrig & Bernado ().
[14]
For computational accounts to be made more relevant to humanities narratology, two issues need to be confronted: (a) the challenge of interdisciplinary communication across substantial methodological divides, especially given the shift in interest of post-classical narratology away from the precise analyses that characterized its structuralist phase; (b) the fact that computational representations and techniques for story generation are not general enough to concoct anything other than very short, relatively simple stories (such as fairy tales), let alone epics or novels (Gervás et al. Gervás, Pablo, Birte Lönneker-Rodman, Jan Christoph Meister & Federico Peinado (2006). “Narrative Models: Narratology Meets Artificial Intelligence.” Proceedings of the LREC-06 workshop Toward Computational Models of Literary Analysis, Genoa, Italy. 2006 ). The availability of multimillion-word narrative corpora and advanced machine learning algorithms used for training computational approaches can partially alleviate this problem, though annotating narratological information can be expensive.
[15] 4 Trends in the Field
[16]
The search for generic computational methods that could be used across narratives focused attention in the 1970s on planning formalisms. The spotlight has remained there ever since, although the planning techniques have evolved to accommodate ever-wider narratological concerns. In planning terms, to understand a story requires inferring, based on the Aristotelian notion of mythos, the causes of the events in the story and the goals of the characters involved – in effect, reconstructing from the sentences in the sujet a plan that corresponds to a causal chain of events (or operators) that can transform the initial state of the storyworld into the final state. The inferred events in the chain can include mental states and actions that may or may not be explicitly mentioned in the sujet. Story understanding systems (e.g. Wilensky Wilensky, Robert W. (1978). “Understanding Goal-based Stories.” Yale University Computer Science Research Report. 1978 ) never got very far, since (i) inferring characters’ goals involves a large search space and the inferences may need to be revised during processing and (ii) humans use a great deal of knowledge to interpret even simple stories. Given Forster’s exemplifying sentence “The king died and the queen died of grief,” a child has no difficulty figuring out why the queen was upset, but imparting a body of such commonsense knowledge to a computer is difficult; (iii) aspects of language that are hard to formalize but that are important for story interpretation, such as humor, irony, and subtle lexical associations, have by and large eluded computational approaches.
[17]
story generation, where the author can limit the system considerably, has proved more viable ( However, planning of fabulae for, where the author can limit the system considerably, has proved more viable ( → Story Generator Algorithms).
[18]
Mateas, M. & A. Stern (2005). “Structuring Content in the Facade Interactive Drama Architecture.” Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE 2005), Marina del Rey. 2005 ) is retaining authorial control over the plot while granting some freedom to the user (who may act as an animated protagonist) in shaping the evolution of the narrative. Empowering the user can lead to aesthetically unsatisfying outcomes, but restricting her through constraints from the plot can limit engagement. The need for generation of text snippets and dialogue rather than full stories ( Mani, I. (2010a). The Imagined Moment. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. 2010a , Mani, I. (2010b). “Predicting Reader Response in Narrative.” 3rd Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies. Foundations of Digital Games Conference, Monterey, CA, June 18, 2010. 2010b ). In recent years, interactive narrative has been the major driver in the field, promising new varieties of aesthetic experience, aided by game engines and vivid animations. One of the challenges here (Mateas & Stern) is retaining authorial control over the plot while granting some freedom to the user (who may act as an animated protagonist) in shaping the evolution of the narrative. Empowering the user can lead to aesthetically unsatisfying outcomes, but restricting her through constraints from the plot can limit engagement. The need for generation of text snippets and dialogue rather than full stories ( → Conversational Narration - Oral Narration) to accompany storyworld animations has also spurred a trend of increased use of text generation based on templates that map non-linguistic input directly to the linguistic output form, sacrificing linguistic generalization for rapid prototyping. Overall, key issues include the modeling of narrative progression and the invention of suitable metrics for aesthetic satisfaction (Mani).
[19] 5 Topics for Further Investigation
[20]
1) As a hybrid of game and narrative that spans multiple media, interactive narrative represents a new and evolving genre. What novel constructs from computational narratology are applicable here, and which old ones need refinement? 2) The computer-assisted annotation of large-scale corpora with narratological information bearing on time, place, plot, character, emotion, point-of-view, narrative embedding, metalepsis, etc. is feasible when carried out as collaborative projects. In this respect the “crowd-sourcing” of narratological markup aims to serve human readers by providing more comprehensive narratological descriptions of narratives across an entire corpus, while at the same time facilitating computer-based research into their narratological patterns (cf. Meister Meister, Jan Christoph (2012). “Crowd sourcing “true meaning”. A collaborative markup approach to textual interpretation.” W. McCarty & M. Deegan (eds.), Festschrift for Harold Short. Surrey, U.K: Ashgate Publishers. 2012 ). Assuming that such efforts can advance computational narratology and also test more foundational theories, which models should be elaborated for corpus-level annotation efforts by the community? 3) How should an empirical theory of aesthetic response be formulated, and can this be exploited computationally?
[21] 6 Bibliography
[22] 6.1 Works Cited
Bremond, Claude (1970). “Morphology of the French Folktale.” Semiotica 2: 347–275.
2: 347–275. Bringsjord, Selmer & David A. Ferrucci (2000). Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the Mind of BRUTUS, a Storytelling Machine . Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Campbell, Joseph ([1949] 1990). The Hero with a Thousand Faces . New York: Harper & Row.
. New York: Harper & Row. Cavazza, M. & F. Charles (2005). “Dialogue Generation in Character-based Interactive Storytelling.” AAAI First Annual Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference, Marina del Rey, California [1].
[1]. Cavazza, M. & D. Pizzi (2006). “Narratology for Interactive Storytelling: A Critical Introduction.” S. Gobel, R. Malkewitz, & I. Iurgel (eds.), Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment . Third International Conference. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4326. Berlin: Springer.
. Third International Conference. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4326. Berlin: Springer. Cheong, Y. G. (2007). A Computational Model of Narrative Generation for Suspense . PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University.
. PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method . Ithaca: Cornell UP.
. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Elson, David K., Nicholas Dames, & Kathleen R. McKeown (2010). “Extracting Social Networks from Literary Fiction.” Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL’2010), 138–47.
(ACL’2010), 138–47. Freytag, Gustav (1900). Freytag's Technique of the drama : an exposition of dramatic composition and art . Translated by Elias J. MacEwan. Chicago: Scott, Foresman.
. Translated by Elias J. MacEwan. Chicago: Scott, Foresman. Gerrig, R. & D. Bernardo (1994) Readers as problem-solvers in the experience of suspense. Poetics 22: 459–72.
22: 459–72. Gervás, Pablo, Birte Lönneker-Rodman, Jan Christoph Meister & Federico Peinado (2006). “Narrative Models: Narratology Meets Artificial Intelligence.” Proceedings of the LREC-06 workshop Toward Computational Models of Literary Analysis, Genoa, Italy .
. Goguen, Joseph (2004). CSE 87C Winter 2004 Freshman Seminar on Computational Narratology . Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego [2].
. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego [2]. Goyal, Amit, Ellen Riloff & Hal Daumé III (2010). “Automatically Producing Plot Unit Representations for Narrative Text.” Proceedings of the 2010 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP’2010), 77–86 [3].
(EMNLP’2010), 77–86 [3]. Grasbon, D. & N. Braun (2001). “A Morphological Approach to Interactive Storytelling.” Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment, CAST '01, Living in Mixed Realities, Sankt Augustin, Germany , 337–40 [4].
, 337–40 [4]. Harrell, D. A. (2007). Theory and Technology for Computational Narrative . PhD Thesis, Departments of Computer Science and Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego.
. PhD Thesis, Departments of Computer Science and Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego. Lang, R. (2003). “A Declarative Model for Simple Narratives.” M. Mateas & P. Sengers (eds.), Narrative Intelligence . Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lehnert, W. G. (1981). “Plot Units: A Narrative Summarization Strategy.” W. G. Lehnert & M. H. Ringle (eds.), Strategies for Natural Language Processing . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Mani, I., B. Wellner, M. Verhagen, C. M. Lee & J. Pustejovsky (2006). “Machine Learning of Temporal Relations.” Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Sydney, Australia , 753–60.
, 753–60. Mani, I. (2010a). The Imagined Moment . Lincoln: U of Nebraska P.
. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Mani, I. (2010b). “Predicting Reader Response in Narrative.” 3rd Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies. Foundations of Digital Games Conference, Monterey, CA, June 18, 2010 .
. Mateas, M. & A. Stern (2005). “Structuring Content in the Facade Interactive Drama Architecture.” Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE 2005), Marina del Rey .
. Meister, Jan Christoph (2003). Computing Action. A Narratological Approach . Berlin: de Gruyter.
. Berlin: de Gruyter. Meister, Jan Christoph (2011). “→ Narratology.” Paragraph 1–81. P. Hühn et al. (eds.), the living handbook of narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg UP.
Meister, Jan Christoph (2012). “Crowd sourcing “true meaning”. A collaborative markup approach to textual interpretation.” W. McCarty & M. Deegan (eds.), Festschrift for Harold Short . Surrey, U.K: Ashgate Publishers.
. Surrey, U.K: Ashgate Publishers. Montfort, Nick (2011). “Curveship's Automatic Narrative Variation.” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG '11), 211–18, Bordeaux, France .
. Moretti, Franco (1999). Atlas of the European Novel, 1800–1900 . London: Verso.
. London: Verso. Peinado, Federico & Pablo Gervás (2006). “Evaluation of Automatic Generation of Basic Stories.” New Generation Computing 24: 289–302.
24: 289–302. Pizzi, D. (2011). Emotional Planning for Character-based Interactive Storytelling . PhD Thesis, School of Computing, Teesside University, Middlesbrough.
. PhD Thesis, School of Computing, Teesside University, Middlesbrough. Propp, Vladimir ([1928] 1968, 1988). Morphology of the Folktale . 2nd edn. Austin: U of Texas P.
. 2nd edn. Austin: U of Texas P. Rumelhart, David E. (1980). “On Evaluating Story Grammars.” Cognitive Science 4: 313–16.
4: 313–16. Salway, Andrew & David Herman (2008). “Digitized Corpora as Theory- Building Resource: New Foundations for Narrative Inquiry.” R. Page & B. Thomas (eds.), New Narratives: Theory and Practice . Lincoln: U of Nebraska P.
. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Schäfer, L., A. Stauber & B. Brokan (2004). “Storynet: An Educational Game for Social Skills.” S. Göbel et al. (eds.), Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Second International Conference, TIDSE 2004, LNCS 3105 . Berlin: Springer, 148–157.
. Berlin: Springer, 148–157. Schank, Roger C. & Robert P. Abelson (1977). Scripts, plans, goals, and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Šklovskij, Viktor B. (Shklovsky, Victor) ([1917] 1965). “Art as a Technique.” L. T. Lemon & M. J. Reis (eds.), Russian Formalist Criticism . Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 3–24.
. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 3–24. Tomaševskij, Boris (Tomashevsky) ([1925] 1971). A Theory of Literature . Letchworth: Bradda Books.
. Letchworth: Bradda Books. Wilensky, Robert W. (1978). “Understanding Goal-based Stories.” Yale University Computer Science Research Report.
[23] 6.2 Further Reading
Callaway, Charles (2000). Narrative Prose Generation . Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina.
. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina. Correira, A. (1980). “Computing Story Trees.” American Journal of Computational Linguistics 6.3-4: 135–49.
6.3-4: 135–49. Cullingford, R. E. (1978). “Script application: Computer understanding of newspaper stories.” Research Report 116. Computer Science Department, Yale University.
116. Computer Science Department, Yale University. DeJong, G. F. (1982). “An Overview of the FRUMP System. W. G. Lehnert & M. H. Ringle (eds.), Strategies for Natural Language Processing . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 149–76.
. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 149–76. Elson, David K. (2012). “Dramabank: Annotating agency in narrative discourse.” Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2012) .
. Finlayson, Mark A. (2009). “Deriving narrative morphologies via analogical story merging.” B. Kokinov et al. (eds.), New Frontiers in Analogy Research . Sofia: NBU P.
. Sofia: NBU P. Hobbs, Jerry (1990). Literature and Cognition . Lecture Notes, Number 21, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford, California. Chicago: U of Chicago P.
. Lecture Notes, Number 21, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford, California. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Kazantseva , Anna & Stan Szpakowicz (2010). “Summarizing Short Stories.” Computational Linguistics 36.1: 71–109.
36.1: 71–109. Lebowitz, M. (1985). “Story-telling as planning and learning.” Poetics 14: 483–502.
14: 483–502. Lehnert, Wendy, G., Michael G. Dyer, Peter N. Johnson, C.J. Yang, & Steve Harley (1983). “Boris – an experiment in in-depth understanding of narratives.” Artificial Intelligence 20: 15–62.
20: 15–62. Löwe, Benedikt (2010). “Comparing formal frameworks of narrative structures.” Computational Models of Narrative: Papers from the 2010 AAAI Fall Symposium, Menlo Park, California .
. Mani, I. (2013). Computational Modeling of Narrative . San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool.
. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool. Mateas, M. (2000). “A Neo-Aristotelian Theory of Interactive Drama”. Working Notes of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment. Palo Alto, CA : AAAI Press.
: AAAI Press. Meehan, James R. (1977). The Metanovel: writing stories on computer . PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, Yale University.
. PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, Yale University. Mueller, Erik T. (2002). “Story understanding.” N. Lynn (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science 4: 238–46. London: Nature Publishing Group.
4: 238–46. London: Nature Publishing Group. Mueller, Erik T. (2004). “Understanding script-based stories using commonsense reasoning.” Cognitive Systems Research 5.4: 307–40.
5.4: 307–40. Pérez y Pérez, R. & M. Sharples (2004). “Three Computer-Based Models of Storytelling: BRUTUS, MINSTREL and MEXICA.” Knowledge-Based Systems 17.1: 15-29.
17.1: 15-29. Reed, Aaron (2010). Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 . Independence, KY: Course Technology PTR.
. Independence, KY: Course Technology PTR. Riedl, Mark O. & R. Michael Young (2010). “Narrative Planning: Balancing Plot and Character.” Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 39: 217–68.
39: 217–68. Turner, Scott R. (1994). The Creative Process: A Computer Model for Storytelling and Creativity. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
[24] 6.3 Web Resources |
Washington: Researchers have described an ancient skull recovered from a cave in the Annamite Mountains in northern Laos as the oldest modern human fossil found in Southeast Asia, pushing back the clock on modern human migration through the region by as much as 20,000 years.
The discovery indicates that ancient wanderers out of Africa left the coast and inhabited diverse habitats much earlier than previously appreciated.
The scientists, who found the skull in 2009, were likely the first to dig for ancient bones in Laos since the early 1900s, when a team found skulls and skeletons of several modern humans in another cave in the Annamite Mountains. Those fossils were about 16,000 years old, much younger than the newly found skull, which dates to between 46,000 and 63,000 years old.
No other artifacts have yet been found with the skull, suggesting that the cave was not a dwelling or burial site, said University of Illinois anthropologist Laura Shackelford, who led the study with anthropologist Fabrice Demeter, of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
It is more likely that the person died outside and the body washed into the cave sometime later, she said.
The find reveals that early modern human migrants did not simply follow the coast and go south to the islands of Southeast Asia and Australia, as some researchers have suggested, but that they also travelled north into very different types of terrain, Shackelford said.
"This find supports an `Out-of-Africa` theory of modern human origins rather than a multi-regionalism model," she said.
"Given its age, fossils in this vicinity could be direct ancestors of the first migrants to Australia. But it is also likely that mainland Southeast Asia was a crossroads leading to multiple migratory paths," she noted.
The discovery also bolsters genetic studies that indicate that modern humans occupied that part of the world at least 60,000 years ago, she said.
"This is the first fossil evidence that supports the genetic data," she said.
The researchers used radiocarbon dating and luminescence techniques to determine the age of the soil layers above, below and surrounding the skull, which was found nearly 2 1/2 meters (about 8.2 feet) below the surface of the cave.
Researchers at Illinois used uranium/thorium dating to determine the age of the skull, which they determined was about 63,000 years old.
"This fossil find indicates that the migration out of Africa and into East and Southeast Asia occurred at a relatively rapid rate, and that, once there, modern humans weren`t limited to environments that they had previously experienced," said Kira Westaway, of Macquarie University in Australia said.
"We now have the fossil evidence to prove that they were there long before we thought they were there," she added.
The team described its finding in a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
ANI |
Feb 5, 2017; Houston, TX, USA; Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan (2) passes the ball during the first quarter against the New England Patriots during Super Bowl LI at NRG Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Dan Powers-USA TODAY Sports
Is Matt Ryan the best quarterback to ever wear number two?
Jersey numbers are a strange phenomenon in the NFL. Number 12, for example, has been worn by several hall of fame quarterbacks and future hall of famers, including Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, Bob Griese, Jim Kelly, Joe Namath, and Kenny Stabler, just to name a few.
While the best quarterback to ever wear the number 12 could be debated for hours, the number two offers less competition. Two was most notably worn by Tim Couch, Aaron Brooks, Doug Flutie, and of course, Matt Ryan.
Let’s break down the careers of these field generals who wore the number two.
Aaron Brooks
20,261 Career Passing Yards
56.5% Career Completion Percentage
123 – 92 Career Touchdown to Interception Ratio
38 – 52 Record as a Starter
More stats at Pro Football Reference
The cousin of Michael Vick, Aaron Brooks never found the same success in the NFL. While he will be remembered as an inconsistent quarterback, Brooks did lead the New Orleans Saints to the franchise’s first ever playoff win in 2000.
Tim Couch
11,131 Career Passing Yards
59.8% Career Completion Percentage
64 – 67 Career Touchdown to Interception Ratio
22 – 37 Record as a Starter
More stats at Pro Football Reference
As an All-American in college and the first overall pick of the 1999 NFL Draft, Tim Couch was supposed to bring the Cleveland Browns to the promised land. Unfortunately, injuries were the story of Couch’s career, as he showed flashes of greatness, but was never able to perform at a top level consistently.
Doug Flutie
14,715 Career Passing Yards
54.7% Career Completion Percentage
86 – 68 Career Touchdown to Interception Ratio
38 – 28 Record as a Starter
More stats at Pro Football Reference
Heisman winner and college football legend, famously known for his hail mary to beat Miami, Doug Flutie easily stands out here. However, due to his height, Flutie found most of his professional success in the Canadian Football League, winning three Grey Cups. He did make an NFL comeback after his stint in the CFL, earning a trip to the Pro Bowl and winning the Comeback Player of the Year award in 1998.
Matt Ryan
37,701 Career Passing Yards (through 2016)
64.9% Career Completion Percentage (through 2016)
240 – 114 Career Touchdown to Interception Ratio (through 2016)
85 – 57 Record as a Starter
More stats at Pro Football Reference
If Ryan’s superb numbers alone do not close the argument, his accolades will. The 2016 Most Valuable Player, the 2016 Offensive Player of the Year, 2016 First Team All-Pro, Four Pro-Bowls (2010, 2012, 2014, 2016), and the 2008 Offensive Rookie of the Year are the highlights of Ryan’s trophy case. His great playoff run leading the Falcons to a Super Bowl appearance in 2016 and his intangible clutch factor throughout his career seal the deal.
Matt Ryan is the best quarterback to ever wear two on his jersey, but we know he’s also number one in the hearts of every Falcons fan. |
Food fighting festival throwing tomatoes at eachother
La Tomatina La Tomatina in 2014 Official name La Tomatina Observed by Buñol, Valencia, Spain Date Last Wednesday in August 2018 date August 29 ( 2018-08-29 ) 2019 date August 28 ( 2019-08-28 ) 2020 date August 26 ( 2020-08-26 ) 2021 date August 25 ( 2021-08-25 ) Frequency annual
La Tomatina ( Spanish pronunciation: [la tomaˈtina]) is a festival that is held in the Valencian town of Buñol, in the East of Spain 30 kilometres (19 mi) from the Mediterranean, in which participants throw tomatoes and get involved in a tomato fight purely for entertainment purposes. Since 1945 it has been held on the last Wednesday of August, during a week of festivities in Buñol.
History [ edit ]
La Tomatina 25-08-2010
It started the last Wednesday of August in 1945 when some young people spent the time in the town square to attend the Giants and Big-Heads figures parade. The young boys decided to take part in a parade with musicians, Giants and Big-Heads figures. The energy of jovialities caused one participant's big head to fall off. The participant flew into a fit of rage, began hitting everything in his path. There was a market stall of vegetable that fell victim to the fury of the crowd. People started to pelt each other with tomatoes until the local forces ended that fruit battle.
The following year, some young people engaged in a pre-planned quarrel and brought their own tomatoes from home. Although the police broke it up, this began the early tradition. In the following years, the young boys' example had unwittingly made history.
La Tomatina was banned in the early 50s, however this did not stop the participants who were arrested. But the people protested the prohibition and the festivity was again allowed with more participants and increased passions. The festivity was again cancelled till 1957 when, as a sign of protest, the tomato burial was held. It was a demonstration in which the residents carried a coffin with a huge tomato inside. The parade was accompanied by a music band which played funeral marches. The protest was successful. La Tomatina Festival was finally permitted and became an official festival.
As a result of the report of Javier Basilio, a broadcaster from the Spanish television program called Informe Semanal, the festivity started to be known throughout the rest of Spain. Since then, the number of participants increased year after year as well as the excitement about La Tomatina Festival. In 2002, La Tomatina of Buñol was declared Festivity of International Tourist Interest by the Secretary Department of Tourism due to its success.[1]
Description [ edit ]
Preparing the "palo jabón"
Throwing tomatoes from a truck
Usually, the fight lasts for about two hours, after which the town square is covered with tomato debris.[2] Fire trucks then hose down the streets and participants often use hoses that locals provide to remove the tomatoes from their bodies. Some participants go to the “Los Peñones” pool to wash. The citric acid in the tomatoes leads to the washed surfaces in the town becoming very clean.[3][4]
Since 2013 participation in the event has been restricted to the holders of paid tickets. In 2015, it was estimated that almost 145000 kg of tomatoes were thrown.[3]
Rules of the festival [ edit ]
The city council follows a short list of instructions for the safety of the participants and the festival:[5]
Do not throw bottles or hard objects Do not tear or throw t-shirts Squash tomatoes before throwing them to avoid hurting others Keep a safe distance from trucks Stop throwing tomatoes after the second starter pistol shot Follow the directions of security staff
In other countries [ edit ]
La Tomatina Buñol has inspired similar celebrations in other parts of the world:
In popular culture [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates: |
Posted on Sep 20, 2016 in Boardgames, Front Page Features
James Day’s MBT – MAIN BATTLE TANK Game Review
MBT Game Review. Publisher: GMT Games Designer: James M. Day Price $95.00
Rick Martin
Passed Inspection: Tons of content. Complete rules for armor infantry and airpower. Multiple levels of play from beginner to advanced player. Beautiful components. Complete table of contents and index.
Failed Basic: Some confusion as to air power attacking armor using armor piercing ammunition.
MBT is the newest release in the reconstituted series of armor games by legendary game designer James Day. While earlier releases from GMT have been updates of the classic Yaquinto Panzer and Armor World War 2 games (still waiting on an update to the North African themed “88” which is my favorite of the series – come on guys!), GMT’s MBT is an update of the Avalon Hill released MBT which focuses on Nato vs Eastern Block “what if” battles from 1987.
{default}
As I stated in my original review of Day’s updated Panzer:
“Back when I was in 8th grade (I’m 46 now – you do the math), I discovered military and role playing games. The first games, which I either saved up for or were given as gifts, include Dungeons and Dragons (the Basic Set), Orge, GEV, Starship Troopers, Star Fleet Battles and 88. If I remember right, 88 was available in the “Gaming Department” of a local department store at the now gone Salem Mall in Dayton, Ohio. The department included various versions of chess, including a 3 D chess clearly modeled on the game Mr. Spock played in “Star Trek”, some Avalon Hill titles and a selection of large boxed games from a company called “Yaquinto”. I distinctly remember seeing the huge flat yellow boxed 88 which featured German Africa Corp soldiers manning an 88 mm anti-tank gun on the cover. Having been raised on shows like “The Rat Patrol” and being an avid viewer of tv broadcasts of “The Desert Fox”, I had a great fondness for the North African Campaign and I remember saving up my allowance for over a month to purchase that cool looking war game. I was not disappointed. Each unit in 88 was a tank or truck or squad of infantry. I loved the tactical nature of the game and often substituted model tanks for the counters in the game. After playing 88, I had to find its brother games – Panzer and Armor. Panzer featured Russian Font battles while Armor featured the Allied campaigns to conquer Germany after D Day.
When Yaquinto Games disappeared, I gave up hope of ever seeing new expansions for these tactical war games. I purchased a reprint of Panzer by Excalibur Games but was highly disappointed . Main Battle Tank and Israeli Defense Force from Avalon Hill were modern upgrades to the system created by James M. Day in the Yaquinto games.”
MBT stands for Main Battle Tank and, as this game’s title indicates, MBT focuses on tactical armor on armor conflict in a “what if” Soviet vs Nato clash in Europe of 1987.
Each unit is one tank, truck, infantry fighting vehicle, airplane, helicopter or infantry unit. Infantry units represent squads, ½ squads or sections. Crew serviced infantry weapons include heavy machine guns, Dragon teams, AT4 teams, LAW teams, Stinger teams, Saxhorn teams, RPG teams, etc.
As always, James Day has performed an incredible amount of research to make sure that all aspects of the weapons and situations are covered with exquisite detail.
Upon opening the box, you’ll find a basic rule book, an advanced rule book, a play book, five player aid cards and two 11” x 17” summary sheets, six sheets of high quality, full color counters, 28 full color double sided unit data cards, dice and five full color double sided geomorphic maps. Also included are zip lock bags to put your counters and dice in.
The rules are well illustrated and efficiently organized and include a glossary and a table of contents as well as a complete index. The rules are organized in to a Basic Game, an Advanced Game and Optional Rules.
The Basic Game helps gets the players’ tracks wet and covers such concepts as basic line-of-site, vehicle commands, movement and attacking plus basic terrain. A basic scenario can be played in as little as 30 minutes depending on the number of tanks involved. Each tank is given a command marker which is initially placed face down. Basic commands include “Fire”, “Move”, “Over watch” and “Short Halt” (stop moving briefly and fire then move again). It is these command markers which make the game fast to play. While the versions of this game from the 70s and 80s used written commands which the players show to each other, all the new releases allow the players to place these command markers near their units and then flip them over to carry out the actions. These command markers, in fact, allow for a high degree of solitaire play-ability as all the player has to do is create a mix of command counters for the enemy based upon the scenario being played. Then the player can mix them up face down and put them next to the enemy units. Simply flip them over during the turn to see what the enemy “AI” does. It works pretty well.
In the Basic Game, a tank is rated for front and rear armor only. In the Advanced Game, each tank’s armor is broken in to ratings for 11 separate angles. To take out an enemy tank, the firing player must make a roll to hit the target with modifiers for range. All rolls are made with two 10-sided die. If a hit occurs, the shot still has to penetrate the target’s armor. Each unit has a data card which lists everything from its speed on different terrain to its gun types and penetration factor of its guns. If the shot penetrates the armor, then a 1d10 is rolled based upon the damage factor of the gun doing the shooting. Results run from a dud shell to damage to parts of the tank to leaving the target a burning wreck.
As technology has advanced so have the defensive measures used on tanks. In addition to the armor plating and sloping used in World War 2, most modern tanks use composite materials, explosive reactive armor and other systems which help protect the tank and crew from harm. These are factored in to the advanced rules and really add to the game.
Each armored unit is rated for its type of sensors and gun sights including laser range finders, thermal imagers and infra-red. Plus each unit is rated for the number and type of different weapon systems and ammunition. For example, the M1 Abrams is rated for its accuracy, armor piercing and high explosive/general purpose potential for machine guns, APFSDS rounds, Heat-MP rounds and anti-aircraft ability.
The fire power of these MBTs, AFVs, and even the firepower of the average infantry team is devastating especially when compared to the statistic of their World War 2 brethren.
Since the World War 2 “Panzer” series and the “modern” MBT use the same game system, it would be fun to take 1 M1 Abrams and send it up against 4 or 5 Tiger tanks and see what happens. I bet it wouldn’t be pretty for the Tigers especially with the modern laser sites and hard hitting APFSDS rounds on the Abrams.
Aircrafts and helicopters are covered and data is included for almost all air units which could have been used in the mid-1980s including Apaches, Cobras, A10s, Hinds, Su-25s and much more. Strangely enough, the aircrafts are only rated for their GP attack value. This seems a little counter-intuitive to me as the A10 is noted for its armor piercing cannon shells. None-the-less, air strikes can be very devastating for those stuck on the ground.
Infantry units also have access to devastating weapons such as Stinger missiles and Dragon teams. While infantry isn’t the prime focus of the game, combined arms theory is realistically treated.
Complete rules for terrain cover every conceivable cover, building, bridges, etc. you could ever hope to find in Europe. No stone has been unturned in the research and rules in this game.
Rules are included for environmental factors such as heat haze, inclement weather and night time combat.
Optional rules factor in moral plus armored doctrines of the various factions including Russian formation rules.
Both off map and on-map artillery rules are included as are rules for hidden (fog of war) units, sectional command and control, minefields, amphibious movement and the list goes on and on. This game has it all! In fact, there is so much that even an intermediate player can be a little overwhelmed, but that’s not a bad thing!
MBT is worth every penny for armor fans. Get this game! It is an instant classic!
For an interview with James Day: http://armchairgeneral.com/game-designer-james-day-armchair-general-interview.htm”
Armchair General Rating: 99 %
Solitaire Rating: 4
About the Author
A college film instructor and small business owner, Richard Martin has also worked in the legal and real estate professions, is involved in video production, film criticism, sports shooting and is an avid World War I and II gamer who can remember war games which came in plastic bags and cost $2.99 (he’s really that old)! |
New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman has overcome a lot to get to where he is today. Not only was the former Kent State quarterback taken in the seventh-round of the 2009 NFL Draft, but he was immediately converted from QB to receiver by the Patriots.
Edelman spent years fighting for playing time behind bigger name players on the Patriots like Wes Welker, but since Welker’s departure from the Pats in 2013, Edelman has become Tom Brady’s go-to receiver, and new BFF.
With two Super Bowl rings on his resume now, Edelman’s hard work has finally paid off. And, judging by this letter he received from a former teacher, it’s clear that his lofty goals were never derailed by doubters.
Take a look.
set your goals high.
do whatever it takes to achieve them. #motivation pic.twitter.com/1eoaG2yp9w — Julian Edelman (@Edelman11) July 18, 2017
It’s a nice letter and kind gesture from the former teacher, but the lesson to take away from this is that setting high goals doesn’t mean they are unattainable. Edelman has proven that with hard work, perseverance and a little grit, anything is possible.
I can’t help but think, too, that when Edelman read this letter, this went through his mind.
Edelman played a huge part in New England’s 25-point comeback win in Super Bowl LI, coming up with that big catch in the fourth quarter that kept the ball moving for the Patriots. He finished the game with five receptions for 87 yards. |
A video showing a black student accosting a white student over his dreadlocks has racked up more than two million views in two days. Shot at San Francisco University, it shows an unnamed black woman blocking the path of Corey Goldstein, who sports the controversial hairstyle. Referring to his dreads, she claims: “It’s my culture”. In a second video, Goldstein goes on to defend his choice of hairstyle, insisting that dreadlocks are “everywhere… it’s not something that is just part of the coloured community”.
Goldstein is, of course, quite right - dreadlocks are not the sole preserve of black culture. The style has been traced back to Goldstein is, of course, quite right - dreadlocks are not the sole preserve of black culture. The style has been traced back to Ancient India, Egypt and Greece . But the fact that dreads belong to many cultures doesn’t mean that Goldstein is automatically immune to the accusation that now surrounds him: that he is guilty of what is know as “cultural appropriation”. In fact, Goldstein is a shining example of its very definition : “a dominant culture [taking] elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group”.
In his defence, Goldstein stated that dreadlocks are “ingrained in so many cultures other than that. It’s in Egyptian culture; it’s in Viking culture – even in Victorian culture”. Vikings were white, yes, and there are claims that the Scandinavian seafarers rocked dreads too. But Goldstein doesn’t rock his dreads in 11 th Century Scandinavia. He wears them in the US, where dreadlocks are still tangled in the black struggle against white supremacy.
In the 1950s, a time of intense racial segregation and discrimination, African Americans adopted dreadlocks. As fellow black folk, they acknowledged its potential to reject white dominance other political, cultural and economic issues. Jamaican Rastafari’s, meanwhile, wore dreadlocks as a form of cultural resistance. They wanted to provoke society and rebel against an often white dominant culture.
As the black actress As the black actress Amandla Stenberg says, “appropriation occurs when the appropriator is not aware of the deep significance of the culture that they are partaking in”. By wearing dreadlocks without acknowledging their symbolic resistance, Goldstein reduces cultural power to a “cool” trend. As part of the oppressive culture, he emulates minority tradition while bypassing the discriminations that comes with it.
As for “Victorian culture”, I’m at a loss, but regardless of whether Benjamin Disraeli wore the locks or not, Goldstein’s defence preserves the power imbalance between white folk and people of colour.
“My hair, my rules, my body”, Goldstein asserts, displaying a deep sense of entitlement. Sure, it’s only hair, and it is his hair to style. But does he have the right to style it in a way that has a deep cultural meaning to minority cultures? The ability to style your hair for fashion’s sake is a luxury, not a right. If it is offending others, Goldstein should consider giving up that luxury.
Goldstein reveals no political or spiritual reason for wearing dreads, apart from his claim that he “loves and respects [African American] culture”. It is possible, however, to respect culture without taking from it; you can raise awareness of its oppression and educate yourself.
Such education may stop Goldstein from generalising. In his statement, he makes another interesting point. Dreads aren’t “something that all across the board [African Americans] believe in”, Goldstein states, and he’s right. There’s the mum with the weave who nags her son because she thinks his dreadlocks are disgusting. There’s the cornrowed teenager who believes that hair carries no meaning. But to go on to claim that black hair is just “something that they wear on their head” is ignorant in the extreme.
Does Goldstein really believe that no African Americans wear dreadlocks for spiritual or political reasons? None at all? A white man erasing these beliefs and meanings sounds a lot like what Azealia Banks termed “ Does Goldstein really believe that no African Americans wear dreadlocks for spiritual or political reasons? None at all? A white man erasing these beliefs and meanings sounds a lot like what Azealia Banks termed “ cultural smudging ” to me. In an interview with Hot 97, Banks said that ‘cultural smudging’ tells black people “you don’t own shit, you don’t have shit, not even the shit you created for yourself”.
Goldstein’s expression of white entitlement affirms her gloomy message. He’s taken from a minority culture and defends his actions by the same justifications used time and time again. Rather than showing “love and respect” in his way, Goldstein ought to talk to some African Americans about what dreadlocks really mean to them. |
Posted by Mark Williams | October 17, 2012
We recently attended the annual Off Road Expo just outside Los Angeles, and we spotted this unique Jeep sitting outside in the display area. In honor of the upcoming SEMA Show, the yearly festival of all things unique and custom in the automotive aftermarket, we thought we'd pass this one along.
Built by Wild Boar, this custom-converted 6x6 Jeep Wrangler is an all-new creation called the JK6 Wheeler. The vehicle uses a custom-lengthened frame and custom transfer case with output shaft adapters and offers 65 gallons of fuel capacity, giving it about 1,000 miles of tank range.
Although the JK6 uses a stock Pentastar 3.6-liter V-6, it does offer quite a few other custom details, inlcluding a roof-top pop-up tent and a unique covered bed area over the dual rear axles.
Look for more custom trucks like this as we head to Las Vegas to cover the 2012 SEMA Show closer to the end of the month. You can bet we'll have all the inside information from the show about the coolest pickup trucks we can find, as well as the latest and greatest parts and new products for your own rig. |
Six years have passed since the release of the game. Lots of dates, updates, tie-ins, events and offers. Join us right after the jump for the complete list of all major dates and updates in this six years of tapping (individual patches are not included). This post will be updated every new update is released.
2012 16 Feb The game was released in Europe (iOS) 01 Mar The game was released in North America (iOS) 03 Mar The game was removed from the store (iOS) 16 Aug The game was readded in the store (iOS) 21 Sep The first new level : Level 21 28 Sep Episode Tie-in : Season Premiere 2012 Moonshine River 03 Oct Level 22 and Event : Treehouse of Horror XXIII 05 Nov Level 23 08 Nov Event : Thanksgiving 2012 13 Nov Episode Tie-in : Penny-Wiseguys 30 Nov Episode Tie-in : The Day the Earth Stood Cool 05 Dec Level 24 and Event : Christmas 2012 2013 11 Jan Level 25 30 Jan Event : Valentine’s Day 2013 and Level 26 Pre-release 06 Feb The game was released in North America (Android) 12 Feb The game was released in Europe (Android) 14 Feb Level 26 28 Feb Episode Tie-in : Gorgeous Grampa 07 Mar Event : St. Patrick’s Day 2013 14 Mar Episode Tie-in : Dark Knight Court 21 Mar Level 27 08 Apr Episode Tie-in : What Animated Women Want 10 Apr Event : Whacking Day 19 Apr Level 28 02 May Episode Tie-in : Whiskey Business 10 May Level 29 16 May Season 24 Yard Sale 28 May Gil Offer : Day Old Donuts 31 May Level 30 12 Jun Expansion : Squidport 24 Jun The game was released (Kindle and Blackberry) 28 Jun Event : 4th Jul 2013 15 Jul Level 31 25 Jul Level 32 31 Jul Expansion : Krustyland 15 Aug Level 33 29 Aug Level 34 12 Sep Level 35 23 Sep Episode Tie-in : Season Premiere 2013 Homerland 01 Oct Event : Treehouse of Horror XXIV 23 Oct Level 36 07 Nov Level 37 15 Nov Event : Thanksgiving 2013 04 Dec Episode Tie-in : Yellow Subterfuge 10 Dec Event : Christmas 2013 2014 08 Jan Episode Tie-in : Married to the Blob 16 Jan Level 38 29 Jan Event : Super Bowl 05 Feb Event : Valentine’s Day 2014 26 Feb Friend Points 05 Mar Episodes Tie-in : Diggs and The Man Who Grew Too Much 12 Mar Event : St. Patrick’s Day 2014 19 Mar Episode Tie-in : The War of Art 28 Mar Level 39 09 Apr Episode Tie-in : Days of Future Future 15 Apr Event : Easter 2014 30 Apr Level 40 15 May Episode Tie-in : The Yellow Badge of Cowardge 22 May Level 41 03 Jun Event : Stonecutters 18 Jun Level 42 26 Jun Gil Offer : Mansion of Solid Gold 02 Jul Event : Jul 4th 2014 17 Jul Yard Sale 2014 23 Jul Level 43 04 Aug Gil Offer : Summer Donut Sale 13 Aug Gil Offer : Back to School 19 Aug Event : Clash of Clones 05 Sep Level 44 17 Sep Level 45 24 Sep Episode Tie-in : Season Premiere 2014 Clown in the Dumps 02 Oct Gil Offer : Shadow Knight 07 Oct Event : Treehouse of Horror XXV 16 Oct Episode Tie-in : Treehouse of Horror XXV 22 Oct Level 46 29 Oct Gil Offer : Ghost Pirate Airship 05 Nov Episode Tie-in : Matt Groening / Simpsorama 12 Nov Level 47 20 Nov Event : Thanksgiving 2014 and Episode Tie-in : Covercraft 28 Nov Gil Offer : Black Friday 2014 and Truckasaurus 03 Dec Event : Winter 2014 16 Dec Level 48 2015 15 Jan Gil Offer : Queen Helvetica 21 Jan Episode Tie-in : The Musk Who Fell to Earth 28 Jan Level 49 05 Feb Offer : Stonecutters Black Market Sale 12 Feb Event : Valentine’s Day 2015 18 Feb Event : Superheroes 04 Mar Level 50 11 Mar Gil Offer : The Homer 12 Mar Event : St. Patrick’s Day 2015 01 Apr Mystery Box Upgrade and Event : Easter 2015 08 Apr Level 51 14 Apr Event : Terwilligers 22 Apr Episode Tie-in : The Kids Are All Fight 06 May
Level 52 and Money Mountain 13 May Episode Tie-in : Mathlete’s Feat 29 May Level 53 03 Jun Event : Pride Month 2015 12 Jun Gil Offer : End of School Promotion 2015 17 Jun Level 54 23 Jun Event : Tap Ball and Soccer Cup 2015 30 Jun Event : 4th of Jul 2015 15 Jul Level 55 22 Jul Expansion : Springfield Heights 30 Jul Gil Offer : Ice Cream Man Homer 06 Aug Level 56 11 Aug Event : Monorail 26 Aug Gil Offer : Muscular Marge 03 Sep Level 57 17 Sep Level 58 23 Sep Episode Tie-in : Season Premiere 2015 Every Man’s Dream 24 Sep IRS and Job Manager 30 Sep Gil Deal : Oktoberfest 06 Oct Event : Treehouse of Horror 2015 15 Oct Episode Tie-in : Halloween of Horror 21 Oct Episode Tie-in : Treehouse of Horror XXVI 22 Oct New User Power Ups 28 Oct Gil Offer : Halloween Promo 10 Nov Level 59 19 Nov Event : Thanksgiving 2015 26 Nov Gil Offer : Black Friday 2015 02 Dec Expansion : Springfield Heights Chapter 2 08 Dec Event : Winter 2015 2016 13 Jan Episode Tie-in : Much Apu About Something 21 Jan Event : Deep Space Homer 04 Feb Gil Offer : Tailgate and Daily Challenges System 10 Feb Event : Valentine’s Day 2016 17 Feb World’s Largest Redwood 23 Feb Event : Burns’ Casino 09 Mar Episode Tie-in : The Marge-Ian Chronicles 16 Mar Event : St. Patrick’s Day and Easter 2016 31 March Event : Crook and Ladder 13 April Spring Cleaning 19 April Event : Wild West 9 May Whacking Day 2016 18 May Level 60 2 Jun Event : Homer’s Chiliad 14 Jun Event : Superheroes 2 29 Jun Event : 4th of July 2016 26 Jul
Dilapidated Rail Yard 3 Aug
Event : Springfield Games 16 Aug
Event : SciFi 21 Set
Episode Tie-in : Season Premiere 2016 Monty Burns’ Fleeing Circus 4 Oct
Event : Treehouse of Horror XXVII 9 Nov
Episode Tie-in : Havana Wild Weekend 16 Nov
Event : The Most Dangerous Game Dec 6
Event : Winter 2016 Dec 22
First Time Packs 2017 3 Jan
Event : Homer the Heretic 11 Jan
Episode Tie-In : The Great Phatsby Teaser 18 Jan
Episode Tie-In : The Great Phatsby 25 Jan
Lunar New Year 2017 31 Jan
Event : Destination Springfield 2 Feb
Football 2017 8 Feb
Valentine’s 2017 15 Mar
Rommelwood Academy 17 Mar
St. Patrick’s Day 2017 21 Mar
Hellfish Bonanza 28 Mar
Event : Secret Agents 16 Apr
Easter 2017 10 May
Pin Pals 24 May
Forgotten Anniversary 30 May
Event : Time Traveling Toaster 30 May
Donut Day 2017 30 May
Road to Riches 28 Jun
4th of July 2017 5 Jul
Pride 2017 19 Jul
Superheroes Return 26 Jul
Stunt Cannon 1 Aug
Event : Homerpalooza 12 Sep
County Fair 27 Sep
Episode Tie-in : The Serfsons 28 Sep
Classic Mini Events and Monorail Promo 3 Oct
Event : Treehouse of Horror XXVIII 14 Nov
This Thanksgiving’s Gone to the Birds! 29 Nov
A Rigellian Christmas Promo 5 Dic
Event : The Invasion Before Christmas 2018 3 Jan
Event : The Buck Stops Here and Episode Tie-In : “Haw-Haw Land” 17 Jan
Classic Mini Events and Bart Royale Teaser 17 Jan
Event : Bart Royale 17 Jan
Valentine’s Day 2018 17 Jan
Event: Homer vs the 18th Amendment and
Episode Tie-In : “Homer is Where the Art Isn’t”
This is all for now, happy tapping! |
The rich who bought poverty: Wealthy parents and officials face action after Mail Today exposes fake certificates being used for school admissions
Ramesh Kumar (name changed) stays with his family in a plush apartment in upscale Gulmohar Park. He sends his daughter to one of the best schools in the city in his luxury car, but does not spend a penny towards her school fees.
Meet the poor rich beneficiaries of the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) in the National Capital.
They have all the comforts and luxuries in the world besides a government certificate endorsing their 'poor status'.
Touts usually approach prospective clients at shops such as these that provide typed affidavits and help finish legal formalities
An internal probe being carried out by the Delhi government has revealed several 'glaring cases' where persons, not even remotely disadvantaged, have procured the EWS certificates and are using them to avail subsidised education for their children in some of the top public schools in the city.
Two separate Delhi government departments – education and revenue – are now ascertaining the exact number of such students and the veracity of these 'prima facie howlers'.
While it is clear that the government officials who approved the 'undeserving' candidates for EWS certificates will face criminal prosecution, it is also being examined if the parents, who actually procured the document, can be prosecuted.
As for the students admitted to schools on the basis of such false EWS certificates, the most 'prevalent' view among senior government officials is that they should be allowed to continue if their guardians pay the general category fee for the entire duration of their schooling as an EWS student. Most of the false EWS certificates were used by parents to admit their children in the academic session 2011-12 and 2012-13.
The schools which admitted such students, however, will not face any action as they accepted a genuine certificate provided by the state government.
Mail Today managed to access some of the EWS certificates and the attached verification reports that are now being probed.
The EWS or income certificates are meant for families with less than Rs 1 lakh annual earning.
It allows the beneficiaries In Ramesh Kumar's case, the surveyor found him to be staying in Gulmohar Park for over 20 years and recommended rejection of his application.
Despite this, the applicant was issued the certificate by the authorities. In another case, the verification official went to F-block in Lado Sarai, south Delhi, and rejected the case.
He cautioned: 'Applicant has given Lado Sarai address only for admission purpose.' The story is no different in another case in Lajpat Nagar II where the verification official observed that the applicant was staying in an 'upper middleclass locality and the standard of living was good'. He wrote in his report that the applicant pretended to belong to the lower income group, but the ground reality was totally different.
Delhi's divisional commissioner Vijay Dev admitted that such irregularities had come to light and promised prompt and severe action.
'All these glaring cases came to our notice only recently and a probe is on to identify the culprits,' Dev said.
He questioned the logic behind issuing EWS certificates to candidates who 'didn't even get a favourable verification report'.
'In all such cases, prima facie, it seems that action can be taken against the local administrative staff for issuing such certificates. Given the importance of the issue, it was recently raised at a meeting with the education department and we will jointly address it in a few days,' Dev said.
According to sources, the education department too has made a tentative list of students with an 'iffy' EWS background.
'The list was made after schools and others noticed certain EWS candidates coming to school in private cars,' a senior education department official said.
Senior government officials said before any action is taken or announced, the suspects would be given a 'fair hearing and a chance to explain'.
If they fail, they would face action. Delhi chief secretary P.K. Tripathi, too, accepted that it was a serious issue and assured strict action in all such cases that came to the government's notice.
'In future, we can also examine the possibility of making the process of issuing EWS certificates a bit stricter through involvement of gazetted officers to ensure that such government facilities are availed of by the right candidates,' Tripathi said.
Mail Today had recently exposed how the EWS certificates could be bought for just Rs 5,000.
In order to get these certificates, one would have to go through an extensive network of touts that is forever present around the offices of the subdivisional magistrate and district collector in the city. access to several government schemes and benefits.
An underprivileged family can apply for the EWS certificates at the local sub-divisional magistrate's office on a plain paper, accompanied by an affidavit and Delhi residence proof.
Each of these applications is verified by the local office staff who make a visit to the address to ascertain the claim of the applicant. |
In this file photo, piles of coal are shown at a power plant in Thompsons, Texas. The plant, which operates natural gas and coal-fired units, is one of the largest power plants in the United States.
The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emitted from power plants and other industrial activities around the world is a vast source of untapped energy, according to new research that describes a proof-of-concept technique to harvest it.
Akin to harvesting energy from the wind, this combination of chemistry and mechanics would generate electricity from the carbon dioxide (CO2) already flowing out of plants. While it wouldn't destroy the CO2, it would pull far more energy from existing waste gas. It could arguably even enable plants to resist scaling up and becoming more wasteful, just to keep up with demand.
"The energy is there," Bert Hamelers, a program director at Wetsus, the Center of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology in the Netherlands, who led the research, told NBC News. "Only you need a turbine to get it."
The system he and colleagues devised to get energy from CO2 involves alternately mixing water or another liquid solution with combustion gas containing a high concentration of CO2 such as that from a power plant and air with a low concentration of the gas.
These liquids are pumped between specialized membranes to produce an electric current. The current comes from the concentration gradient between the combustion gas and air, Hamelers explained. The process is described in detail in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters.
Other teams are working on a similar mixing approach to exploit the chemical differences between seawater and freshwater. But, until now, no one has tried to mix a combustion gas with air, Hamelers noted.
Like wringing energy from the wind, harvesting energy from CO2 does not increase greenhouse gas emissions. "For the same CO2 emissions," he said," you get more energy."
The approach, he emphasized, does not get rid of the CO2. "You use the energy that is now wasted. You bring it in and get the extra energy out, but you cannot sequester it."
The CO2 released from power plants and other activities around the world could produce 1,570 billion kilowatt hours, or the equivalent of about 400 times the annual electrical output of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona, Hamelers and colleagues noted in their paper.
For the proof-of-concept, the researchers used a well-known technique to bubble the gas and air through the liquid solution. That process uses more energy than the energy it produces, "but there are alternatives like membrane-based processes that use less energy," Hamelers said.
"The objective for us was to show that, yes, there is this source of energy and, yes, you can harvest it," he added. "Of course you need a lot more technological development before this is a system that can be practiced."
John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, visit his website. |
Friday’s Grand Jirga against drone strikes, at which Tariq was present – Pratap Chatterjee
Two boys aged 12 and 16 years old were reportedly killed in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan on Monday night. One of the boys, Tariq Khan, had attended an anti-drone rally in the Pakistan capital just days beforehand.
It’s profoundly shocking that a teenage boy who had travelled to protest these drones should be killed by them just days later.
Pratap Chatterjee
Monday’s deadly attack struck a vehicle near the town of Mir Ali in Waziristan. Up to four people died, including 16-year old Tariq Khan and his 12-year old cousin Wahid.
It was the second attack in as many days in which civilians have been reported killed. On Sunday four chromite miners are believed to have died as they traveled to work in Waziristan. The US has been insisting that it has killed no civilians since May 2010.
The Bureau’s own data shows that between 111 and 281 civilians have been reported by credible media as being killed in US drone strikes between May 1 2010 and Monday’s attack. Sixteen of those killed were reportedly children, including Tariq and Wahid.
He was one of the potential camera trainees we hoped would film the activity of drones in Waziristan. He was young and very enthusiastic.
Shahzad Akbar, Pakistani lawyer
The death of the two boys on Monday takes to 175 overall the number of children reported killed in US drone strikes since 2004.
For the Bureau’s full data on Pakistan drone strikes click here.
Rally
Days before his death on Monday 16 year old Tariq Khan had traveled to Islamabad to protest against US drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas. He attended a jirga, or tribal meeting, organised to protest the attacks by UK legal charity Reprieve and its Pakistani partners.
The Bureau’s Pratap Chatterjee was at the gathering and photographed the participants: ‘It’s profoundly shocking that a teenage boy who had travelled to protest these drones should be killed by them just days later. Despite the Bureau’s evidence to the contrary, the US continues to deny that it is killing civilians in Pakistan. Whether it will continue to do so remains to be seen. ‘
It was billed as a ‘Waziristan Grand Jirga’ on behalf of drone strike victims in Pakistan – to be held at the Margalla hotel in Islamabad. Some 25 men, young and old, filed into the first floor conference hall shaking hands and kissing cheeks with over a dozen Waziri elders who had convened the high level meeting to discuss ‘how to end the suffering of innocent civilians.’ It was billed as a ‘Waziristan Grand Jirga’ on behalf of drone strike victims in Pakistan – to be held at the Margalla hotel in Islamabad. Some 25 men, young and old, filed into the first floor conference hall shaking hands and kissing cheeks with over a dozen Waziri elders who had convened the high level meeting to discuss ‘how to end the suffering of innocent civilians.’ One of the young men who walked in to the jirga on October 28, 2011, was Tariq Khan, a 16 year old boy. He shook hands with Karim Khan of Mir Ali, the father of a drone strike victim, and then took his place in the audience. The night before, I sat with some of his companions and we ate a traditional Pashtun dinner. The youngest among them stayed silent and reserved as their elders spoke with me on their behalf, as is Pashtun tradition. Rahimullah, another Waziri teenager who ate with me, smiled only when we discussed their local football teams. The next morning I watched and filmed Tariq Khan sitting quietly at the meeting. Like Rahimullah, he said little, and listened respectfully as the elders discussed what to do. For four hours, the Waziris debated the drone war, and then they listened to a resolution condemn the attacks, read out by Mirza Shahzad Akbar, a lawyer from the Foundation for Fundamental Rights. The group voted for this unanimously. After lunch, the group travelled to a rally outside the Pakistani parliament. Imran Khan, a former cricketer, and now the leader of the Tehreek-e-Insaaf political party and Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of Reprieve, a UK legal charity, addressed some 2,000 people gathered. The next day, the Waziris returned to their homes, eight hours drive away. Just over 72 hours later Tariq Khan was dead. He was killed in a drone strike on Monday when he was travelling in a car to Miran Shah, the biggest town in North Waziristan. Wahid, his 12 year old cousin, was also killed together with two other men. The boys were on their way to see a relative, according to Noor Kalam, Tariq’s uncle, who spoke to the BBC by phone. ‘We condemn this very strongly,’ he said. ‘He was just a normal boy who loved football.’ Pratap Chatterjee
Shahzad Akbar is a Pakistani lawyer engaged in a number of lawsuits on behalf of clients injured in CIA drone attacks. Speaking to the Bureau from Islamabad, he recalled meeting Tariq last week: ‘He was one of the potential camera trainees we hoped would film the activity of drones in Waziristan. He was young and very enthusiastic.’
Shahzad described the two most recent drone attacks as ‘completely meaningless.’
Clive Stafford-Smith of Reprieve said of the deaths: ‘Could you ever have clearer proof against the line that the US is not killing ‘non-combatants’, with the death of a 16-year old boy I just met, and his 12-year old cousin?’
When asked whether it still maintained that it has killed no civilians since May 2010, the CIA declined to comment. |
President Obama Threw A Cyberwar.... And No One Showed Up
from the firing-off-a-blank-check-from-the-'Executive-Order'-account dept
Last spring, in the wake of the Sony hack, President Obama threw a cyberwar. And no one showed up.
In April 2015, President Obama issued Executive Order 13694 declaring a national emergency to deal with the threat of hostile cyber activity against the United States. But six months later, the emergency powers that he invoked to punish offenders had still not been used because no qualifying targets were identified, according to a newly released Treasury Department report.
It certainly sounded scary enough. Obama said things about "cyber threats" being a serious threat to national security and the US economy. The state of emergency, according to the President, would create a "targeted tool" for combating our cyber-enemies.
This state of emergency is just one more in a line of uninterrupted states of emergencies dating back to the mid-1970s. A perpetual state of emergency is far more useful to the government than a "targeted tool," so a declaration of (cyber) war against a bunch of noncombatants still served a purpose, if only indirectly.
It started the ball rolling on the CISPA/CISA resurgence, which eventually "passed" after being attached to the coattails of a budget bill with far more momentum and support, as few legislators were willing to stare down the barrel of a government shutdown just to prevent a badly-written cyber-bill from passing.
More importantly, the president's statement and executive order gave the administration permission to do things it doesn't normally get to do.
Under the powers delegated by such statutes, the President may seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens.
Declaring a state of emergency allows for the potential wreaking of havoc in taxpayers' lives. And even if these powers go unexercised (or anything), it still costs the taxpayers money.
Even though it generated no policy outputs, implementation of the executive order nevertheless incurred costs of “approximately $760,000, most of which represent wage and salary costs for federal personnel,” the Treasury report said.
The expenses of national states of emergency aren't being offset by seized funds or assets related to the targets of the executive order. The Treasury Department's report logically notes that zero targets means zero seizures. According to another report quoted by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, the long-running "state of emergency" prompted by various North Korean actions is resulting in less than ~$60,000 a year -- compared to an operational cost of at least $125,000/month (presumably the North Korean state of emergency is more expensive than the "cyberwar" one). No one really expects a "break even" government, but it's inarguable that targeting known or unknown entities via executive orders really isn't doing much to cripple their operations.
Filed Under: administration, cybersecurity, cyberwar, executive order 13694, president obama, white house |
Credit card fraud and identify theft are serious problems for consumers and industries. Though corporations and individuals work to improve safeguards, it has become increasingly difficult to protect financial data and personal information from criminal activity. Fortunately, new insights into quantum physics may soon offer a solution.
As reported in The Optical Society's (OSA) new high-impact journal Optica, a team of researchers from the Netherlands has harnessed the power of quantum mechanics to create a fraud-proof method for authenticating a physical "key" that is virtually impossible to thwart.
This innovative security measure, known as Quantum-Secure Authentication, can confirm the identity of any person or object, including debit and credit cards, even if essential information (like the complete structure of the card) has been stolen. It uses the unique quantum properties of light to create a secure question-and-answer (Q&A) exchange that cannot be "spoofed" or copied.
The "Question-and-Answer" Security Game
Traditional magnetic-stripe-only cards are relatively simple to use but also simple to copy. Recently, banks have begun issuing so-called "smart cards" that include a microprocessor chip to authenticate, identify and enhance security. But regardless of how complex the code or how many layers of security, the problem remains that an attacker who obtains the information stored inside the card can copy or emulate it.
The new approach outlined in this paper avoids this risk entirely by using the peculiar quantum properties of photons that allow them to be in multiple locations at the same time to convey the authentication questions and answers. Though difficult to reconcile with our everyday experiences, this strange property of light can create a fraud-proof Q&A exchange, like those used to authorize credit card transactions.
"Single photons of light have very special properties that seem to defy normal behavior," said Pepijn Pinkse, a researcher from the University of Twente and lead author on the paper. "When properly harnessed, they can encode information in such a way that prevents attackers from determining what the information is."
The process works by transmitting a small, specific number of photons onto a specially prepared surface on a credit card and then observing the tell-tale pattern they make. Since -- in the quantum world -- a single photon can exist in multiple locations, it becomes possible to create a complex pattern with a few photons, or even just one.
Due to the quantum properties of light, any attempt by a hacker to observe the Q&A exchange would, as physicists say, collapse the quantum nature of the light and destroy the information being transmitted. This makes Quantum-Secure Authentication unbreakable regardless of any future developments in technology.
Making Cards Quantum Secure
To provide security in the real world, a credit card -- for example -- would be equipped with a paper-thin section of white paint containing millions of nanoparticles. Using a laser, individual photons of light are projected into the paint where they bounce around the nanoparticles like metal balls in a pinball machine until they escape back to the surface, creating the pattern used to authenticate the card.
If "normal" light is projected onto the area, an attacker could measure the entering pattern and return the correct response pattern. A bank would therefore not be able to see a difference between the real card and the counterfeit signal projected by the attacker.
However, if a bank sends a pattern of single "quantum" photons into the paint, the reflected pattern would appear to have more information -- or points of light -- than the number of photons projected. An attacker attempting to intercept the "question" would destroy the quantum properties of the light and capture only a fraction of the information needed to authenticate the transaction.
"It would be like dropping 10 bowling balls onto the ground and creating 200 separate impacts," said Pinkse. "It's impossible to know precisely what information was sent (what pattern was created on the floor) just by collecting the 10 bowling balls. If you tried to observe them falling, it would disrupt the entire system."
Quantum, But Not Difficult
According to Pinkse, this unique way of providing security is suitable for protecting government buildings, bank cards, credit cards, identification cards, and even cars. "The best thing about our method is that secrets aren't necessary. So they can't be filched either," he said.
Quantum-Secure Authentication could be employed in numerous situations relatively easily, since it uses simple and cheap technology -- such as lasers and projectors -- that is already available. |
When Vanishing Inc. Magic set out to design its first deck of signature brand playing cards, we had one specific goal in mind: to create the most fashion-forward, subtle, and sophisticated "look" for a deck of cards yet devised. The result is the Dapper Deck Deluxe Package, which is an attractive deck of cards crafted from the finest stock and finish, along with a matching silk tie and a 1000 thread count pocket square. Everything is packaged in a hand-painted wooden lacquer box complete with lock, practice mirror, and Dapper Deck insignia. Each package comes with a numbered, signed certificate by creators Joshua Jay and Andi Gladwin. Strictly limited to 400 units.
We consulted with two fashion industry experts to help us hone a design that would match fine suits that the stylish magicians we create for would wear. The dapper base colors are navy blue or, for more of a punch, Jerry's Nugget Orange. The details are in pastel shades of green, yellow, red, and grey, and each back design is designed to bring out the colors of your wardrobe, and accent the tie or pocket square in your ensemble.
The idea here is not to look over-matched or branded. Instead, our hope is that early in your performance, perhaps as the cards are being shuffled, your most astute spectators will notice that the attractive print on the back of your cards is matched to your pocket square and tie. This is the kind of detail we strive for in the quality of our magic. It should be the detail we strive for in our appearance as well.
The Dapper Deck Deluxe is comprised of a heavy wooden box that previews the Dapper Deck design. Inside you are supplied with a deck of each color--navy and orange--as well as the pocket square (made of the finest quality silk available to us) and a thin, silk tie. A practice mirror is provided on the lid of the box for a quick check to make sure your hands are nimble and your tie is on straight. And an ornamental lock and key are provided to keep unsuspecting eyes away from the secrets of the Dapper Deck.
ADD ONS -
If you would like to pledge for a add on here is how it works.
Here's what you can add on.
Here's how add ons work. |
By IANS
BENGALURU: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Friday warned the ruling NDA government against distorting the Constitution and implementing the agenda of the RSS.
"The aim of the union government is to distort the Constitution, which was drafted by B.R. Ambedkar, and implement the RSS agenda. We should go by what Ambedkar had exhorted us to do - educate, organise and agitate," he said at an international conference here.
Inaugurating an international conference on "Quest for Equity: Reclaiming Social Justice, Re-visiting Ambedkar", Gandhi said truth and power were not the same.
"Truth and power are not the same thing. Truth is what stands up to power," he told the gathering at the opening ceremony of the three-day conference organised by the state government.
Citing a few influential leaders and change makers the world over, Gandhi said iconic personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Ambedkar and and American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr had the ability and courage to speak the truth of power.
"Though the emperor is naked, none had the courage to point it out due to oppression, weakening of the institutions and subversion of democracy to serve the narrow purpose of a few," he asserted.
Drawing parallels to Adolf Hitler's assertion that reality was best understood when it was suppressed, he said a dangerous and global epidemic was to distort truth.
Gandhi also decried casteism and untouchability that were still prevalant across the country.
Human rights activist Martin Luther King III, son of the legendary American civil rights leader, said that like US President Donald Trump's campaign, the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had unleahsed animosity against the minorities.
"Parallels abound between the 'alt-right' in the US and the 'Hindu-extreme right' in India," he said.
Organised by the Karnataka government, the conference will unveil the 'Bengaluru Declaration' outlining specific constitutional, institutional and policy responses to concerns of equity, human rights, freedom and democracy. |
At Sunday’s Edmonton Oilers playoff game at Rogers Place, some female fans were surprised to find women’s bathrooms had been converted to men’s, causing their wait times to increase.
Earlier in the playoffs, male fans had complained about lengthy lines for washrooms during Oilers playoff games.
The Oilers Entertainment group attempted to cut down on the wait times by adding a staff member to the washrooms to help point out empty stalls and putting sticks on the floor to assist fans in knowing where to line up.
READ MORE: Edmonton and Rogers Place making tweaks to adjust to Oilers’ playoff fever
Watch below: In response to fans, Rogers Place has made a few changes to help speed up washroom lineups during hockey games.
But on Sunday night, Rogers Place did something different, flipping women’s bathrooms to men’s in an attempt to reduce wait times for male fans.
“For playoffs, what we’re seeing is we’re getting predominantly men in here – the more exciting the hockey gets, I think the less guys are willing to give up their tickets,” said Susan Darrington, general manager of Rogers Place. “So we’ve adjusted our plans and we flipped a restroom on our main and on our upper concourse to be more available for men.”
On Sunday night, the women’s bathrooms backed up and female fans took to Twitter to voice their concerns.
“We came across an extremely long lineup and found out that was actually the lineup for the women’s washroom. And we had to go, we had to wait,” Jacqueline Comer said.
She estimated she got into a bathroom line on the upper level about two minutes into the intermission and spent about 25 minutes waiting to use the washroom.
“It was ridiculous. Waiting five minutes, 10 minutes – it’s OK. But waiting half an hour? That’s not acceptable,” she said.
Charlene Zacharuk encountered the same issue.
“I go to the washroom that’s always the women’s washroom and it’s a men’s washroom. So we make our way three-quarters of the way around the building and the women’s washroom is 60 deep,” she explained. “There was no lineup at the men’s washroom that was previously the women’s washroom, so that made it even more frustrating.”
Darrington said staff are trying to address the issues.
“We clicker count, we’ve got people watching the lines and again, we’re studying them and doing everything we can operationally to make it as comfortable as we can for our fans.”
She said staff survey season-ticket holders to try and get an idea of how many men are coming to a game compared to women.
“You’ll never make everyone happy. I think we actually feel good about what we’ve done. The men are getting through faster, the women are seeing a little more of a delay.”
Zacharuk said flipping the bathrooms isn’t a fair solution.
“I get that the men had to wait, and it was an inconvenience for them, but they solved the problem by creating another problem.”
Not wanting to miss a minute of the action, Zacharuk chose not to drink in the second period so she could stay in her seat and avoid the long lineups.
“I don’t know why they couldn’t make it just one unisex bathroom. You could have a choice. If you don’t want unisex, you go to the guys’ or you go to the girls’ washroom,” she said, suggesting the idea as a means of eliminating the wait times for both genders.
READ MORE: Porta potties installed downtown to relieve Edmontonians during Oilers’ playoff run
Comer felt the decision showed male fans took precedent over women.
“It just felt like we were on the other end of the scale for us in terms of what fans were important,” she explained.
“You should have enough washrooms for the number of people that are going to be in there. I think it’s kind of a no-brainer.”
Rogers Place aims to have fans in and out of the bathrooms in about four minutes, a time Darrington said they were successful with in the regular season.
According to the City of Edmonton, there are 172 toilets and urinals required by code, while Rogers Place has 485. However, some have use restrictions, including company boxes, the Loge Level and Sportsnet Club. |
Hillary's Espionage and the Statute of Limitations
Alger Hiss was a U.S. State Department official who was accused in 1948 of being a Soviet spy. Hiss's indictment stemmed from alleged espionage in the form of secret State Department documents spirited out of Foggy Bottom and into the hands of persons "not authorized to receive" them. "The Pumpkin Papers" consisted of sixty-five pages of retyped secret State Department documents, four pages in Hiss's own handwriting of copied State Department cables, and five rolls of developed and undeveloped 35mm film. Being charged under the Espionage Act was appropriate for those who obtained any information relating to the national defense and delivered that information to someone who was not authorized to have it. The former State Department official, Alger Hiss, typed classified information on his office typewriter, slipped the copies into a briefcase, removed classified information from the State Department, and provided all of this to his Soviet handler, who photographed and microfilmed it. The FBI wished to prosecute Alger Hiss for espionage, but the Justice Department indicated that the statute of limitations had run out, and Hiss was convicted of the lesser crime, perjury, for lying to the FBI.
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton insisted that she "had broken no rules" to conduct government business through the use of a private email service in lieu of the U.S. government's unclassified system, the Non-Classified Internet Protocol (IP) Router Network (abbreviated as NIPRNet) and the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet). These are a system of interconnected computer networks used by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of State to transmit classified information. The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars developing, deploying, and protecting its internet protocol router networks to enable authorized government officials to conduct the business of government, properly exchange information, and intelligence, up to and including information classified SECRET, with others in the government (and their contractors) who are authorized and entitled to have it. Mrs. Clinton purposely avoided using the government's networks through the use of a homebrew server. That she found a way to transmit countless classified documents, up to and including special access program material, to her personal server has been made public and is not in question. The former Democratic presidential candidate disclosed that she and her aides had deleted more than 30,000 emails she deemed "personal." For a frame of reference, 30,000 emails printed out represents a stack of 60 reams of paper, a stack 11 feet tall. When the FBI retrieved the spools of microfilm, the Alger Hiss "Pumpkin Papers" printed out to a stack four and a half feet tall. Hillary Clinton and the FBI have learned much from the Alger Hiss case. The American public will not be able to read a transcript of Hillary Clinton's interview with the FBI, because the bureau did not transcribe it. Furthermore, Mrs. Clinton was also not placed under oath during the three-and-a-half-hour interview. When Mrs. Clinton wasn't placed under oath, she could not be charged with lying to the FBI, as Alger Hiss was eventually charged with and convicted of. There doesn't seem to be a race against the clock for the Trump DOJ to charge Mrs. Clinton with espionage. Alger Hiss escaped prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917 due to the statute of limitations having expired. Also, there was no appetite by the DOJ to charge the former senior State Department official and Democrat lawyer. Although federal statute USC 3282 provides for a five-year statute of limitation for the vast majority of federal crimes, this statute of limitations does not necessarily stand in the case of espionage prosecution. It is generally agreed by legal scholars that acts of espionage can be prosecuted for at least ten years after the alleged act. I wish Congressman Trey Gowdy could give Attorney General Sessions a lesson on Spoliation of Evidence, with which attorneys fresh out of law school are familiar. Hillary Clinton's deletion of 30,000 emails is a classic case. When parties fail to produce relevant evidence within their span of control, evidence they are otherwise naturally expected to possess, the U.S. legal system allows and even mandates that unfavorable presumptions be drawn against them. So when some item of relevant evidence – whether documents, physical objects, or data relevant to an ongoing legal matter – is destroyed, discarded, or modified in some way, the U.S. legal system allows us to presume that the missing evidence was unfavorable to that party and allows us to draw conclusions accordingly. The classic junior high school excuse, "the dog ate my homework," isn't valid under the law when the disappearance is suspicious. Spoliation of evidence is prohibited by an array of laws and regulations. Also, anyone who destroys relevant evidence or assists in such destruction is subject to criminal prosecution, civil fines, tort liability, exclusion of testimony, and dismissal of claims, as well as adverse evidentiary inferences. We have little way of knowing if any one of the 33,000 missing documents under Mrs. Clinton's control could have been used "to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation." The Trump DOJ should be making all possible efforts to retrieve the missing 33,000 emails and determine once and for all: "was it espionage or was it yoga?" "You don't use BleachBit for yoga emails or for bridesmaids emails," Congressman Trey Gowdy said in an interview to Fox News. "When you are using BleachBit, it is something you really do not want the world to see." The cabal of President Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI director James Comey did everything they could to protect Hillary Clinton from the politically explosive charge of espionage when it was obvious to anyone in the intelligence community what she was doing. There is sufficient and obvious evidence that like the Soviet spy Alger Hiss, Mrs. Clinton should be charged with espionage before the statute of limitations runs out. |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.