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Rob Ford stole my seat! Disgraced Toronto Mayor is accused of taking rock star's spot at Buffalo Bills NFL game
Canadian musician Matt Mays says Rob Ford took his seat at the Buffalo Bills-Atlanta Falcons game in Toronto today
Mays tweeted that the Mayor was in his seat and asked fans for advice
Most advised he kick the embattled politician from the seat
Mays eventually got his seat back
author]
He's done some questionable things in his life, but has Toronto Mayor Rob Ford finally crossed the line?
The embattled politician has been accused of stealing another person's seat when he attended the match between the Atlanta Falcons and the Buffalo Bills in Toronto on Sunday.
Shortly after the game began, musician Matt Mays tweeted that the Mayor was in his seat.
Seat warmer: Musician Matt Mays accused Mayor Rob Ford of stealing his seat at a Sunday NFL game
Musician versus Mayor: Matt Mays was unsure of what to do when he discovered Rob Ford in his seat at the NFL today
'Rob Ford is sitting in my seat at the Bills game. He stole my seat. I don't know what to do,' he wrote at 4:50pm.
The musician, who fronts indie rock band The Guthries, sought some advice from his Twitter followers, no doubt somewhat trepidatious of the volatile Mayor.
'I'm by myself. I gotta kick him out right? I mean I would kick anyone else out... Am I wrong?' he asked the Twittersphere.
Rob Ford is sitting in my seat at the Bills game. He stole my seat. I don't know what to do. — Matt Mays (@MattMays) December 1, 2013
I'm by myself. I gotta kick him out right? I mean I would kick anyone else out... Am I wrong? — Matt Mays (@MattMays) December 1, 2013
xxxx
Lisa wrote, '@MattMays After seeing him tackle that old lady at the city council meeting, I'm not so sure.'
Steve Fisher advised, 'We all wish we could boot him from office. At least you can boot him from your seat. Do it. '
Seemingly still unsure of what action to take, a frustrated Mays tweeted, 'The mayor stole my f@#%ing seat man!!'
@MattMays tell him theres a guy selling crack by the toilets. Job done. — Peter Webber (@PeterWebber) December 1, 2013
While so far there hasn't been any visible evidence of Mays being at the game, social media has been alive with football fans' pictures of Ford.
According to one Twitter use, a security guard had to be stationed near Ford - or Mays' - seat to shoo away people trying to snap a picture of the infamous Canadian.
Hey Rob Ford! pic.twitter.com/275fTMLwQz — Jack Walmsley (@jackle_more) December 1, 2013 Fan favorite: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford poses with a fan during the first half of an NFL football game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Buffalo Bills on Sunday
Snack time: There was almost more attention on Rob Ford's movements than the action on the field
The Mayor is pictured enjoying snacks, applauding and posing for pictures with his bemused public.
Fortunately, it seems May finally screwed up the courage to ask Ford for his seat back.
At 3:06pm, the singer-so0ngwriter told fans, 'Got my seat back.' |
Home Bariatrics Gastric Sleeve
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Sleeve Gastrectomy (Gastric Sleeve)
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Gastric Sleeve Surgery: All the things you need to know
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The Gastric Sleeve Surgery (or Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy) is a bariatric procedure that removes 75-80% of the stomach. It is now the most commonly performed bariatric procedure in United States and worldwide.
Gastric Sleeve Surgery brings profound changes to life!
Overall improved quality of life
Excess weight loss of about 60-70% within one year of surgery
Remission or improvement of obesity related health conditions such as diabetes mellitus type II, hypertension, sleep apnea, fatty liver disease, joint pain, and hyperlipidemia
Desire to eat decreases
Reduction in hunger sensation
How Gastric Sleeve surgery is performed
1. Small incisions are made in the abdominal wall for the insertion of small trocars
2. The stomach is inspected and the blood vessels to the lateral side of stomach are divided
3. A Bougie tube is inserted into the stomach and serves as a sizer for the new stomach
4. The stapler is used to divide the stomach into two parts
5. Continuous firing of the stapler is used to divide the stomach
6. The stomach is completely divided into two parts
7. The new banana shaped stomach has about 20-25% of original stomach volume
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Gastric Sleeve Educational Video
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How does the Gastric Sleeve surgery work?
There is a reduction in stomach volume, causing people to feel full much quicker after the surgery Hormonal changes such as reduced secretion of hunger hormones cause people to feel less hungry Increased stomach motility, which allows food to pass stomach and intestine quicker after surgery
History and Trend of the Gastric Sleeve
Initially, the Gastric Sleeve was the restrictive part of the biliopancreatic diversion duodenal switch operation. Then, the gastric sleeve became the first stage operation for very obese patients who underwent duodenal switch operation to reduce the perioperative risks. Some patients lost enough weight after the gastric sleeve surgery and did not undergo the planned second stage duodenal switch operation. These findings prompted bariatric surgeons to consider the gastric sleeve surgery as a standalone bariatric procedure. The first laparoscopic Gastric Sleeve was performed in 2000.
Over the past decade, the number of gastric sleeve surgeries continue to increase nearly every year. Now, more than half of all bariatric surgeries performed in US are gastric sleeve procedures.
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How much weight will I lose after the Gastric Sleeve?
On average, people lose about 60-70% of their excess weight
The first 2 weeks: 10-20 pounds; most patients lose about one pound a day
The first 3 months: 35-45% of excess weight loss
The first 6 months: 50-60% of excess weight loss
The first year: 60-70% of excess weight loss
Most people reach their lowest weight 12-24 months after surgery
The Gastric Sleeve success rate is approximately 80-90%
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Improvement of Obesity Related Health Problems
Large clinical trials and studies have proven gastric sleeve surgery lead to resolution or improvement of many obesity related health problems such as:
Type 2 diabetes: Most studies indicated that 60-80% of patients with type 2 diabetes could achieve disease remission or improvement after gastric sleeve surgery
Hypertension
Fatty liver disease
High cholesterol
Sleep apnea
Decreased cancer risk
PCOS
Asthma
Migraine
Join pain
Depression and other psychosocial problems
Infertility
Low testosterone: Gastric sleeve can naturally lead to increased testosterone level
Urinary incontinence
Gout
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Eligibility and Insurance Coverage
Most insurance companies cover bariatric surgery, when you meet the following criteria:
BMI greater than 40, or
BMI of 35-39.9 with one of the obesity related health problems such as:
Hypertension
Type 2 diabetes
Sleep Apnea
Fatty liver disease, or
Hyperlipidemia
For patients who want to have surgery at UCLA, we will verify your insurance coverage.
Please submit an online request of appointment form.
For patients with BMI of 30-34.9, insurance will not cover bariatric surgery procedures. However, we have self-pay options for those individuals who have struggled with obesity for a long time, especially those with obesity related health problems.
Calculate your BMI
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Recovery after Surgery
The surgery takes approximately 40-70 minutes
Discharge from hospital typically occurs after 1-2 nights
All patients are encouraged to walk as early as 3-4 hours after surgery
In general, the pain is easily manageable after surgery. Most patients take less than the recommended pain medication
Most patients go back to work and/or school after 2-4 weeks. Fatigue is common the first 2 weeks due to low calorie intake from liquid diet. However, the majority of patients do not feel hungry during this stage of the diet. The energy level improves quickly after the introduction of the soft diet, which is approximately 2 weeks after surgery. On occasion, we allow patients to work from home 2-3 days per week after surgery.
Patients can begin exercising 4 weeks after surgery
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Complications and Risks
Over the past decade, with the improvement of surgical techniques and surgeons’ experience, the gastric sleeve has become an overall safe bariatric surgical procedure. However, complications can still occur during and after surgery. Below are the main complications and risks of the gastric sleeve surgery:
Leakage from the staple line – this is a rate but serious complication of the gastric sleeve surgery. The reported leak rate is between 0.7-3 percent. At UCLA, we pay paramount attention to our surgical techniques to minimize all the complications. At this point, we have never had a leak from the gastric sleeve surgery at UCLA.
Stricture/stenosis - In the past, we had one stricture among our first 20 gastric sleeve procedures. We have not had any strictures within the past 5 years.
Bleeding
Blood Clot
Heart Burn – This is a very controversial topic in bariatric surgery and the data from different centers is inconsistent. In our experience, most patients with heartburn before surgery see improvement of symptoms after surgery due to weight loss. Some patients may develop new heartburn, which is treatable with over-the-counter anti-acid medications, in most cases.
Nutrient or vitamin deficiency
Weight Regain – After 1-2 years, slight weight regain is common among all bariatric procedures and about 10-20% of patients can have significant weight regain after gastric sleeve surgery. After 5 years of follow up, many centers collected data to show that the majority of patients can maintain their weight loss after the Gastric Sleeve Surgery.
Excess skin, in some cases, insurance will cover excess skin removal
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Diet after Gastric Sleeve Surgery
Day 1 : Clear liquid diet. Some surgeons allow patients to drink water a few hours after surgery
: Clear liquid diet. Some surgeons allow patients to drink water a few hours after surgery Day 2-14 : Full liquid diet including protein shakes, yogurt, broth, milk, and juice
: Full liquid diet including protein shakes, yogurt, broth, milk, and juice Weeks 3-5 : Soft food diet
: Soft food diet Patients can begin introducing regular food 5 weeks after surgery. They are encouraged to eat a small amount of food each time and have meals that are more frequent.
All patients must take multi-vitamin and B complex after surgery
Comparison of Gastric Sleeve to other Types of Bariatric Procedures
Laparoscopic gastric banding (Lap-band) was once very popular. However, due to its high rate of long term complications and inferior weight loss, the number of Lap-band surgeries went down every year in the US and worldwide. Most of the US large academic Bariatric Surgery Centers rarely perform the Lap-band procedure at this time.
Laparoscopic Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass Surgery is the gold standard of bariatric surgery. However, Gastric Sleeve has replaced the Gastric Bypass Surgery as the most popular bariatric surgery in recent years due to its technical simplicity and fewer long-term complication rates.
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Advantage of Gastric Sleeve versus Gastric Bypass Surgery
Technically, the Gastric Sleeve is a much simpler surgery. The operating time for gastric sleeve is usually 40-70 minutes, while gastric bypass surgery takes approximately 2-3 hours to complete.
There is a much lower chance for nutrient or vitamin deficiency with the Gastric Sleeve procedure. In addition, there is no mal-absorption for Gastric Sleeve patients.
Some long-term complications could occur with the Gastric Bypass patients including bowel obstruction, marginal ulcer, and internal hernias. The chance of Gastric Sleeve patients developing these complications is exceedingly rare.
Gastric Sleeve Surgery Success Stories
Kallista's Story - Weight Loss Surgery: Gastric Sleeve* Gastric Sleeve
I am forever grateful for my experience at UCLA.
View Kallista's Story >
Sheena's Story - Weight Loss Surgery: Gastric Sleeve* Gastric Sleeve
If I had to do it all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat.
View Sheena's Story >
Sarah's Story - Weight Loss Surgery: Gastric Sleeve* Gastric Sleeve
I truly feel like I got another chance at life!
View Sarah's Story >
Contact Us
To schedule a consultation with UCLA Bariatric Surgery in Los Angeles, California, call us at (310) 825-7163 or
fill out our online form >
For a physician referral, please call (800) UCLA-MD1 (825-2631).
*Weight loss results can vary depending on the individual. There is no guarantee of specific results. Read full disclaimer >
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The Associated Press reported last week on the efforts of Sheriff Adrian Garcia of Harris County, Texas, to prevent violence against the Houston county jail’s estimated 250 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender inmates. The AP notes that while a number of major cities have taken similar steps, Harris County will be the first in Texas to implement such a program.
Naturally, the American Family Association and Eagle Forum are scandalized.
Under the headline, “Deputy, Ronnie is now called Regina: Jail enacts sexual orientation policy,” Charlie Butts, a reporter for the AFA’s OneNewsNow, interviews Texas Eagle Forum president and former Texas Republican Party chairwoman Cathie Adams, who claims that Houston’s mayor Annise Parker – who is openly gay – is behind the new policy.
Adams claims that Parker actually wants to leave LGBT people “more vulnerable to abuse” and that the policy “will eke into the community and set up a very tragic situation.” She suggests instead of allowing transgender people to identify as they choose, that the jail offer conversion therapy to transgender inmates; Butts claims, “The mental health field has an excellent track record in treating transgendered people to conform to their biological gender.” In fact, major medical groups including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association oppose the practice of reparative therapy. |
We want our 100in1Day projects to temporarily improve a public space in Edmonton and demonstrate how a community might achieve more lasting positive change. It may be led by an individual, community-based group, or an organization.
Projects can be practical, like planting trees or pop-up street furniture. They can be social, like hosting a block party. They can be artistic, like flash mobs or yarn bombing. They can challenge us or fix a problem. They can be as big or small as you want. All projects must be safe, legal and inclusive.
Examples of placemaking include:
Art installations or street art
Public performances or storytelling
Planting community gardens or cleaning up a park
Screening films outdoors
Hosting a community potluck or BBQ
Playing games such as soccer, jump rope or hopscotch
Setting up a free lemonade stand and talking to passersby
Need some more inspiration?
Browse all the projects people organized for 100in1Day 2016. |
Danny Did Foundation annual kickball tournament View Full Caption
EDGEBROOK — Clouds hung in the sky and the grass was wet from heavy rainfall the day before, but hundreds of families traveled to Edgebrook Park on Sunday promising their kids a day of outdoor fun.
As soon as they got to the park, the weather changed; suddenly it was nothing but clear blue skies and sunshine.
"It was because of Danny," said Mary Duffy, chief operating officer of the nonprofit Danny Did Foundation, which organized its fifth annual kickball tournament in honor of Danny Stanton, who was 4 when he died after a seizure in his sleep in 2009.
This year's event drew 320 registrations from kids ranging from kindergartners to eighth-graders. They traveled from as far as Northwest Indiana, said Tom Stanton, Danny's uncle and the executive director of the foundation. That makes it the biggest turnout yet, he added.
Proceeds go to the foundation, which aims to prevent deaths caused by seizures. About 2.3 million Americans suffer from epilepsy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Stanton said the tournament raised around $10,000 this year through a combination of registration fees, donations and sponsorships.
Kickball was an "obvious choice" when members of the foundation sat down to design events five years ago, Stanton said. Danny used to play in his front yard with his sister, Mary Grace, now 13, and his two brothers, Tommy, 6, and Johnny, 12.
And he played "really well" for a 4-year-old, Duffy said. He was good at baseball, too, Stanton remembered.
One of his cherished memories was during Danny's last summer, in 2009.
Danny was very attached to his older brother Johnny, and went to all of his baseball games in the the hopes that he could fill in, he said. That summer, Johnny's baseball team made it to the championship, and sure enough, a player was injured, so Danny got the chance to play.
"He got a hit, which was pretty incredible for a little 4-year-old running around with 7-year-olds," Stanton said. "I always cherish this moment."
Duffy, who is a family friend of the Stantons, said Danny could kick the ball "5 yards down" and he would always play with the older kids.
On Sunday, kids of all ages played kickball on teams according to age, donning neon T-shirts with a Danny Did Foundation logo. On the perimeter of the park, volunteers sold popcorn, pizza and snow cones, all of Danny's favorite foods, Duffy said.
In 2011, the field at the park was officially named Danny Stanton Field, Stanton said.
Danny's sister Mary Grace, who is going into eighth grade, said all of her friends from school come to every kid-friendly event put on by Danny Did Foundation.
The kickball tournament, among other events, brings the already tight-knit community together, said Steve Greifelt, a family friend whose son played in a soccer league with Danny.
His three kids, ages 6, 9 and 11, played kickball despite the muddy fields. The Greifelt family has been supporting the foundation since its inception.
"We miss [Danny]; we wish he were here with us," Greifelt said.
Bob Spallone, 46, whose kids also played kickball, echoed Greifelt's sentiment, adding that the Stantons have reached a lot of people in the community and beyond.
Like the Stanton family, Spallone's family received positive support from the Edgebrook community when it experienced tragedy, he said. Spallone's 12-year-old son, Luke, died in an accident 1½ years ago.
Luke's initials were on the neon-colored T-shirts as well.
"It's a very tight-knit community," said Spallone, explaining the foundation's growth.
"People's cousins come, or their friends come, and a lot of the volunteers may [be too old to play kickball] but they remember to come help."
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here: |
This article originally appeared on PEOPLE.COM.
Like Han Solo, Harrison Ford himself has finally awakened to the force of Star Wars. He’s come a long way from wanting to kill off the popular character while making the original movie trilogy to now playing a crucial role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
“It might have felt silly, but it didn’t,” Ford, 73, says in PEOPLE’s Star Wars special issue, of reprising his role as Han Solo. “It was fun to work with [director] J.J. Abrams, who brought great energy, passion, and clear focus to the whole event. So I had a good time.”
While Han Solo was the breakout performance that launched Ford to Hollywood stardom and iconic roles including Indiana Jones and Jack Ryan, the actor has never been a Star Wars fanboy. As Ford told PEOPLE after the 1977 premiere of the first movie, Star Wars was “a silly movie but wonderfully made.”
Yet Ford seemed to understand the character of Solo better than anyone. He earned the role over established stars like Al Pacino and Kurt Russell because he was so convincing as the Han Solo stand-in during early auditions. And Ford helped shape Solo’s look: “The first [costume] iteration had a large blue Peter Pan collar attached to the shirt, which I resisted,” he says.
Ford even ad-libbed the now-famous “I know” response to Princess Leia’s declaration of love in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, and he pushed George Lucas to kill Solo in 1983’s Return of the Jedi to show the stakes of galactic war. Lucas kept him alive. Since that movie, though, Ford hasn’t been spending his time obsessing over the questions that fans have been asking: Did Princess Leia and Han Solo go on to get married? Did they have kids who embraced the Force?
Answers won’t be revealed until the movie’s global premiere on Dec. 18. Until then, “I don’t worry about saying anything,” Ford says. “I’m very comfortable with just keeping my mouth shut.”
Check out the secrets of Rey’s speeder: |
CBS has renewed its entire daytime schedule for the 2017-18 season, including a three-year deal for daytime’s No. 1 drama, The Young and the Restless, and an additional two years for network television’s No. 1 daytime show The Price Is Right. The full lineup also includes new seasons of Let’s Make a Deal, The Talk, and The Bold and the Beautiful, which previously received a multi-year pickup through 2017-18.
Now is in its 45th season, The Price Is Right averages 4.84 million viewers.. Hosted by Drew Carey, it is produced by FremantleMedia North America. Let’s Make a Deal, returning for its ninth season, is averaging 3.05 million viewers. It’s produced by FremantleMedia North America, hosted by Wayne Brady.
The No. 1 daytime drama for 28 consecutive years, The Young and the Restless averages 4.93 million viewers. The series is produced by Bell Dramatic Serial Company, in association with Sony Pictures Television.
The Bold and the Beautiful, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, is averaging 3.94 million viewers. The most watched dramatic serial in the world is a Bell-Phillip Television production.
Currently in its seventh season, The Talk averages 2.7 million viewers. Recently, the series won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host for hosts Julie Chen, Sara Gilbert, Sharon Osbourne, Aisha Tyler and Sheryl Underwood. The series is produced by CBS Television Studios.
“CBS Daytime has never been stronger. From 30 consecutive years of being No. 1 in the ratings to another year as the most honored network at the Daytime Emmys, our lineup of talk, game shows and dramas connects with our audience like no one else,” said Angelica McDaniel, EVP Daytime Programs and Syndicated Program Development at CBS Entertainment and CBS Television Distribution. “All of our talent, onscreen and behind the scenes, is hard at work making the upcoming season of these award-winning series even bigger and bolder.” |
It’s been six years since to the day that Paul “Bear” Vasquez showed the world what raw, unfiltered happiness truly looks like in his now-infamous “Double Rainbow” video—and he’s right back where it all started.
“I’m sitting in the same exact spot I was when the Double Rainbow video started,” Vasquez said, speaking to the Daily Dot from the living room of his Yosemite farm. In the original video, Vasquez begins recording while he’s still inside his house, after he notices the multi-colored magnificence outside of his window. He moves outside to get a closer look when he’s completely overcome by the sight of two rainbows stretched across the mountain Vasquez’s house overlooks.
“What does this mean?” Vasquez asks, laughing, crying, trying to make sense of what he was witnessing in the January 2010 video.
Forty-two million views later, Vasquez has achieved a level of Internet fame that he says is merely a “side effect” of what he was put on Earth to do.
“It’s like the first video of God someone put on the Internet. You can’t put an ad on God.”
“A lot of people in the beginning were like, ‘Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame,’ and I knew it wasn’t that. … This was something bigger,” Vasquez said. “The whole thing was so I could give a message to humanity. None of it’s about me.”
That message is simple: Love your fellow man, walk gently on Mother Earth, and connect to spirit. And Vasquez certainly conveys that through his YouTube channel, Yosemitebear62, with over 43,000 subscribers.
Vasquez considers himself a natural when it comes to the Internet, sharing his cosmic messages through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Having made videos since the 1980s, he said, when YouTube finally came out in 2007, he immediately saw that as an opportunity to share his work with a larger audience: the world.
“When the video went viral, I had been living as a starving artist, and I was doing it in a sustainable way,” he said. Now that he accrues extra money from ads on his YouTube channel, as well as commercial appearances here and there, Vasquez says his life is “99 percent exactly the same. … Everything that’s come has been just a bonus,” including the time he appeared in a SmartWater commercial with Jennifer Aniston. “I got to hug her,” he said, laughing. “That was pretty good!”
Still, despite the little ways he’s been able to monetize his videos in these past six years, he still considers the Double Rainbow his “gift to humanity” meant to be seen without the burden of advertising.
“The video is me understanding I’m in the presence of God,” he explained. “So it’s like the first video of God someone put on the Internet. You can’t put an ad on God.”
And Vasquez’s overall message of goodwill has not been lost in a fog of fame. “A lot of people understand that I was marveling at the beauty and power of nature; that’s why it’s so popular,” he said. “People connect to it on the deepest level.”
Vasquez still finds the beauty in nature the same way he did in 2010. “I open my soul and share it without reservation to humanity. I’m just going to react in a pure, open, and honest way,” he said. Indeed, living outside of Yosemite National Park, which he calls the most beautiful place in the world, Vasquez can fully appreciate the world around him.
“I can only do that because I live—I mean, you’ve seen the video—that’s my front yard. I’m looking at that right now,” said Vasquez, referring to the mountain in the Double Rainbow footage. “When you live like that, it really changes you. … It really opens you up.”
Photo via Yosemite Bear Tours/Facebook |
Proposals from European commission would compel businesses to positively discriminate when hiring new executives until quota is reached
The European commission is to push for a quota for women on company boards to address the slow progress to gender equality in the senior ranks of publicly listed businesses.
Under the proposals, companies whose non-executive directors are more than 60% male would be required to prioritise women when candidates of equal merit were being considered for a post.
Previous attempts by the EU’s executive to set a 40% goal for women in the top ranks of listed companies have been blocked by Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden overs fears that Brussels was overreaching into domestic affairs. Hungary and Poland have opposed the move on ideological grounds.
The result of the impasse has been slow progress to greater diversity at the top of companies. Women made up 29% of recruits to UK boards in 2016, down from 32.1% in 2014 and 31.6% in 2012, according to research by the recruiter Egon Zehnder.
White men 'endangered species' in UK boardrooms, says Tesco chairman Read more
The proportion of women on the boards of the largest listed companies across the EU has more than doubled, from 10% in 2005 to 22% in 2015. However, women account for only 7% of board chairs and presidents and 6% of chief executives in the largest companies.
On Monday, the commissioner for justice and gender equality, Vĕra Jourová, will publish proposals to redress the gender pay gap.
Speaking to the Guardian before the launch, Jourová said: “We have so much evidence that it is good for business to have diversity, to have women and men on boards. Women [make up] 65% of university graduates, so why don’t we use that talent and the investment?
“Women have a very good talent for long-term, sensible spending [and] for crisis-solving because they can come up with proposals for negotiation and compromise. It is a necessary balance to the approach of men: attack and escape.”
A quota for boards will be one of a series of legislative proposals aimed at tightening the law to improve diversity and pay practices in work.
The pay gap in the EU, quantifying the difference in average hourly pay for male and female workers, remains resolutely large.
According to figures released in October, Britain registered the biggest increase in the EU’s gender pay gap in 2015. The UK’s gender pay gap jumped from 19.7% in 2014 to 20.8% in 2015, the largest annual rise among Europe’s main economies. The gap in the UK now outstrips the EU’s average of 16.3%.
Jourová, the Czech Republic’s representative in the commission, said: “In each country there are special reasons for this. I think that in most member states, maybe all, the main problem is segregated jobs. Females’ jobs, nurses, social services, teachers are underpaid. And is it because women are working in these roles? Maybe. I would guess this is also the case with the UK and [it is] something they should think about.
“We are addressing the member states with a strong call to look into it and change their renumeration policy in the public sector. The gender pay gap is also partly caused because women have more duties at home and take part-time jobs. And are paid less. It is a trap.”
Across the EU there is a full-time equivalent employment rate of 40% for women and 56% for men.
Jourová said she believes discrimination is still a major factor, and that current EU legislation is ineffective because it is not strongly enforced. Jourová has also suggested legislation to force listed companies to publish gender-specific statistics on pay.
“There are no teeth [to current laws],” she said. “According to our estimates, discrimination accounts for 8-10% of the gap. There is not enough enforcement. It must be done by labour inspectorates, and it should be captured in collective bargaining by the trade unions.” |
The Fourth Doctor, the Second Romana... and the first Jago & Litefoot encounter of 2017!
Released today on CD and Download is The Beast of Kravenos, the opening story of this year's sixth series of Doctor Who - The Fourth Doctor Adventures, when writer Justin Richards brings the Doctor (Tom Baker), Romana (Lalla Ward) and K9 (John Leeson) to Victorian London for a night at the theatre with Jago (Christopher Benjamin) & Litefoot (Trevor Baxter):
A stunning new star act is wowing the audiences of the New Regency Theatre. The modern mechanical marvel of canny canine charisma - the automated dog that can answer any question - the incomparable - the unbeatable - K9!
The Doctor and Romana have returned to Victorian London and been reunited with their old friends Professor George Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago. However this is not merely a social visit. A terrifying crime spree is sweeping the capital, and the burglaries of 'The Knave' defy all logic.
Something impossibly dangerous is taking place amid the fog. Only the time travellers and their friends can stop it... but can they be sure they're all on the same side?
Doctor Who - The Fourth Doctor Adventures: The Beast of Kravenos is available from today on Download and CD for £8.99 and £10.99 respectively - or you can save money through subscribing to the whole series of nine stories for £65 or £75. Announced just before Christmas is a seventh run of adventures for Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, available in two four-story boxed sets which can be subscribed to for £40 or £45 depending on format.
The range continues next month as the Doctor and Romana confront the Sontarans in The Eternal Battle! |
The founder of the Silk Road underground website has forfeited the site and thousands of bitcoins, worth around US$28 million at current rates, to the U.S. government.
The approximately 29,655 bitcoins were seized from the Silk Road website when the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) moved to close it in late September. The site served as an underground marketplace for drugs and other illegal items, relying on bitcoins for transactions because such payments are much more difficult to trace, the government says.
Ross Ulbricht, also known as "Dread Pirate Roberts," operator of the site, was arrested on Oct. 1 in a San Francisco public library while allegedly logged into the site, according to court papers. He was subsequently charged with one count of narcotics conspiracy, one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking and one count of money-laundering conspiracy.
The government had argued that the bitcoins were used to facilitate money laundering and thus should be forfeited along with the website.
"The United States Marshals Service shall dispose of the Silk Road Hidden Website and the Silk Road Server Bitcoins according to law," wrote Judge J. Paul Oetken, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, in a court order that was issued on Wednesday but not made public until Thursday.
The ruling represents the largest-ever forfeiture of bitcoins.
"It is the intention of the government to ultimately convert the bitcoins to U.S. currency," said Jim Margolin, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York.
Once converted, the bitcoins, like monetary proceeds of other crimes, will go into the government's general fund, he said. There, they will be used for general-purpose spending.
The bitcoins that Ulbricht forfeited are a fraction of the total amount seized by the government in connection with the case.
The government still holds an additional 144,336 bitcoins, worth around $130 million at present, and has asked a court to order the forfeiture of those assets, too. Ulbricht filed a claim contesting the government's move and asserting he is the owner of the bitcoins, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is [email protected] |
What would happen if responsible citizens stepped up to do the police’s job during the rioting that authorities in the government and media whipped up for political reasons in Ferguson? They would be shut down by the very police that idly allowed lowlife to loot and/or burn down dozens of businesses — as the Oath Keepers learned:
Oath Keepers boarded up a bunch of the storefronts and started night rotations on several rooftops. … Fearing more arsonists, Oath Keeper volunteers kept buckets of water, fire extinguishers and other nonlethal weapons on the rooftops. Some are also armed with rifles that aren’t available at Walmart and Cabela’s. The volunteers said they were well aware of the risk to life that arson can play and the legal right to stop it from happening. Group volunteers say they are confident they have helped protect property and lives since they arrived. Victor Clark, a dentist at Ferguson Dental on South Florissant Road, said he was happy to have the Oath Keepers’ free assistance. He wants to reopen his business soon. On Monday, rioters shattered the front door and window, and stole dental needles and anesthetic. Then Oath Keepers showed up out of the blue. “We gave them our keys,” he said. “We didn’t know that much about them, but we got a feeling of trust. You have to do something to protect our building.”
Someone sure does — since the money paid for this in taxes apparently all goes to wealth redistribution.
Considering that Missouri’s Democrat governor had refused to use the National Guard to defend businesses from the rioters (evidently under pressure from Obama), this was not likely to go over well with officials.
Police questioned group members early in the week and allowed them to stay. But Saturday, after media inquiries, St. Louis County police officers ordered the Oath Keepers to leave the rooftops. Threatened with arrest for operating without a license, the volunteers argued but eventually left their positions early Saturday, Rhodes said. “We are going to go back as protesters,” [Oath Keepers founder Stewart] Rhodes said Saturday afternoon.
Maybe if they throw a few Molotov cocktails through innocent people’s windows, they can get the folks in charge on their side.
Authorities didn’t want volunteers spoiling the spectacle.
On tips from Sean C, Bill T, and Stormfax. Hat tip: Conservative Refocus. |
AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas Capitol police confiscated all kinds of items from people on Friday -- including jars of feces -- as hundreds of protesters flooded the building in the final hours of a Senate debate on a controversial abortion bill.
But one woman told The Huffington Post that Capitol police went as far as to take away food she carried to help with her diabetes and to very publicly confiscate her maxi pads.
Paula Chaney of Georgetown, Texas, described being line at the Capitol with her friends when an officer came over to give a rundown of items not allowed in the building. She said the cop never mentioned feminine products.
"When I got to the bag check, the troopers were all acting very aggressively," Chaney said. "As a diabetic, I carry food -- both quick sugar and protein -- and I have never had any trouble taking it in anywhere when I remind the personnel involved of the protections afforded by ADA law. This time, I was told that the law didn't apply and I either lost my food or my place in line."
Chaney said the officer, who she identified as Trooper Stoner, then unzipped the personal care section of her purse, took out two purple-wrapped maxi pads and "started waving them around, much to my humiliation and horror, and said that they were not allowed in either."
Chaney said she pleaded with him, informing him that her menstrual period had started that day, but the officer accused her of being "aggressive." When she told a supervising officer that the way they were being treated was "a travesty," she said that officer marched her over to the nearest elevator, yelling the entire time, and said she was welcome to leave the building. Without her maxi pads, she decided to leave.
"I am a middle-aged white woman, and not used to being treated this way by law enforcement, certainly not the DPS troopers in the Capitol," Chaney said. "I have been in and out weekly and more all session, and I have never seen anything like I have the last few days."
AmericaBlog captured a video of Chaney moments after the ordeal, which shows her visibly upset as friends comfort her.
Chaney and her friends were dressed in orange T-shirts, a color that represents opposition to the abortion bill. People in support of the bill wore blue shirts. Chaney said she noticed that people in blue shirts in line weren't being searched as closely as she and her friends, and said those people were allowed to bring things into the Senate gallery that she and her friends were not.
"A whole lot of people are trying to shut us up," Chaney said. "This was just way over the line."
The Texas Department of Public Safety indicated earlier Friday that officers would thoroughly search everyone coming into the Capitol for articles that potentially could be thrown at lawmakers for as long as the Senate debate continues. But Stand With Texas Women later tweeted that police had stopped confiscating tampons and maxi pads, at the urging of Democratic Sen. Kirk Watson. |
What is it that we have received “without cost?” Well, we have received every good thing for free. It’s true! All that is good is a gift from God. And it’s a free gift from Him. There is nothing we can do to earn His blessings in our lives. Do you believe that?
The above Scripture quote is part of Jesus’ exhortation to His Twelve Apostles as He sends them out to preach, heal and cast out demons in His name. He reminds them that all they have received from Him is a free gift and that they must, in turn, give the Gospel free of charge to everyone.
Advent is a time when we should especially focus upon the coming celebration of the Gift of Christmas. Christmas is a time when we give and receive gifts, but it’s important to understand the difference between a “gift” and a “present.” A present is something that is expected. For example, your spouse or child expects a present on their birthday or on Christmas. But a gift is something that is much more. A gift is something that is freely given, unearned and undeserved. It’s given out of love with no strings attached. This is what the Incarnation is all about.
Advent must be a time when we ponder the truth that God came to earth to give us Himself in an unmerited and free way. His life is a totally free Gift to us and is the greatest Gift we have ever received. In turn, Advent must be a time when we also reflect upon our calling to bring the Gift of Christ Jesus to others.
Reflect, today, upon the giving and receiving of Jesus in your life. Let your heart be filled with gratitude this Advent so that you, in turn, can give the Gift of Jesus to others.
Lord, thank You for the Gift of Your life. Thank You for coming to earth to enter into my life. Thank You for the joy of knowing You and loving You. May I allow this joy to so transform my life that I may continually seek to give You to others. Jesus, I trust in You.
More for Advent>>> |
Mauricio Pochettino mentioned the concept at a press briefing last December. “Energía universal,” the Tottenham Hotspur manager said, slipping into his native Spanish. It translates fairly literally into English yet the meaning is altogether more profound.
The best way to describe it is as a guiding power, a life force that influences everything. It feels appropriate to consider the Butterfly Effect, which advances the possibility that small causes can have momentous effects, and there is an obvious spiritual dimension to it. Universal energy. It has shaped Pochettino’s approach to life and been at the heart of his psychological transformation of Spurs. It will continue to sustain him and his on-pitch disciples in Sunday’s north London derby against Arsenal at White Hart Lane.
Dele Alli, Twitter loneliness and the cautionary tale of Renato Sanches | Barney Ronay Read more
Pochettino first brought it into the public domain as part of a discussion about Harry Kane and how the striker’s awareness of Tottenham’s place and identity in London had helped him to find extra edge in derby matches. Kane has an eye-catching scoring record against his club’s capital city rivals: he now has 22 goals in 31 games.
“I believe in energía universal,” Pochettino said. “It is connected. Nothing happens for causality. It is always a consequence [of something else]. Maybe, it is one of the reasons that Harry always scores in derbies. I believe in that energy. For me, it exists.”
The references had been there, previously, and more have followed since. Pochettino routinely talks of the necessity to “put our energy” into a particular player or “give our love” to another one.
It cuts both ways. The Argentinian is equally sensitive to negative personal energy and he said recently that his team had “spent a lot of energy fighting” Leicester City at the end of last season but also everybody else who had wanted their rival’s Cinderella Premier League title story to come true. “That was a very bad period for us,” Pochettino said. It was a sharp spike in Tottenham’s learning curve.
Pochettino has made it his mission to harden the mentality at Spurs, having found what he felt was a collectively weak one when he arrived in May 2014. To him, everything is related to energy and it not only drives his team’s high-octane style. He demands that his players run themselves into the ground – most notoriously, during his remorseless pre-season training sessions – but, also, that they are prepared to fight until the last breath of every game.
It takes a specific type of player to connect with Pochettino, to buy into his rhythms and motivational techniques, and he inherited plenty who could not. The early months of his White Hart Lane tenure were a trial and the situation was not helped by his previous club, Southampton, having made a flying start to the season under their new manager, Ronald Koeman.
When Pochettino took his team to Aston Villa on 2 November 2014, they were 12th in the Premier League. Southampton were second. But Tottenham won 2-1, having been 1-0 down, and Pochettino would come to consider the result as the turning point. Kane had come on for Emmanuel Adebayor and he scored the winner with a deflected free-kick in stoppage time. Thereafter, he would replace Adebayor in the starting lineup. Of Pochettino’s 18-man matchday squad at Villa Park, only eight are still at the club.
Play Video 1:08 Tottenham focused on more than just finishing above Arsenal, says Pochettino – video
Pochettino had started by giving opportunities to the squad’s more senior players. He believed it to be the correct approach. Had he thrown in the youngsters straight away and it not worked out, it would have been more difficult to turn to the older heads.
But it has long been clear – going back to Pochettino’s first managerial post at Espanyol and then Southampton – that he prefers to work with younger, more malleable players. He is obsessed by profiling and the prototype Pochettino player is tactically flexible, physically imposing, full of desire, open to learning and blessed with good character.
The prototype Pochettino player is physically imposing, tactically flexible, full of desire, open to learning and blessed with good character
Pochettino gives them freedom. For example, players at some clubs have to sign up to a code of conduct but not at Tottenham. Pochettino will not fine a player for being a couple of minutes late or wearing the wrong clothing. To him, it is important that they have the framework to express themselves. But there are limits. There are principles that must be respected and, above all, he must be respected.
Pochettino would describe his approach as fluid and holistic. He is not bound by conventions, such as running through tactics and set pieces the day before a game or naming the team immediately after the final session. For the 3-0 home win over Hull City on Wednesday 14 December, he announced the lineup two hours before kick-off. Furthermore, he switched to a formation with three at the back.
The timing was partly because the team had played at Manchester United on the Sunday and so, by Tuesday, were still in recovery mode, when Pochettino believes that he cannot stress the players’ bodies or minds. And so he waited. Some managers stick to pre-match schedules partly as a comfort to themselves, so that they can say they ticked every box. Not Pochettino.
The 45-year-old is young enough to be matey with his players but old enough to take a distance. What he prioritises is knowing everything about them; how they react and, crucially, how they feel. It is often said, behind the scenes at the club, that Pochettino likes to feel before he makes a decision – in other words, rely upon intuition.
Wenger rejects Arsenal-Spurs power shift: ‘One year can’t make up for 20’ Read more
“Faith and belief are important words,” Pochettino said, on the Thursday before last. “But most important is to feel the faith and the belief when it is running in your blood and your body.”
Pochettino puts the good vibrations into his players. Why does he talk up the credentials of the back-up goalkeepers, Michel Vorm and Pau López, even though they cannot expect to displace the first-choice, Hugo Lloris? Because they need to feel the positive energy. When they are required – Vorm, in particular – they cannot flick a switch and perform. They have to be primed; a part of the collective chemistry; a member of the family.
Pochettino’s confidence in his squad is total these days, and it is why he never complains about injuries. He knows that a replacement is tuned in and ready to go. A feature of Tottenham’s season has been how well they have coped, at various times, without Kane, Lloris, Toby Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen and Danny Rose.
To Pochettino, every member of his squad is a complex individual and he has had to mine deep into their psyches to understand them. In some cases, it has taken more than two years to arrive at the connection but he believes that it is the only way to get the best out of them. It might be that just one of them responds in a positive way to a particular thing. It makes the thing worthwhile.
The way that Pochettino and his staff use data and analyse performance is extraordinary in its detail and, allied to their psychological approach, they are able to devise bespoke programmes for the players. There have been occasions when there are eight different types of training in one day. Pochettino knows when a player ought to train or rest, when he needs the carrot or the stick. Over recent weeks, with the team on an eight-match winning streak in the league, he has tried to push, rather than relax. The players are more receptive when their tails are up.
Tottenham clash with Arsenal takes Pochettino back to another demolition derby | David Hytner Read more
Pochettino’s success at Tottenham has been striking on several levels. He was charged with establishing the club in the top four. Instead, he has them in title contention for a second successive season. It has been done on a relative shoestring, with a “completely different project to the big sides”, to borrow a phrase from Pochettino, while it might also be noted that he is working with a third sporting director in less than three years. After Franco Baldini and Paul Mitchell, it is now Steve Hitchen who is in charge of scouting and recruitment.
The trends are upward; the improvement in many players pronounced. Will it lead to a trophy this season? Possibly, although Chelsea remain the favourites for the title and they showed their superiority over Pochettino’s team last Saturday, when they beat them 4-2 in the FA Cup semi-final.
Yet Pochettino does not see silverware as the route to validation. He is consumed, instead, by the work; the process; the energy. The trophies would be a consequence. |
UPDATE (July 29, 4 p.m.): Vancouver Police have released new photos of one of the men involved in the home invasion.
Initially, they described one suspect as having full sleeve tattoos on both arms. Investigators now have higher quality photos of him, which reveal the tattoos are not sleeves, but are quite distinctive, with the one on the right forearm appearing to be tribal style with a scorpion.
“Police are hoping the release of these additional photos will result in that one tip needed to positively identify the two men,” says VPD Cst. Brian Montague in a statement.
“Someone knows who they are and we hope that the appalling circumstances of the crime will convince someone to come forward.”
Two men are wanted for questioning in connection with a home invasion in East Vancouver involving a seven-year-old child.
According to Vancouver police, two men dressed in construction gear forced their way into a home in the 3300-block of Dieppe Street at about 3:30 p.m. on June 17.
One of the men, who was carrying a gun, pointed it at the seven-year-old girl and demanded money. She then went to her parent’s bedroom and handed over a jar of change.
A man in the home was hurt and taken to hospital for a non-life threatening injury to his head.
VPD Sgt. Randy Fincham said a number of undisclosed items were stolen from the home, including a rare and unique watch — a Rolex Yachtmaster II steel and rose-gold watch.
The two suspects were last seen walking away from the front entrance of the home, south on Dieppe Street.
The first man is described as 25 to 45 years old with a slim build, shaved head and full sleeve tattoos on both arms. The other man is dark-skinned, 20 to 30 years old with a medium build and a thin beard.
“It’s very unique there’s a small child that was victimized during a home robbery or home invasion,” Fincham said. “This was a heinous robbery, which will have an impact on a seven-year-old child and her family for the rest of their lives.”
It is currently unclear why the East Vancouver home was targetted and Fincham said they have tried a number of investigation steps to track down the two suspects as well as the stolen watch.
“The quicker we can identify the two men the quicker we can get them off the streets.”
Anyone with information about the identity of the two men is asked to call the VPD Major Crime Section at 604-717-2541 or Crime Stoppers.
PHOTOS: |
PITTSBURGH (AP) — The former nanny of Pittsburgh Penguins player Chris Kunitz was sentenced Tuesday to five years in federal prison for setting fire to her rental residence and then filing fraudulent insurance claims for the contents.
The public defender for Andrea Forsythe, 28, unsuccessfully sought a term running concurrently to one she’ll receive next month for thefts from the Penguins player and other people for whom she worked as a nanny.
She also was ordered to pay more than $179,000 restitution to the insurance companies that covered her losses in the June 23, 2014 fire in Sturgeon.
In the other cases, Forsythe was convicted of numerous crimes and will be sentenced Jan. 3 by a judge in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court. Prosecutors say she stole $12,000 diamond earrings from Kunitz’s home in 2013 and sold them to jewelry stores. The earrings were a birthday present for Kunitz’s wife, Maureen.
The theft charges filed by police in Collier Township, where Kunitz lives with his wife and their children, grew out of the arson and insurance fraud investigation by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives into the Sturgeon fire.
Forsythe pleaded guilty in July to federal charges of malicious destruction of property by fire and wire fraud for burning the house, then filing fraudulent insurance claims for the contents, including some jewels she had allegedly stolen from another couple while also working as a nanny.
The other couple told investigators that an 18-karat gold diamond necklace worth about $4,400 and a gold diamond stud earring worth more than $10,000 had been stolen from them. Appraisals of those jewels were then used by Forsythe to make the fraudulent insurance claims, federal authorities contend.
As that investigation progressed, Forsythe eventually confessed to stealing the earrings from Maureen Kunitz. They were appraised at $11,900 when Kunitz bought them for his wife’s birthday sometime before she noticed them missing in September 2013.
Forsythe acknowledged stealing the diamond earrings from Maureen Kunitz’s bedroom while the couple wasn’t home, the Collier Township police complaint said. Forsythe then sold a loose diamond from one earring to a jewelry store for $2,542 and the other earring to a precious metals and jewelry store for $1,408.50.
Forsythe’s federal public defender, Jay Finkelstein, in court documents blamed the thefts on Forsythe’s allegedly abusive home life as a child. Finkelstein has a blanket policy of not commenting to the media.
U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon refused Finkelstein’s request to allow Forsythe’s federal sentence to run concurrently to whatever sentence she receives next month saying the theft victims “deserve their own justice, so to speak, and the court will not intervene here.”
However, the county judge could still order that sentence to run concurrent to the federal sentence. If that happens, Forsythe would get credit for serving both terms simultaneously, instead of serving them one after the other.
Forsythe’s public defender in the Allegheny County theft case didn’t immediately return a call for comment Tuesday.
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This story has been corrected to say earrings were sold to jewelry stores rather than jury stores. |
Mr. Pemoulie, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Alex, could do more to invite travelers, however. Reservations are not taken for parties of fewer than five, and there is a particularly unwelcoming wrinkle. If you have to wait for a table and there is no room at the bar, a host will take your phone number and point you toward some nearby saloons. But then she will tell you that if you don’t pick up the phone, she will immediately move on to the next name on the list.
If you’ve ever missed a call while sitting inside a bar, this may strike you as inconsiderate at the least. Luckily, I passed the time enjoying the company of the high-spirited bartenders at a fusion place down the street called Sushi Tango, and my phone always rang.
After walking down blocks of neat townhouses that reminded me of Brooklyn, I was always happy to head toward the lights streaming from the windows that wrap around Thirty Acres’ corner spot on Jersey Avenue. The 32-seat dining room is simple and relatively unornamented, apart from the pastel portraits of Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford on corrugated cardboard.
I don’t know what brought the ex-presidents to Jersey City, but their benign presence seems to have rubbed off on the servers, who are unusually friendly and free of pretense, and on the amateur disc jockey who stocked the playlist with tunes like “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
The look of the menu is pure Momofuku, with its sans-serif font under boldface headings like “Things” and “Sweet Guys” (desserts). Under “Raw” are two starters that give Mr. Pemoulie a chance to raid the larder of the Ashkenazi Jews, something he did frequently and successfully as fall changed to winter.
A mash of beets with horseradish, last seen at Passover trying to make the best of its unfortunate marriage to gefilte fish, tries out a new partner at Thirty Acres, East Coast oysters on the half shell, liberated for the night from their unfortunate liaison with cocktail sauce. This was one time when infidelity brought out the best in both accomplices.
Tasting cured belly of Arctic char sprinkled with sesame seeds and sea salt and accompanied by whipped scallion cream cheese, I could close my eyes and believe I was at a brunch catered by Russ & Daughters. The missing element, a bagel, wasn’t missed at all; it would have gummed up the gently sweet slices of fish. |
The US Navy has awarded Saab a contract to deliver its Sea Giraffe agile multi beam (AMB), multi-mode radar (MMR) for the US Coast Guard’s offshore Patrol Cutters.
The current contract is worth $16.8 million and contains options for further deliveries which could bring the overall contract value to $118.5 million.
Saab’s Sea Giraffe MMR, a 3D, electronically scanned phased array radar, provides high radiated power, selectable waveforms, and modern signal processing to consistently achieve high performance across various marine environments.
The initial order covers the procurement of two systems with options for additional radars.
In addition to the coast guard, the company’s AN/SPS-77 radar is currently deployed on the US Navy’s Independence-class littoral combat ship. A derivative of AN/SPS-77 known as AN/SPN-50, is being developed to meet the Air Traffic Control needs on aircraft carrier and amphibious assault class ships for the US Naval Air Systems Command.
Saab said the order would contribute new jobs to SDAS’ Sensor Systems facility in Syracuse, NY. In January, Saab signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with New York State aimed at expanding Saab’s presence in Central New York.
“This allows us to move forward on our Central New York growth strategy, and to expand our deliveries of Saab’s proven naval radar capabilities to these important US Navy and USCG customers”, Erik Smith, president and CEO of Saab Defense and Security USA said. |
Forty years on from the discovery of Mungo Man, what he represents is as pertinent now as ever
26 February 1974 was a historic day, one destined to change my life and affect the lives of many others. It was the day I encountered the eroding remains of Mungo Man on the shores of a distant and then unnamed lake basin in western New South Wales.
Five years earlier, on those same dry lake shores, I had happened upon the cremated remains of a young woman, now known as Mungo Lady. Her discovery established that fully modern humans had been in Australia for longer than any European expected. But just as significant were the complex ceremonial features of the burial of Mungo Man, which presented one of the dramatic mysteries of ancient human cultural development. His emergence 40 years ago was a special moment, the opening of an entirely new page in Australian history. The circumstances of that encounter help clarify understanding of who we are; they establish an ancient link with this land and our shared past.
In the summer of 1974, in geological pursuit of ice age climatic change, I was using dry lake basins as rain gauge records of past wet-dry climatic oscillations. Heavy rain had interrupted my excursions into what was an eroding wonderland, the large high-rimmed dune or lunette lining the eastern shores of the yet-to-be-named Lake Mungo. I was temporarily “confined to barracks” at Mungo station, the homestead and shearers’ quarters of the late Albert and Venda Barnes.
Local station owners Venda and Albert Barnes view the results of excavation with archaeologist Dr Alan Thorne, right. Photograph: Jim Bowler
Eventually the rain stopped, the mud dried and the landscape brightened. Eager to explore surfaces refreshed by cleansing rains I hastened to the site of the earlier Mungo Lady discovery, the Joulni or southern sector of the big lunette, an area rich in items of archaeological and geological interest. While I was following a distinctive soil horizon, one that had already yielded many artefacts, the late afternoon sun highlighted a tiny patch of something white shining through a cover of expansive sand mantle.
An immediate examination revealed what was obviously the domal part of a human skull. I brushed away sand to reveal that the jawbone was intact. This was part of an emerging body. Suddenly, and only 400 metres from the site of Mungo Lady, the number of human grave sites on the dunes was doubled.
A hasty phone call from the nearest station homestead to colleagues at the Australian National University stimulated an immediate reaction. Two days later, Dr Alan Thorne, recently appointed as physical anthropologist to the department of archaeology and an expert on ancient Australian human history, arrived with a team to carry out the excavation. Clearance of cover sands soon revealed a complete skeleton. Lying in an outstretched position, hands extended over his groin, the man’s 170-centimetre-tall body had been inserted into a carefully prepared grave 80 to 100 centimetres deep in lakeshore sands on the downwind (south-eastern) side of the dune.
The body was emerging by erosion from original dune sediments, dated to more than 20,000 years. That burial cover assured us the grave was older than 20,000 years and knocking on the door of Australia’s earliest occupation age. With each delicate removal of sand, a new chapter of Australian history was unfolding before us.
The excavating team in the process of revealing the Mungo Man skeleton. Photograph: Jim Bowler
But then came a surprise: we were aware of a strange brownish-red zone around the upper part of the body. I was asked to identify a small pellet. It was a type of limonite, an iron oxide. Then the penny dropped. This was not just limonite but ochre, the result of haematite grinding, painted on the body or sprinkled on the grave.
Identified by Thorne as the remains of an adult male, this man had been buried with a level of ritual significance never before imagined, let alone encountered in any record of Australia’s ancient occupancy. This was of international significance.
The remains were removed and returned in Thorne’s care to the ANU, where they were carefully preserved for further detailed examination. The discovery was announced to the scientific world along with a dramatic full-grave image. Mungo Man – eventually firmly dated to 41,000 years – became famous almost overnight.
The results of his emergence and removal to Canberra were complex. Archaeological sciences celebrated these new contributions to Australia’s antiquity with special emphasis on their cultural significance, the ochre ritual. Physical anthropologists confirmed the earliest Australians were fully modern people.
Reactions from Aboriginal people were mixed. These were times of often passionate debate about land rights. Gough Whitlam’s preliminary Land Rights Act still awaited legislative endorsement. Major problems remained in areas of cultural ownership: who owned Australian history?
Indigenous people, angered by the removal of human remains without their knowledge, protested. In these remote inland areas, away from river-based communities, Aboriginal presence was virtually invisible. But the Aboriginal response was loud and clear. “This is our culture; you are disturbing the spirits of our people. Stick to your own European history.”
The 1976 Aboriginal Land Rights Act, passed under the new prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, set new and overdue ground rules for the collection and management of cultural materials. Such work could not continue without approval of, and preferably collaborative engagement with, traditional owners. This new level of Aboriginal control was seen by many as an unwelcome barrier to research agendas.
An uneasy standoff ensued between scientists and Indigenous occupants. Archaeology at Mungo came to a halt. A mutual accord was finally reached in 1989 whereby scientists and local Indigenous people agreed to mutual sharing of research agendas, ensuring priority employment for local Aboriginal people wherever possible. This was cemented by Thorne’s 1991 return of the Mungo Lady remains to traditional owners. Meanwhile the remains of Mungo Man lay in the laboratories of the ANU.
Mungo Man has given us a rich insight into a dynamic and ancient world. He has delivered an exciting range of scientific firsts, played a significant role in the establishment of the Willandra Lakes as a world heritage area, and, for many Indigenous people, his status has given a sense of pride to the very notion of being Aboriginal. As one of the two foundational burials, with Mungo Lady, he exemplifies Aboriginal Australia’s proudest traditions of antiquity and cultural development on the international stage.
Traditional owners have never ceased to call for the return of all skeletal remains to their homelands, the shores of Lake Mungo. For many years that return anticipated the establishment of a special Keeping Place, a dignified and secure repository for all skeletal remains removed from the world heritage area. Economic and bureaucratic difficulties have frustrated the establishment of the Keeping Place for years. Now traditional owners have joined with involved scientists to jointly declare that 40 years is long enough for Mungo Man to stay in his cardboard box. It is time to come home, time to return to Lake Mungo’s shores.
The view west towards Lake Mungo shows massive erosion on a shoreline dune. Erosion exposes internal artefacts and human remains buried within the ancient shoreline. Photograph: Jim Bowler
A working party is striving to make his return possible. Mungo Man will find his resting place in the same secure storage shared by Mungo Lady since her return in 1991. This is a momentous occasion, a benchmark moment for traditional owners and a closing of the gap in my Mungo journey. It is an event of national significance. That homecoming opens new opportunities; new voices will be heard from ancient graves.
In emerging from that grave Mungo Man continues to challenge ignorance and prejudice. Such status takes on further legitimacy in the light of his liturgical burial. That action of ceremonial anointing with the earth, the ochre drama, defines new levels of communal self-perception, an awareness and celebration of a people-nature mystique, an acknowledgement of a power beyond. In that sense the burial stands arguably as the world’s oldest example of overt religious expression.
In my pursuit of rational science, those lakeshore sands, originally solely of geological interest, have been transformed into sacred grounds. My eyes have been opened to glimpse and share in some small way that inner view long entrusted to Mungo Man’s Aboriginal descendants, a deep connection to country, to their ancestral spirit-charged lands. I remain ever conscious of Mutthi Mutthi elder Mary Pappin’s admonition: “You did not find Mungo Lady and Mungo Man – they found you!”
Already taking his place in the school curriculum as a key focus in Aboriginal history, Mungo Man’s place as messenger stands in firm justification for national recognition. While Aboriginal Australia must speak in its own voice, as a scientist with a sense of humanity already much deepened by Mungo Man’s contribution, I confidently hope that what has been changed in me will be shared in the lives of many others.
The return opens a new chapter, one in which the voices from the past – the voices from those graves – return in spirit with the bones. My burden remains to speak to and for those voices, to interpret their meaning and to deliver in their death the messages they may have voiced in life.
Mungo Man crosses many boundaries, boundaries between science and traditional cultures, between past and present, between black and white, between life and death. On returning home, his voice takes on new urgency, defining messages for his land and for his people. That occasion, after 40 years in waiting, brings new hope, a reassurance to Indigenous Australians of the nation’s debt to their ancestral history.
Wednesday’s anniversary commemorates a day that greeted the arrival of a new actor on the dramatic stage of expanding Aboriginal history. It was a day that changed the way we see ourselves as Australians. |
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared on Monday's "Larry King Live" to discuss his organization's massive leak of classified logs from the Iraq War. During the interview, King and Assange had a testy exchange about Assange's walking out of a CNN interview over the weekend, with Assange telling King he should be "ashamed" for bringing the incident up.
On Saturday, Assange walked out of an interview in London with CNN reporter Atika Shubert after she began asking him about his personal legal issues. Assange is being investigated in Sweden on charges of sexual abuse that were first dropped, and then reopened.
Assange took offense with Shubert's line of questioning, calling it "disgusting" and accusing Shubert of not wanting to discuss the issues raised by the documents released by WikiLeaks, and walked out.
On Monday, King did discuss those issues with Assange and with Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Assange began by talking about some of the details revealed by the documents, including tens of thousands of previously unreported civilian casualties and rampant abuse and torture of detainees.
WATCH:
Towards the end of the show, however, King brought up the earlier interview, playing the tape of Assange walking out. King appeared to be initially confused by the tape, asking if Assange had walked out of his own show as well.
"Well, I didn't walk off, Larry, just then," Assange replied. "But perhaps, I should...those documents cover 109,000 deaths. That's a serious matter and it's extraordinarily disrespectful to those people to start conflating the first revelation of that material with any sort of tabloid journalism."
WATCH:
King hit back, criticizing Assange for dismissing the questions into his personal life.
"She was asking about the deliverer of the information, a question about the deliverer of the information...what was wrong with that?" he asked.
"...It is not right to bring in sensational and, in fact, false claims, a relatively trivial matter compared to the deaths of 109,000 people," Assange said. "And it is -- I mean, CNN should be ashamed of doing that. And you, Larry, you actually should be ashamed, as well." |
Where the First Empire was born of a remnant of the Student Men, on the eastern coast of Bluewine Bay on the Telsion peninsula and the Dragons Teeth a new civilization emerged from the ground up from the Dark Ages following the War of Four Centuries. Between 3000 and 2600 BIA Small towns and villages grew into City-States with some aide from trade with the resurgent Qanthrathi states to the west as well as trade contacts with Dwarven States, the High Elves and even the Drow (when they were not attempting to enslave them). Power in these states was distributed. A few of them had ruling dynasties but none of them ever developed a formal nobility or the rigid feudal structure. Far more common among Telsionic city state were oligarchies (in which a wealthy elite could vote on matters and their elected leaders) and democracies (in which all adult male citizens could vote on matters and their elected leaders), though slavery was widespread among them. The Drow fought with them on occasion, but were more concerned with dealing with orcish clans, hunting down Necrites and fighting wars with each other and with High Elvish raids. A few of their cities were reaped, especially early on, though eventually the Drow found it more productive to extort tribute out of these states and to use them as a source of mercenaries.
It was from this extortion that a power arose. With the persuasion of the famous statesman Ferrenes the Younger five of these city states came together in 2525 BIA with a proposal to two of the three neighboring Drow states: they would collect tribute for them from other states in return for a 8% cut, to which the Drow agreed. Thus was born the League of Five. Working together these five states could match any other state and with the profits they gained from extracting tribute their cities grew wealthier and stronger and continued to do so for five years. Their influence waxed as they vassalized other city states as 'junior members' of their league. Eventually in 2398 BIA their power had grown to the point where the Five Archons of the League told the Dark Elvish tribute collection party that they would no longer be their loan collectors. The Drow launched an attack to deal with this insolence, but this attack was repulsed. Two years latter they launched a second assault bringing to bear much larger forces, but these too were ultimately repulsed with the assistants of the High Elves. Having survived it's first trial by fire The League of Five had emerged as the Second Empire, which would continue a gradual expansion.
The Second Empire was a very loosely nit society. Junior members and client kingdoms were mostly free to run their territories as they saw fit, though they were required to pay taxes to the League and provide troops and ships when requested. The armies of the League were similarly diverse as each nation was usually free to raise warriors as it saw fit and came to include charioteers, slingers, crossbowmen, axemen, foot and mounted archers, shock infantry armed with fearsome warscythes, axes, men armed with primitive flame throwers and firebombs and elephant riders. Dwarvish minorities. Even so the most common soldiers in their armies were Hoplites: citizen soldiers clad in either linen, leather, chainmail or plate with large round shields and spears who fought in tight phalanx formations. The greatest (or at least most prestigious) hoplites came from the League's five ruling cities, where every free man was required to train for war and serve if called for. The Second Empire was very unusual in that it had five capitals which rotated on an annual basis. Eventually the government turned to subsidizing armaments. League policy was set by two bodies, the Council of Archons (which had five members elected by the people of each of the five cities) and the League Assembly (representatives of each of the League's Junior members, which included some colonies created by the Senior Members). The League Assembly did have some power and influence, in particular over budgetary matters even though the Council of Archons still served as the executive wing. In addition to the League Members there were also League Subjects who had resisted the League and were stripped of their right to assembly, usually for periods of 50 or 100 years.
Though the Second Empire fought several wars with the Drow ultimately it avoided too much confrontation with them. Fearing what happened to the First Empire they repulsed Drow attacks and fought battles at sea, but never launched an attack on a Drow State itself, in spite of considerable prodding from the High Elves. There was also a fair amount of trade between the second empire and the neighboring Drow States. Though a few sources embellish it most the role the Dark Elves played in it's end was secondary, for ultimately the Second Empire collapsed from within.
In 1979 BIA, Triaxicles (Strategos of the Southern Seas) in one of seventh and final war between the Second Empire and the Halicanisid Seraphate. From the Empire's assets on the eastern coast of the Greenwater Sea he launched an invasion, bested armies four times the size of his and (with reinforcements from the Empire Proper) pushed into the heart of the Second Empire's long time rival. In three years he had conquered the bulk of the Seraphate and left the rest to break apart. He was recalled in 2874 BIA to stand before the five Archons and was offered a boon from the Council of Archons of anything they could provide. What he asked for was that the League of Five become the League of Six, with his own city becoming a senior member of the League along with the five founding member states. This request was refused and he refused any other boon offered to him. This move intensified a rift between the alliance's Senior and Junior partners and after Triaxicles' assassination in 1968 BIA (who was responsible for doing so has been a subject of scholarly debate to this day) eventually culminated in civil war.
Thirty Seven junior members went out and formed The League of Thirty Seven to contest control of the league from the old capital. Fighting continued as border regions declared independence from the league, were over run by barbarians, were reaped by Dark Elves (who also acted as mercenaries for each side while for the most part refusing to fight other Drow forces). After thirteen years of fighting and the deaths of millions of subjects, the League of Five had lost more than 70% of it's territory, with 30% of it's former territory in the hands of the League of Thirty Seven and the remaining 40% lost to both. It's wealth spent, most of it's best forces dead and large sections of it's farmland and infrastructure in ruins and much of it's forces dedicated to garrisoning contested territory and guarding new boarders the Second Empire was left vulnerable and would continue in decline for another twenty years until the forces of the ascendant Third Empire came and absorbed what remained. |
There’s a wave of social robots taking over crowdfunding websites. Promising to be your personal assistant and companion of the future, these robots have become funding behemoths raking in hundreds of thousands to even millions of dollars per crowdfunding campaign. Spruced up campaign videos and full-fledged startup teams provide a strong backbone for the robot and its ability to garner backers, but there are two flaws lurking in the reality of these crowdfunded social robots: robot fulfillment and backer expectation.
Robot fulfillment is the robot’s ability to perform the actions described in the campaign. For example, can the robot order food when told to? Backer expectation is the anticipation that the backer has towards the robot they’re backing. In the case of social robots, it’s the belief that the robot will improve their lives by providing on-demand information and assistance through a talking machine interface. Both of these factors have been set high, and that’s a problem.
Let’s first take a look at Jibo. Jibo is a crowdfunded social robot born from the mind of MIT graduate and roboticist Cynthia Breazeal. It sits atop your table playing your typical virtual assistant. Ask Jibo about the weather or the recipe to that one meal you’re cooking up and he’ll answer. He’ll even notify you of texts and order food from your favorite restaurant. But that’s about it. Jibo is a stationary Siri-like robot that’s bound to whatever surface you place him on. However, that hasn’t scared off backers from contributing to Jibo’s huge success.
Jibo’s robot fulfillment is obscure at the moment. I have no doubt he can recognize average voice commands such as “how’s the weather” or recite words from a webpage, but I find it a bit odd that there have been zero demos showing off real dynamic conversations between Jibo and people. A simple search query for “Jibo demo” will bring up endless videos where Jibo recites his robotic “hello” and then spins around in circles while playing back a tune. It could very well be that Dr. Breazeal and her team are keeping everything behind the curtain for a big reveal, but there’s also the chance that development isn’t going as planned.
Aside from robot fulfillment, there’s the pickle for backer expectation. Jibo is promising to be your robotic assistant and companion. Backers are expecting a lot from Jibo, but they shouldn’t be surprised when Jibo turns out to be no more than a motorized talking smartphone. Jibo’s advertised features may seem reminiscent of science fiction, but they’re pretty close to the boilerplate algorithms we experience with digital assistants in our smartphones. And honestly, how often do you use your phone’s digital assistant? Once a month? Probably. Everyday? Unlikely. Perhaps backers are looking past this and investing for the social aspect that Jibo retains as a robot with pseudo-emotions. Nonetheless, I’m laying down my cards and saying Jibo will be a disappointing, dust-collecting machine in a majority of backers’ homes prior to adoption.
Another probable candidate for jaded backer expectations is a new robot named Robit. It’s a tiny robot currently seeking funding on Indiegogo that plans to be the robot that “does it all.” A robot such as Mr. Handy from the Fallout series if you will. With Robit, however, that’s not exactly the case. The robot moves around on two wheels with a weird motorized head at the top that spins around in an effort to convey emotion. No arms, object manipulators, or end effectors of any kind. The makers of Robit boast he can set alarms, remind you of your daily tasks, act as a robotic webcam for video calling, and even advise you on what to eat if you’re on a diet. These tasks boil down to the essential apps found on most smartphones. However, with Robit, the backer is going to have to make sure Robit’s available 100% of the time, and there’s no way he’s fitting in a pocket. Once a backer realizes this, they’re more likely to get annoyed with the hassle of Robit and just go back to using technology that’s faster and more reliable.
Moving on to robot fulfillment, here’s a robot that is bound to piss off backers. Its name is Alpha 2 and it’s a humanoid robot built for the home.
Backers have put in over a million bucks for this robot to deliver high-tech voice recognition, object handling, and features similar to your personal computer, but it’s ability to fulfill its promises aren’t looking so good. Alpha 2 was demoed at CES 2016 during a CNET interview, and it pretty much failed at performing the promised features: voice recognition, dancing, and basic motor skills. The whole thing was caught on tape, and it’s pretty hard to watch without cringing into a raisin. Warning. Awkwardness ensues.
The main point here is that these social robots are no more than your smartphone in the flesh. A smartphone, however, is quick, reliable, and portable. Putting the burden on a robot to tell you the weather may seem novelty at first, but it’s almost certain to get old once you realize that you have to make sure your robot’s there, listening, and answering in record timing before you get frustrated and resort to other means of technology. Wait, isn’t that what we’ve already done with our phone’s digital assistants? Social robots are on their way, but they’ll be a big disappointment to those who paid for them to arrive.
This article contains the opinion of the author and not the overall views of SimpleBotics. |
The sentence was higher than the recommendation by prosecutors of 80 strokes of the cane. Officials have not revealed the men's names due to the sensitivity of the case.
Published 12:45 PM, May 18, 2017
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia – A sharia court Wednesday, May 17 sentenced two Indonesian men to be publicly caned for gay sex for the first time in the conservative province of Aceh, the latest sign of a backlash against homosexuals in the Muslim-majority country.
The pair, aged 20 and 23, were sentenced to 85 strokes of the cane each after being found guilty of breaking sharia law in the only part of Indonesia that implements the strict Islamic regulations.
They were caught together in bed in March by vigilantes who burst into the boarding house where they were staying in provincial capital Banda Aceh.
Shaky phone footage of the raid that circulated online showed the vigilantes kicking, slapping and insulting the men, with one of them slumped naked on the ground during the attack.
Public caning has long been common for offenses such as gambling and drinking in Aceh, but Wednesday's verdict was the first time the punishment has been handed down for gay sex since a sharia regulation came into force in 2015 banning the practice.
"This is barbaric – this is another low point for Aceh, and also for Indonesia," said Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch.
Gay sex is not illegal elsewhere in Indonesia, which has the world's biggest Muslim population.
The ruling is another sign of growing hostility towards Indonesia's small lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, which has faced a wave of angry rhetoric in recent times, with ministers, hardliners and influential Islamic groups lining up to denounce homosexuality.
'Reduce my sentence'
Handing down the verdict at the Banda Aceh court, presiding judge Khairil Jamal said that the men had been "proven legally and convincingly guilty of committing gay sex, the defendants are sentenced to 85 strokes of the cane in public".
The sentence was higher than the recommendation by prosecutors of 80 strokes of the cane. Officials have not revealed the men's names due to the sensitivity of the case.
The men arrived at court handcuffed to one another, covering their faces with their clothes to hide their identities from journalists. During the hearing, they bowed their heads and covered their faces with their hands.
Asked by the judge if he accepted the verdict, one of the men said softly: "Please reduce my sentence". The second nodded gently and did not say anything.
Afer being caught, the men were handed over to sharia authorities who said they admitted to being in a relationship and having had sex 3 times.
The sentence will be carried out at a later date. Canings in Aceh are typically conducted using a thin, rattan cane in front of huge crowds outside mosques.
The backlash against the homosexual community began in early 2016, and activists believe it was triggered by widespread media coverage of a decision in the United States to legalize same-sex marriage.
A growing number of cases of gay people being harassed and running into problems have been reported. Earlier this month, police arrested 8 men in the city of Surabaya for allegedly holding a "gay party".
Aceh has faced mounting criticism for its canings, with images of women collapsing as they are publicly flogged drawing criticism from rights groups.
The province, on western Sumatra island, began implementing sharia law after being granted special autonomy in 2001, an attempt by the central government to quell a long-running separatist insurgency. Islamic laws have been strengthened since the province struck a peace deal with Jakarta in 2005. – Rappler.com |
OverDoz, the flower-minded collective behind California dream vids like "Don't Wanna Be Your Girlfriend," have popped up again with Childish Gambino, King Chip, and thousands of girls. Produced by Patrick Paige, bassist for The Internet, it's the kind of sunny funk that OverDoz is more than capable of pulling off, though the hook concedes the subject matter's less pretty: I ain't bragging, Kent Jamz sings of his body count, it ain't attractive. "I had been pretending to be Ron Isley all week, and the hook just flowed," Kent explains to FADER. "Once Chip and Gambino heard it, they had to get on it." It's been chill to see Gambino tastefully Drake-ing, hopping on cuts with upstarts from Kari Faux to Fredo Santana. But this feature was probably most worth his time: At the festival, the top of the lineup/ Still need a line-up, clothes ain't designer. OverDoz just wrapped their debut album, 2008, due on Sony/RCA. |
We are pleased to announce the launch of E-Learning Council’s Leaders in Learning Podcast. What better way to launch a learning and development podcast than to interview Clark Quinn from Quinnovation. Clark is an E-Learning Symposium keynote speaker, a recognized leader in learning technology strategy and a sought after speaker.
E-Learning Council Leaders in Learning RSS link.
Transcript of Interview with Clark Quinn
Sanjay Nasta: You’re listening to a Leaders in Learning podcast from E-Learning Council. The mission of E-Learning Council is to advance e-learning through a community that provides leadership, best practices and resources in a collaborative environment. I’m Sanjay Nasta. Today we are talking to a leader in learning, Clark Quinn, of Quinnovation. Clark, do you want to introduce yourself to our viewers?
Clark Quinn: I’m Clark Quinn. I help organizations use technology in ways that align with how we think, work and learn. Just a long background, a PhD in applied cognitive science, playing with sort of the bleeding edge of technology, lots of scars to prove it, and work through Quinnovation. That’s my vehicle to help organizations start getting strategic about … and particularly the learning development units in organizations … to get strategic about how they assist performance as we move forward from the industrial age to the information age.
Sanjay Nasta: We probably started with similar backgrounds. I’ve managed to go through all the computer age, really, then the PC age, and then the internet and now mobile, so I bet we have a similar set of backgrounds. One of the things that you’d emailed me before this was a white paper on quality e-learning, and the concept I found very interesting in there, the key concept, was the concept of effective e-learning versus efficient e-learning. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Clark Quinn: Sure. When we started having internet and computer-based training, we worried a lot about the quality. Particularly after 9/11, there was a lot of pressure to stop trying to do travel, and we started doing a lot more online. Since then, the pressure has come to do it faster, do it cheaper, and in doing that we’ve gone to how quickly can we put up content on the screen with a quiz, using technology in ways that we know how to use. We’ve moved from effectiveness, because we know this sort of event-based model, the fired together, wired together, and that’s great. You have to give a break and really sleep, and then you can strengthen it some more. Trying to imagine that we can do it all in one day is just broken, and yet that’s the model we have.
There’s a number of ways in which we distinguish between what we call traditional, typical e-learning, and what we know would be the type of thing that works. In fact, I banded together with several colleagues walking around an expo hall, once again saying, “We’ve been here 10 years together, meeting at these things, and what we see, there may be new, shiny objects or new buzzwords, but fundamentally underneath, the models haven’t changed.” We banded together and did what we call the Serious eLearning Manifesto. If there’s this big delta between what we could and should be doing and what we’re actually doing. I mean, we throw everything out and lose our predictability and our ability to actually do it under real-world constraints.
Sanjay Nasta: You know, we developed a lot of learning, and there is a tremendous pressure on cost and time, and just as much time of development as cost from our clients. Under those constraints, it becomes hard to be creative, to create the kind of e-learning that will actually drive effectiveness. How do you see getting past that pressure? What are some of the ways that we can talk to the stakeholders to educate them on why effective e-learning is important?
Clark Quinn: Yeah, and it’s a challenge. The problem is well-produced e-learning and well-designed and well-produced e-learning, the differences between them are subtle. That’s our area of expertise, and we’re supposed to know the nuances. Our consumers of our output, we shouldn’t expect them to know the difference. They should trust us, but many times they don’t, and we haven’t been good at articulating it. Too many go into instructional design that don’t have the deep background.
To your point, I think there are significant inflection points, certain places in our e-learning design processes, where small changes in what we do and how we do it, informed by what we know, there’s several bottlenecks I see. The first one is working with subject matter experts. There’s this fundamental problem that, because of the way our brains work, we compile knowledge away so that it’s no longer accessible to conscious learning. Research shows that 70 percent of what experts do, they don’t have conscious access to. They literally can’t tell us what they do, and yet we need to know what they do to help learners acquire it.
We need to come up with new ways to work with subject matter experts, and yet there’s a number of results or pressures that keep us from doing that. One of them is that for accreditation and compliance, sometimes we’re required to do what the subject matter expert tells us. “I’m an expert, you have to take my word for it,” and they don’t even realize they don’t have access to it. The power differential between the instructional designer and the subject matter expert, and in fact we need to balance those and say, “Look, you know your stuff, but I know my stuff. Trust me on this, or let’s negotiate a process.”
There’s a number of different ways we can work with that, but there are just pressures that make it challenging. That’s one example of a leverage point throughout the design process where we could get a better starting point, and once we have that starting point, we can execute against it fairly reliably to do better. There are some other points, but that’s one of the key ones that really can make a big difference.
Sanjay Nasta: Access to subject matter expert time is always a big issue for us. That’s a struggle, because they usually have day jobs, right? I mean, if they’re experts, they’re well regarded. They have a day job, they’re already busy, and this is an added-on responsibility. Do you have specific tactics that help you get better results out of subject matter experts?
Clark Quinn: I do. I think there’s a couple of things that will make a difference. When you’re hiring outside experts, maybe you’re producing learning for the market, you might have to reward them for their time, and then you have a strict … actually, in many cases that’s easier, because you can have a strict relationship expectation statement that says, you know, upon this, you will get paid. It’s internal experts that tend to be harder, and yet you need your business partners who you’re developing this for to acknowledge that you can’t do it without access to them. Part of it is in setting the expectations up front in what the relationship has to be, and being very concrete about why it has to be.
Another couple tricks, and this takes some knowledge on the part of instructional designers, and it’s a problem that we have accidental instructional designers. You wouldn’t have an accidental, you know, cab driver or an accidental neuroscientist, but somehow we seem to have accidental instructional designers.
Sanjay Nasta: You have accidental cab drivers. It’s called Uber now.
Clark Quinn: True, but there’s some requirements, I believe … and I’m willing to be wrong … and you take whatever risks are associated with that. The point being, take the initial material. Get the material beforehand, the PDFs and the PowerPoints, and don’t just slap them up on the screen but understand them enough, and use some real-world knowledge enough and talk to some triangular stakeholders, and [pre-seed 07;34] what you think is likely to be the information you need from those SME, and then have them critique it. Instead of having them generate it, have them critique it, and they’ll fix stuff that’s wrong, but you’ve done a lot of the work for them so you get the maximum input.
Like I said, also triangulating, so getting it from the supervisor of the people you’re training, who aren’t necessarily the same as the subject matter experts, and find out the problems that they still exhibit even after training, and bring that back in and say, “Well, we’re going to make those alternatives.” If you can get several subject matter experts, ideally getting several and getting them to work together really helps unpack that thinking, but that’s even more of a time commitment, as you point out.
There’s prethinking and giving them something to critique instead of asking them to produce it all ahead of time, and being [inaudible 08:21] with questions and having a dialogue with them to maximize their time are a couple of things that will help you get the best outputs from the least amount of time investment on their part.
Sanjay Nasta: The other challenge we’ve frequently seen with subject matter experts is the same problem we used to have when we were designing web pages. The information, it’s almost an information dump. It’s almost ego-driven information instead of objective-driven information, and that is a big challenge we have to overcome and educate. For me, training goes to an objective. That’s the difference between training and just conversation. Talking to a lot of management, two essential things that you talked about, it’s the do, it’s the effectiveness. I think one of the problems we have in training is it’s sometimes tough to measure the effectiveness in an isolated way, and that’s the other challenge.
I was thinking about talking to you this morning, and efficiency is one part, but the effectiveness of training is the other. How do we measure it? How do we prove it? When you can prove it, I’ve seen the budgets increase dramatically, but until you can prove it, it’s hard. In some cases it’s easy to prove, like sales training. If you can isolate it a bit and you watch sales go up, that’s a great measurement. Can you talk a little bit about your thoughts around effectiveness and what you see as effectiveness, and how you measure it?
Clark Quinn: Absolutely, Sanjay, and you’re right. Even before you talk with subject matter experts, you should be determining that there’s a real need that this course you’re designing is going to achieve. What is the problem? What is the gap between what we’re observing and what we should be observing, so we have a very specific focus, and how do we know that there’s that gap? That’s where you kind of do a measurement. People come in and ask for courses, and really you need to push back and say, “Well, what is the problem we’re solving?” This gets into performance consulting, and you identify. You say, “Sales, as you point out, is easy. Are we closing at an appropriate rate? What’s our time to closure? What’s our hit rate?”
All these things are concrete, but I want to suggest that most of what we should be doing should similarly be addressing a discernable problem. You know, yes, we have compliant sexual harassment training and such, and we might … you know, if we were doing that right. We’re doing it because it’s lawyer CYA instead of meeting a determined lack of performance. For most things when they come in, if it’s, you know, reducing errors in the manufacturing process, decreasing times on calls for customer service, it might not just be a course. It might be a combination of, well, we need better tools, job aids or look-up tables or decision tree tools, combined with training, to address that.
That’s where wrapping good course design should be inside a broader process of performance consulting, and then when we determine the learning experience, then we talk to the subject matter experts. Then we determine what should be in the decision course, but you can’t get there just when somebody says, “Okay, let’s start talking to an expert about a course.” You need to start beforehand and say, “What is the business unit’s measure that is not up to scratch?” If they can’t give that to you, you have a problem.
What’s not happening in the call center that should? Are customers unhappy? Are you not able to solve their problems, or is it taking too long to solve their problems? Let’s get specific here, and then you can design your training to address the real problem. Obviously, this is hard, but at the end of the day, that’s the strategic move that’s part of L&D has to name.
Sanjay Nasta: It also requires a broader base of knowledge than just learning. Some of those things require a business background, an operational background or a marketing background, depending where you’re addressing, so you can at least speak the same language. It’s a challenge to just go in with a learning background and attack some of those business problems. We have to start speaking the language of business, which is numbers and accounting. It’s one of the challenges I’ve had with some of the training people we work with. It’s important to speak the language of the customer and the stakeholder.
My other observation is we frequently … and training, you said it was going to a $105 billion industry or something in that range? It’s a large industry. We put a lot of different things under the training umbrella, and the training that you need for regulatory compliance … which frankly can be a page-turner, because the objectives are to take the training, in all honesty.
Clark Quinn: You shouldn’t be designing that. I mean, that’s industry standard stuff. You should just buy whatever the best off the shelf is. You shouldn’t invest your precious resources in design and development, except for things that are proprietary to your organization. Now, if there’s some maybe process used, yes, the way you handle it, but other than that, that’s just not a good use of your resources. Save it for more essential things.
Sanjay Nasta: The software industry went through the same thing, right? I mean, before QuickBooks, every business we consulted with said, “Oh, our accounting needs are unique,” and I will tell you, for most small businesses, QuickBooks and then Great Plains, then Oracle, can cover all accounting needs. It’s amazing how many times regulatory compliance training gets designed.
I will also tell you that I think in the minds of stakeholders and management, training gets painted with the same brush. They don’t differentiate between regulatory and compliance training and performance training, and I think that’s some of the marketing issues we have, getting the folks who are making the decisions to buy training to understand that there is a difference. I don’t know if you agree or disagree.
Clark Quinn: I couldn’t agree more. The designers in the company should be experts in the company’s business if they’re going to support it, and that’s part of the bigger picture of the strategy. There’s more to it. There’s a number of other touch points. There was some work Atul Gawande did, who wrote “The Checklist Manifesto,” where you have two checklists, one making sure you dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s, and that’s really good and most people do that, but he also had one where people synced up at the right point to make sure you’re on the page.
He was syncing up brainstorming at the beginning of the learning experience with diverse inputs, so the developer and the designer together just go, “What can we do and follow some good, known processes about being creative?” Then they come up with something that then each can work on their own part of it, but those sync points are another thing.
I’m suggesting there’s three major elements, processes around working with SMEs, processes that have great definition around how to make each of those elements work well, and getting the right connections, people working together at the right touch points to get the maximum benefit of creativity and quality along the way.
Sanjay Nasta: That’s a very good summary. Are there industries that are doing very effective training? I’ve seen examples.
Clark Quinn: Oh, sure. The military, the airline industry, places where people die if you get the answer wrong. You look at military and airline and medicine and they have either a lot of simulator practice or they have a lot of mentored practice, and that’s really the key. The rest of it’s idiosyncratic. If you happen to have an insightful, clever L&D manager who gets this and you look at what they do, they have action and reflection. That’s what learning is. We act in the world and reflect on it. To the extent that we’re good at reflection, we become more powerful learners, and one of the areas of focus could be just sort of learning to learn.
Sanjay Nasta: I was reading through your “Serious eLearning Manifesto,” and I love the summary. I think I’m going to make a poster and stick it in all our IDs’ offices. The move from content-focused to perform-focused, the move from efficient for authors to meaningful learning, and attendance-driven to engagement-driven, all of those will be very powerful changes in the industry. I get in deep trouble sometimes because I challenge what our industry is doing. I challenge the quality of the work that we are doing. I can’t politely repeat that in an interview, though. How has the traction been on the “eLearning Manifesto”? Are you starting to get some traction?
Clark Quinn: We’ve had traction. We got buy-in from ASTD and [inaudible 16:52] and ISPI and “Training” magazine, and we’ve had continuing people signing up, so we’ve gotten mind space. People have come up and said, “Oh, I love it,” but where I’ve seen a barrier is people having the momentum to make the change to do it. I have to give credit. That wasn’t me alone. That was with Michael Allen and Allen Interactions, who’s been decades at the, you know, ledge. Julie Dirksen, who wrote the great book “Design for How People Learn,” and Will Thalheimer, one of our great translators of research into practice.
We have great partners in doing that, but we truly believe in strong evidence that, yes, those eight values that differentiate typical e-learning from serious e-learning are important, and yet we’re calling out the industry. It can be risky in a business sense, but if you care about the potential … and that was what was great about working with those people, and it’s nice to talk to you too, Sanjay. If you care about what the potential is and what technology could be doing for learning, you really can’t not try and nudge the industry in positive directions if not, all right, take a brickbat.
Sanjay Nasta: We should wrap up, but there’s one question that comes out of that. I think the principles are great. The challenges to achieve the principles are partially tool-based and process-based. I think a lot of our designers are still having challenges with the process to achieve these values and the tools to achieve these values. I’ve seen it in other industries. In mobile, when we moved from web to mobile, the first thing we did was we copied the web, and the applications that got deep buy-in were designed for mobile. I think we have to have processes that allow us to design for effectiveness. We have to have marketing to solve that. I think that’s part of what’s going to drive adoption. I will tell you, from the management suite, the folks are ready for it, because it’s a challenge to them to achieve this.
Clark Quinn: Well, I think it’s well past time where CFOs are going, “Can you justify the money we’re spending on this?” I use this lightly and it’s probably insensitive, but I call us a faith-based industry. We have faith that if we follow the process, it’s what’s good. We don’t test it, we don’t measure it, and the rest of our business has faith that we know what we’re doing. They know learning is important and what we do looks like schooling, so it should be good, and they forget that schooling wasn’t particularly successful in their learning experience. I don’t mean to be irreverent, but I’m trying to find an angle that says, “We’ve got to get away from just this belief and start testing ourselves, and becoming as innovative as we expect other industries and organizations to be.”
Sanjay Nasta: The problem is, in this age, I can get any piece of information in a second on Google. It’s the wisdom to use that information that is of value. The era of memorizing information is over. That’s too bad. I’ve passed lots of tests by retaining information, but I think it’s closer to what I experienced in engineering school where information didn’t help you a lot. It was frequently open-book. It was the problem that you had to solve that helped you.
Clark Quinn: That’s great. I love open-book. I think you’re spot on, Sanjay, in that area. The ability to recite rote information is not going to help organizations succeed. The ability to make better decisions, the right ones at the right time, is what’s going to make a difference, and that’s going to come from this deeper e-learning design. That’s what I’m trying to raise awareness of and help organizations do, so we can start lifting our businesses, our earnings, reputation and success.
Sanjay Nasta: Clark, we should probably wrap up, but as usual, we talked for a bit of time. Every time we get together, we get evangelical about this. I really appreciate your time. Anything you’d like to add to close this conversation?
Clark Quinn: Not really. Stuff before it appears in books and then in white papers and in presentations shows up on my blog, Quinnovation.com. I encourage your audience to go there and have a look if they need help sleeping at night, and thank you. The only other thing I wanted to say, Sanjay, is I appreciate the opportunities you’ve provided to help try and raise the industry. I appreciate your investment of time and effort, and here’s to better learning.
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An unidentified man, who plead guilty to statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl in 2009 and got her pregnant, is now filing for visitation rights to see the toddler produced by the rape.
The man was sentenced to 16 years probation in 2011, reports the Daily Mail. Part of the probation required that he pay child support, however, that also entitles him to seek visitation rights.
The man met the 14-year-old girl at church and, later, had sex with her and got the teen pregnant. However, she was too young to legally consent to sex, reports Fox 25.
The victim’s mom told Fox 25: "She decided to keep her baby. And now she has to hand her baby over for a visit with her rapist?"
The teen's attorney Wendy Murphy told the NY Daily News that she asked the court to require the rapist pay restitution instead of child support, which would deny him access to the toddler.
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Murphy also asked that the man be banned from seeing the child and mother: "This family has been very clear from the beginning that they want nothing to do with this guy. What legal system requires a toddler to have a relationship with the man who raped her mother?"
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Following on from our “not-review” of five free Android apps for audiophiles Hifi Pig has put together another selection of free Android apps that audiophiles may find useful and fun.
PlatterSpeed – Vinyl Tool
This little app does what it says on the tin…it helps you calibrate the speed of your turntable to 33 1/3 or 45 RPM using a 3150 Hz test tone….of course you’ll need a record with this tone on there and the company recommend a specific one to use.
Not used this app, but again it looks fun and will satisfy the tweakers and measurement fanatics out there in audiophileland.
Seismograph
Max at Townshend Audio really ought to take the credit for bringing this app to our attention and it certainly makes for an interesting demonstration of his isolation products. Basically you place this on your speaker, or any other bit of kit, walk around the room and watch the seismograph go crazy as your feet hit the ground. The more isolated from the ground your kit, the less the seismograph will jump around.
If you are looking at isolating your equipment efficiently then this is a useful little free app will help you find out if you have been successful or not.
Audiophile Test (Hearing Test)
The general purpose of this little app is to tell you if you can hear the difference between low and high quality MP3 files. Good fun… many will not want to share the results I fear. Relies on you having good quality headphones already I would suggest…and perhaps an out-board DAC….and headphone amp.
Box Tune Calculator
Another free app for making speaker enclosures aimed at the audiophile DIY market and the car audio. It’s a pretty comprehensive toolkit of an app to be fair including a nvented box calculator, Wedge box calculator, Box volume calculator, Port size calculator and an ohm calculator so you can work out the overall impedence of your speakers based on how you wire them and the individual impedences of the drivers you use.
There are wiring diagrams and a cut sheet to help you put your project together. I’m certainly no DIYer to I’ve not used this one but it looks intuitive enough and should be a useful one for folk to have in their arsenal.
Perfectone
Perfectone is a nice little free Android app that aims to get your speakers in the right position for your room. The bumph on Google Store says “Using a revolutionary new algorithm to calculate Reverberation Time, PERFECTONE determines the best place to put stereo speakers in YOUR room”.
To use it you turn down the volume on your device, press the button and a graph is displayed. You then add your room dimensions and are told where your speakers will be best placed. Far more easy to use than the screen grab would initially suggest.
It’s an easy to use app and the science does seem to be solid enough with it. However, I would only ever use something like this as a rough-guide and then fine tune by ear. |
Chad Hansen: Taoism and the Tao Te Ching
Originally from Utah, Chad Hansen studied Western philosophy and entered the PhD program at the University of Michigan. He then taught at the universities of Pittsburgh, Stanford, and Vermont and went on to hold several visiting professorships in Hawaii and at U.C.L.A. before settling in Hong Kong as a professor of philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in 1993.
In this exclusive interview for Life Arts Media Professor Hansen shares his knowledge and insights about Taoist philosophy and his new translation of the Tao Te Ching.
Although written more than 2,500 years ago and within a radically different culture, the Tao Te Ching’s concepts and teachings have become more influential in the West than ever before.
Laozi, the Chinese sage and founder of Taoism, sets out a path (tao) that allows us to tune in to the nature of the universe. His axioms are intended to help us achieve transcendence and a life of integrity and balance: they explore the importance of male and female complementary qualities while praising self-knowledge and criticizing rational understanding. Among his insights are the beliefs that flexibility and suppleness are superior to rigidity and strength, and that self-absorption and self-importance are vain and destructive.
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Split high court now holds fate of Obama immigration actions
WASHINGTON — Conservative Supreme Court justices expressed sharp skepticism about President Barack Obama's immigration efforts Monday, leaving his actions to help millions of people who are in the country illegally in the hands of a seemingly divided court.
As hundreds of pro-immigration demonstrators and a smaller number of opponents filled the sidewalk outside the court, the justices appeared to split along ideological and partisan lines over a case that pits Republican governors and members of Congress against the Democratic administration.
President Barack Obama's administration is asking the justices to allow it to put in place two programs that could shield roughly 4 million people from deportation and make them eligible to work in the United States.
Texas is leading 26 states led by Republicans in challenging the programs that Obama announced in 2014 and that have been put on hold by lower courts. Those states say the administration usurped power that belongs to Congress, and Justice Anthony Kennedy indicated some support for that view.
"It's as if ... the president is setting the policy and the Congress is executing it. That's just upside down," Kennedy said.
Chief Justice John Roberts also aggressively questioned Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr., suggesting there are few limits to the president's power under the administration's view of immigration law.
"Under your argument, could the president grant deferred removal to every ... unlawfully present alien in the United States right now?" Roberts asked.
"Definitely not," Verrilli said. But it was not clear Roberts was satisfied with the answer and subsequent explanation.
The programs would apply to parents of children who are citizens or are living in the country legally. Eligibility also would be expanded for the president's 2012 effort that applies to people who were brought here illegally as children. More than 700,000 people have taken advantage of that earlier program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The new program for parents, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, and the expanded program for children could reach as many as 4 million people, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
If the court is split ideologically, the case could end in a 4-4 tie following Justice Antonin Scalia's death in February. That would leave the programs in limbo, almost certainly through the end of Obama's presidency.
Both sides acknowledge that the outcome of the presidential election ultimately could determine the programs' fates, even if the Supreme Court rules for the administration. Republican candidates have pledged to roll back Obama's actions, and Republican candidate Donald Trump has proposed deporting the roughly 11 million people who are living in the U.S. illegally.
Several justices remarked how Congress provides enough money to deport only about 400,000 people annually.
The bulk of immigrants who live in the U.S. illegally "are here whether we want them or not," Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.
The high court is expected to decide by late June whether the efforts can move forward in the waning months of Obama's presidency.
Roberts and his colleagues might have an incentive to avoid a tie vote that would not set a nationwide precedent and also point to the short-handed court's difficulty in getting its work done. If that's the case, the fate of the programs could hang on a two-word phrase the administration used to describe the status of immigrants under the programs— lawful presence. Texas and congressional Republicans who back the state say the phrase is important because it gives the immigrants more rights than federal law allows.
Verrilli told the justices that they could get rid of the phrase and essentially leave the programs unchanged. "If the court thinks it's a problem and wants to put a red pencil through it, it's totally fine," he said.
Roberts sounded interested in that idea, asking lawyer Erin Murphy if the court could, in fact, just "cross out the phrase."
Murphy, representing House Republicans, said it wasn't that simple.
In fact, it was not clear from the arguments whether such an outcome would affect immigrants' ability to work or receive other benefits, including Social Security.
One way for the court to avoid dipping into the complex details of immigration law would be to adopt the administration's argument that Texas has no right to challenge the programs in federal court.
But Roberts did not seem interested in that idea, noting that a ruling on the technical issue of standing would put Texas in a "Catch-22."
Republican governors and members of Congress have argued that Obama doesn't have the power to effectively change immigration law. When he announced the measures 17 months ago, Obama said he was acting under his own authority because Congress had failed to overhaul the immigration system. The Senate had passed legislation on a bipartisan vote, but House Republicans refused to put the matter to a vote.
The administration and immigration advocates say Obama's orders are neither unprecedented nor even unusual. Rather, they say, the programs build on past efforts by Democratic and Republican administrations to use discretion in deciding whom to deport.
The protection from deportation is "discretionary, temporary and revocable relief from the daily fear that they will be separated from their families," Thomas Saenz, arguing on behalf of three mothers of U.S. citizen children, told the court. |
A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative has spoken out about the complex dangers of declassifying secret information detailing how Russian state-sponsored hackers allegedly helped to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election.
Steven L Hall, a 30-year veteran of the clandestine agency, who retired in 2015, warned it would be "complicated" for US intelligence to publicly disclose any evidence without also exposing its human sources, their secrets and expensive methods of intelligence gathering.
"Facts may help resolve the matter, but in revealing the facts, the government may also reveal how we got them," he wrote in The Washington Post. "Worse — and I do not exaggerate — if it were human sources that provided the information, they could lose their lives."
Previously, in October, a joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) asserted that "senior" officials in Russia likely sanctioned hacks at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other key political entities.
Later, the CIA and the FBI claimed to have real evidence linking the cyberattacks – and subsequent leaks – to hackers working for Russia. As president Obama launched a probe into the case, intel officials touted the main aim of the Kremlin was to help elect Donald Trump.
Now, many are now calling for this evidence to be released. Recently, journalist Jason Leopold filed a lawsuit to try and obtain this information. Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham – while urging sanctions – claimed the majority of US senators believed Russia was responsible for the hacks.
For his part, Hall argued strongly that to reveal such facts could result in disaster. "The intelligence we have collected would probably help in providing a better understanding," he wrote. "But revealing anything could quickly become a problem. If one piece of intelligence is revealed, one political side or the other will almost certainly feel the information favours their adversaries.
"They will demand additional information. Worse, questions like, 'How exactly did you get that information?' or 'Where did that come from?' and 'When precisely did you know that?' will inevitably be asked — and the protection of sources and methods will begin to erode."
'A slippery slope'
Branding the call for evidence as a "slippery slope", the former spy said the CIA's ability to collect intelligence in the future could be at risk should too much information about its work be made public.
"We may simply be forced to make a Solomonic choice, trying to split the baby down the middle by releasing some of the intelligence but not so much as to compromise current and future collection," he wrote.
"This path will be unlikely to please either intelligence officers arguing for source protection or those outside the intelligence community clamouring for a more complete release of information. Of course, it is not the Russians to blame for this last problem, but rather our own fractured political system."
In response, journalist Glenn Greenwald, close confidant of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, indicated Hall was working with an ulterior motive in mind. "Ex-CIA operative lays the groundwork for keeping purported evidence of Russia hack hidden from public," he said on Twitter.
Echoing the sentiment, Thomas Drake, another former NSA whistleblower, tweeted: "In other words there is no proof? Defending Oz mirage [and] magic intel. In public interest, either show it or shut it."
On the same day as Hall's op-ed was published, it emerged that the Obama administration is close to finalising how it will respond to the state-backed hacks. Citing unnamed intelligence officials, the Washington Post said this may include "covert action." |
A rural NSW electrician faces life in jail for allegedly using his technical skills to help Islamic State develop "high-tech weapons capability", including the ability to detect coalition guided missiles in Syria and Iraq.
Haisem Zahab, 42, was arrested at his house in Young in southern NSW on Tuesday and charged with two counts of foreign incursion and recruitment which carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
The charge relates to anyone who "engages in a hostile activity in a foreign country".
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin said Zahab's research was sophisticated and credible and officers were "forensically" searching the property for further evidence.
A man was arrested on Tuesday after more than 20 Australian Federal Police officers swarmed a Young property. ()
"We will leave no stone unturned in what we're looking for," Mr Colvin said.
Zahab, an Australian-born citizen, did not apply for bail when he appeared in Young Local Court on Tuesday and it was formally refused.
He's next due to appear in Parramatta Local Court on March 8.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the arrest did not relate to any planned domestic attack and there was no threat to the community.
Tuesday's arrest was the result of an 18-month police investigation. ()
"Police will allege that this individual, in a regional centre, acted with intent to provide ISIL with ... the technical capability, and high-tech capability, to detect and develop missiles," Mr Turnbull told reporters in Canberra.
"This highlights that terrorism, support for terrorist groups, and Islamist extremism is not limited to our major cities."
Justice Minister Michael Keenan said the arrest was the result of an 18-month investigation.
Mr Colvin said Zahab allegedly researched and designed a laser warning device to help warn against incoming guided munitions used by coalition forces in Syria and Iraq.
"Secondly, we will also allege that he has been researching, designing and modelling systems to assist ISIL's efforts to develop their own long-range guided missile capabilities," Mr Colvin said.
Zahab is alleged to have networks and contacts in the Islamic State group, although Mr Colvin said he acted alone and had never been to Syria or Iraq.
Mr Colvin said those contacts were not necessarily in conflict zones "but in other parts of the world as well and he has been relying on them to pass this information".
Mr Colvin said Zahab is believed to have been in Young "for a while" and was arrested in front of his family, including children, at a house in the rural town which is known as the cherry capital of Australia.
The community is reeling from the arrest.
"It's a shock, for sure," former mayor Stuart Freudenstein told AAP.
Mr Freudenstein said there was not been a burgeoning Muslim community in the region, despite some media reports.
"I'm not aware of the numbers increasing that much. There are a few that are sprinkled throughout the community," he said.
However, an Islamic school for Kindergarten to Year 8 students is expected to open in the area this year to cater for the local Muslim population.
© AAP 2019 |
Schiff, Trott Introduce Bipartisan Resolution to Recognize Armenian Genocide
Washington D.C. – Today, U.S. Representatives Adam Schiff (CA-28) and Dave Trott (MI-11) introduced legislation to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The Resolution recognizes the genocide against the Armenian people from 1915-1923 by the Ottoman Empire, while drawing links to the modern scourge of genocide, including attacks on religious minorities in Iraq and Syria by ISIS.
"Over 100 years ago, the Ottoman Empire undertook a brutal campaign of murder, rape, and displacement against the Armenian people that took the lives of 1.5 million men, women, and children in the first genocide of the 20th century," said Schiff. "Genocide is not a historic relic - even today hundreds of thousands of religious minorities face existential threat from ISIS in Syria and Iraq. It is therefore all the more pressing that the Congress recognize the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide and stand against modern day genocide and crimes against humanity."
“After over a hundred years, it is long overdue that the United States government stand in solidarity with the Armenian people to officially recognize the genocide waged against their families a century ago,” said Trott. “I am honored to be able to represent such a vibrant Armenian population in Southeast Michigan and I will continue to fight for them in Congress.”
Representatives Adam Schiff and Dave Trott were also joined by the other leaders of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues, Representatives Valadao, Bilirakis, Pallone, and Speier in underscoring their support for the recognition of the Armenian genocide.
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MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. -- Just when you thought the debate over whether stars should play in bowl games had cooled off, Jabrill Peppers suffered a hamstring injury in practice a day before the Orange Bowl and missed the game. Then, just one quarter into that game, the Wolverines found themselves down another top player as tight end Jake Butt suffered a knee injury and did not return.
But for all the talk of the risks, namely injury, associated with potential first-round picks playing in bowl games -- Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh believes Butt suffered an unfortunate MCL or ACL injury -- there has been nary a mention of the upside.
Dalvin Cook was the paradigm of that Friday night in South Florida.
Cook was always going to play in this game. It was a homecoming for him, one last chance to play in front of his family and a faithful Florida State fan base that has long known what many covering college football have been late to recognize: Cook may well be the sport's best running back.
But while D'Onta Foreman broke records at Texas, San Diego State's Donnel Pumphrey smashed FBS marks, Leonard Fournette failed to live up to his 2015 dominance and missed games for LSU, and Christian McCaffrey impressed with his all-purpose ability, Cook continued flashing and grinding for FSU with much less fanfare.
He nearly eclipsed 4,500 career rushing yards on Friday while rumbling for his 19th rushing touchdown for the second year in a row. That doesn't even account for his 900+ career receiving yards, 45 of which came on an incredible deep pass down the sideline early in the first quarter at Hard Rock Stadium.
Cook supplied 40 rushing yards on the first series of the game, a touchdown drive for FSU. His 45-yard catch led to a field goal a few minutes later. He didn't account for much on the Seminoles' next two scoring drives as the Wolverines did a great job bottling him up, but when the game got close late, Cook reappeared -- twice.
With Michigan's coverage improving and quarterback Deondre Francois getting absolutely blown up by the UM defensive front seven, FSU's 11-point lead was suddenly down following an ill-advised throw by Francois near his goal line; linebacker Mike McCray picked it off with ease and brought it 14 yards to the house for a touchdown to cut his team's deficit to five.
Michigan looked poised to get the ball back and have an opportunity to take the lead early in the fourth quarter after Francois was sacked again, this time for a loss of 13, setting up a third-and-22 from the FSU 13.
With the Wolverines covering the pass, Jimbo Fisher decided to give the ball to his best playmaker, hoping Cook could at least give the Seminoles' punter some additional space. Cook had other ideas.
Breaking a couple tackles on his way to the far side of the field, Cook suddenly saw open grass in front of him. He hauled ass to the sideline and took it as far upfield as he could, finally stopping 71 yards later with the raucous Florida State-leaning crowd back on its feet and Michigan fans firmly planted in their seats.
MAMA THERE GOES THAT MAN
4REAL!!!#FSU RB Dalvin Cook @dalvindjc (Miami Central HS) breaks off the long run for 71 yards!!! #FLgridironpic.twitter.com/6wuVeAFdWt — FloridaGridironPreps (@FLgridironpreps) December 31, 2016
There was a furious Michigan comeback to take its first lead of the game. The Wolverines scored back-to-back touchdowns and converted a two-point try to go up three with 2:17 remaining.
And while it was not Cook who took back stutter-step 65-yard kickoff return that gave Florida State renewed life in the final two minutes -- that was wideout Keith Gavin -- it was Cook's 21-yard reception on the first play of the ensuing series that put FSU in the red zone and made at least a tie in regulation a foregone conclusion.
As you well know by now, the Seminoles scored a touchdown a couple plays later and held on for the victory. Cook was named the game's most valuable player with 207 total yards (145 rushing) and his lone score in the 33-32 victory.
"It was the best game of my life, man!" Cook exclaimed on the field while hoisting the trophy. "... It took everything we had."
A bevy of NFL scouts were in attendance Friday night. Personnel directors across the league were surely watching at home on their couches. If the three years of electricity had not piqued their interest, perhaps this game -- and any of Cook's individual plays or the sum of them -- let them know Dalvin Cook is for real.
Perhaps the team that has been salivating over drafting Cook in the middle of the first round has now come to the realization that they're going to need to trade into the top 10 to nab a back with his dynamic ability and unmatched athleticism.
Perhaps Cook, who never considered sitting out his final game, did himself a service that Fournette and McCaffrey -- both of whom dealt with legitimate nagging injuries this season -- did not due to concern over their health and what it would mean for their future.
Cook balled out in front of his family. He once again led Florida State in an incredible victory with the entire nation watching. And for doing so, he got at least one accolade he so richly deserved and likely made himself some money in the process.
On the same night Butt's injury gave us every reason to accept star players skipping their non-College Football Playoff bowl games, Cook's performance proved the possibly tremendous value of playing in them. |
Democratic leaders in New York scored two major progressive policy wins in their recent budget deal with Republicans who control the state senate—a $15 minimum wage by 2021 and 12 weeks of paid family leave for all workers. But a third progressive prize—a sweeping ethics reform package proposed in the wake of recent high-level corruption convictions—never made it into the budget package.
Critics say the budget deal was the legislature’s last, best opportunity to pass comprehensive ethics reforms since last year’s convictions of former Democratic Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver and former Republican Senate Leader Dean Skelos on federal corruption charges of profiting off the power of their public offices. Sentencing is expected Wednesday for Silver and later this month for Skelos.
The short-circuited ethics overhaul took some of the luster off what was otherwise a crowning moment for Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who is widely believed to have national—even presidential—ambitions, but who is sometimes accused by progressives of skewing too far toward the center. Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton stood by Cuomo’s side at the victory rally to celebrate the $15 minimum wage increase.
But in the background, reform advocates wondered whether Cuomo is truly interested in real reform, and whether the legislature will ever support measures that directly impact their personal livelihoods and campaign habits—especially with Republicans in control of the state senate.
Reformers say it’s a case of déjà vu—another reminder that state leaders have a habit of shirking reform, even in the face of massive scandal and corruption. Dick Dadey, executive director of the government watchdog group Citizens Union, had harsh words for Cuomo, State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, and Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan.
“It’s a shame and embarrassment to New York that three-and-a-half months after the convictions of these leaders, not one piece of anti-corruption legislation was passed, whether it was tied to budget or not,” Dadey, told The American Prospect. “The budget provided leverage to get a strong package passed. It’s unfathomable that our three political leaders could not find a common ground to address the corruption in New York state.”
Cuomo has privately promised reformers that he will continue to press ethics reform legislation this session, but reform advocates say there’s not much of a window for it to actually pass. And they openly question whether he’s willing to risk his growing national profile to engage in a fight that will require him to utilize a tremendous amount of political capital. Some have even resigned themselves to the conclusion that comprehensive ethics reform won’t stand a chance until after the 2016 elections.
“It’s one thing to put it in and fight for it, which is what he did on $15. It’s another thing to put it in and not fight for it, which is what he did on ethics,” Blair Horner, legislative director for New York Public Interest Research Group, said in an interview. Horner, who briefly worked for Cuomo when the latter was attorney general, has become one of the state’s most outspoken advocates for ethics and campaign-finance reform.
“The whole thing hinges on what the governor does,” says Horner. “If he chooses to make it a priority, there’s a shot.”
Corruption scandals have long plagued Albany, but the legislature’s tainted public image has worsened in recent years. Of the 33 state legislators who have left their seats because of criminal or ethical problems since 1999, more than half have stepped down since Cuomo took office in 2010. In its annual ranking of corruption in the states last year, the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity gave New York a D minus.
Cuomo’s ethics record has also suffered. Critics say the reforms he has introduced in the face of outside pressure and political scandal have been piecemeal. In 2013, he established a 25-person independent commission to investigate corruption in the government. But rather quickly, rumors swirled that Cuomo was compromising the commission’s investigations. Eventually, he shut down the commission altogether. A New York Times investigation later found that Cuomo had undermined the panel’s independence from the start by, as the Times reported, “objecting whenever the commission focused on groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him.”
But the arrest and eventual conviction of Silver and Skelos, widely referred to as two of the three “men in the room” who controlled state politics, shocked even the most cynical of New Yorkers and prompted reformers to dub the jarring scandal New York’s “Watergate moment.”
In January of this year, with the convictions of Silver and Skelos still fresh in the public’s mind, Cuomo included a bold set of ethics reforms in his $145 billion state budget proposal. The provisions were lifted straight from the wish list of good-government watchdogs. Cuomo proposed placing strict limits on state legislators’ outside income, stripping convicted legislators of their pensions, and strengthening lobbying disclosure rules.
AP Photo/Mike Groll, File In this February 25, 2016 file photo, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo gets off a recreational vehicle before a rally to raise the minimum wage in Albany, N.Y. New York leaders are once again brushing off questions about ethics reform, despite polls showing overwhelming public dismay at the chronic corruption in New York's Capitol.
He also called for creating a public campaign-financing system and closing the so-called LLC loophole, which allows corporations to secretly funnel huge amounts of money to candidates through limited liability companies. The loophole, which allows a clear path around state contribution limits, has given special interests like the real estate industry an expansive avenue for political influence in Albany.
Several of the proposals took aim at the types of activities that had led to corruption charges against Silver and Skelos, including the lucrative opportunities that legislators enjoy to earn outside income and to receive huge campaign contributions from LLCs.
“These ethics reforms are important. Especially considering the context of the past year,” Cuomo declared in his State of the State speech on January 13. “We have to remember the people we serve, and it’s our responsibility to give them the government that they deserve.”
Reform advocates had publicly applauded Cuomo’s anti-corruption platform, but say privately that they weren’t expecting much from the budget deal—or in the 2016 legislative session for that matter.
“There never was a deal,” Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director for New York’s League of Women Voters, told the Prospect. “The governor has done this before. He puts [ethics reform] in the budget but, as far as I can tell, he never had any intention to make this stick in any way. He went across the state for the minimum wage, but never once mentioned ethics.”
In response to a request for comment from the Prospect, Cuomo’s office pointed to comments he made in mid-March. "After the budget, you still have April, May, June, because the session goes until June and my opinion is nobody should leave Albany and end the session unless we at least do the pension forfeiture bill, the LLC loopholes, because I just think that would be inexplicable to the people of this state and the legislators are smart people. They know they go back and they run for election,” Cuomo said.
The ethics reform process itself has drawn allegations of inherent conflicts of interest. Cuomo is the largest recipient of LLC contributions, many of them reportedly from high-dollar real estate donors. Many Republican members of the legislature make large incomes outside public office and, critics say, don’t want to impose limits on their own wealth. Democrats in the Assembly also stand accused of protecting the pensions of legislators who’ve been convicted of corruption, which includes many prominent leaders of their party. It’s not the first time politicians have resisted acting against their own self-interest.
In the roughly three months between the time Cuomo proposed his budget, and when a deal was struck, the governor was already managing expectations about the likelihood of comprehensive ethics reform. In February, he started vocally touting his support for a $15 statewide minimum, but watchdogs say he became much quieter on ethics. However, he publicly maintained that he was still committed to reform.
“I don't know how I could have been any louder on ethics than I was in my State of the State and I don't know how I could have been any stronger in statements I've made since the scandals than I've been,” Cuomo told reporters. “And I don't know how I could have been any more aggressive in my proposals.”
AP Photo/Mary Altaffer Former New York state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, center, leaves court, Tuesday, April 28, 2015, in New York.
But his resistance to pushing his ethics overhaul after his State of the State address sent the reform community a different message. “In previous years the way he's allocated the might of his bully pulpit has been a good barometer for what issues will gain traction and which ones will fall to the wayside,” Jimmy Vielkind presciently wrote for Capital New York.
By mid-March, with two weeks before the budget deadline, Cuomo said ethics most likely wouldn’t be included in a deal and placed the blame on the legislature, where both chambers had proposed budgets without comprehensive ethics reform. The Democratic Assembly was resistant to the idea of pension forfeiture, and the Republican Senate didn’t want to place limits on outside income.
“It’s clear to me that they don’t intend to pass a robust ethics package in the budget,” Cuomo told reporters in March.
The political drama stuck to a script that, to reform advocates, was becoming familiar. “In Albany, this is how the stage gets set for each legislative house to praise itself and to blame the other for the failure, yet again, of meaningful reform, and for Mr. Cuomo to blame them both,” The New York Times editorial board declared.
Reform advocates now say state leaders may have missed their last chance. If Cuomo had truly wanted his proposed ethics reform in the budget, they say, he could have gotten it. In New York, the governor’s strongest political lever each year is the budget deal because in addition to his bully pulpit, the governor controls the purse strings on local aid to schools and hospitals, and major capital improvements on things like transportation and infrastructure.
And Cuomo has never hesitated to pull those strings. Reform advocates point to the state minimum wage as an example. Not too long ago, Cuomo was resistant to raising the state’s wage minimum. However, under mounting pressure from unions and from the national Fight for $15 movement, he reversed course to back a $15 minimum for New York City’s fast-food workers, for state employees, and eventually, for workers throughout the state. Once committed, Cuomo convinced a Republican senate that has long been hostile towards a minimum wage hike to strike a deal in its favor.
“It shows that he does seize opportunities where he can be seen as someone who comes in and takes an issue to victory,” says Dadey, of Citizens Union. “That shows how astute and effective a political player our governor is.”
Dadey and his allies wonder whether Cuomo is merely paying lip service to ethics reform and has no intention of trying to thread the needle to reach a deal with the legislature. But reform advocates acknowledge that the failure of reform does not rest entirely on Cuomo’s shoulders.
AP Photo/Mike Groll, File In this Monday, March 31, 2014, file photo, members of the Assembly debate budget bills at the Capitol in Albany, New York.
“He can’t force the legislature to do something they won’t do—especially with something like ethics, which will have a direct impact on them. In that sense, to say it’s all the governor’s fault is simplistic,” says Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. “On the other hand, he has huge power. Certainly, this year he did not fight for it the way a lot of reformers had hoped. This is a political calculation on his part on whether it’s worth fighting for something you may lose.”
The pathway for passing ethics reform before the legislative session ends in June is narrow, but a glimmer of hope remains for ethics advocates.
On the same day as next week’s presidential primary elections in New York, there are also special elections to fill the seats left vacant by Silver in Manhattan and Skelos in Long Island. With the Republican majority in the Senate hanging by one seat, the race to succeed Skelos has become a heated political battle. Democrats tapped Assemblyman Todd Kaminski to run on a campaign built around a pro-reform agenda while Republicans chose an “outsider” unconnected with the tainted Albany political machine. Reformers liken the race to a referendum on state corruption, and say that if Kaminski wins it could provide a new impetus for ethics reform.
Some say Cuomo may use a pending bill to increase legislative pay as a bargaining chip to push ethics reforms. The legislature has been quietly gunning for a raise for years and Cuomo threatened during negotiations in March to withhold a raise if the legislature failed to pass the budget before its deadline. If the raise comes up for consideration this session it’s possible that Cuomo could demand ethics concessions. Still, that would likely result in minor reforms at best.
“The muscle memory of Albany will be to come up with a lot of tiny proposals and then herald that as historic reform,” says Horner of New York PIRG.
If the legislature fails to take up reform this session, proponents will try to make their case on the campaign trail in the lead up to the November elections. With public outrage at corruption boiling over, activist groups are primed to dedicate resources getting pro-reform candidates elected and making anti-corruption legislation a top priority.
One big question is whether Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney who charged Silver and Skelos, will announce another string of investigations. Coming off the recent convictions, more federal investigations would create such a spectacle that the legislature would be forced to pass something, says the League of Women Voters’ Bartoletti.
Cuomo has said that ethics reform will be his first priority after the budget. That remains to be seen. His failure to push very hard to include his provisions in the budget deal disillusioned good-government activists, who call into question his willingness to make substantial reform a top priority for his administration.
“Politics in Albany is a very high-stakes poker game with very little hint to what hand you’re holding and what deals you’ll make. This is more true this year than it ever has been,” says Dadey. “This will happen if he wants it to happen. If he fails in getting this done, it will be a huge black mark on his legacy.” |
Last Thursday night, The Alemonger invited me over for a tasting of his recent Craft Beer purchases from Trader Joe’s. We are no strangers to Trader Joe’s at the G-LO residence, and go there every so often to purchase their unique and usually fine quality food offerings, so when the opportunity to try some of their beers came up, I just couldn’t say no. Of the seven different beers in the photo above, we managed to try five.
Since I know very little about the Trader Joe’s Craft Beers, and since there is very little information about their beers on their website, I will skip the usual, “Here is what the brewery has to say about this beer” section and just get on with our reviews.
Here goes…
Beer #1 – Newton’s Folly Authentic Draft Cider
Alemonger says: Tasted as though it came straight from a bottom dollar grocery store generic apple juice container that sat out in the heat for a week or so. One plus: there wasn’t half a worm floating in it
Tasted as though it came straight from a bottom dollar grocery store generic apple juice container that sat out in the heat for a week or so. One plus: there wasn’t half a worm floating in it G-LO says: Overly sweet. Flat. Think Mott’s Apple Juice with a splash of vodka. Hard Cider can be delicious and refreshing. This was neither.
Beer #2 – Josephs Brau Bavarian Style Hefeweizen
Alemonger says: About as faithful to the flavor profile of a German Hef as it is to a Norweigan rabbit. Nothing worked. All of the flavors were off the charts. No head retention either. Simply terrible.
About as faithful to the flavor profile of a German Hef as it is to a Norweigan rabbit. Nothing worked. All of the flavors were off the charts. No head retention either. Simply terrible. G-LO says: Way off balance. That classic German Hefeweizen taste was overblown with cloves. There was so much clove that it tasted like it was added as an afterthought. Lacked the crispness that I long for in a Hefeweizen. Wet cardboard aftertaste.
Beer #3 – Simple Times Pilsner
Alemonger says: Pilsner? Really? Makes Miller’s claim “taste a real Pilsner” seem plausible. Reminded me of what you might pour out of the bottom of an open Fritos bag if it were left out in the rain, i.e. corn juice. And not the high fructose variety either! At least THAT can be really tasty.
Pilsner? Really? Makes Miller’s claim “taste a real Pilsner” seem plausible. Reminded me of what you might pour out of the bottom of an open Fritos bag if it were left out in the rain, i.e. corn juice. And not the high fructose variety either! At least THAT can be really tasty. G-LO says: Bland bland bland. Where is that hint of bitterness and maltiness that I crave from a Pilsner? This one made me long for a Bud/Miller/Coors. At 67 cents a can, I say throw in 8 more cents and buy yourself a can of soda.
Beer #4 – Mission Street India Pale Ale
Alemonger says: Not a top notch IPA by any standards, but far from a weak immitator. They may be once removed from Firestone-Walker, but the “big brothers” don’t let this brewery stray too far from standards brewed at the the Big House. For the price, a respectable value IPA.
Not a top notch IPA by any standards, but far from a weak immitator. They may be once removed from Firestone-Walker, but the “big brothers” don’t let this brewery stray too far from standards brewed at the the Big House. For the price, a respectable value IPA. G-LO says: Finally! A drinkable and downright enjoyable beer! Firestone Walker makes this for them. Their Union Jack and Double Jack IPAs are fantastic. This isn’t that, but it’s still quite good.
Beer #5 – Boatswain American IPA
Alemonger says: Thank god I found a really cheap fuel to fill my grill lighters because I’m sure that’s what these guys really meant the liquid in the bottles to do. Easily the worst “IPA” I’ve ever had. Felt bad even subjecting the drain to it.
Thank god I found a really cheap fuel to fill my grill lighters because I’m sure that’s what these guys really meant the liquid in the bottles to do. Easily the worst “IPA” I’ve ever had. Felt bad even subjecting the drain to it. G-LO says: IPA? But where are the hops? Bland and flavorless. The less said, the better.
___________________________________________________________
So there you have it! Five very different beers from Trader Joe’s, and four out of five were highly disappointing. In case you think we’re being overly harsh, here are a couple more opinions…
Have you tried the beers from Trader Joe’s? Let us know in the comments below! |
A week ago, Edmonton-St. Albert MP Brent Rathgeber phoned the board of directors of his constituency association at their monthly meeting and announced his resignation from the Conservative caucus. One board member, Doug Elniski, resigned in support.
Then Rathgeber informed the Speaker, the Prime Minister’s Office, the chief government whip, and finally, he posted a tweet to the world. He acted by the book. More important, he acted: his resignation was an event, an unpredictable interruption of routine procedures. Accidents are unpredictable too. Rathgeber’s resignation was no accident, but the result of that internal deliberation we usually call thinking. Moreover, because it was public and concerned matters of public policy, it was political in the fullest sense of the term. Public action means the actor bears responsibility for his deed, which gave an unusual gravity to Rathgeber’s words of explanation.
In the past few weeks, the Canadian government has used words in the opposite way, to veil and obscure rather than to reveal the meaning of their deeds. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Nigel Wright/Mike Duffy affair. To date, no words at all have been uttered by anyone that make sense of why Wright cut a cheque to Duffy so he could repay taxpayers for claiming expenses improperly.
To put it another way, when Rathgeber resigned, he revealed who he was. He disclosed a unique and distinct personality, which is always risky. This is why even those who thought his action rash at least admitted he was brave. His supporters called upon others to emulate him. They thought his deed was glorious and Rathgeber a hero.
As with the Homeric meaning of hero, Rathgeber had a story to tell. Much of it he told over the past few months on his blog.
He is a lawyer, a Queen’s counsel who understands that by the law of the Constitution, his job is to represent his constituents in Parliament and the job of Parliament is to hold the government to account, especially over its stewardship of public resources. It is not his job to present the views of the executive to the people of Edmonton-St. Albert. Reformers used to call the latter process “becoming Ottawashed.”
The occasion for his resignation was the amendments made in committee by seven Conservative MPs (six of whom were from Ontario and so devoid of Reform party recollections) of his private member’s Bill C-461, The CBC and Public Sector Disclosure and Transparency Act. Had the bill become law, it would have made the salaries of senior mandarins and CBC operatives public. Now, it may be true that making salaries public does not necessarily reduce costs. But no one made that argument in committee. In fact, no one made any arguments, because months ago, the executive decided to raise the threshold for salary disclosure. No one said a word about that either.
Why the PMO is protecting disclosure of senior bureaucrats’ salaries, let alone refusing to widen access to information criteria for the CBC, is a mystery. That would be the same CBC that refused to answer an access to information request about the size of its vehicle fleet on the grounds of “journalistic integrity.”
Rathgeber knows he will suffer the consequences of his action. In response to a blog post last summer, “Of Orange Juice and Limos,” dealing with ministerial opulence, when the House reconvened in the fall, Rathgeber’s desk had been moved to the back row.
There are consequences for the government as well. Like a Rhinestone Cowboy, “there’s been a load of compromisin’ on the road to the Tory horizon.” And as Rathgeber said, “I can only compromise so much before I begin not to recognize myself.”
In the months to come, the rest of the country will ask whether the Conservative government, as Rathgeber said, had “morphed into what we once mocked,” namely a new incarnation of the principle-free, entitlement-obsessed Liberals of Chretien’s day. If the Tories are oblivious of compromise because they have lost principles to compromise on, then they owe Rathgeber a vote of thanks for providing a reminder of what they have lost.
Barry Cooper is a senior fellow at the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute and a columnist with the Calgary Herald.
The editorial pages editor is Gordon Clark, who can be reached at [email protected]. Letters to the editor can be sent to [email protected]. |
NASA/ESA/CFHT/CXO/M. J. Jee/UC Davis/A. Mahdavi/San Fran. State Univ.
Astronomers have for the first time detected how the 600-kilometre-per-second motion of galactic clusters affects the cosmic microwave background. The results, which were posted online in March1 and are soon to appear in Physical Review Letters, confirm a 40-year-old prediction and provide a new way to investigate the evolution of large-scale structure in the Universe.
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) was created almost 14 billion years ago, shortly after the Big Bang, when the opaque plasma that filled the Universe cooled and became transparent, sending an afterglow of light in all directions. In 1970, the astrophysicists Rashid Sunyaev and Yakov Zel'dovich posited2 that as the CMB streamed through galactic clusters, its photons would scatter off electrons whizzing through regions of hot, ionized gas, and would gain a minor boost in energy. Within years, astronomers observed this thermal Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect.
In 1972, Sunyaev and Zel'dovich predicted3 a much more subtle 'kinematic' Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect (kSZ), in which the energies of CMB photons are altered by the motion, rather than the temperature, of galaxy clusters. A cluster moving away from an observer on Earth would decrease the CMB's temperature by roughly one-millionth of a degree, whereas a cluster moving towards the observer would increase it by a similar amount.
For decades, research teams attempted in vain to detect the kSZ. Even today, no telescope on the ground can measure the fine gradations in CMB temperature that would be produced by a single galactic cluster. But Arthur Kosowsky, an astronomer at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, suggested that the solution was to look for the kSZ in aggregate, by examining a large sample of paired galaxy clusters.
Two by two
“Because of their gravitational interactions, these cluster pairs tend to move toward each other,” says David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton University in New Jersey who has collaborated with Kosowsky. “That typically means that as they are drawn together, the more distant cluster in a pair will be moving toward you, making a CMB hotspot, while the closer cluster will be moving away, making a CMB coldspot. Averaging over thousands of cluster pairs, you can see the signal of the kSZ in this temperature difference.”
Between 2008 and 2010, a team of researchers using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile mapped CMB temperature variations in a large swathe of the sky. To link the variations to cluster pairs, however, required a second data set, from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.
BOSS observed the same region of sky in visible light, to create a three-dimensional map of more than 27,000 galaxies. Nick Hand, then a student of Spergel's and now an astronomy PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, measured the kSZ by comparing the ACT data with the 7,500 most luminous galaxy clusters in the BOSS data set.
Neither the ACT nor BOSS was designed with the goal of detecting the kSZ, says Hand. “This collaboration was a consequence of the era of large data sets that astronomy is currently in.”
What's the matter?
Spergel says that the technique has not yet yielded any new insights, but “will scale up beautifully”. The growing sample of galaxies that have been spotted by surveys such as BOSS, paired with upgrades to microwave detectors on the ACT and the South Pole Telescope, another CMB observatory, will soon provide more numerous and precise kSZ measurements, he says. This will allow astronomers to improve their estimates of the velocities of distant galaxies — crucial to understanding the properties of dark energy and dark matter — and of the intergalactic distribution of matter, which will help them to investigate galactic formation and evolution.
Spergel thinks that the most likely long-term use of the technique will be in measuring the intergalactic distribution of the ordinary matter in the Universe.
“Of the ordinary matter we believe exists in and around galaxies,” he says, “we see about a third as stars and molecular gas clouds. Most of the remaining two-thirds is probably ionized in the space between galaxies, but we haven't had a good way to see it, and that means we don't really know the history of the typical atom. Does it fall into galaxies and then get blown out by supernovae explosions, or does it never really get incorporated in the galaxies and always sit at their outskirts? Is there a cycle? We can trace much of this using the kSZ, since the effect's strength depends on the distribution of electrons in a cluster's ionized gas.” |
Undercover agents breached the physical security of the National Institute of Standards and Technology 15 out of 15 times, House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said Wednesday during a hearing on the institute's cybersecurity.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) ran the testing at the committee's urging and presented a full report, including videotapes of the test, to the committee before the hearing.
"Their findings are alarming and confirmed our worst fears," said Smith. "NIST is a sieve."
NIST, a division of the Commerce Department, conducts research on everything from voting machines to nuclear reactors to developing federal standards. It has campuses in both Maryland and Colorado.
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While the full report was not released to the public over security concerns, the public report mentions a variety of problems in the security policy at NIST. Those include poor training of security experts and scientists and a security strategy giving some responsibilities to the Commerce Department and other responsibilities to NIST.
While the bifurcated security structure is required by statute and can only be changed by Congress, the GAO report discusses poor integration between the two branches.
NIST and the Department of Commerce have accepted every recommendation given by the report.
The specifically tested security vulnerabilities are being withheld, but the committee is working to get the videos released.
The GAO deferred discussing whether its investigators had access to either computers that could be infected with malware or labs. But, a GAO representative noted, it would be reasonable to assume, given that NIST buildings largely exist to host laboratories and offices, that this would be the case.
The House Science Committee first took interest in NIST security in 2015, when a meth lab that was run by a former NIST security employee out of an unused lab exploded. In 2016 an intruder was found wandering through the NIST campus. |
This item has been corrected.
On the 7 train that connects Manhattan to the bustling ethnic enclave of Flushing, Queens, it’s becoming more and more common to see riders wearing surgical masks in public. It’s a phenomenon that’s long been a common in East Asian countries. And ever since the 2002 SARS outbreak and the 2006 bird flu panic, the practice has crossed over into immigrant Asian populations in the US. Now, with Ebola fears still on high, many immigrant Asians aren’t taking chances—despite the fact that the number of known US Ebola infections has now dropped to zero, and assertions by public health authorities that Ebola is almost certainly not airborne-transmissible.
The reality is that the woven-cloth surgical masks provide minimal protection from environmental viruses anyway. (Surgeons use them to protect patients from their mouth-borne germs, not the other way around.) But the masks’ actual prophylactic utility is, in a way, secondary to other reasons they’re being worn, which is why they’re likely to become more common in the future—even among non-Asians.
The custom of facemask-wearing began in Japan during the early years of the 20th century, when a massive pandemic of influenza killed between 20 and 40 million people around the world—more than died in World War I. There were outbreaks of the disease on every inhabited continent, including Asia (where it devastated India, leading to the deaths of a full 5% of the population). Covering the face with scarves, veils and masks became a prevalent (if ineffective) means of warding off the disease in many parts of the world, until the epidemic finally faded at the end of 1919.
Influenza victims crowd into an emergency hospital at Camp Funston, a subdivision of Fort Riley in Kansas, in 1918.
In Japan, a few years later, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, triggered a massive inferno that consumed nearly 600,000 homes in the most populous part of the nation. After the quake, the sky was filled with smoke and ash for weeks, and air quality suffered for months afterward. Facemasks came out of storage and became a typical accessory on the streets of Tokyo and Yokohama. A second global flu epidemic in 1934 cemented Japan’s love affair with the facemask, which began to be worn with regularity during the winter months—primarily, given Japan’s obsession with social courtesy, by cough-and-cold victims seeking to avoid transmitting their germs to others, rather than healthy people looking to prevent the onset of illness.
Then, in the 1950s, Japan’s rapid post-World War II industrialization led to rampant air pollution and booming growth of the pollen-rich Japanese cedar, which flourished due to rising ambient levels of carbon dioxide. Mask-wearing went from seasonal affectation to year-round habit. Today, Japanese consumers buy $230 million in surgical masks a year, and neighboring countries facing chronic pollution issues—most notably China and Korea—have also adopted the practice.
Japanese consumers buy $230 million in surgical masks a year.
Of course, pollution is everywhere, as is airborne illness. So why has the mask-wearing trend primarily been limited to East Asian nations?
The underlying reason could be philosophical: All three countries have been broadly influenced by Taoism and the health precepts of Traditional Chinese Medicine, in which breath and breathing are seen as a central element in good health. “‘Qi’ is a central concept in Chinese cosmology—and thereby physiology—generally having to do with energy and vapor,” explains Michelle M. Ching, a board certified practitioner of acupuncture and herbal medicine based in Los Angeles. “Qi has numerous meanings in Chinese including ‘air’ [kong qi], ‘atmosphere’ [qi fen], ‘odor’ [qi wei], which is perhaps another reason masks are so necessary in China!, ‘strength’ [li qi] and ‘pathogen’ [xie qi]. When bodily qi is depleted, or its movement deranged, pain and disease develop. So breathing is critical in order to maintain good qi in the body.”
Meanwhile, the intake of “feng,” or noxious wind, is considered the most potent and common of TCM’s “Six External Causes” of disease. “Think about wind,” says Ching. “It can blow open doors, blow cool air off a body of water to the land surrounding it, or fire from one part of the forest to another. The door analogy relates to TCM’s understanding of how exposure to wind can weaken our body’s defenses.”(Perhaps as a permutation of these ideas, East Asia has numerous ancillary superstitions about air and wind, the most notable of which is a deathly fear of sleeping in rooms with running electric fans, a belief that has its epicenter in Korea, where “fan death” phobia remains rampant even today.)
The bottom line is that in East Asia, the predilection toward using face-coverings to prevent exposure to bad air is something that predates the germ theory of disease, and extends into the very foundations of East Asian culture. In recent years, however, mask-wearing has become rooted in new and increasingly postmodern rationales.
Reuters “The most beautiful mask” against SARS.
Studies have found that among many young Japanese, masks have evolved into social firewalls; perfectly healthy teens now wear them, along with audio headsets, to signal a lack of desire to communicate with those around them. This is particularly true for young women seeking to avoid harassment on public transit, who also appreciate the relative anonymity the masks provide.
Masks are even becoming an element of East Asian style: In Japan, surgical masks bearing chic designs or the images of cute licensed characters can be purchased in every corner drugstore, while last month at China Fashion Week, designer Yin Peng unveiled a line of “smog couture” clothese paired with a variety of masks, from Vader-esque ventilators to whole-head riot-gear rebreathers.
Reuters “Smog couture” in China.
Reuters “Smog couture” in Hong Kong.
So who knows? As pollution, climate change and pandemic illness become a routine aspect of our global reality, we may soon see facemask fashion go viral (excuse the pun) in Western countries as well.
Correction: A previous version of this story stated that 0.5% of the Indian population died during a 20th century flu pandemic.
This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers. |
Dr. Dobb's Journal (DDJ) was a monthly magazine published in the United States by UBM Technology Group, part of UBM. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers. When launched in 1976, DDJ was the first regular periodical focused on microcomputer software, rather than hardware. In its last years of publication, it was distributed as a PDF monthly, although the principal delivery of Dr. Dobb's content was through the magazine's website. Publication ceased at the end of 2014, with the archived website continuing to be available online.
History [ edit ]
Origins [ edit ]
Bob Albrecht edited an eccentric newspaper about computer games programmed in the BASIC computer language, with the same name as the tiny nonprofit educational corporation that he had founded, People's Computer Company (PCC). Dennis Allison was a longtime computer consultant on the San Francisco Peninsula and sometime instructor at Stanford University.
In the first three quarterly issues of the PCC newspaper published in 1975, Albrecht had published articles written by Allison, describing how to design and implement a stripped-down version of an interpreter for the BASIC language, with limited features to be easier to implement. He called it Tiny BASIC. At the end of the final part, Allison asked computer hobbyists who implemented it to send their implementations to PCC, and they would circulate copies of any implementations to anyone who sent a self-addressed stamped envelope. Allison said, Let us stand on each others' shoulders; not each others' toes.
The journal was originally intended to be a three-issue xerographed publication. Titled dr. dobb's journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics & Orthodontia (with the subtitle Running Light Without Overbyte) it was created to distribute the implementations of Tiny BASIC. The original title was created by Eric Bakalinsky, who did occasional paste-up work for PCC. Dobb's was a contraction of Dennis and Bob. It was at a time when computer memory was very expensive, so compact coding was important. Microcomputer hobbyists needed to avoid using too many bytes of memory—avoiding overbyte.
After the first photocopies were mailed to those who had sent stamped addressed envelopes, PCC was flooded with requests that the publication become an ongoing periodical devoted to general microcomputer software.
PCC agreed, and hired Jim Warren as its first editor. He immediately changed the title to Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia prior to publishing the first issue in January 1976.
Early years [ edit ]
Jim Warren was DDJ's editor for only about a year and a half. While he went on to make a splash with his series of West Coast Computer Faires, subsequent DDJ editors[1] like Marlin Ouverson,[2][3] Hank Harrison, Michael Swaine and Jonathan Erickson appear to have focused on the journalistic and social aspects of the young but growing microcomputer industry. Eventually PCC, the non-profit corporation, sold DDJ to a commercial publisher.[1]
The newsletter's content was originally pure enthusiast material. Initial interest circled around the Tiny BASIC interpreter, but Warren broadened that to include a variety of other programming topics, as well as a strong consumer bias, especially needed in the chaotic early days of microcomputing. All of the content came from volunteer contributors, with Steve Wozniak as one of the better known of them. Other contributors included Jef Raskin, later credited as a leader in the Macintosh development; Hal Hardenberg, the originator of DTACK Grounded an early newsletter for Motorola 68000 based software and hardware; and Gary Kildall, who had created CP/M, the first disk operating system for microcomputers which was not married to proprietary hardware.
Computer program source code published during the early years include:
The March 1985 issue "10(3)" printed Richard Stallman's "GNU Manifesto" a call for participation in the then-new free software movement.
Discontinuation of printed edition [ edit ]
Dr. Dobb's Journal, December 2000 issue , December 2000 issue
In later years,[when?] the magazine received contributions from developers all over the world working in application development and embedded systems across most programming languages and platforms. The magazine's focus became more professional. Columnists included Michael Swaine, Allen Holub and Verity Stob, the pseudonymous British programmer.
The title was later shortened to Dr. Dobb's Journal, then changed to Dr. Dobb's Journal of Software Tools as it became more popular. The magazine later reverted to Dr. Dobb's Journal with the selling line, "The World of Software Development", with the abbreviation DDJ also used for the corresponding website. In January 2009 Jonathan Erickson, the editor-in-chief, announced the magazine would cease monthly print publication, become a section of InformationWeek called Dr Dobb's Report.,[4] a website and monthly digital PDF edition.
Later history [ edit ]
The primary Dr. Dobb's content streams at the end were the Dr. Dobb's website, Dr. Dobb's Journal (the monthly PDF magazine, which had different content from the website), and a weekly newsletter, Dr. Dobb's Update. In addition, Dr. Dobb's continued to run the Jolt Awards and, since 1995, the Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award. Regular bloggers include Scott Ambler, Walter Bright, Andrew Koenig, and Al Williams. Adrian Bridgwater edited the news section beginning in 2010.
End [ edit ]
On 16 December 2014, an article by editor-in-chief Andrew Binstock announced that Dr. Dobb's would cease publication of new articles at the end of 2014.[5][6][context?]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
Despite violent clashes with police over the weekend, Hong Kong democracy protesters are standing firm, demanding full independence of Beijing's influence. (Reuters)
Any visitor to Hong Kong will tell you that umbrellas are already a fixture of life in the city, essential not only for keeping yourself dry during the rainy spring and summer but also providing much-needed shade from the sun. The "world's most expensive umbrella," made of American ox-hide and using antique German frame, was made there in Hong Kong in 1994, and single-use umbrellas can be bought from vending machines in subway stations, adding only further to the item's ubiquity.
Perhaps it makes sense, then, that when pro-democracy activists came out on the streets to joing the "Occupy Central" protests, many brought umbrellas with them. Many of these activists, driven to protest by what they saw as the inability of Hong Kong's leaders to stand up to Beijing, probably brought their umbrellas to provide shelter from the late September sun.
As the situation became volatile, however, the umbrellas served a second purpose: To protect their owners from pepper spray.
A protester protects himself with an umbrella, after police used pepper spray against activists attempting to break into the legislative building, during a demonstration in Hong Kong, early on Saturday, Sept. 27, 2014. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
Protesters used whatever they could get their hands on for protection: Some images even show people using plastic wrapping to cover themselves. The use of the umbrellas as protection was striking, however, and media outlets picked up on it, dubbing it the "Umbrella Revolution." A search of Twitter appears to show that the term has been around since at least last Friday:
Some protesters painted messages on top of their umbrellas, and artists began incorporating umbrellas into logos designed for Occupy Central. "I was inspired by seeing people defend themselves with domestic props," Hong Kong artist Kacey Wong told the BBC. "The contrast was so marked. On the one side there was police brutality and on the other side there were these poor umbrellas." According to the Associated Press, umbrellas are now being donated to replace those destroyed by the police.
Pro-democracy protesters gather outside the Hong Kong government headquarters, on the second day of the mass civil disobedience campaign Occupy Central, Central District, Hong Kong, China, 29 September 2014.EPA/ALEX HOFFORD
For outside observers, the umbrella is something easy to latch on to: An ordinary object used to fight against state security apparatus. It helped those far from Hong Kong understand a conflict driven by a wide variety of factors including Hong Kong's complicated colonial history and tradition of democratic protests.
For some, the images coming out of Hong Kong are reminiscent of those coming out of Beijing more than 25 years ago. Now "umbrella man" has been compared to "tank man," the unknown civilian who blocked the path of tanks during the Tiananmen Square crisis in 1989.
However, other observers may be reminded of something else: China's economic might. According to one widely cited statistic, some 70 percent of the world's umbrellas are produced in China.
Thousands remained on the streets in Hong Kong on Monday, protesting over Beijing's decision to reject calls for open nominations for the election of Hong Kong's chief executive in 2017. The protests escalated on Sunday, with riot police resorting to the use of tear gas. (The Washington Post) |
The global financial system has become dangerously unstable and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability, a leading monetary theorist has warned.
The global financial system has become dangerously unstable and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability, a leading monetary theorist has warned.
"The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up," said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD's review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). "Emerging markets were part of the solution after the Lehman crisis. Now they are part of the problem, too."
"Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for mischief," he said.
"It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something," he told The Telegraph in an exclusive interview on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos. "The only question is whether we are able to look reality in the eye and face what is coming in an orderly fashion, or whether it will be disorderly. Debt jubilees have been going on for 5,000 years, as far back as the Sumerians."
The next task awaiting the global authorities is how to manage debt write-offs - and therefore a massive reordering of winners and losers in society - without setting off a political storm.
Mr White said Europe's creditors are likely to face some of the biggest haircuts. European banks have already admitted to $1 trillion of non-performing loans: they are heavily exposed to emerging markets and are almost certainly rolling over further bad debts that have never been disclosed.
The European banking system may have to be recapitalized on a scale yet unimagined, and new "bail-in" rules mean that any deposit holder above the guarantee of €100,000 will have to help pay for it.
The warnings have special resonance since Mr White was one of the very few voices in the central banking fraternity who stated loudly and clearly between 2005 and 2008 that Western finance was riding for a fall, and that the global economy was susceptible to a violent crisis.
Mr White said stimulus from quantitative easing and zero rates by the big central banks after the Lehman crisis leaked out across east Asia and emerging markets, stoking credit bubbles and a surge in dollar borrowing that was hard to control in a world of free capital flows.
The result is that these countries have now been drawn into the morass as well. Combined public and private debt has surged to all-time highs to 185pc of GDP in emerging markets and to 265pc of GDP in the OECD club, both up by 35 percentage points since the top of the last credit cycle in 2007.
"Emerging markets were part of the solution after the Lehman crisis. Now they are part of the problem too," Mr White said.
Mr White, who also chief author of G30's recent report on the post-crisis future of central banking, said it is impossible know what the trigger will be for the next crisis since the global system has lost its anchor and is inherently prone to breakdown.
A Chinese devaluation clearly has the potential to metastasize. "Every major country is engaged in currency wars even though they insist that QE has nothing to do with competitive depreciation. They have all been playing the game except for China - so far - and it is a zero-sum game. China could really up the ante."
Mr White said QE and easy money policies by the US Federal Reserve and its peers have had the effect of bringing spending forward from the future in what is known as "inter-temporal smoothing". It becomes a toxic addiction over time and ultimately loses traction. In the end, the future catches up with you. "By definition, this means you cannot spend the money tomorrow," he said.
Federal Reserve
A reflex of "asymmetry" began when the Fed injected too much stimulus to prevent a purge after the 1987 crash. The authorities have since allowed each boom to run its course - thinking they could safely clean up later - while responding to each shock with alacrity. The BIS critique is that this has led to a perpetual easing bias, with interest rates falling ever further below their "Wicksellian natural rate" with each credit cycle.
"It was always dangerous to rely on central banks to sort out a solvency problem ... It is a recipe for disorder, and now we are hitting the limit."
The error was compounded in the 1990s when China and eastern Europe suddenly joined the global economy, flooding the world with cheap exports in a "positive supply shock". Falling prices of manufactured goods masked the rampant asset inflation that was building up. "Policy makers were seduced into inaction by a set of comforting beliefs, all of which we now see were false. They believed that if inflation was under control, all was well," he said.
In retrospect, central banks should have let the benign deflation of this (temporary) phase of globalisation run its course. By stoking debt bubbles, they have instead incubated what may prove to be a more malign variant, a classic 1930s-style "Fisherite" debt-deflation.
Mr White said the Fed is now in a horrible quandary as it tries to extract itself from QE and right the ship again. "It is a debt trap. Things are so bad that there is no right answer. If they raise rates it'll be nasty. If they don't raise rates, it just makes matters worse," he said.
There is no easy way out of this tangle. But Mr White said it would be a good start for governments to stop depending on central banks to do their dirty work. They should return to fiscal primacy - call it Keynesian, if you wish - and launch an investment blitz on infrastructure that pays for itself through higher growth.
"It was always dangerous to rely on central banks to sort out a solvency problem when all they can do is tackle liquidity problems. It is a recipe for disorder, and now we are hitting the limit," he said.
Telegraph.co.uk |
For the past two weeks you have been sharing your awesome ideas for the decks with us. Now the time has come to conclude which ideas are the best.
This time the task was to make use of ranged keyword — a mechanic that does not see much play on the ladder and competetive scene. We will start by analyzing the mechanic and then provide a few deck examples — our Metashaker finalists! Alright, let's begin!
Ranged — Keyword Analysis
The ability to attack enemies from afar without taking damage back is very strong. The game of Faeria focuses on board control, the player who places his creatures in the right position where he can attack enemy creatures has an advantage. This is why mobility tricks like Syland Horsemaster, Flash Wind and Sagami Grovecaller are valued so high by the players as well as creatures with jump and charge like Windstorm Charger and Triton Warrior.
But ranged might be very strong not only because ranged creatures have massive area they control but also because they don't take damage back whenever they attack from afar — like if you cast Safeguard every time you attack. Sounds too good, right? The mere presence of ranged creatures on the board forces your opponent to change his entire strategy including developing lands to respond to this threat.
However, the strong points end here. Since ranged is that useful, ranged creatures naturally are very weak. The 4 faeria 2/2 with ranged Hilltop Archer might be able to do some work only if he won't be removed immediately which can be done countless number of ways: Seifers Wrath, Soul Drain, Deepwood Stalker and many others. Other ranged creatures are not too much better, the only exceptions are Windstorm Archer and probably Yakkapult which requires 6 lands and is kinda slow. I have only mentioned removals from hand but there is a bigger problem. With their low stats ranged creatures are extremely vulnerable in close combat and once your opponent develops lands close to you and starts summoning his creatures there your archers may become useless.
To sum up, ranged creatures may be extremely effective in the right deck and hands but playing them involves very high risk. If you want to expand on this topic, I suggest you to read Aquablad's Oversky Card Spotlight — Ranged Creatures where he ranks his top 5 ranged creatures and attaches a deck list to each one.
Now we proceed to the contest results! There were so many different good decks this time that it was very hard to choose the top 3 — and here is what we have come up with. Meet the Metashaker #10 finalists!
Ranged Rush
The first deck is made by Reath. It's strategy is to play a ranged creature in front of your orb and start hitting the enemy orb as early as possible. Hilltop Archer, Siege Engine and Boulder Thrower all can be played on turn 2 (gain +1 faeria instead of building a land if necessary). Keep your archers alive with green buffs. As soon as your opponent develops lands close to you, you will be at a disadvantage. However, by the time he manages to do so he will most likely be at low health which enables you to finish him off with Flame Burst, Rebel Slinger and Siefers Wrath making up for the ranged creatures weakness.
For the 1st place Reath recieves 5000 gold. Congratulations!
GB Enchantment feat. Yakkapult
The second deck is made by GNU_Linux and it is a GB Enchantment deck with the addition of Yakkapult. GB Enchantment decks usually tend to play defensively summoning their healthy creatures in the back and threatening the opponent with a possibility of playing Gabrian Enchantment. With the addition of Yakkapult you can now start pressuring your opponent much sooner. Your opponent will struggle to break through your healthy creatures to kill your Yakkapults so you can easily launch yaks to the enemy orb. You can also use Elderwood Embrace with Gabrian Enchantment to buff your ranged creature to 9/9 for a two turn kill. Yakkapults perfectly fit in the deck being a great win condition for it whereas the rest of the deck fully supports the ranged creature covering its weaknesses.
For the 2nd place GNU_Linux recieves 2500 gold. Congratulations!
Yellow Rush
The last deck is made by Ramora and features Oradrim Sagittarius in Yellow Rush. The description of the card literally screams "I am made for Yellow Rush!" but making a deck with it right is not that simple. Haste creatures work really well together with the archer to gain most value out of its ability. Since you have a lot of small creatures that deal 1-2 damage to the orb including Sagittarius himself, Zealous Crusader is a great addition to the deck. Manta Rider is also a good choice because his stickiness to the board may help you trigger Sagittarius' ability and Khalims Prayer an extra time. Besides, its 3 desert requirement works well together with ranged creatures. Usually by the time you develop a 3rd desert you don't have any good spots for the land — 2 lands near the opponent orb might be enough. However, in this deck the 3rd desert is not wasted since you need one in front of your orb to summon your archers there (technically it's not the 3rd desert but 1st since you should probably open with the desert in front with this deck).
For the 3rd place Ramora recieves 1000 gold. Congratulations!
Honorable Mentions
Closing words
Thank you everyone for sharing your awesome ideas! While we are taking a small break make sure to take part in other contests: If Yaks Could Talk and Custom Card Creation Contest.
That's it for now. See you later! Check the news on the Hub or offical Faeria discord #tournaments channel if you don't want to miss next Metashaker! |
The Toronto Raptors have made a habit out of doing things the difficult way.
So when coach Dwane Casey met with the media after the Raptors' roller-coaster Game 6 victory over Milwaukee that sent them into the Eastern Conference semifinals and a showdown with the Cleveland Cavaliers, all he could do was shake his head.
"We knew it wasn't going to be easy, we made it hard on ourselves down the stretch," Casey said. "But I thought we showed a lot of resiliency down the stretch.
"To close out on the road is one of the hardest things to do in the NBA. I don't care who you are, what team you are, it's very difficult to do."
No quit from Bucks
DeMar DeRozan scored 32 points as the Raptors held on to beat the Bucks 92-89, but not before watching their 25-point lead obliterated amid a fierce, crowd-fuelled Milwaukee comeback. The Raptors clinched the best-of-seven series 4-2 to advance to the conference semis which begin Monday in Cleveland.
Kyle Lowry added 13 points, while Serge Ibaka had 11 boards but just seven points before fouling out for Toronto.
The Raptors, who had never won a playoff series in less than the maximum number of games, dominated for much of the night and led by as many as 25 points midway through the third quarter. But the Bucks responded with a 15-3 run to cut Toronto's lead to 74-61 heading into a nail-biting final frame.
The Bucks rode their momentum, while the Raptors coughed up one ball after another, and when Jason Terry drilled a three-pointer with 3:06 to play, it gave the Bucks their first lead since the first quarter. The roar in the BMO Harris Bradley Center was deafening.
Raptors keep calm
In the post-game locker-room, the Raptors talked about the ensuing huddle. DeRozan, Lowry and Cory Joseph preached calm to their teammates.
"Them talking, calming us down in the huddle being those leaders and just reassuring us we were fine," Patrick Patterson said. "There was enough time left on the clock. They made their run but we can easily make ours and that is exactly what happened."
Added Joseph: "It's human nature to get a little tense when things aren't going your way. And the whole building is against you on the road. It's human nature. You have to fight against that to calm yourself down and still play the game.
In a fourth quarter that saw Toronto score just five field goals, Patterson and Joseph responded with two of them — Patterson scored on a cutting dunk, then Joseph drilled a three, and Toronto was back up by three. DeRozan's driving dunk with 49 seconds to play gave Toronto a five-point cushion.
Terry gave the Bucks one last gasp, connecting on a three to make it just a two-point game with 16 seconds left. But DeRozan scored two free throws, then Patterson intercepted Tony Snell's inbounds pass to clinch the win, DeRozan spiking the ball victoriously.
Lowry was asked about the big baskets by Joseph and Patterson, and the point guard's trust in his teammates down the stretch.
"[DeRozan and I] talked about it in the locker-room, we both were completely calm," he said. "We knew they were going to make a run, we knew the situation. You've gotta stay calm.
"And for us, we wouldn't be here, we wouldn't do the things we do, without our teammates, simple as that. We are one team, one through 15. We've got a couple of guys in the D League right now, they won a championship (also Thursday night) — congratulations to those guys. We on the same team, same page, we're all in the same locker-room. We're all equal. Without them, we wouldn't be who we are."
Much needed breather
All the pre-game talk had been about closing this series in six games, both to avoid the Game 7 pressure the Raptors know way too well, and give themselves a breather before tipping off against the resting Cavaliers in Cleveland.
Toronto lost to Indiana and Miami last year in Game 6 before rallying to win Game 7. Three years ago, the Raptors dropped Game 6 against Brooklyn before being beaten by the Nets in Game 7.
"We talked about it, how beneficial it would be, how important tonight is. But again, if Milwaukee will co-operate that would be great," Casey had joked pre-game.
Milwaukee wasn't in the mood for co-operating, particularly Giannis Antetokounmpo, who played all but 81 seconds, scoring 34 points and nine rebounds. Thon Maker, who played high school basketball in Orangeville, Ont., had five blocks.
"Both teams played their heart out there in that second half," said Bucks coach Jason Kidd.
The Raptors shot 46 per cent on the night, and made nine of their 22 three-point attempts. The Bucks shot 42 per cent.
The second-seeded Cavaliers, meanwhile, have been off since sweeping No. 7 Indiana on Sunday. |
The basic audio mixing workflow
So what’re the mixing basics? Just like most processes — and especially in audio mixing — everyone has their own opinions. Right or wrong, who knows? That’s fair. But there are essential mixing basics that everyone should follow.
The right mix to work with
Believe it or not, you should be mixing before you mix.
Lost? I’ll explain. What are the main textures you’re looking for in your track? What kind of space are you trying to create? Upfront and punchy? Or distant and reverberant? Work on bringing the most character out of your sounds while you're in the early stages of recording. Think about the big picture while recording or choosing your initial sounds.
Push the original recordings as far as you can without heavy processing. Get an early sense of where you are heading for the final mixdown. Commit to good sounds early and avoid endless tweaking later in the mixing stage.
Cut the fuss. Use a bus.
Picture a yellow school bus. Now picture it with a bunch of sounds riding it.
This is what a bus is in a mix. By sending multiple sounds to one track (the bus) you can apply the same processors to them all at once. It’s very handy. Try it out on a drum bus. This allows you to process all your drum sounds as one unit. Treat them with the same reverb to give the perception that they’re all in the same space. Or Set up a delay or compression bus.
Experiment with which sounds you send to what bus. I guarantee you’ll get some very useful results.
HOT TIP: Commit to good sounds early and avoid endless tweaking later in the mixing stage.
Balance your levels
Time to give your mix a little haircut. A little snip here, a little trim there. Balance those levels and don’t be afraid to give parts the big chop. Drop the drums for a bar, crank up that vocal for a verse. Get loose.
Get a basic balance of your levels before you go crazy with effects processing. Trim ‘em so they don’t clip later. Think about headroom early.
Keep a final goal in mind as you balance all of your tracks. This will give you a rough idea of how each track will eventually fit together. Processing will smooth out your rough ideas.
Planning on panning
So what is panning?
Panning helps you control the width of a mix. It’s the left to right breadth of the stereo field. Panning allows for sounds to be placed in your mix properly. Either to the left, or the right of the stereo center. Keep your heavier or lower sounds near the centre. This means the bass or the kick. Use them as a centring force that you can work around. If everything is panned centrally, your mix will sound flat or crowded. |
Share. One step forwards and two steps back for the series. One step forwards and two steps back for the series.
Need for Speed Payback is one step forwards and two steps back for EA’s 23-year-old racing series. While Payback does fix a host of the 2015 Need for Speed reboot’s missteps, it also brushes away a lot of the stuff developer Ghost Games got right at that time.
You see, Need for Speed 2015 brought with it a resurrection of the spirit of 2003 and 2004’s successful Underground games and saw the return of meaningful performance and visual customisation. Between all the hokey live-action, first-person fist-bumping it also revolved around encounters with real-world automotive icons. That’s an idea I still genuinely like. Of course, it was very short, the world was largely empty, there initially wasn’t any drag racing, and you couldn’t even pause the game in single-player. It was flawed, no doubt.
Payback remedies all that latter stuff. There’s a much longer experience here – it took me around 17 hours to complete the story alone. Plus, the world is filled with extra activities and events, drag racing is included from the get-go, and yes, you can pause it. Truly a novelty.
But elsewhere? Well, unfortunately, Payback has gambled and lost.
Exit Theatre Mode
You may have heard that Payback has dialled back on the pure street racing focus in favour of a self-described “action driving” experience. The reality is that racing still pads out the bulk of the driving in Payback and the new “action driving” stuff is limited to a small handful of movie-inspired sequences and Payback’s new police pursuit system. They may look exciting on the surface, but they aren’t really that demanding; unlike, say, the Stuntman games, Payback doesn’t require us to do any of the trickier stuff ourselves – the game takes over all the cool bits. We’re just driving from cutscene to cutscene. They’re well-executed, particularly how they seamlessly swap you between characters and vehicles (like the opening moments of Forza Horizon 3), but they’re completely scripted. Fast and frantic, but shallow and not worth replaying. They’re really just built to service Payback’s paper-thin story, which starts with a confounding succession of betrayals and ends without ever really going anywhere interesting.
“ Escaping police is now a totally linear exercise, where we have to follow a set path via checkpoints within a time limit.
The cop chases feel largely neutered too; escaping police is now a totally linear exercise, where we have to follow a set path via checkpoints within a time limit instead of improvising and doing something unpredictable to throw them off. Taking down cop cars in these events has a welcome enough Burnout 3 flavour to it – muscling your pursuers into spectacular slow-motion collisions with poles and parked cars is fun – but I don’t think it was worth losing proper pursuits for. No more darting down random side-streets at the last second to shake the fuzz, or parking in a dimly-lit area with the engine off, like Need for Speed 2015. There aren’t any cops around during free-roam, either; they’re only present in story missions or at certain triggers spread around the map that will initiate another linear, pre-set chase.
Payback changes things up slightly in the penultimate race event, where it adds cops in the middle of an actual race, but otherwise police pursuits are basically now just time trials where the AI is trying to stop you. The cop AI seems robust enough, and they’ll work on boxing you in when they have the numbers, but I didn’t find them too dangerous. They’re supernaturally fast (as usual, standard issue Crown Vics are able to go doorhandle-to-doorhandle with seven-figure supercars) but player-controlled cars are incredibly powerful battering rams, tearing through cop cars like a bad curry through a colon.
Exit Theatre Mode
The rest of Payback is wrapped up in drifting and racing – including street, off-road, and drag. The handling model is accessible, arcade fare – long, lazy drifts are possible with a dab of brake and a bootful of throttle. That said, I’ve had more than a few events ruined by some overly hostile AI. The respawning is a bit aggressive, too. After clipping an obstacle or skirting with a steep slope I often found myself being respawned in the middle of the track after a few seconds, even though I’d instantly recovered and was already speeding off in the right direction.
“ It’d be almost funny if the script was equipped with a single ounce of self-awareness.
The events themselves are all tied to defeating themed race crews spread over the map, each of whom introduces themselves like they’re the Most Important People on Earth. It’d be almost funny if the script was equipped with a single ounce of self-awareness, but Payback treats its cast of hip young millennials and soda commercial cast-offs like they’re the coolest thing since the other side of the pillow. Unfortunately, they’re not cool, or funny. They’re not even actually likeable, to be honest. The three main player-controlled characters are the worst offenders, ranging from irksome to infuriating.
The characters aren’t functionally different from each other; they’re just each tied to one or two of the five specific car classes that are different from each other. Payback splits its cars into five categories – race, off-road, drift, drag, and runner (which are used for battling cops). Cars for specific race types need to be purchased from specific dealers and can’t be used in any other race type than the one they were purchased for. It’s a bit restrictive, particularly considering the game doesn’t always necessarily play by its own rules. For instance, it makes a fuss out of communicating that ‘runner’ cars are specially-reinforced vehicles built to take on police, but then regularly throws us into cop chases in non-runner cars that seem to handle the events just as adequately. It doesn’t mind tossing drag cars into impromptu sprint races, either. I wasn’t a fan; my GT-R drag car corners like a whale on a skateboard.
Toyota and Ferrari have fallen out of the game for reasons beyond EA’s control, but the mix of tuner, muscle, and exotics has otherwise improved from the already decent selection available in Need for Speed 2015. They still look nice too, particularly the weather-beaten “Derelict” cars we’re tasked with discovering around the map (think Test Drive Unlimited’s hidden wrecks, or Forza Horizon’s barn finds). The way Payback’s lighting system plays off the damaged paint and rusty panels of these derelicts is excellent.
Beyond the cars, however, I found Payback less visually impressive than Need for Speed 2015 overall. Payback’s dry and dusty casino city and its outskirts make for a large, varied map (and it boasts a day/night cycle this time around) but it’s not nearly as good-looking as the grimy, reflection-packed, rain-slick asphalt of Need for Speed 2015.
Exit Theatre Mode
The segregated car divisions, I can handle; the upgrade system, I cannot. I hate it, in fact. Individual visual customisation options now need to be unlocked by performing arbitrary tasks out in the world. I get that it’s designed to get us interacting with all the new Forza Horizon-inspired jumps and speed traps, et cetera, but it’s a lot of new hoops to jump through to change your cars’ appearance where previously there were none.
Much, much worse is that performance customisation has been distilled into a collectible card game. Unlike Need for Speed 2015, which allowed us to bolt on specific parts to improve performance – you know, like a normal racing game – Payback’s upgrades are controlled by what the game dubs “Speed Cards”. Payback’s many-tentacled Speed Card system is absolutely not for me.
“ Payback’s many-tentacled Speed Card system is absolutely not for me.
To make your car faster you need Speed Cards, and each vehicle your crew owns has six slots for Speed Cards (the slots ostensibly represent things like the gearbox, or the turbo, and such). You can earn a single, random Speed Card by completing a race, but at best it will only be an incremental improvement on your current Speed Card line-up. You can also buy Speed Cards for in-game cash from auto parts stores, but the cards they carry are random and rotate every 30 minutes.
If you get a Speed Card you don’t want, you can turn it into a single “Part Token”. You need three Part Tokens to have one tug at the Speed Card slot machine (stay with me), which generally yields better cards than the ones you can buy à la carte from parts stores. You can also earn Part Tokens from “Base Shipments”, which are loot boxes that also contain cash and additional customisation items (like coloured tyre smoke or neons).
You earn Base Shipments by racking up in-game reputation points, but there are also “Premium Shipments”, which can be bought with “Speed Points” (a second in-game currency that costs real money and seems geared only to obscure how much actual money people may be dropping on Shipments).
It’s a cold, convoluted, and random system dredged up from the sloppy shores of the free-to-play mobile swamp. How is this a fun upgrade system? It doesn’t care what parts you want or how much time you have to play the game. Any time I was awarded a worthless Speed Card I felt nothing but resentment. Surely not an emotion most developers want their games to elicit?
It just turns getting your head under the hood and purchasing bespoke parts for your favourite car into a wearisome grind. I couldn’t ignore this system because – with the exception of the drift and cop chase events – the AI spanked me whenever I tried to cheap out and enter certain events too far below the suggested car level. You have to acquire Speed Cards and, once you’re out of Part Tokens to pump into the vile slot machine, replaying old races is the only way to slowly push your car’s level up. |
You’ve probably heard the news by now: Steven Moffat is finally stepping down as the showrunner of Doctor Who, to be replaced by Chris Chibnall. I think it’s a good thing – even though I loved most of Moffat’s run, I’m more than ready to see another writer’s take on the show. I’ve yet to be impressed with Chibnall’s Who work, but if we have Broadchurch series 1 to go by, I’m welcoming this change.
There’s a huge problem with this particular changing of the guard, however – after the heights of Series 9, we’d have to wait for a while. Series 10 has been pushed back to 2017, in order to make the transition from Moffat to Chibnall smoother. I’d support this decision if we only had something to watch other than the 2016 Christmas Special. You see, by Christmas 2016, 365 days will have passed without a new Doctor Who episode on TV, marking the first full year without the show since 2005.
This isn’t exactly a return to the Wilderness Years, but how do we get our Doctor Who fix while BBC is sorting out everything behind the scenes?
Don’t worry, fellow Whovian! I created this survival guide so you can find something to tide you over until series 10 airs. This is, by no means, a complete list of supplementary media as I left out a lot of things. If you want a quick fix, though, this will help you get started.
Next Page: Classic Doctor Who |
Residents at downtown Los Angeles’s not-so-tony Cecil Hotel received a bit of unwanted news this week when they were advised not to drink the water. It seems that a corpse, the remains of a Canadian woman named Elisa Lam, had been found in one of the water cisterns supplying the hotel, possibly contaminating the water supply. The water, per one British visitor, had a funny taste and color, presumably from the rotting flesh in the pipes.
We will leave the task of sorting out the grisly details behind the tragic death to the LAPD. But whether the water had become dangerously contaminated is a different issue. The question before us, then, is this: how quickly does a dead person decompose? And what effect, if any, does the fact that her body was found floating in water have on the rate of decomposition?
Decomposition has been well characterized—in fact there is even a word for the process (taphonomy) and a facility at the University of Tennessee, referred to as the “body farm,” devoted to the scientific study of decomposition. Forensics experts need to understand what breaks down when to accurately backdate when a murder might have occurred.
Forensics experts consider that animals decay in five major stages—a process that takes a few weeks for most of the degradation, then many more months till a body is reduced to skeletal remains. The first stage is “fresh”—the immediate aftermath of death, when oxygen is no longer supplied to the cells and anaerobic bacteria (which do not require oxygen to survive), already present in staggeringly high numbers in the digestive tract, begin to really proliferate. And by high numbers, consider this: on a normal day, there are 10 times more bacteria in and on our body than the number of cells that constitute “us,”—i.e., the human self, the ego and the id and the superego, and the accompanying package known as the body. By the numbers, we are composed of 100 trillion cells. Ten times that number means we are surrounded and occupied by a cool quadrillion bacteria, a staggering, even unimaginable, number. I mean, Christ was born, if he was born, only 64 billion seconds ago. The number of bacteria we associate with is 18,000 times larger than that.
Anaerobes, especially in the exponential growth phase seen after a death, cause two large problems: they make that familiar forgot-to-empty-the-fridge rancid odor and also metabolize various nutrients into gas. This creates the second stage of decomposition—bloat. As its name suggests, bloat quickly becomes visible because the malodorous gas created by the anaerobes fills the abdomen and other tissues, making the corpse appear like the Michelin man. The next stage is equally sobering. Called “active decay,” this is when insects—maggots and flies and the like—begin to pick the corpse clean, and tissue that has been liquefied by putrefaction spills into the environment. The other two stages of decomposition, “advanced decay” and “remains,” can be read about here.
Given that the woman in L.A. had last been seen two to three weeks before the discovery of her body, she likely was at some stage of putrefaction, the pace of which was slowed by submersion in water. Still, it is likely that billions or even trillions of new bacteria had overtaken her body, with many spilling into the water. Furthermore, as she moved to the end of putrefaction and into active decay, the liquefied tissue likely supplied even more bacteria into the Cecil Hotel water supply. Water supplies are equipped to handle some amount of bacteria; indeed American municipal water is treated with various antibacterials, such as chlorine, to keep drinking water safe. The amount of bacteria, though, from a decaying animal would easily overwhelm the range of what routine treatment could prevent.
So we have a situation that is gross, yes. Creepy and extremely sad, oh yes. But, bacteria and all, is the water dangerous? Probably not as much as you would think.
Though humans are no match for the vulture and other carrion-picking birds that eat rancid decaying flesh every day (they have stomach acid that could fry an egg and an immune system seemingly capable of mopping up all manner of stray toxins), we are pretty well equipped to survive. We too have a stomach full of harsh hydrochloric acid (at least those of us not on antacids or proton-pump inhibitors such as Nexium or Prevacid) and can take a pretty good wallop. Furthermore, unless the woman was poisoned with anthrax or botulism or some other bacterial toxin that might be proliferating in her remains, the bacteria would not be lethal, just nauseating. I suspect that vomiting and a day or two of stomach misery would be the worst that would happen to the hotel guests, if that.
So, rather than a public-health crisis, we are left with miffed, on-a-budget tourists with a story to tell, a hotel that will likely go under from the bad publicity, and yet another grim, unexplainable death, once again of a young person drawn to the flash and eternal promise of L.A. only to find a boulevard of broken dreams—the one true Hollywood ending, one we all have seen far too many times. |
IBM is casting an ever-widening net to cover a broader range of workloads starting with today’s announcement of its NextScale system, which is designed to use a stripped-down x86 lure to reel in everything from the cloudy heights to high performance computing.
That lure is surprisingly simple–and all by design. Server buyers on all sides of the compute spectrum are being pulled into the swift current of stripped-down, purpose-driven and cost-conscious hardware. IBM has remained one of the few that continued to swim upstream of this raw-box approach–but it’s catching up–and throwing some performance awareness into the mix.
Adding to their x86 drive, the star of NextScale is the Ivy Bridge processor (one or two) which are nestled within a half-width NextScale nX360 server. These snap snugly into the host n1200 enclosure (a 6U, 12-bay chassis) that can double up to host 84 of these pared-down boxes—or 2,016 cores–in a standard 19-inchrack.
And “standard rack” is the key word here, at least for those who bit the iDataPlex line but were scared off by the strange manipulations of space and time necessary to maneuver around its (useful but) non-standard design. In other words, IBM has taken a “best of all worlds” approach with the NextScale system, pulling the MVP features from iDataPlex and Flex alike to create something that might be able to go head-to-head with the wave of hyperscale (and hypercheap) solutions that are flooding the market.
This new server strain puts IBM in a much larger petri dish with competitive offerings from HP (namely the SL6500 series and the half-width SL390S) as well as similar lines from Dell (the C8000 series, in particular). But the difference here, says System X Product Manager, Gaurav Chaudhry , is that they’re able to offer integration with some of IBM’s key initiatives and products, including their recently acquired workload management tools from Platform Computing, full GPFS support and for the cloudy side, ready-made APIs and binaries for xCAT which, while free to begin with, is being actively supported by IBM.
Dubbed the “economical addition to the System X family” IBM says that this approach offers the density, performance and flexibility to support the diverse targeted workloads. For the HPC crowd, there are certainly some features worth noting—but generally speaking, this is a pared-down approach that lets users build what they need at a price point that’s relative to other bare-bones boxes from competitors. But there are still some things that are off in the future—enough so that we might not see many of these finding their way into the Top 500 before next ISC.
The NextScale announcement is really about possibility and the future, at least for HPC buyers. So far, this is an Intel-only offering, with support for GPUs and Xeon Phi coming in early 2014. While there were no timeframes stated for other additions, including Power, ARM or other processors, it stands to reason that IBM wouldn’t want to be left behind as others march to the beat of customer demand.
With that said, to snap in spicy elements like GPUs or Phi means a need for more sophisticated cooling. One notable missing element with NextScale is the direct water cooling. The version announced today is air-cooled with the possibility of passive water cooling. Chaudhry says that direct water is coming right in line with other acceleration/co-processor capabilities.
That omission aside, there are some other notable elements that will appeal to the HPC set. For instance, IBM will offer well-rounded support for Infiniband, including FDR and QDR. There is no integrated I/O or switching, no chassis-level management, and the attractive part of iDataPlex, namely its front access capabilities to almost all components, was carried over.
For the cloud and general datacenter users, there will be two standard gigabit Ethernet ports, although they’ll be glad to sell additional capability to add 10GbE as an option as well. While HPC is all about the IOPS, latency and general performance, Chadhury says that the cloud customers simply want to get up and running as soon as possible—it’s all about time to delivery, he says
As IBM’s David Watts noted of the new nx360 server addition:
The IBM NeXtScale nx360 M4 compute node contains only the essential components in the base architecture…
1 or 2 Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 series processors
Up to 8 ECC DIMMs operating up to 1866 MHz providing a total memory capacity of up to 128 GB
2 on-board 1Gb Ethernet ports
Integrated management with the IMM2 supporting IPMI and UEFI industry standards
PCI Express 3.0 I/O expansion capabilities through a 16x riser cage
Additional mezzanine slot for FDR InfiniBand or 10Gb Ethernet without consuming a PCIe slot
IBM took their cues from the positive responses around offering front accessibility (as with the iDataPlex systems) and carried that over to NextScale. Chaudhry freely admits that while iDataPlex was made for its own configuration and offered little flexibility, the idea with NextScale was to “keep all the things we liked and get rid of other things, like the full-width server versus this 8.5 inch wide but deep (versus shallow) approach.”
On that “best of all worlds” note touched on earlier, Chaudhry highlights the difference between the Flex versus NextScalelines s in the increased ability to go as “vanity-free” as one wishes. “So say if a customer isn’t looking for the integrated switching built into the chassis, they have the flexibility to pick their own,”
The key concepts behind this launch are around flexibility, simplicity and scale—in short, a move away from the tricky design and implementation details of their iDataPlex but with more room to grow than Flex might offer for some users. IBM Product Marketing Manager for the System X line, Gaurav Chaudhry says that this isn’t the immediate end of the line for iDataPlex. It simply marks an evolution toward flexible systems that can meet the low latency, high performance, and I/O demands of HPC while remaining lightweight and simple enough for cloud users to hop into without a great deal of effort. The company still has a number of iDataPlex systems to support, which will continue for at least 18 months, but the hyperscale, low-cost NextScale is the real battlefield for IBM’s push—and the shove will come down to price.
As a side note, it seems a shame that the Flex line was named “Flex” versus NextScale—seems the true meaning of these are flip-flopped, with the Flexes emphasizing scalability and NextScale pushing flexibility. |
New iPad stations that will be deployed at LaGuardia, Minneapolis-St. Paul, or Toronto airports. OTG
(CBS News) Travelers waiting for board flights are getting an entertainment upgrade in the form of Apple iPads.
Over 7,000 new iPads are scheduled to land at a handful of airports over the next 18 months, thanks to airport restaurateur OTG. The company has already installed 300 new iPads at LaGuardia Airport Terminal D, with 2,000 more to come. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and Toronto Pearson International Airport are scheduled to get 2,500 new iPads each.
The iPads will be located at OTG restaurants, where customers can sit in renovated seating areas. Using a custom browser, travelers can order meals, play games and check flight statuses, emails, Facebook and Twitter.
"This is a unique deployment that has no precedent," Rick Blatstein, chief executive officer of OTG, said in a press release. "We're marrying culinary excellence at the airport with new media. In addition to the content we are already offering, we see this as a significant opportunity for broader deployment of digital content from movies to news to games."
OTG operates restaurants in seven other airports, including John F. Kennedy, Boston Logan, Tucson, Washington National, Orlando, Chicago O'Hare, and Philadelphia. |
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Islamic State supporters have claimed that Downing Street, Gatwick and Heathrow "are next" after the Brussels terror attacks in a sickening new video.
The new footage shows two men in balaclavas with British accents addressing the camera.
Speaking together, they say: "Belgium, Brussels airport... Big boom went off, innit!
"Heathrow, Gatwick, Downing Street... You're next. You get me bruv?
"Brap brap, yeah what! What!"
At least 31 people were killed following three explosions at Zaventem Airport and Maelbeek metro station during the attacks on Tuesday.
The threat comes as security has been "stepped up" at checkpoints staffed by British officials on borders.
However the increase in security will last for only two weeks.
Lucy Moreton, general secretary of ISU, said: "We’ve stepped up controls at the border, and at all borders, but it is maintaining that at a high level for a long period of time and whether there is the political will, or potentially even the necessity to do so.
(Image: Getty)
"Experience from past would suggest that it isn’t. The increased checks at the border last about two weeks, or that’s how long they lasted after the Paris attacks."
Read more:
Alongside those who lost their lives during the attacks, more than 270 were injured, including children who lost limbs.
Following the terror attack, ISIS formally claimed responsibility.
(Image: Getty)
A statement read: "Islamic fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State.
Read more:
"Islamic State fighters opened fire inside Zaventem Airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martydom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station.
(Image: REUTERS)
Read more:
"The attacks resulted in more than 230 dead and wounded."
ISIS supporters posted threats on Twitter, warning social media users of supposed planned attacks.
One tweeted: "The Islamic State will attack London, Washington, Rome and all the infidels' capitals."
(Image: PA)
Another wrote: "The Crusaders are blundered and confused. Yesterday Paris, today Brussels, and they don't know where will be the next attack."
Home Secretary Theresa May revealed yesterday in the House of Commons that intelligence services had foiled seven terror plots on British soil in the last 18 months.
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FOOTAGE COURTESY OF MEMRI |
The State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last year’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a congressional investigation concluded Tuesday.
Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign — all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a bipartisan staff report.
In one stunning finding, the subcommittee said OneVoice even told the State Department’s top diplomat in Jerusalem of its plans in an email, but the official, Consul General Michael Ratney, claims never to have seen them.
He said he regularly deleted emails with large attachments — a striking violation of open-records laws for a department already reeling from former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s handling of official government records.
Mr. Netanyahu survived the election, and the U.S. spending was not deemed illegal because the State Department never put any conditions on the money. Investigators also said OneVoice didn’t turn explicitly political until days after the grant period ended.
“The State Department ignored warnings signs and funded a politically active group in a politically sensitive environment with inadequate safeguards,” said Sen. Rob Portman, chairman of the investigative subcommittee. “It is completely unacceptable that U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to build a political campaign infrastructure that was deployed — immediately after the grant ended — against the leader of our closest ally in the Middle East. American resources should be used to help our allies in the region, not undermine them.”
PHOTOS: Famous felons
Sen. Claire McCaskill, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said the Obama administration followed the law.
But she said their investigation exposed “deficiencies” in the State Department’s policies.
OneVoice had been politically active in Israel’s 2013 elections, which should have been a red flag to U.S. officials to put strict controls on how American taxpayers’ money was spent, the investigation said.
While it wouldn’t have necessarily disqualified the group, the State Department should have written a specific prohibition against using American money to influence a foreign election, the subcommittee said.
It’s part of a pattern of bad behavior at the State Department. The Government Accountability Office reviewed more than five dozen department grants and found officials cut corners and missed red flags in 80 percent of them.
The Israeli Embassy didn’t respond to a request for comment on the findings.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said they had not had time to go through the report and he couldn’t comment on it. He also didn’t comment on Mr. Ratney’s practice of deleting official records.
The Senate investigation found that the State Department funded two sister groups — OneVoice Israel and OneVoice Palestine — to hire a U.S. political consulting firm, recruit volunteers, build a social media network and run advertising.
But it was also building its anti-Netanyahu political strategy, at a time when the Israeli leader was quite controversial in U.S. politics, celebrated by Republicans but feuding with the Obama White House over differences in policy.
OneVoice told at least two State Department officials of its political plans, even as it was collecting taxpayer money. But the department “took no action in response,” the subcommittee concluded.
Mr. Ratney, one of the two officials, said he remembered getting an email from OneVoice, but didn’t recall seeing the attached file detailing the group’s political strategy.
The State Department was unable to recover the email, but investigators got it from OneVoice.
Mr. Ratney later told investigators he regularly deleted emails with attachments “in order to maintain my inbox under the storage limit.” He told investigators he “did not know [he] was required to archive routine emails.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
When is the last time you thought of something you were grateful for? Often times we get caught up in what isn’t exactly perfect in our lives and forget to be thankful for what is going right.
Since it’s so easy to fall into that pattern, I decided to start a series of posts about gratitude. In the TED Talk I recently watched, Shawn Anchor suggests that you think of 3 things you’re grateful for each day. I usually do this when I wake up in the morning, but I want to take it a step further and share my gratitude with you all every Sunday. I would love for you to join me and tell me what you’re grateful for in the comments as well!
Showing gratitude is one of the most effective ways to reduce anxiety, depression, anger, and many more negative or “below the line” emotions.
Here are three things I’m grateful for today:
1. Eating this watermelon, banana, and strawberry fruit salad. Watermelon is one of my favorite foods and I definitely take advantage of the summertime because it is in season. This was some of the best watermelon I’ve ever had.
2. Getting to walk to dinner from where I live and see this adorable wheelbarrow with succulents in front of our neighbors place. I want to replicate it! You don’t think they’d mind, do you? 😉
3. Seeing this rainbow out of the plane window. I’ve never seen one like it. So incredible!
What are you grateful for today? I would love to hear!
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Become an official Happster & get free happy notes here: http://tinyurl.com/imahappster
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Senate Democrats introduced legislation today that appears to put Republicans on notice that if they mess with the debt ceiling again, Democrats will permanently eliminate their default threat.
Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) introduced a bill that would make permanent a rule devised by Mitch McConnell that uses resolutions of disapproval to allow the president to raise the debt ceiling.
Sen. Schumer said, “The way it works right now, the debt ceiling is like a ticking time bomb that threatens massive economic destruction. This bill would defuse it. By forcing Congress to disapprove debt ceiling increases, we greatly reduce the risk of default that would be a crushing blow to our economy – taking money out of middle-class pockets and destroying middle-class jobs. I hope our Republican colleagues will do the right thing and join in our efforts to limit the risk of default and provide certainty to American families and businesses.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell was not amused. According to The Hill, McConnell said,
“[Schumer] wants to extend the debt ceiling permanently by going around Congress. Let me repeat that: the so-called ‘Schumer-Obama Plan’ is a plan to permanently hand the president a credit card without spending limits, and without lifting a finger to address the national debt,” McConnell said. “I reject that idea entirely. “I believe that increases in the debt ceiling should be accompanied by reforms,” he continued. “That’s just what we did in 2011, when Congress raised the debt ceiling in return for enacting $2 trillion in bipartisan spending control — the spending control the president campaigned on endlessly.”
The Democratic bill won’t pass. It won’t get out of the Senate, and if it did, it wouldn’t pass the House. The legislation is still important because it suggests what Democrats are going to ask for next if Republicans threaten the country with default in February or March of 2014.
If Republicans threaten the nation with another self-created economic crisis, Democrats will push for the elimination of the debt ceiling. President Obama has already signaled support for the bill, so it is clear that Democrats are sending a message. Democrats have been emboldened by the way that they stood up to Republicans on the government shutdown and the debt ceiling, and Republicans will pay a steep price if they choose to play games.
What happens to this bill right now isn’t as important as the fact that Democrats are putting it on the table. Senate Democrats are setting the stage for using the Republicans’ own behavior against them. There is also the political bonus of reminding Republican voters in Kentucky that Mitch McConnell could be responsible for Republicans losing their favorite hostage.
Congressional Republicans have repeatedly proven that they aren’t fit to govern, and if they try to provoke another economic crisis, Democrats are ready to act.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human: |
Posted August 25th at 12:00am.
As part of celebrating Madden NFL 25, a season 25 years in the making, EA SPORTS enlisted Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson to go back to Summer Camp and relive their earliest days of playing Madden. Here’s an exclusive, behind-the-scenes glimpse of what happened on set.
Seattle Seahawks QB Russell Wilson at the Rose Bowl before the shoot. Wilson’s competitiveness shined through as he made members of the EA SPORTS crew pair off and run routes to help him get loose.
San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick threw the ball around after joining Wilson on set.
Plays were drawn up the old fashioned way with the crew.
Russell and Colin caught a quick break on set alongside EA’s Sandy Sandoval.
Kaep paid homage to the NFL Quarterback Club days.
EA’s Dustin Shekell is a big 49ers fan, so going over the plan with Kaep was a huge thrill.
The plan of attack.
Russell got his game face on.
Colin and Russell got their first crack at Madden NFL 25 in the Rose Bowl locker room. The guys played for an hour, video game man against video game man.
Even though the weights on Kaep’s back each weighed less than a pound, he mentioned how awkward it felt to have it strapped to his body.
Rise. Grind. Take five-step drops with a barbell on your back.
Will we see this jersey again in Super Bowl XLVIII?
Or will it be this one?
Discover 25 Reasons to Buy Madden NFL 25 and meet the All-25 Team.
Get ready to Run Free. Madden NFL 25 is available on August 27. Pre-order Madden NFL 25 today to receive exclusive Franchise Packs. |
A top Russian official has called upon state-owned arms producers to introduce an ethics code in order to battle alcohol abuse in the workplace.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets, speaking Tuesday to human resources directors of major state-owned companies, lamented "a propensity for alcohol abuse" at those plants.
She said "the lack of discipline" comes with a "high price not only for the factories, but for humankind."
Among the meeting's participants were representatives of the manufacturer of air-defense missile systems Almaz-Antei and nuclear corporation Rosatom.
She also called on factory directors to set an example for their employees and cut down on drinking at office parties.
"I myself have seen corporate parties which were nothing like corporate parties," Golodets told the officials in comments carried by the Interfax news agency.
A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development this year showed that 30% of Russian deaths in 2012 were attributable to alcohol, the highest ratio among the nations it tracked.
Privately owned companies have raising alarms about alcohol and drug addiction among Russian workers as well.
Leading Russian steel producer Severstal signed a cooperation agreement this month with the Federal Narcotics Service to help battle substance abuse at its factories. Severstal's press office reported that 21 people were caught high on drugs in the first eight months of the year. |
It appears that Meek Mill is ready to put all of his recent drama with Drake on the back burner for the moment and get back to making music. Last night, Meek shared a number of previews of his upcoming mixtape, DC4, on his Instagram, and to no real surprise, it sounds pretty damn good.
Meek didn't reveal exactly when he's planning to release the project, but the snippets include a YG feature, and a verse where he addresses people saying he "took an L" with his Drake beef. Next week is the two year anniversary of his last Dreamchasers mixtape, so maybe Meek has a surprise up his sleeve. Check out the previews below.
Eating breakfast on jet!!! A video posted by Meek Mill (@meekmill) on Sep 23, 2015 at 1:48am PDT
DC4 A video posted by Meek Mill (@meekmill) on Sep 23, 2015 at 1:43am PDT
$AVAGE LIFE$TYLE A video posted by Meek Mill (@meekmill) on Sep 23, 2015 at 1:33am PDT
#DC4 @yg A video posted by Meek Mill (@meekmill) on Sep 23, 2015 at 1:26am PDT
#DC4 shame on them niggas for betting against us! A video posted by Meek Mill (@meekmill) on Sep 23, 2015 at 1:24am PDT
DC4 we got a problem nowwwwwwwww 😎 A video posted by Meek Mill (@meekmill) on Sep 23, 2015 at 1:19am PDT |
Kenji Kurachi of Osaka, Japan, is cycling to the Mackenzie Valley from Yellowknife and aims to finish his journey by biking between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk.
"I want to cycle on the Arctic Ocean," he says. "This is my dream. I want to challenge myself."
He’s previously taken bike trips around the world.
Kurachi, 32, arrived in Yellowknife mid-January. Kurachi has a tent, a stove and a generous supply of Ichiban noodles. He plans to eat three packages of those a day.
He's already done his first leg, spending seven days cycling to Fort Providence. He rode from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. but the nights were long.
“Very, very difficult and too cold. I stayed in my tent almost but I can’t sleep,” he says.
He had just passed Behchoko when what he thought was a cute dog came within a few feet of his bike.
"Big dog chase me. Run away. I thought 'Oh, very cute.' But it was a wolf. Very scary."
Kurachi managed to snap a photo of the animal and has been documenting his journey.
He says many drivers on the highway have stopped to check on him. He says he appreciates the kindness of Canadians he's met so far.
N.W.T. roads haven't been as kind. He's already had to make several tire repairs, and backtracked to Yellowknife last week to stock up on supplies.
"He had an unusual request," says David Stephens who's the bike manager at Overlander Sports in Yellowknife. "He asked me for 14 spare bike tubes for his bicycle."
A cycling enthusiast and former resident of Japan himself, Stevens speaks the language and understands Kurachi's will to see his dream through.
"It takes great courage, and to have done other trips successfully in the winter, I admire him for that.
"Some people think we are crazy or he is crazy, but we both agree we think people are crazy if they just sit in their house and watch TV all winter. It's a waste of a life."
Stephens plans to give Kurachi a place to stay at the end of his trip.
Kurachi has passed Fort Providence and is now continuing on to Wrigley. He expects to reach Tuktoyaktuk in April. |
Through careful study of terrorist incidents and investigations and study of the histories of the terrorist groups, U.S. law enforcement officers, security officials, and intelligence analysts have developed an understanding of the tactics, techniques and procedures used by terrorists preparing for and conducting attacks. Professionals can usually distinguish between a truly suspicious incident and benign behavior. However, there is a third category of non-violent activities that is more difficult to identify, which we will refer to as "acts of staged controversy."
There are some cases where witnesses describe actors' behavior as "odd" yet very overt—behavior apparently designed to attract attention. Viewed under differing prisms, the behavior could be classified as either benign or as some type of terrorist activity. Decision makers and practitioners should consider the possibility that certain incidents are staged or that they are escalated by manipulation of the media and the legal system to create controversy and to provoke a response to serve strategic purposes.
It is very difficult to prove ulterior intentions behind what we are referring to as "acts of staged controversy." Perhaps these acts are deliberately provocative. Or, it is possible these are innocent events that may be seized upon by advocacy groups for political gain. We present this hypothesis to provide an alternative way of analyzing these types of incidents.
Strategic Motivations of Islamist Groups
Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, do not necessarily intend to engage in violence (though some branches of the Muslim Brotherhood are very violent). Nevertheless, they share the same long-term goal as violent jihadist groups: to establish an Islamic society. Part of their strategy is to weaken and dismantle democratic regimes.[1] They endeavor to "Islamize" society using a bottom up approach[2] so that eventually their doctrines are accepted as the norm rather than considered extreme or marginal.
This article offers two cases, both involving the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which describes itself as a Muslim advocacy organization. These cases are meant to be illustrative of how acts of staged controversy may be implemented by groups with an Islamist agenda.
Many of CAIR's founding members were members of the Muslim Brotherhood[3] and of a support network created by the Brotherhood to benefit Hamas. Some experts believe that CAIR continues to be deeply involved with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and supports their objectives.[4],[5] The Muslim Brotherhood is not considered a monolithic organization, and its various branches may disagree on specific tactics, but all are consistent in their commitment to its core ideological principles, including the adoption of their political version of Islam as a governing standard for all Muslims around the world.[6]
In 1991, the Muslim Brotherhood issued a memorandum outlining its strategic goal in North America.[7] It reads, in part:
"The [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
Minnesota Imams
On November 20, 2006, six imams boarded a US Airways jet that was about to depart from Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport for Phoenix, Arizona. They had attended a three-day conference of the North American Imams Federation. Three only had one-way tickets and no checked luggage.[8] Various witnesses reported observing the group praying in an unusually loud way in the waiting area prior to boarding.[9] One of the witnesses, a clergyman who was familiar with Islamic practices, described their behavior at the gate as "atypical."[10] This same witness was later seated next to one of the imams on the plane and intentionally engaged him in conversation. The imam initially expressed to the witness that he was in the United States to do work related to his Ph.D. Later in the discussion, he admitted he was not doing academic work but instead intended to "represent Muslims in the United States" by generating support for Shari'a law.[11]
Upon boarding the plane, the imams dispersed. Two sat in the front of the plane, two in the middle, and two in the rear.[12] The flight crew and passengers observed them changing seats, and several of the men requested seat-belt extenders.[13] Crew members thought the request was odd, as none of the imams appeared overweight.[14] Although the extenders were provided, they were never used and were left on floor of the plane.[15] One passenger stated that she believed that the imams deliberately acted out as a part of an attempt to intimidate airline employees.[16] Another passenger said, "I can't explain it, but it was like they were definitely trying to raise suspicion."[17] The flight was delayed and the imams were removed from the plane by the airport police, questioned, and released after their plane had already departed.
CAIR filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation, and a separate civil suit in federal court on behalf of the imams against US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission, citing civil rights violations. CAIR also sued the "John Does" who alerted the aircrew and authorities after becoming alarmed by the imam's behavior in the terminal and on the plane.[18] While the "John Doe" provision of a bill (designed to protect citizens who report possible terrorist-related behavior from being sued, and to protect officers acting in an official capacity to prevent terrorist attacks) was moving through Congress, CAIR persisted with its lawsuit, claiming the right to discover whether the complaints were actually made "in good faith" or if they were racially motivated.[19]
President George W. Bush signed the "John Doe" provision[20] into law on August 3, 2007 and CAIR dropped its claims against the "Does."[21] There may be a residual "chilling effect," however, that would prevent concerned citizens from reporting suspicious incidents for fear of getting sued.[22] Causing reluctance to report suspicious incidents in which Muslims are involved may be an aspect of Islamist strategy to reduce resistance to the Islamization of society.
In January 2009, the U.S. Department of Transportation ruled that US Airways did not discriminate against the imams and that the airline's actions were reasonable. The civil suit is scheduled to go to trial in August, 2009.[23]
Giants Stadium
During a football game September 19, 2005 at Giants Stadium, five Muslim men were questioned by FBI agents after they prayed near the stadium's main air intake duct located in a sensitive area.[24] Former President George H.W. Bush attended the game and security was high. After approximately 20 minutes of questioning, FBI agents determined that the group did not pose a threat and allowed them to return to the game.
This group may have acted completely innocently. The issue, however, was not dropped by the men, and a few weeks later, on November 2, 2005, the group joined forces with the New Jersey-based American Muslim Union and the New York City chapter of CAIR for a joint press conference concerning the incident. At the conference, the men complained that they had been humiliated at Giants Stadium, and that their "main aim [in publicizing the episode] was to bring to light and educate people about what it is we're supposed to do."[25] They also took the opportunity to promote a campaign called "Pray for Understanding,"[26] which the executive director of the New York office of CAIR described as a way to teach people about Islam. The tie-in to the "Pray for Understanding" campaign at the press conference suggests the possibility that the incident at Giants Stadium may have been staged to create a platform to promote an ulterior public relations agenda.
What Islamists Might Gain from "Acts of Staged Controversy"
The Minnesota Imams and Giants Stadium incidents are just two examples where unusual but overt behavior has been investigated, dropped (because there was no clear indication of wrongdoing), and subsequently taken up and intensified by CAIR or by other Muslim groups. Due to the involvement of Islamist advocacy groups, news stories are generated and controversy stirred.
If the objective of Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, is to establish Islam as the dominant global societal doctrine, then how would creating acts of controversy - or seizing on opportunities to create controversy - further their strategy to achieve their objective? If they intend to achieve their objective through non-violent means then it is logical to conclude that they would want Muslims to embrace their perspective and to eschew democratic principles..
For example, acts of staged controversy could be used to:
Cause Muslims to feel disaffection for the democratic system by promoting feelings of betrayal and abandonment.
Convince Muslim Americans that they are not accepted as Americans. Acts of staged controversy provoke a response from authorities that can foment an "us vs. them" rift between Muslims and non-Muslims.
Incite political divides that may ultimately cause political instability.
Influence legislators to call for laws to outlaw profiling and/or repeal existing laws such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Patriot Act.
Draw attention from foreign media in an attempt to show that the U.S. rhetoric about acceptance is hollow.
Acts of staged controversy could also be exploited by groups who seek to use violence. For example, acts of staged controversy could be used to:
Desensitize security personnel by making activity that common sense would deem suspicious instead seem routine and not worth any special effort.
Intimidate security personnel and citizens by threatening lawsuits; making them reluctant to report suspicious behavior.
Handling Acts of Staged Controversy
Unfortunately, hatred, bigotry, and mistrust exist in the United States, and it is the role of civil rights groups to respond appropriately when acts of hatred do occur. It is the duty of responsible officials to monitor political, religious, and social tensions so that violent acts motivated by hatred can be prevented. The long view for homeland security, however, cannot be compromised by hasty responses to ambiguous situations. It is possible that some Islamist groups may exaggerate the occurrence of anti-Islamic discrimination in order to validate the premise that "Islamophobia" is rampant. According to FBI statistics, out of a total 7,624 hate crimes reported in the United States in 2007, 115 were motivated by anti-Islamic bias.[27] By contrast, 2,658 were motivated by bias against blacks, 749 were anti-white, 1,265 targeted people based on sexual orientation and 969 of the hate crimes reported were motivated by bias against Jews.[28]
Law enforcement and security personnel, airline and airport managers, legislators, politicians, media, and private citizens all have roles to play to prevent the spread of extremist ideology, which could lead to radicalization and, ultimately, a possible terrorist event.
Response at the Federal, Law Enforcement and Media Levels
Politicians must acknowledge Islamist ideology is being promoted in the United States, recognize who is promoting it, and understand the subtle tactics used by the Islamist groups before they can introduce effective counter-measures against terrorism. Politicians must realize that Islamist groups are competing for hearts and minds in the United States, so commitment to democratic values cannot be taken for granted.
How does law enforcement play a role in acts of staged controversy if there is no apparent crime committed? It is unlawful to conspire and to deliberately disrupt or interfere with the legitimate activities of law enforcement and security personnel. Engaging in deliberately suspicious behavior in order to distract security and law enforcement authorities is a tactic that has been discussed on Islamist message boards.[29] Of course, in ambiguous situations it is hard to prove the actual intent of the actors. Difficult though it may be, investigations should be conducted and cooperating witnesses sought and developed. The stakes are high, especially when the results of these incidents are considered in the aggregate and not individually.
Associations with terrorists or terrorist groups are not evidence of a crime, but are valuable data points in evaluating the true nature of an incident. If there are nefarious or questionable associations or prior activities that could shed light on possible motivations for ambiguous acts, they should be made known as much as possible. For example, one of the six imams involved in the Minnesota airport case, Omar Shahin, raised money for the Holy Land Foundation and for the Illinois-based KindHearts Foundation, which the government shut down last year for alleged support of Hamas."[30]
Additionally, the media should be aware of the possibility that it is being used to further an Islamist agenda. Media cooperation and extensive coverage is a key element of successful acts of staged controversy. Historically, global political Islamist groups have skillfully manipulated the media as part of their effort to circulate their message.[31] Statements made by spokespeople representing Islamist groups are often taken at face value by the media, and past involvements and associations often go unmentioned. Just as it is for law enforcement, it is important for the media to consider incidents in the aggregate.
Conclusion
It could be that individuals or groups unintentionally behave in a way that is deemed suspicious, and that official response may cause embarrassment. It also is true that innocent events create opportunities for groups like CAIR to influence the public's view of Islam, both politically and ideologically.
Acts of staged controversy or public relations campaigns manipulating otherwise innocent events may be an aspect of Islamist group strategy to Islamize society. Authorities dealing with such incidents should assess the behavior as an aggregate. Their responses should address the root of the problem, rather than potentially allowing such incidents to compel a response that supports the Islamist agenda.
Madeleine Gruen is a Senior Analyst for the NEFA Foundation. She is also a Senior Intelligence Analyst for Mike Stapleton Associates and is a contributor to the Counterterrorism Blog. Previously, she was an intelligence analyst for the New York Police Department's Counterterrorism Division.
Edward Sloan is a detective in the New York Police Department with 35 years of service. He is a Navy Reserve Officer and since 2001 has deployed several times to Afghanistan and the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His views are not necessarily those of the NYPD or the Navy.
[1] Stephen Coughlin, Analysis of Muslim Brotherhood's General Strategic Goals for North America, Statement entered as evidence in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, September 7, 2007.
[2] Zeyno Baran, The Muslim Brotherhood's U.S. Network, Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Vol. 6, Hudson Institute, 2008.
[3] Douglas Farah, Ron Sandee, and Josh Lefkowitz, The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States: A Brief History, NEFA Foundation, October 26, 2007, http://www1.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/nefaikhwan1007.pdf (last accessed February 26, 2009)
[4] See: "Government's Memorandum in Opposition to Council on American-Islamic Relations' Motion for Leave to File Amicus Curiae Instanter and Amicus Brief in Support of the Unindicted Co-Conspirators' First and Fifth Amendment Rights," USA v. Holy Land Foundation, 3:04cr240 (TXND September 4, 2007) in which prosecutors say "CAIR has been identified by the Government at trial as a participant in an ongoing and ultimately unlawful conspiracy to support a designated terrorist organization, a conspiracy from which CAIR never withdrew."
[5] "Beware of CAIR" letter from U.S. Reps. Sue Myrick, Pete Hoekstra, John Shadegg, Paul Broun and Trent Franks to other House members. January 30, 2009. It says "There are indications that this group has connections to HAMAS. " And, letter from U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf to Michael Heimback, FBI Assistant Director, Counter Terrorism Division, February 2, 2009. Wolf asks about news reports that the FBI has cut off communication with CAIR "amid mounting evidence that it has links to a support network for Hamas."
[6] See The Muslim Brotherhood's English-language web site, http://ikhwanweb.com/index.asp.
[7] The Muslim Brotherhood's document outlining their strategy in North America and analysis of the document can be found on the NEFA Foundation web site: http://www.nefafoundation.org/hlfdocs.html. See Exhibit GX 4-21 (last accessed February 26, 2009).
[8] Minnesota Airport Police Incident Report, OCA # 06004536, November 20, 2006.
[9] Katherine Kersten, Ordering Imams Off Flight Was Reasonable Act, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune, December 7, 2006.
[10] Minnesota Airport Police Incident Report, OCA # 06004536, November 20, 2006.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid
[18] Steven Huntley, Travelers Need Shield From Lawsuit, Chicago Sun-Times, July 29, 2007.
[19] Ibrahim Hooper, National Communications Director for CAIR, appearance on "Tucker," MSNBC, July 29, 2007.
[20] The Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 (H.R.1)
[21] Audrey Hudson, Imams Drop Lawsuit Against Doe Passengers, Washington Times, August 23, 2007.
[22] See Congressman Peter King appearance on Fox News Channel, July 20, 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYbev9SDMtc (last accessed February 24, 2009).
[23] David Hanners, Feds Refute Imams' Bias Case Against US Airways, Twin Cities Pioneer Press, February 18, 2009.
[24] A Place to Pray During Games, New York Times, November 23, 2005.
[25] Jeff Diamant and Russell Ben-Ali, Meadowlands to Add Worship Area, Newark Star Ledger, November 22, 2005.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Federal Bureau of Investigations, 2007 Hate Crime Statistics, http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/incidents.htm (last accessed on February 24, 2009).
[28] Ibid.
[29] U.S. Department of Homeland Security, HSIA 04-0042, September 2, 2004.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Madeleine Gruen interview with former high-ranking member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, December 8, 2008. Also see Habib's Get Rich Quick Schemes, Manchester Evening News, December 18, 2008. |
The Ukrainian crisis has entered its second summer. While the ferocity of the clashes in East Ukraine has eased since the Minsk Agreement in February, deadly fighting continues on a daily basis. In the meantime, the conflict has fallen somewhat off the radar of Western media, while the suffering of the civilian population in eastern Ukraine continues. There are no signs on the horizon of any accommodation between the governments of Ukraine and Russia. Must Europe accept an ongoing, low-intensity military conflict on its fringes as the new normal?
The Western bloc’s response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and subsequent sponsoring of an anti-government insurgency in Donbass has remained remarkably coherent so far. It is also having an effect: as Alexei Kudrin, Putin’s Minister of Finance from 2000 to 2011, remarked last month, “Russia is in the midst of a fully-flegded crisis.” In part because of the West’s co-ordinated economic pressure the Russian Central Bank expects the country’s GDP to shrink by up to 4% in 2015. So far this has not prompted a shift in Russian attitudes towards key issues regarding Ukraine. Putin continues to enjoy sky-high domestic approval ratings while the Russian government’s creeping takeover of the media landscape is eliminating political dissent from mainstream outlets. Spinning a tale of aggressive American intervention in Russian affairs, the national media are rallying nationalist sentiments and pushing a narrative of a declining, decadent West, all while successfully maintaining that Russia is not involved in a military conflict with its neighbour Ukraine.
The origins of the East-West stand-off over Ukraine are systemic in nature: neither side is prepared to give any ground. For the West, matters of principle are at stake: the inviolability of Ukraine’s sovereign borders as guaranteed by the Budapest Accords, and the right of nations to choose their alliances freely and without external interference. For the Kremlin, the conflict has become deeply intertwined with wider calculations about regime survival, making unilateral concessions unlikely.
Some 20 years ago, the US and Russia began a process of sustained engagement that culminated in the end of the Cold War. Then, as now, efforts at nuclear arms control could generate the initial diplomatic capital needed for a wider improvement in relations.
What is motivating Russian actions?
There remains in the West a degree of confusion about the reasoning behind Vladimir Putin’s choices in Ukraine. What exactly is Russia hoping to gain from its renewed confrontation with NATO? After the ouster of fellow kleptocrat Viktor Yanukovich, it appears that Putin felt there was more to gain than to lose from annexing Crimea and underwriting an insurgency in Eastern Ukraine. Russia’s strongman has since put up with the fall-out: as former US Assistant Secretary of State PJ Crowley put it, his ‘domestic political gain outweighs the international pain.’ Perhaps he was also laying down a marker: further NATO expansion toward Russia’s borders will not be tolerated. But a question remains: why did he elect a policy of confrontation with NATO in the first place? The answer matters a great deal. As former Secretary of State James Baker put it, “If there was a single key to whatever success I’ve enjoyed in diplomacy it has been my ability to crawl into the other guy’s shoes. When you understand your opponent, you have a better chance of reaching a successful conclusion with him or her.”
At the annual Fulbright Lecture in Oxford in June, Jack Matlock articulated the diplomat’s answer to this question of ‘who caused Putin.’ Matlock was himself a key figure in the end of the Cold War: he served as head of the Soviet Affairs desk on the National Security Council in the early 1980s and as Ambassador to the Soviet Union in the crucial years from 1987 to 1991. According to Matlock, the roots of the current crisis lie in the West’s mistaken conclusion in 1991 that ‘we won.’ In reality the end of the Cold War was negotiated through arms control deals, troop reduction agreements, the voluntary and peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire, and the mutually agreed reunification of Germany. In the years that followed, however, as the myth of victory took hold, Western leaders repeatedly ignored vital Russian security interests, most importantly by permitting NATO’s eastward expansion. Assurances that such moves were of a defensive nature faded in Russian eyes when NATO conducted a bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999. Inclusive steps by Western powers such as permitting Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organisation did not outweigh a growing perception of anti-Russian aggression – witness, for example, the depth of the resistance that NATO’s plans for a ballistic missile defense system have prompted in Moscow. For Matlock, the West’s enthusiastic support of colour revolutions and its promises to put Georgia and Ukraine on a path toward NATO membership cemented the view in Russia that its interests were being systematically undermined. The pushback began with the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and dangerously escalated in Ukraine last year. In other words, for Matlock, ‘we caused Putin.’ The implication is that a correction of Western policies could ameliorate the current state of affairs.
The alternative argument is that Russia’s foreign policy is the end-result of a post-Soviet journey toward autocracy that would clash with the liberal world order sooner or later. The genesis of contemporary Russia is the subject of a number of books and documentaries that examine Putin’s rise. Princeton’s Stephen Kotkin, a History Professor at Princeton University, has reached the following conclusion:
‘The methods Putin used to fix the corrupt, dysfunctional post-Soviet state have produced yet another corrupt, dysfunctional state. […] Bit by bit, using stealth and dirty tricks, Putin reasserted central control over the levers of power within the country – the TV stations, the gas industry, the oil industry, the regions. It was a cunning feat of state rebuilding.’
More sinister are the implications of an article by Scott Anderson that the commissioning publisher, Condé Nast, refused to distribute for fear of reprisals against its Russian subsidiaries. Anderson investigates the Moscow Apartment Bombings of 1999 that cost hundreds of lives, precipitated the Second Chechnya War and accelerated Putin’s rise to power. He reconstructs a number of fairly clear-cut links between Russia’s domestic secret service – headed by Putin until 1999 – and the likely perpetrators of the bombings. Official complicity in the atrocities is, incredibly, not at all far-fetched.[1] It is also consistent with the more alarming features of contemporary Russia: repression is on the rise and prominent opposition figures are being silenced in disturbing ways.[2] It is immaterial whether the dozen or so murdered Putin critics were killed at the Kremlin’s behest, or by forces eager to ingratiate themselves to the government: either way, the result is that any public figure speaking out against Russia’s leaders incurs a considerable health risk in doing so, a state of affairs that strengthens Putin’s grip over the country.
In this view, the real motivation behind Russia’s increasing assertiveness abroad isn’t opposition to Western hegemony, but to ward off the spectre of a colour revolution at home. NATO’s 1999 campaign against Serbia that provoked such anger in Moscow was aimed at curbing state-sponsored massacres of Kosovars, and ended up bringing democracy to the region. Both Georgia and Ukraine experienced a partial transition to democracy before suffering Russian military incursions. Most interestingly, efforts by Barack Obama to ‘Reset’ American relations with Russia came to an end despite the President’s best efforts after the Kremlin blamed ‘CIA forces’ for the mass-demonstrations that broke out in Moscow following Putin’s re-election in 2011. Arguably, the real turning point in the Kremlin’s thinking was when the potential of a democratic revolution reached Russian borders.
This interpretation of Russia’s actions is worrying. Because if Putin is ultimately motivated not by geopolitical considerations but by internal (or personal) ones, then his optimal strategy is to maintain a frozen, perpetual conflict in Ukraine while periodically destabilising other areas of interest on Russia’s borders. To a determined autocrat, deliberate subversion of democratic alternatives is preferable to the risk involved in permitting a stable, successful liberal democracy to emerge on Russia’s borders: after all, this would constitute the greatest threat to Putin’s rule.
Nuclear opportunities?
Are the current state of relations bound to worsen? The risk of gradual tit-for-tat escalation is real. Russia’s increasing military intrusions into NATO airspace have prompted fears of a challenge to the collective defense provision of the North Atlantic Charter. These fears begat the Obama Administration’s decision to station heavy weapons in Eastern Europe, which, in turn, sparked further Russian retaliatory moves – and onwards spins the escalatory wheel. Little seems to be in place to prevent this spiral from continuing. As Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s Chief of Staff, observed: ‘there are practically no channels for interaction left.’ In fact, the situation is eerily reminiscent of 1983, when East-West relations were at their lowest ebb since the Cuban Missile Crisis and the spectre of nuclear escalation loomed large.
Then, as now, the nuclear dimension of the conflict is the most troublesome. Yet it also offers the best bet for constructive engagement between the two sides. With the 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference ending in deadlock, there is a risk, as Alexei Arbatov has pointed out, of sleepwalking into a new nuclear age, where nuclear force doctrines are once again elevated in military importance, creating further fear and mistrust among the world’s great powers. In this kind of environment, the only bulwark against nuclear war is mutual deterrence, which currently stands on shaky ground: Strategic Missile Defense remains as thorny an issue today as it was in the 1980s and encourages the development of high-precision long-range conventional missiles, as well as the weaponisation of space. If not curtailed, a renewed era of strategic confrontation in the nuclear domain would strengthen the dangerous dynamic of non-aligned countries pursuing weapons with nuclear capabilities as a security measure.
But the potency of nuclear intensification also represents an opportunity. Precisely because of the cataclysmic potential of nuclear war, the institutional regime regulating the spread of atomic weapons became an engine of co-operation and reassurance among the great powers during the later stages of the Cold War. Today, it remains incumbent upon the US and Russia, who possess 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, to lead the non-proliferation regime. While important planks of the post-Cold War security system remain in place – such as the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Force treaty and the New START treaty of 2011 – the US and Russia would be well-advised to systematically re-engage by kick-starting the nuclear arms reduction talks that have flat-lined since 2011. Doing so could help to re-build the kind of trust that Reagan and Gorbachev once managed to create. A new nuclear arms race would clearly be in neither country’s interests. Indeed, the saliency of US-Russian nuclear co-operation was demonstrated this week by the conclusion of the nuclear accord on Iran. The success of US-Russian collaboration in this domain was not lost on either of the country’s leaders.
If diplomacy on the nuclear front spills over into wider diplomatic re-engagement, then common ground on controversial issues surrounding Ukraine might be found in the medium-run. Federalist reforms and devolution to strengthen the political rights of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine (in return for guarantees concerning Ukraine’s sovereignty) may assuage the Kremlin’s concerns about anti-Russian rule in Kiev. Opening up a route for Ukraine to join the EU would lack the security implications of NATO membership yet give the country a chance to become a liberalised state that does not threaten Russia. Crimea might then be formally ceded after an internationally observed, free and fair referendum, which would likely produce a pro-Russian outcome.
Painful compromises on both sides will be necessary to defuse the intolerable risks of the status quo. This is why nuclear arms talks are a good place to start, just as in the 1980s. A failure to repair the broken relationship between Russia and the West will heighten the spectre of escalating nuclear tensions and risk a new age of proliferation in which a fatal error or misjudgement could produce the gravest of consequences. The conflicting parties already understand this in some sense, as the Iranian nuclear talks showed. Amidst the turmoil in Greece, the Middle East and the South China Sea, we would do well not to overlook the fraying of the international nuclear order. Therein, after all, lies the most fundamental and unthinkable of international security risks – as well as the clearest route to rapprochement between Russia and the West.
[1] For instance: “Gennady Seleznyov, the Speaker of the Duma, made a speech on the floor of Parliament on the morning of September 13, 1999. ‘I have just received a report,’ he announced to legislators. ‘An apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk was blown up last night.’ While Seleznyov got the basics right – an apartment building had indeed just been blown up – he had the wrong city; the blast that morning had been at 6/3 Kashirskoye Highway in Moscow. This put the Speaker in an awkward spot when an apartment building in Volgodonsk was blown up three days later.” [2] Alexander Litvinenko, for example, was a former FSB agent who blew the whistle on the Apartment Bombings and ended up dying a slow, painful radiation-induced death after being poisoned with a kind of Polonium that could only be obtained at a specific former nuclear site in Russia. Putin himself later awarded the man suspected by the British government of murdering Litvinenko a medal of honour.
Benjamin Mueller is a doctoral candidate in International Relations at the London School of Economics. He is also the International Relations Stonex Scholar at LSE IDEAS.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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We've pretty much got it all... so why are we women so miserable?
Well, here we are then. We've done it, we females of the species - we've pretty much got it all. Success, love, careers, sexual freedom, babies. We're running countries, for goodness' sake, huge, powerful ones like Germany and Bangladesh and one of us - Hillary Clinton - nearly got to be the most powerful person on Earth.
We must be over the moon, dancing all the way to the office and then all the way home again at night.
Only - we're not. Far from it, it seems. New research, published in the U.S., and relating to a study of more than a million people, shows that women are more miserable than we've ever been. And we're actually getting more miserable.
Umbrella days: Research in the U.S. shows that women are more miserable than they've ever been
And this is the real point - men are not. According to the same research, men are getting happier and, moreover, are even happier as they get older.
And it's not just this study. The World Health Organisation reports that depression is the second most debilitating disease for women; for men, it's the tenth most.
Now why is that? What miserable little worm of a gene must there be in our psychological and emotional make-up that means we do nothing but complain about our lot, when that lot is so extremely good? Indeed, better than ever in the history of womankind.
Someone said to me once, way back in the early days of bra-burning feminism, and I've never forgotten it: 'Women are terrible moaners. They moan because they want to be married, then they moan because they want a baby, then they moan because it's boring at home and they want to go back to work, then they moan because they feel guilty about leaving the baby.'
Not a quote from some cynical man, as you might presume, but from a fully fledged, successful, working woman with three children.
Letting the sisterhood down to be sure, but wouldn't you admit there is something at least in what she says? Are we not just permanently dissatisfied?
Of course, being dissatisfied has got humanity where we are today. We always want more, we always want to better what we've got and, as a result, humankind progresses.
But that doesn't explain why women in particular are feeling a lot less contented than we did, say, 50 years ago.
So is our unhappiness directly related to our new post-feminist - and theoretically enviable - situation in society, with every possibility seemingly open to us professionally, academically and even romantically?
Could it be that having too many choices has left us dissatisfied with whichever one we choose - because we constantly fear another path in life could make us happier?
If that is the case, then many men, and many of my mother's generation, might find that rather rich given how much drudgery was involved in being a housewife half a century ago.
Maybe our unhappiness these days just seems so outrageous because we do have it so good. Because we do have the option to work or be at home.
Yes, my mother resented her dependence on my father and the boredom of her daily round of housework, shopping, cooking, washing, ironing and running around after me with no prospect of escape. But at least she was valued by society.
Back then, mothers simply didn't work outside the home. They had their babies and stayed at home to look after them. There was no option.
So maybe our unhappiness these days just seems so outrageous because we do have it so good. Because we do have the option to work or be at home.
What this research also tells us is that we can't complain that we have to do all the domestic stuff any more; technology has lifted a huge amount of the burden, and men are becoming increasingly good at doing their share of the chores.
That's all well and good, but while the men may be helping more at home, most of us are tying ourselves in knots trying to make a success of the careers we regard as a birthright.
The cost of being a working mother is astronomical - and I'm not referring to nursery and childminding fees, although the stress of earning the money to cover those does come into the equation.
Measured in terms of guilt, exhaustion, fear (yes, I do mean fear - fear that the creche catches fire, or the au pair gets involved in a long phone conversation and the two-year-old wanders out into the road), well, it doesn't get much pricier than that.
Show me a working mother who can concentrate 100 per cent on a meeting that starts half an hour before she absolutely has to leave in order to arrive at the nursery before it closes, and I'll show you a creature as rare as the unicorn.
I simply do not believe that any man, however 'new' and however much he has changed nappies and bonded with his babies, feels the same gut-wrenching guilt and anxiety when he's away from them on a regular basis that women do.
The study by the WHO found that depression is the second most debilitating disease for women
It's simple biology. In that area, we haven't really progressed much from the days of the cavemen. Until someone finds a way for men to actually bear the babies, it won't change.
So, if the modern right to work is making mothers unhappy and feeling torn in two, what about the cost of being a stay-at home mother?
You feel bored, frustrated and resentful much of the time, however much you love the small person who has just tipped its juice onto the floor for the fourth time, or grizzled all the way home from the swings.
And who makes the very thought of a sex life some kind of blurred and unimaginable mirage.
Was it for this, you wonder, that you struggled to get your 2:1 in Classics or fought your way up the company ladder and got a car and key to the executive washroom? What are you doing here at home? How did that happen?
And however much you love your children, there's no doubt the attitude of society towards stay-at-home mothers fosters a feeling of inferiority for many women.
When my children were small, the stay-at-home mother was the 'good mother' who was feted as an example to us all. As the working variety, I was in a tiny minority and I was pilloried for it.
But now if you're at home, you aren't cherished by society. You are somehow cast as a self-satisfied prig, letting down the worker bees, unable to say anything meaningful about anything and most unfairly endowed with a husband who earns enough money to indulge your desire to stay at home.
The Government's desire to drive all women back to work by offering ' wraparound childcare' doesn't help either.
So my argument is that millions of modern women are unhappy whether they go to work or stay at home.
It seems the shackles we cast off in the feminist revolution have only enabled us to be miserable whatever we do.
I sometimes think (not entirely seriously, but it bears examination) that we'd all be a lot happier if we were obliged by law to stay at home for five years - or maybe three - after having each baby, and then went back to work.
There would be no conflict, no self-doubt and, most importantly, no guilt; you'd just have to settle down and get on with it and wait for your turn to go back to the real world.
And you know what? You'd probably enjoy it.
There is no doubt that the to-work-or-not dilemma is absolutely crucifying. I believe it is at the heart of women's unhappiness. And there really is no correct answer. The glass is always half-empty, wherever you are.
If those are the issues that drag down a woman's mood throughout her 30s and 40s, what happens to our male counterparts later in their lives?
A woman of 50 is reproductively done for, all washed up; a man of 50 can marry again and have babies. The fact he probably won't is neither here nor there - he knows he could if he wanted to.
Why, for example, do men get happier as they get older, while we get more miserable?
I think it's biology. A woman of 50 is reproductively done for, all washed up; a man of 50 can marry again and have babies.
The fact he probably won't is neither here nor there - he knows he could if he wanted to.
That's the whole point. We're left staring into the empty nest, with absolutely no chance of filling it again, except spasmodically with the grandchildren.
And I don't care what anyone says or how many pictures there are of Sophia Loren looking dazzling at 75, women age faster than men. And most of us do mind.
I'm extremely blessed, with a huge and happy family (last time I looked anyway) and work I adore.
But I still fret on a daily basis about unworthy things, such as my sagging arms and wrinkles multiplying at the speed of light.
Perhaps that's because we live in a horribly introspective age. We fret and fuss over ourselves as never before; it's almost a disease in itself. Never were upper lips less stiff; never were so many hearts to be seen on sleeves.
Diana, Princess of Wales led the way and the nation followed, confessing, kissing, weeping.
Among the famous, it's reached boiling point: who's had the unhappiest childhood, the most demeaning relationship, the toughest rejection? Me, Me, Me!
Pouring out their hearts at the drop of a designer hat, gazing into their surgically reduced navels. Just Putting Up With It is seriously old-fashioned.
Too much self-analysis is dangerous. Am I happy? Am I bored? Am I fulfilled?
It's a bit like thinking you might have a sore throat or a stomach ache; concentrate really hard on the throat or the stomach and yes, there it goes, nasty little tickle, beastly little ache.
The problem is that if you ask yourself 'Is my life as wonderful as I'd hoped?', the answer is that it probably isn't.
If you ask 'Am I really still in love?', the response is that, of course, it's not the same as it was when you met.
It's all a bit like constantly digging up a frail little sapling to see if it's growing, and killing it as a result.
If you leave the sapling of happiness alone, it will have a much better chance of setting down some roots and starting to thrive.
What we must do is appreciate the things we are doing well in life, whether it is mothering or working - and not dwell on the things we fear we're missing out on.
Collectively as a sex we must hang onto that approach. If we can convince ourselves that our glasses are actually half-full rather than half-empty, then we should feel a whole lot more optimistic. And maybe a whole lot happier. |
Last week, 12 Iraqi police officers burst into a house in Karbala, beat up and blindfolded the six occupants and bundled them off in three vans, taking the computers they found with them. The house was then burned down by unknown people.
The house was a new "emergency shelter" run by the Iraqi LGBT organisation.
Two days later, one of the men turned up in hospital with a throat wound saying he'd been tortured. Iraqi LGBT has ordered those in its other two safe houses to move immediately.
The group says the police action is consistent with other state attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Iraq. It has information that the other five – two gay men, one lesbian and two transgender people – have been transported 100 miles north to the interior ministry in Baghdad, where they'll be interrogated (ie tortured) to find out more about the group. Then, going on past experience, they'll probably be handed to militias loyal to Shi'a clerics Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr (both of whom have called for homosexuals to be put to death) and their mutilated bodies will turn up later.
But it is also clear from past experience that there is unlikely to be a sustained international outcry from gay people, governments or others about this latest incident.
Last year, the US state department, following representations by Rep Jared Polis, said that it was investigating reports of trials and executions of LGBT people – including for membership of the Iraqi LGBT group – as well as reports of arrests, beatings and rape by interior ministry security forces. Polis said that at least one gay man has been executed by the government for "membership of a banned organisation" and that "egregious human rights violations ... [are] being carried out by Iraqi government officials from the ministry of the interior".
But this was immediately undermined by the US embassy in Baghdad. Patricia Butenis, its chargé d'affaires, said: "We have no evidence that security forces are in any way involved with these militias."
This official dismissal is echoed in the British foreign office's latest human rights report that does acknowledge persecution in Iraq but claims that "official figures do not show a significant overall increase in violence against, or systematic abuse of, the homosexual community by fundamentalists or militia groups". It makes no mention of allegations of state involvement and repeats claims by Iraq's human rights minister and the interior ministry that murders of LGBT people "will be prosecuted" (none have) and that "homosexuality is not a criminal offence in Iraq". Iraqi LGBT, however, has two documents from a judge ordering arrests of homosexuals in Babel province earlier this year; those arrested have disappeared.
The latest US state department human rights report does suggest that the Iraqi state is offering no protection to LGBT people, saying the "authorities had not announced any arrests or prosecutions of any persons for killing, torturing, or detaining any LGBT individuals by year's end". In diplomatic terms this represents a glacial sort of progress in criticism of the Iraqis. The state department, like the foreign office, is "concerned". But Neil Grungras, executive director of the San Francisco-based Organisation for Refuge, Asylum & Migration, who follows developments closely, says "these concerns have thus far not translated into concrete action".
The foreign office, similarly "concerned", has told Iraqi LGBT for two years that the British embassy in Baghdad is "investigating" reports of state involvement.
In that time Britain has managed to "investigate" and publicly criticise both the Malawian and the Ugandan governments.
At a state department event yesterday, Hillary Clinton touted US support, like Britain's, for African LGBT activists. Four were invited guests and she even offered funding. In both Malawi and Uganda there is a strong religious opposition to homosexuality but this hasn't stopped criticism. Yet in Iraq "religious sensitivities" are mentioned behind the scenes as the reason why Britain won't publicly criticise inaction on the killings of LGBT people, let alone killings by or with the connivance of the Iraqi government. Of course, in reality, the "sensitivities" are primarily political and LGBT people are being sacrificed for the sake of them.
Africa is the "gay international issue du jour" and that's a good thing, but the absence of any attention – any – to Iraq screams out for explanation. Iraqi LGBT has documented 738 killings in five years, similar numbers to those suffered by Iraq's Christian minority. Yet Iraq's state-colluded pogrom of gays isn't the subject of demonstrations by the international gay community, sustained actions by international human rights organisations, protests by lesbian or gay celebrities or even fundraising for "safe houses" – though they have one major funder, the Dutch humanist charity, Hivos.
Ali Hili, Iraq's LGBT leader, said "people in the west have been too quiet for too long about the violence against LGBT people in Iraq. The militia and the powers that be know they can get away with it while that silence continues."
Last year, group members in Iraq responded to the outrageous statement from Butenis, saying they were "fed up with such 'political' words" and that "the Americans are doing nothing to stop the terror campaign against them. They believe that the priority for Hillary Clinton's state department and Obama's administration is to not upset the Iraqi government."
One could say the same of the British and one can understand why LGBT Iraqis are fed up. The foreign office knows about the Karbala raid. Why is someone not sent out immediately to investigate and then, once the truth is known, the foreign office can condemn it? Why are we standing up for some LGBT people in the rest of the world and not others? Can this pogrom carry on happening and not a finger be lifted to try and stop it?
• This article was amended at 19.15 on 23 June 2010. The original referred to the six abducted being "two gay men, one lesbian and two transgender people". This breakdown should have referred to the five who are still missing. This has now been corrected |
A return to direct rule from London is a possibility if the Northern Ireland parties fail to agree on a plan to resolve deep disagreements over paramilitarism and welfare reform, the cabinet minister for the province has warned.
Secretary of state Theresa Villiers told the Conservative party conference on Wednesday the survival of devolved government was now at stake in the talks going on in Belfast between unionist and nationalist parties.
Stormont Northern Ireland crisis talks explained Read more
Villiers said “a return to direct rule would be a severe setback” but admitted transferring powers back to London cannot be ruled out.
Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government is under threat over two key issues: the alleged ongoing existence of the Provisional IRA and the Ulster parties’ inability to reach consensus on welfare reforms.
Unionists have latched on to an assessment by the Police Service of Northern Ireland that the PIRA still exists in some form and that some of its members were behind the murder of ex-PIRA prisoner Kevin McGuigan in August. They claim this breaches a key article of faith in agreements that led to them sharing power with nationalist party Sinn Féin – the dissolution of the PIRA as a military force and the decommissioning of its weaponry. Sinn Féin has countered that unionist threats to pull down power sharing are due to inter-unionist election rivalry.
Northern Ireland's political crisis: key questions answered Read more
Even before the McGuigan murder controversy, however, there were deep divisions inside the power-sharing coalition at Stormont over Treasury demands for cuts to the public-sector workforce in Northern Ireland. The two main unionist parties and the centrist Alliance party supported the welfare reform programme while Sinn Féin and the SDLP have opposed it. As a result, the Northern Ireland Executive has been unable to set a budget this year.
Concentrating on the row over welfare reform, Villiers said: “One only has to look round Europe to see the problems caused when an administration cannot live within its budget and the harsh impact that can have on some of the most vulnerable in society.
“Replaying that scenario in Northern Ireland would stretch political relationships within the Executive well beyond breaking point. There’s a real risk that those taking a hard line against welfare reform will end up running the devolved institutions into collapse as collateral damage.”
Transferring power from the Stormont government in the region back to Whitehall would mark a major blow to the agreements negotiated over the last 17 years aimed at restoring devolution to the province. It would enrage nationalists in particular, and lead to a bitter election contest for a new Stormont assembly in either late autumn or early winter.
The main unionist party, the Democratic Unionists, has also received sustained criticism over its partial boycott of Northern Ireland Executive business. Even though the DUP ministers are absenting themselves from cabinet meetings, it has emerged they are still taking their full salaries as if they were fully in government.
In response to charges of hypocrisy, the DUP said on Wednesday its ministers will not personally gain financially from the payments while their “in-out” protest over alleged ongoing PIRA activity continues. |
Nairaland Forum / Nairaland / General / Health / Youngest Birth (31250 Views)
Ola Orekunrin, The Youngest Doctor In England At Age 21 / LINA MEDINA, The Youngest Mother Ever / Can This Be True? (the Youngest Mother Ever ) 5 Years Old (2) (3) (4)
(1) (Reply) (Go Down)
The youngest mother on record was a five year old Peruvian girl. Lina Medina made medical history when she gave birth by caesarean section in May 1939. Her parents initially thought she had a large abdominal tumour but doctors later confirmed she was actually pregnant. Lina gave birth to a healthy boy which she named Gerardo after a doctor at the hospital. Gerardo grew up alongside his mother and always considered her his sister until he was told the truth when he was ten year old. Lina and her husband still live in Peru but Gerardo died in 1979.
Let's not even talk of who impregnated her, what about her reproductive organs? At that age the girl shouldn't even have sex hormones!(at least fully developed and functioning ones).
Haba! According to the biology them teach us for school, a girl has to start menstruating before she can get pregnant. At 5 her ovaries are not fully developed not to talk of releasing an egg that will become fertilized. Is that report for real? Where did the girl even get the womb to hold the pregnancy for 9 months? I am shocked beyond words. How possible?Let's not even talk of who impregnated her, what about her reproductive organs? At that age the girl shouldn't even have sex hormones!(at least fully developed and functioning ones).Haba! According to the biology them teach us for school, a girl has to start menstruating before she can get pregnant. At 5 her ovaries are not fully developed not to talk of releasing an egg that will become fertilized. Is that report for real? Where did the girl even get the womb to hold the pregnancy for 9 months? I am shocked beyond words.
fake story. only 13 years have this record in nigeria
Am astonished to read that its a fake story. Why dont you do a research to know who has the record of youngest birth. Presently there is a 10 year old who is 7 months pregnant is Cape Town, South Africa and someone is saying a 13 year old Nigerian has the record. Look beyond your horizon
@ poster, so the 5 year old mother thing is fake. The 10 year old thing is possible, that one i go agree, because some girls attain puberty really fast. It's saddening, some of them get pregnant and don't even know what is happening to them
@Ejadamen. U never do wetin i asked to do. Just do the research and tell me who has the record.
This Health sec. seriously needs a Mod.
I talked about her on a thread about crazy father shagging their children.
this girl got her period when she was 8months old and had "almost"fully developed breast at 4 and had had the ovaries of a fully mature woman. she was raped by a relative (no one knew who the father was) gave birth to her baby at the age of 5yrs 7months and 21days exactly BY CESAREAN and she is the youngest mother on record.
people didnt know she was pregnant until the pregnancy was about 7months old, they took her to the doctor and thought she had a tumor ONLY TO REALIZE SHE WAS PREGNANT.
the youngest NIGERIAN mother is a girl of 8YRS OLD called Mum-zi who was part of chief Akkiri's harem from Calabar.
At the age of seven, Mum-zi joined the harem of Chief Akkiri, ruler of the estuary of Calabar, Nigeria. Shortlyafter her betrothal,
Mum-zi became pregnant. At the age of 8 years and 4 months, she gave birth to a perfectly normal, well-developed baby girl.
her daughter also became a mother at 8 making Mum-zi a grandmother at 17. she holds the record!!!!! (but unfortunately no photo proof for that one!)
here is a picture of Lina Medina :
(on the second photo, thats her, the doctor and her baby)
I was concerned about how possible it was for a 5 yr old girl to deliver scientifically but Mr. BrownJay has answered my question beautifully by supplying that the girl got her period when she was 8 months old. That means she developed prematurely, same thing with the 8yr old Nigerian girl. But na wa o! @ yousouph, you were right.I was concerned about how possible it was for a 5 yr old girl to deliver scientifically but Mr. BrownJay has answered my question beautifully by supplying that the girl got her period when she was 8 months old. That means she developed prematurely, same thing with the 8yr old Nigerian girl. But na wa o!
This is really serious.
Ewww
@Mrbrownjay. I havent heard of the Nigerian lady even being a grand mother at 17. Which year is that? I will keep it in my book. Thanks for sharing your knowledge on NL
it is almost unbelievable!
tanx for this research i no fit shoutit is almost unbelievable!tanx for this research
here is a list of the world youngest mothers ON RECORD, funny enough the 3 youngest mothers are from PERU, WTF!!!!!
Age 5
-1939: Lina Medina of Paurange, Peru gave birth to a 2.7 kg son (5.9 lb), Gerardo, by caesarean section on Mother's Day, May 14, 1939 in Lima at the age of 5 years, 7 months and 21 days. Her parents, who assumed their daughter had a tumour, took her to a hospital, where she was determined to be seven months pregnant. Although Medina's father was arrested on suspicion of child molesting, he was later released due to lack of evidence, and the identity of who impregnated Medina was never uncovered. [1][2]
Age 6
-1939: The Los Angeles Times quoted Dr. Joseph B. De Lee, obstetrics authority of Chicago Lying-in Hospital, as saying that a German medical journal has already reported that a Russian girl, age 3 1/2, had become a mother, and that this girl had the physical development of a 18 or 20 year old.
Age 8
-2006: A girl from Huánuco, Peru, gave birth to a baby weighing 2 kg (4.4 lb) by caesarean section at a hospital in Lima in December 2006. Her ninth birthday occurred a couple of days later. She became pregnant after being raped by two of her cousins.
Age 9
-1957: Hilda Trujillo gave birth to a girl weighing over 6 lb (2.7 kg) at a hospital in Lima, Peru in December 1957. Her 22-year-old cousin, who was staying in her family's one-room house at the time, was arrested for rape.
-2001: Wanwisa Janmuk gave birth in February 2001 to a girl at a hospital in Phetchabun, a northern province of Thailand. The father was her 27-year-old husband; Thai law allows minors to marry with parental permission.
check the rest of the list here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youngest_birth_mothers the Nigerian one has never been confirmed, but it has been well reported, even once featuring on tv "Ripley's believe it or not"here is a list of the world youngest mothers ON RECORD, funny enough the 3 youngest mothers are from PERU, WTF!!!!!-1939: Lina Medina of Paurange, Peru gave birth to a 2.7 kg son (5.9 lb), Gerardo, by caesarean section on Mother's Day, May 14, 1939 in Lima at the age of 5 years, 7 months and 21 days. Her parents, who assumed their daughter had a tumour, took her to a hospital, where she was determined to be seven months pregnant. Although Medina's father was arrested on suspicion of child molesting, he was later released due to lack of evidence, and the identity of who impregnated Medina was never uncovered. [1][2]-1939: The Los Angeles Times quoted Dr. Joseph B. De Lee, obstetrics authority of Chicago Lying-in Hospital, as saying that a German medical journal has already reported that a Russian girl, age 3 1/2, had become a mother, and that this girl had the physical development of a 18 or 20 year old.-2006: A girl from Huánuco, Peru, gave birth to a baby weighing 2 kg (4.4 lb) by caesarean section at a hospital in Lima in December 2006. Her ninth birthday occurred a couple of days later. She became pregnant after being raped by two of her cousins.-1957: Hilda Trujillo gave birth to a girl weighing over 6 lb (2.7 kg) at a hospital in Lima, Peru in December 1957. Her 22-year-old cousin, who was staying in her family's one-room house at the time, was arrested for rape.-2001: Wanwisa Janmuk gave birth in February 2001 to a girl at a hospital in Phetchabun, a northern province of Thailand. The father was her 27-year-old husband; Thai law allows minors to marry with parental permission.check the rest of the list here:
Peru seems to be breeding prematurely developed girls. What's with all this pedophile relatives?Peru seems to be breeding prematurely developed girls.
This kinda stuff makes R Kelly look like Mother Theresa
as i said on another thread earlier, we have to educate children VERY EARLY in their lives on what a person CAN and CANNOT do with them. as we can see by this list, many of the rapist were known acquaintances/family members.
everyone should teach their children that NOBODY should touch their "pee pee" apart from daddy and mummy. no friends, no auntie, no babysitter, no teacher N O B O D Y !!!!!!!!!!!
we can see from the everyday news that this "trend" is rising all over the world and that children are easy prey.
TEACH YOUR KIDS!!!!!! |
A New York City day camp was abruptly canceled without explanation, and parents are trying to find out what happened to the camp and their money as they scramble to find alternate childcare arrangements for their kids. Ida Siegal reports. (Published Tuesday, July 8, 2014)
A New York City day camp was abruptly canceled, leaving parents without an explanation and their tuition money as they scramble to find alternate childcare arrangements for their kids.
The Empire Day Camp operating out of the Ella Baker School on the Upper East Side was supposed to open on Monday, but families arrived to find a sign saying it was closed. Parents trying to get answers couldn't reach any administrators.
"I can't reach anyone from the camp, my money has not been refunded, and my son is pretty much stranded," said one parent.
Felicia Pezold said she'd been counting on the camp to keep her child safe and occupied while she worked each day.
NYC Summer Camp Unexpectedly Closes
Parents expecting to drop their kids off at Empire Day Camp on Monday got an unwelcomed surprise. On what should have been opening day, the place was empty. Michael George reports. (Published Monday, July 7, 2014)
"That was her activity for the summer, and now that money's gone," she said.
Pezold paid between $2,300 and $2,400 for the summer day camp. Another parent, Rosa Striano, paid more than $3,500 for four weeks of camp for her two daughters.
"I have two girls who have no summer plans now," said Striano. "Thankfully, we have a big family who's helping us, but other camps are also full right now."
Empire's founder and former director Kinya Trotman died in March, but its camp and afterschool program continued, according to former employees, who say they have also been left in the lurch. They say Trotman's teenage son Kyree took over, but things deteriorated quickly.
"Once he took over the company, that's when things started going downhill. Checks started bouncing," said camp counselor Brandi Sampson.
Sampson said Kyree sent a letter at the end of June announcing the program was closing. When she asked about her last paycheck, Kyree called her "yelling and cursing, 'Don't ever call me again, stop texting me. As of today, there's no check,'" according to Sampson.
A person at an address listed for Kyree Trotman answered from behind the door but refused to speak to NBC 4 New York.
Administrators at the Ella Baker School, which has no affiliation with Empire Camp, would not comment to NBC 4 New York, but parents said they sent them a letter saying they could not reach anyone from the camp either.
"I'd like to get my money back first and foremost, but an explanation as to why this happened," said Pezold. "All these families are scrambling. No childcare, no activities for their children."
Striano said, "I want my money back, but more than anything I want them to be accountable for what they've done."
The Empire program's website states it is licensed by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. A request for comment from the department was not immediately returned.
Parents say they will file police reports and complaints with the attorney general's office in the coming days. |
Spaced out: Backyard inventors go head-to-head in Google's £20million competition to fly to the moon
It was once a pursuit reserved for astronauts and top-secret government officials.
But now backyard inventors are hoping to land their own weird and wonderful spacecrafts on the moon after Google launched a £20million competition.
Nasa had previously estimated that such voyages would cost more than £1billion - with some skeptics suggesting that it is almost impossible to even fly to the moon.
Flying spider: Italy's entry into Google's $20million Lunar X competition is a green ball supported by six spider-like legs
But since the Isle of Man government has lifted tax restrictions of space exploration a flurry of do-it-yourself voyages throughout the cosmos are expected.
Internet search giant Google became one of the first to take advantage of the tax break when it announced the Lunar X prize in September 2007.
Twenty two teams who have worked tirelessly on their strange machines will meet in the Isle of Man tomorrow to thrash out the final details of the missions.
Representing Britain in the competition is the crew behind Astrobotic, a four-wheeled silver machine that resembles a moving road sign.
Out of this world: The British Astrobotic is one of 22 teams hoping to win Google's $20million prize for the first ship to land on the moon and drive 500 metres
Julian Ranger, the UK financier who is raising cash for Astrobotic, said: 'We believe we can get the cost [of reaching the moon] down to $50m, a price tag that will transform lunar exploration and make the moon a target for for all sorts of commercial operations.
'Part of our business plan will be to get our rover to move round the site and take a 3D high-definition film of it.
'If nothing else, it should prove to the doubters that the Apollo missions really took place.
'We hope to use SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket to get to the moon.The cost would normally be around $100m, but we hope we can negotiate a special deal for this high-profile project.'
Other hopefuls in the competition include Team Italia whose craft is a green dome supported by six spider-like legs.
America's entry, Jurban, looks like a large worm designed to negotiate the moon's rough terrain of craters with several small capsules joined together in the same way as a train.
The Barcelona Moon Team has entered a more tradition flying-saucer that was built by a jewelery designer. It has a body that resembles an upside down bow with flashing lights on the rim.
Craters: The American crew Jurban hope their cross between a worm and a train will survive on the moon
Flying saucer: Barcelona Moon Team have conformed to more traditional stereotypes of flying saucers with their project
Favourite: The Isle of Man team behind Odysey Moon have partnered with Nasa
The $20million prize will be given to the first team that lands their craft on the moon and directs of journey of more that 500 metres.
An addition $4million is on offer for anybody whose spaceship survives the incredible cold of the lunar atmosphere and another $2million bonus if the craft is launched from Florida. The second prize is $5million.
If nobody manages to reach the moon by December 2012 the prize money will be dropped to $15million. If still nobody has succeeded two years later the competition will be scrapped.
Ranger added: 'It is not the technology that is holding us back. We could be ready in less than a year. Raising the cash will take longer, however.'
'At present, the exact rules of the competition have not been worked out. The organisers and competitors need to work out how they share out the revenue generated by the flights. That is what we are going to do this week at our meeting. Then it will be a matter of raising the money – and flying to the moon.'
The Google Lunar X prize was created following the success of the Ansari X prize which was established in 1996 to inspire private investment in manned space travel.
The $10m prize was won by aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan. His SpaceShipOne craft was flown twice within a month to the edge of space in 2004. |
written by – Rangers Report
This aim of this Analytical Match Report is to enhance the analysis of Rangers performance by providing a variety of advanced stats from the game. Explanations of these stats can be found in our tutorial for these reports.
Expected Goals: Rangers 2.3 Dumbarton 0.3
Dumbarton knew it has little, to no chance of gaining points on Saturday so they went all-in on playing for a 0-0 draw. Surprisingly, especially considering the final score, it did kind of work for a little while. The home side always had 9-10 men behind the ball, defending in layers & Rangers did struggle for a while to create chances. However, Rangers have gone through this routine before, stuck with their game-plan & obviously it paid off right before half-time.
Shot Quality Breakdown:
Of the shots that Rangers took, 60% came from within the penalty box & 45% came from High/Very High Danger areas (the heart of the box).
Rangers turned 75% of the possession into 91% of the totals shots on goal. Those shots translated into Rangers earning 90% of the Expected Goals in the match & 100% of all the shots on target. In a road match…
Shots Shots on Target Sh Acc Sh% Rangers 20 13 0.650 0.462 Dumbarton 2 0 0.000 —–
The league average for shooting percentage this season is 0.305, meaning 31% of all the shots on target have beaten the keepers in the Scottish Championship. Prior to this match, Rangers shooting percentage was a league best 0.389 – which you would expect. So when Rangers put six past the keeper, you’d look for a shooting rate that was off the charts & while beating the goalie on 46% of the shots on target is high – it’s not ‘drop your jaw’ high. It is not unheard of for Rangers to get 20 shots (they average 17.5) but what’s most impressive is the 13 shots on target. The difference was that against Dumbarton 65% of their shots were on target when normally they get 42% of the shots on target – which is fifth best in the league. If this is the beginning of a new trend then we have pinpointed a real area of improvement for Mark Warburton’s team.
Rangers Report Shot Chart:
Rangers only had six shots going into half-time, well below their normal rate. Of course, Dumbarton has zero shots at the half so…there was that. When Kenny Miller got the second goal it was the 11th shot in just under an hour. That seemed to really deflate the home side as they were outshot 9-0 in the next thirty minutes.
Special note: normally Goalkeeper Distribution Ratio is tracked for these reports. However, I decided to track Zone Exits instead for the first time. As readers of the blog know, Controlled Zone Entries into the final third are tracked for each game & for this match I decided to also track who was getting the ball out of the defensive third & how they were doing it. Given that Rangers have been victimized on the counter attack on multiple occasions this season, the need to analyze the team’s defensive plan was glaring. Look for a post on the Zone Exits in the next day or two.
Individual Outliers
Lost in the headlines of Kenny Miller’s hat trick was the performance of James Tavernier. He had a hand in four of the six goals & led the team with 13 controlled entries into the final third. It is safe to say he has rebounded strongly from his dip in form.
The day before the match I tweeted out that Kenny Miller was due to score given he had the biggest differential in Expected Goals & actual goals on the team. Well, three goals later & I felt like a damn genius. Interestingly enough, Andy Halliday was next on the list. #fancystats
While Barrie McKay’s only contribution to the official score sheet was one shot – when you factor in secondary assists (the pass before the primary assist) you see that he actually directly contributed to a third of the goals.
Another typical outing for Martyn Waghorn who also added a secondary assist to his final line of stats.
You can follow Rangers Report on Twitter @TheGersReport
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2012 studio album by Grimes
Visions is the third studio album by Canadian singer and songwriter Grimes, released on January 31, 2012. Her first since signing with 4AD,[6] the album was recorded entirely on Apple's GarageBand software in Grimes' apartment over a three-week period.[7][8] It was mixed by Grimes and her manager Sebastian Cowan at their La Brique Studio Space.[9] Visions was streamed on the NPR website a week before it was released in the United States.[10]
Visions received widespread acclaim by critics on its release and was included in several year-end lists. The album's two singles, Oblivion and Genesis were named one of the best songs of 2012 by many publications, with Pitchfork going so far as to name Oblivion as the best song of the decade so far.[11] Visions won a Juno Award[12] and was also nominated for the 2012 Polaris Music Prize[13]. The album is labeled as bringing the DIY music scene of the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal to international popularity.[14]
Background and recording [ edit ]
[7] I was stuck in this horrible cycle of not living anywhere, just not having any concrete sense of well-being or stability or home. That was really interesting, but that fuelled a lot of the emotional momentum of the album. – Grimes
Claire Boucher released her debut album as Grimes, Geidi Primes on Canadian record label Arbutus Records in January 2010, followed by Halfaxa in September, when she began publicly promoting Grimes and started touring beyond Montreal. In 2011, she released a split 12" EP with fellow Montreal based musician d'Eon, Darkbloom and, beginning in May, opened for Swedish singer Lykke Li on her North American Tour,[15][16] and the following August her debut album was re-released through No Pain in Pop Records, in CD and vinyl format for the first time.[17] In May, Boucher performed early versions of new songs "Genesis" and "Nightmusic" at Festival Kinetik,[18] and "Be A Body" in July.[19]
Growing frustrated with touring and a lack of stability in her life, Boucher began work on Visions in August 2011 over three weeks at her home in Montreal.[7][20][21] While under a release deadline set before she had started the album by her then manager,[22] she recorded the album at a "psychotic pace" to meet the deadline.[23] Most songs on the album were finished in a single day, without many demos being created beforehand.[24] She described the process as being "equally enjoyable and tortuous".[25] She created the album hoping to "clear [her] mental slate. Overriding everything I’d done previously, too" stating the album "is a pretty good representation of the beginning of the future.”[7] Visions was recorded using Apple's GarageBand, primarily using a Roland Juno-G keyboard, vocal pedals, and a sampler.[26] The album was mixed by Boucher and Sebastian Cowan at their La Brique Studio Space.[27] She signed with record label 4AD in January 2012.[28]
Release and promotion [ edit ]
Grimes performing at SXSW in 2012.
Visions was released on January 31, 2012 in Canada,[29] and on February 21, 2012 in the US, UK and Europe.[30] Worldwide releases followed throughout March. The album was streamed on the NPR website a week before it was released in the United States.[31] The Canadian vinyl version of the album featured a different track listing; it featured 9 songs, including two previously unreleased song "Life After Death" and "Ambrosia".[32] "Oblivion" was released onto the Internet in October 2011 as a promotional single, along with the announcement of the album.[33][34] "Genesis" was issued as the lead single on January 9, 2012.[35]
The album debuted at No. 98 on the Billboard 200 albums chart on its first week of release,[36] with around 5,000 sold in the United States. It also debuted at No. 8 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart.[37] As of December 2015, the album has sold 110,000 copies in the US.[38] It has sold over 150,000 units. [39] In 2012 it was awarded a silver certification from the Independent Music Companies Association which indicated sales of at least 20,000 copies throughout Europe.[40]
In November 2012, with the announcement that Visions was named album of the year by record shops Rough Trade and Resident, two exclusive bonus discs were made available with any purchase of the album in each shop, featuring remixes and rare tracks.[41]
Visuals [ edit ]
The music video for "Oblivion", directed by Emily Kai Bock,[42] was shot in Montreal at Olympic Stadium and at McGill University's Molson Stadium,[43][44] during a football game and a motocross rally.[42][45] The video debuted on March 2, 2012, and shows Grimes amongst shirtless frat boys,[45] as well as in a men's locker room surrounded by weightlifting athletes.[46] "Art gives me an outlet where I can be aggressive in a world where I usually can't be, and part of it was asserting this abstract female power in these male-dominated arenas—the video is somewhat about objectifying men. Not in a disrespectful way, though", Grimes explained.[42] In an interview with Spin, she revealed that the song is about "going into this masculine world that is associated with sexual assault, but presented as something really welcoming and nice. The song's sort of about being—I was assaulted and I had a really hard time engaging in any types of relationship with men, because I was just so terrified of men for a while."[1]
The video for "Nightmusic" was directed by John Londono and premiered on May 10, 2012. It takes place in a "barren, greywashed" landscape, and features Grimes wearing one of the "pussy rings" she designed in collaboration with Montreal-based jeweler and sculptor Morgan Black.[47][48]
The self-directed video for "Genesis", which was released as the album's lead single on January 9, 2012,[49] premiered on August 22, 2012.[50] It was filmed in Los Angeles and co-stars rapper and stripper Brooke Candy, whom Grimes describes as "a very contemporary muse". In the video, Grimes is seen alongside a group of friends while driving an Escalade in the desert, holding an albino python in the back of a limousine, and posing in the woods. She said of the concept of the video: "It's loosely based on this painting by my favorite painter, Hieronymus Bosch, called The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things. I wanted to play with Medieval/Catholic imagery. I was raised in a Catholic household and went to a Catholic school, and my childhood brain perceived medieval Catholicism as an action movie: There's this crazy omnipresent guy who can destroy you at any moment."[51]
Critical reception [ edit ]
Visions received positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 80, based on 42 reviews, which indicates "critical acclaim".[52] Lindsay Zoladz of Pitchfork awarded the album a "Best New Music" designation, claiming it "showcases a streamlined aesthetic, resulting in a statement that feels focused, cohesive, and assured. It's simple enough to leave room for Grimes to grow, but this thing is so compulsively listenable it's hard to come away from it wanting much more".[59] The A.V. Club's Evan Rytlewski commented that on Visions, Grimes "continues her march toward accessibility, rendering hazy, quixotic sketches into tangible, hook-heavy electro-pop".[54] Jon Caramanica of The New York Times hailed Visions as "one of the most impressive albums of the year so far".[63] Rebecca Nicholson of The Guardian described Visions as a "smart, funny album, and it's almost impossible not to dance to it".[56] Clash's Matthew Bennett wrote, "With 4AD's renewed vigor in all affairs electronique and Boucher's coherent elevation in both song quality and hook there'll be no stopping this creative, sensual explosion of humanity called Grimes."[64] Benjamin Boles of Now called the album "richly textured and inventive", noting that "while Visions is unmistakably 2012 sonically in its references to R&B and hip-hop, it also fits remarkably gracefully into 4AD's impressive back catalogue of dream pop".[3]
Matt James of PopMatters praised the album as "an absolute blast" and opined, "Sure, it could have done without some of the interludes [...] but its overall sense of ambition is intoxicating. Visions' rebellious contrariness to evade classification is part of the design and certainly part of the charm".[5] Heather Phares of AllMusic concluded, "Fresh and surprisingly accessible despite its quirks,Visions is bewitching".[53] Eric Harvey of Spin wrote, "The pervasive sense on Visions is of a young woman carefully pushing out of her own introversion, which makes the moments where she sings from the gut instead of the throat [...] or strives for human-on-human sensuality [...] all the more thrilling". Harvey continued, "Boucher's talent lies in the balance of exploiting her gifts and leveraging what's come before her, but judiciously".[62] Kevin Liedel of Slant Magazine viewed the album as "a flawed but intimate glimpse into the fantasies of its creator, and while it might not act as a springboard to greater fame for Grimes, it's just as satisfying to hear her take her bedroom music into a darkened basement, away from the prying world."[65] However, Luke Winkie of Under the Radar felt that Visions "isn't as much of an evolution as it is an elongation; Boucher is still making warped, sparsely-populated electro-pop, and the potential still outweighs the content", adding that the album "stands as a half-formed concept".[66] Reyan Ali of The Phoenix stated that "the ever-fascinating Boucher clearly has unusual ideas sloshing around her skull", but ultimately criticized the album as "unnecessarily oblique, listlessly long (48 minutes!), and painfully shapeless".[67] Rolling Stone's Jody Rosen expressed that "Grimes isn't spooky enough to be 'ghostly,' and not substantial enough to hold your attention."[61]
Accolades [ edit ]
AllMusic proclaimed Visions the best album of 2012 and stated, "On Visions, Claire Boucher honed the mix of little-girl-lost vocals and dark synth-scapes she'd forged on her first two Grimes albums, Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, into something just as unique, but far catchier."[68] The Guardian named it the second best album of 2012, calling it "a masterpiece in gonzo pop that is weird, original and derivative at the same time".[69] The NME ranked the album at number two on its 50 Best Albums of 2012 list.[70] The album appeared at number five on Clash's list of The Top 40 Albums of 2012, and the magazine referred to Grimes as a "creative, sensual explosion of humanity".[71] Pitchfork placed the album at number six on its list of The 50 Best Albums of 2012 and praised it as "a triumphant meeting of human and computer, an album that blows the traditions of both pop and experimental music to pieces and glues them back together in gorgeous, entrancing ways".[72] PopMatters included the album at number 11 on its list of The 75 Best Albums of 2012, concluding, "Astoundingly catchy, occasionally haunting, and frequently brilliant, Visions is top-rate art and pop in equal measure, and deserves to be talked about for years to come".[73]
British magazine Fact ranked Visions the 26th best album of 2012 and commented it "moved beyond the circumstantially lo-fi character of her early offerings Geidi Primes and Halfaxa for a profoundly inventive and just plain weird take on electro-pop. While the shifty rhythms can get a bit repetitive, they're usually voiced differently, and they're always paired with otherworldly synth-work that darts into uneasy, industrial territory".[74] Rolling Stone placed Visions at number 33 on its 50 Best Albums of 2012 list, noting the album "uses EDM extremism, medieval chants, sugar-crusted melodies and her own sky-high voice to rethink pop music".[75] The album was listed on Paste's The 50 Best Albums of 2012 at number 50, and the magazine wrote, "With its constantly shifting tonal landscapes and non-standard structures, it's the kind of music that's exceptionally hard to peg on paper, but that never stops Visions' tracks from looping in your head long after it spins to a close".[76]
"Oblivion" was ranked the best song of 2012 by both Pitchfork and PopMatters; the former called it "beautifully fragmented" and stating it "sound[s] both chilly and machine-like but also radiate[s] human warmth and imperfection",[77] while the later opined that "this nouveau dream pop triumph is surely the album's calling card, the definitive encapsulation of everything that makes the record (not to mention the musician behind it) so beguiling to listen to".[78] The NME named "Oblivion" and "Genesis" the sixth and 16th best tracks of 2012, respectively.[79] Rolling Stone included "Oblivion" at number 28 on its list of the 50 Best Songs of 2012, writing that on the song, Grimes "drops sugar-dust vocals over a thwunking synth loop, sounding perfectly dreamy until you listen to the words: 'I never walk alone after dark.../Someone could break your neck/Coming up behind you and you'd never have a clue.' The catchiness only makes it creepier".[80]
Visions was shortlisted for the 2012 Polaris Music Prize on July 17, 2012, but lost out to Feist's Metals.[13] The album won Electronic Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2013.[12]
Track listing [ edit ]
All tracks written by Claire Boucher.
Visions — Standard version No. Title Length 1. "Infinite ❤ Without Fulfillment" 1:36 2. "Genesis" 4:15 3. "Oblivion" 4:12 4. "Eight" 1:48 5. "Circumambient" 3:43 6. "Vowels = Space and Time" 4:21 7. "Visiting Statue" 1:59 8. "Be a Body (侘寂)" 4:20 9. "Colour of Moonlight (Antiochus)" (featuring Doldrums 4:00 10. "Symphonia IX (My Wait Is U)" 4:53 11. "Nightmusic" (featuring Majical Cloudz 5:03 12. "Skin" 6:09 13. "Know the Way (Outro)" 1:45 Total length: 48:04
Visions [81] iTunes Store bonus track No. Title Length 14. "Christmas Song" (featuring Jay Worthy) 2:58
Visions [82] Amazon MP3 bonus track No. Title Length 14. "Angel" 1:22
Visions [83] — Japanese version (bonus tracks) No. Title Length 14. "Life After Death" 2:48 15. "Ambrosia" 3:31
Visions [84] — Canadian 12" vinyl version No. Title Length 1. "Oblivion" 4:12 2. "Eight" 1:48 3. "Circumambient" 3:43 4. "Life After Death" 2:48 5. "Nightmusic" (featuring Majical Cloudz) 5:03 6. "Ambrosia" 3:31 7. "Symphonia IX (My Wait Is U)" 4:51 8. "Genesis" 5:15 9. "Skin" 6:09 Total length: 38:22
Visions [41] Rough Trade version (disc 2) No. Title Length 1. "Ambrosia" 3:33 2. "Christmas Song" (featuring Jay Worthy) 3:00 3. "Genesis" (Skip Remix) 4:01 4. "Song for Ric" (featuring Majical Cloudz) 3:25 5. "Be a Body" (Baarsden Remix) 3:25
Visions [41] — Resident version (disc 2) No. Title Length 1. "Angel" 1:22 2. "Life After Death" 2:48 3. "Oblivion" (Baarsden Remix) 3:25 4. "Be a Body" (Tokori Remix) 4:55
Personnel [ edit ]
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Visions.[85]
Grimes – vocals, production, poetry
Anna Akhmatova – poetry
Jasper Baydala – layout
Sebastian Cowan – mastering, mixing
Mark Khair – alien head design
Charts [ edit ]
Release history [ edit ]
Region Date Label Ref. Canada January 31, 2012 Arbutus [97] United States February 21, 2012 4AD [98] Australia March 1, 2012 Remote Control [99] Germany March 9, 2012 4AD [100] Ireland [101] United Kingdom March 12, 2012 [102] France March 13, 2012 [103] Japan June 6, 2012 Hostess [83] |
When sight can be tiring and painful
By Amanda Hargreaves
Producer, Through the Looking Glass
Binocular instabillity may be more common than thought Imagine what it is like not to be able to read without getting a headache from trying to focus on the print, which seems to dance and blur before your eyes. Or even how it feels not to be able to meet someone's eyes and hold their gaze, because you are seeing two faces and four eyes. If you are one of the 15% of the population who suffer from a condition called binocular instability, then that is the reality - but you may not even realise you have it. Binocular vision involves the control and co-ordination of both eyes. This is affecting a sizable number of our children
Nadia Northway
Visual Stress Clinic Although each eye sees a separate image, these images are blended in the brain into one single picture. The eyes are rarely completely straight. In most of us, they drift slightly and this is controlled without us even noticing. If our eyes drift too much, this can cause headaches and discomfort, especially when reading. The result is delayed processing of information at the most basic level. It is a condition that makes reading and learning arduous. Yet it can be cured simply and cheaply with eye exercises and spectacles. 'I want to see properly' Megan Slater, 15, is now undergoing treatment after years of failing at school: "I want to be able to see properly - I don't want to be frustrated. WHAT TO LOOK FOR If your child is having difficulties at school, check if the following apply: They complain of tiredness or headaches after reading They complain of the print becoming blurry They find it easier to read on a coloured background They rub their eyes after reading for a while They often lose their place when reading aloud They often misread short words "When I get frustrated the teachers tell me to calm down and I just get really angry." Brigid Sundaram remembers having problems when she was at university, studying biochemistry. "I had to read a lot of papers with tiny print," she said. "After 20 minutes I'd usually be asleep in the library, it was exhausting. "I've always had to work harder than anyone else to achieve the same results." Brigid struggled for years at school and university before finally getting the help she needed. The reason is that the condition isn't easily spotted in a routine eye test. You could have 20/20 vision and still have binocular instability. Diagnosis a problem According to Nadia Northway, who runs the Visual Stress Clinic at Glasgow Caledonian University, diagnosis is a problem. She is one of only 1,500 specially trained orthoptists who can spot the subtleties of binocular instability. Orthoptists only practice in hospitals and are therefore hard to access. On the High Street, only some optometrists have the special training required to diagnose the condition. Funding is another key issue. Professor Bruce Evans, director of research at the Institute of Optometry, has been campaigning for proper funding for the detailed eye test required to diagnose binocular instability. He said: "We have had sympathy from politicians, but so far no promises of proper funding for this. It has been a very frustrating process." Significant problem There is no doubt in the mind of Nadia Northway about the impact of the condition. WHAT TO DO If you suspect you or a member of your family may have Binocular Instability and/or Visual Stress (Mears-Irlen Syndrome: Get a regular eye test (they are free now on the NHS) at least once very two years if you are symptom free Children should have their eyes tested once a year, as their sight changes all the time If you suspect that you have a problem even though you are already wearing glasses, or even if you are given the all clear in a routine eye test, ask your GP to refer you to the orthoptics department of your local hospital There you can be properly assessed and given treatment if necessary Alternatively, ask about optometrists in your area who have a particular interest in reading problems. "This is affecting a sizable number of our children," she said. "Given that one in 16 people leave school with inadequate literacy skills and at least half of those may have vision problems, we should be campaigning in the streets about this." And the condition also runs in families, so if the problem isn't spotted, you and your relatives could spend years battling against this hidden disability without knowing what the problem is. After all, how does a five-year-old child know how reading should feel? The child would probably just assume that everybody finds it tiring and painful. Brigid Sundaram realised that all three of her children had the same symptoms as herself, and sure enough they were all diagnosed with Binocular Instability and Visual Stress, also known as Meares-Irlen Syndrome. Both problems often co-exist and have very similar symptoms. And the scale of the problem is still revealing itself. According to research that Nadia Northway is currently carrying out on adults with literacy problems, as many as 80% appear to have binocular instability and/or visual stress. "When you extrapolate from those figures what that means for the general population, it's likely that as many as one third of us may have one or other of these conditions" said Nadia. Edi Stark presents Through the Looking Glass on Monday 13 October on BBC Radio 4 at 2100 BST.
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The true story of the woman who performed mercy abortions at Auschwitz
Gisella Perl was Romanian and Jewish. She was a gynaecologist at a time and place where very few women went into the medical professions. In 1944, she and her entire family were shipped off to Auschwitz, where Perl was instructed to provide medical care for her fellow inmates — medical care that was supposed to happen without even the most basic medical supplies.
In this position, she was officially employed by Josef Mengele, and she saw what happened to women who entered Auschwitz while pregnant. The short answer was death. The long answer was that those deaths were often horrifying and drawn-out. So Gisella Perl gave herself a new job — protecting women by helping them hide evidence of pregnancy and by performing abortions with her bare hands.
I'd never heard Perl's story before. It's heartbreaking. And it's riveting. The Holocaust History Project has a long and well-cited version. |
Homeowners Association threatens to take dog from woman's home Copyright by WCBD - All rights reserved Video
A Mt. Pleasant woman says her Homeowners Association (HOA) is forcing her to get rid of her dog, even though it's done nothing wrong.
Nancy Butler says, "Nobody has the right to come and take any one's dog away from them."
Butler got a letter from the HOA at Seaside Farms. It says she has a "pit bull dog" at her house and pit bulls are not permitted on Seaside Farms property. The letter says if she doesn't remove the dog, there will be fines and possible legal action to take the dog away.
Butler says, "I will do anything to keep that dog. I don't care. It's my dog, I love that dog."
The dog in question is "Bee", who was rescued from the Charleston Animal Society. Nancy says Bee has never caused any problems.
She says, "He's never been outside the fence. I don't walk him, I don't walk."
The HOA told Nancy she needed to get a letter from a veterinarian saying Bee is not a pit bull. She got three of those letters from three different veterinarians and the HOA is still threatening to take the dog away. Joe Elmore, CEO of the Charleston Animal Society, says it isn't even possible for Bee to be a "pit bull".
Elmore says, "Pit bull is not a breed of dog. It's a common misconception. The American Kennel Club does not recognize 'pit bull' as a breed of dog. A lot of folks mistakenly think a dog is a pit bull when it doesn't even exist as a breed. It might be a number of other legitimate breeds of dogs."
He says there are better ways to insure a safe neighborhood than breed discrimination.
He says, "The temperament, the behavior, the socialization, the sex, the reproductive status."
There will be an HOA meeting at the end of the month and Nancy, representatives from the Charleston Animal Society, and other organizations all plan to attend. Nancy says she will protect Bee however she can.
She says, "They depend on you for everything. I depend on him too."
News 2 also talked to attorney Kelsey Gilmore-Futeral, Esq. about this issue. She is the Chair of the Animal Law Committee for the South Carolina Bar. She says breed specific legislation is legal, and HOAs can issue fines or remove an animal that is banned. She says the language in the Seaside Farms breed restriction is not specific.
She says, "The problem you have with that is that a pit bull dog is not a specific breed. So when you come to banning things like Dobermans, German Shepherds, Mastiffs, English Bulldogs, things that are considered actual breeds, it's a little more specific and probably a little more enforceable than a general description of a pit bull-like dog that are frequently misidentified anyway." |
In 2007, Eric Kidd wrote a quite popular article named 8 ways to report errors in Haskell. However, it has been four years since the original publication of the article. Does this affect the veracity of the original article? Some names have changed, and some of the original advice given may have been a bit... dodgy. We’ll take a look at each of the recommendations from the original article, and also propose a new way of conceptualizing all of Haskell’s error reporting mechanisms.
I recommend reading this article side-to-side with the old article.
1. Use error No change. My personal recommendation is that you should only use error in cases which imply programmer error; that is, you have some invariant that only a programmer (not an end-user) could have violated. And don’t forget, you should probably see if you can enforce this invariant in the type system, rather than at runtime. It is also good style to include the name of the function which the error is associated with, so you say “myDiv: division by zero” rather than just “Division by zero.” Another important thing to note is that error e is actually an abbreviation for throw (ErrorCall e) , so you can explicitly pattern match against this class of errors using: import qualified Control.Exception as E example1 :: Float -> Float -> IO () example1 x y = E.catch (putStrLn (show (myDiv1 x y))) (\(ErrorCall e) -> putStrLn e) However, testing for string equality of error messages is bad juju, so if you do need to distinguish specific error invocations, you may need something better.
2. Use Maybe a No change. Maybe is a convenient, universal mechanism for reporting failure when there is only one possible failure mode and it is something that a user probably will want to handle in pure code. You can easily convert a returned Maybe into an error using fromMaybe (error "bang") m . Maybe gives no indication what the error was, so it’s a good idea for a function like head or tail but not so much for doSomeComplicatedWidgetThing .
3. Use Either String a I can’t really recommend using this method in any circumstance. If you don’t need to distinguish errors, you should have used Maybe . If you don’t need to handle errors while you’re in pure code, use exceptions. If you need to distinguish errors in pure code, for the love of god, don’t use strings, make an enumerable type! However, in base 4.3 or later (GHC 7), this monad instance comes for free in Control.Monad.Instances ; you no longer have to do the ugly Control.Monad.Error import. But there are some costs to having changed this: see below.
4. Use Monad and fail to generalize 1-3 If you at all a theoretician, you reject fail as an abomination that should not belong in Monad , and refuse to use it. If you’re a bit more practical than that, it’s tougher to say. I’ve already made the case that catching string exceptions in pure code isn’t a particularly good idea, and if you’re in the Maybe monad fail simply swallows your nicely written exception. If you’re running base 4.3, Either will not treat fail specially either: -- Prior to base-4.3 Prelude Control.Monad.Error> fail "foo" :: Either String a Loading package mtl-1.1.0.2 ... linking ... done. Left "foo" -- After base-4.3 Prelude Control.Monad.Instances> fail "foo" :: Either String a *** Exception: foo So you have this weird generalization that doesn’t actually do what you want most of the time. It just might (and even so, only barely) come in handy if you have a custom error handling application monad, but that’s it. It’s worth noting Data.Map does not use this mechanism anymore.
5. Use MonadError and a custom error type MonadError has become a lot more reasonable in the new world order, and if you are building your own application monad it’s a pretty reasonable choice, either as a transformer in the stack or an instance to implement. Contrary to the old advice, you can use MonadError on top of IO : you just transform the IO monad and lift all of your IO actions. I’m not really sure why you’d want to, though, since IO has it’s own nice, efficient and extensible error throwing and catching mechanisms (see below.) I’ll also note that canonicalizing errors that the libraries you are interoperating is a good thing: it makes you think about what information you care about and how you want to present it to the user. You can always create a MyParsecError constructor which takes the parsec error verbatim, but for a really good user experience you should be considering each case individually.
6. Use throw in the IO monad It’s not called throwDyn and catchDyn anymore (unless you import Control.OldException ), just throw and catch . You don’t even need a Typeable instance; just a trivial Exception instance. I highly recommend this method for unchecked exception handling in IO: despite the mutation of these libraries over time, the designers of Haskell and GHC’s maintainers have put a lot of thought into how this exceptions should work, and they have broad applicability, from normal synchronous exception handling to asynchronous exception handling, which is very nifty. There are a load of bracketing, masking and other functions which you simply cannot do if you’re passing Eithers around. Make sure you do use throwIO and not throw if you are in the IO monad, since the former guarantees ordering; the latter, not necessarily.
7. Use ioError and catch No reason to use this, it’s around for hysterical raisins.
8. Go nuts with monad transformers This is, for all intents and purposes, the same as 5; just in one case you roll your own, and in this case you compose it with transformers. The same caveats apply. Eric does give good advice here shooing you away from using this with IO. Here are some new mechanisms which have sprung up since the original article was published.
9. Checked exceptions Pepe Iborra wrote a nifty checked exceptions library which allows you to explicitly say what Control.Exception style exceptions a piece of code may throw. I’ve never used it before, but it’s gratifying to know that Haskell’s type system can be (ab)used in this way. Check it out if you don’t like the fact that it’s hard to tell if you caught all the exceptions you care about.
10. Failure The Failure typeclass is a really simple library that attempts to solve the interoperability problem by making it easy to wrap and unwrap third-party errors. I’ve used it a little, but not enough to have any authoritative opinion on the matter. It’s also worth taking a look at the Haskellwiki page. |
Mario Balotelli's intention was always to be in France this summer. When the draw was made for the Euros, he posted on Instagram that he couldn't wait for it. Antonio Conte's reaction was withering. What does he mean he can't wait? Can't wait to watch it on TV? As expected, Balotelli was nowhere near the Italy squad, but he has still ended up in France all the same. Just later than he thought.
On Tuesday night, Balotelli touched down in the Cote d'Azur. Then on transfer deadline day, he underwent a medical and signed a contract with Nice. To call it box office -- even if it has caused quite a stir in France during a window when Zlatan Ibrahimovic and David Luiz left Ligue 1 -- would still be an overstatement.
Generally speaking the waning interest in Balotelli is almost as sad as the disdain with which any effort to kickstart his career is received. Patience has been lost. People are cynical and are entirely justified to feel that way. Time and again, Balotelli has done nothing to prove them wrong.
And yet hope is always the last thing to die. No matter how many times we have been disappointed and told ourselves that by now we really ought to know better, the idea that Peter Pan might finally grow up and fulfil his undoubted potential remains strangely captivating. Our better angels want him to do well. It's one of the reasons his career and this transfer still piques our curiosity.
Another reaction, of course, is: Has it really come to this? With all due respect, if you had said four years ago that he would be turning out in the red and black of Nice and not Milan, people would have laughed. You probably recall he was appearing on the front page of Time magazine and featured on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world not that long ago.
Things didn't go well for Balotelli his second time around at AC Milan, but he gets a new chance at Nice.
These were the days of the Incredible Hulk, when Balotelli blasted a couple of goals past Germany in the Euro 2012 semifinal. He then ripped off his blue Italy jersey not to reveal a "Why Always Me?" T-shirt -- like he did in Man City's 6-1 win against United in the Manchester derby -- but to flex the muscles from whence his super powers derived.
For a brief flashing moment even neutrals believed the hype and foresaw Balotelli, then only 21, keeping the promise he made to one day win the Ballon d'Or. Now 26, you would have thought his next move would be for the kind of money Gareth Bale or Paul Pogba commanded. Quite depressingly, his value has been in a downward spiral instead and he joins Nice for nothing. "Balotelli on a free is still paying over the odds by Nice," joked Jamie Carragher.
We couldn't have known it at the time, but that night in Warsaw four years ago -- the quarter-of-an-hour in which he smashed the Germans to smithereens -- was Balotelli's peak, the apex of his career. Pundits from Billy Costacurta to Zvone Boban have even argued that it was the last time Balotelli did anything of genuine significance in the game. While that might seem to be pushing it -- Balotelli did score 12 goals in 13 games in the first six months of his first spell at Milan -- they're right at least when it comes to the world stage. Four years is an awful long time. You might say "Waiting for Balotelli" is football's adaptation of a Samuel Beckett play.
When he moved to Liverpool, his agent Mino Raiola made no secret that it was his client's last chance in the calcio che conta -- the football that matters. He even revealed to La Gazzetta dello Sport that he had made a bet with Balotelli. "You've got a four-year contract and I am not getting you out of it. Either you leave Liverpool for 60 or 70 million and I win my bet or you die there." Raiola lost his bet. Balotelli has gone from being his highest-profile, most-talked-about client along with Ibrahimovic to the one we see and hear little of. Pogba has eclipsed him. Romelu Lukaku and Blaise Matuidi are subjects of greater interest.
Balotelli no longer makes headlines on or off the pitch. The myth-making has stopped. The eccentricity goes unseen. The larger than life public persona, blown up beyond his control and comfort level by a hype machine turned up to 11, has shrunk. No one would ever have put Balotelli down as the shy and retiring type and yet he has retreated from the limelight for a number of understandable reasons. He isn't quite as reclusive as J.D. Salinger, who perhaps would have discerned similarities in Balotelli and a 21st century Italian Holden Caulfield, but the pursuit of a relatively simpler, more balanced life is clear.
People all too easily forget Balotelli is human just like you and me. He's now a father and the estrangement from the mother of his daughter has not made things easy. His adoptive father has also passed away. Events like these in anybody's life put things into perspective and force you to re-evaluate what's important. Contrary to his image, Balotelli isn't a bad boy. He means well. Maybe, just maybe, Nice is the right place for him.
Italy captain Gigi Buffon hailed his move for its apparent "humility," opening a door should his performances merit a call-up that had seemed closed forever after his last appearance for the Azzurri when he was hooked at half-time against Uruguay out of fear that he would get sent off.
Gigi Buffon has gone as far as to say that a good showing in France could pave the way back to the national team for Balotelli.
Going back to Serie A would have been the wrong thing to do. It would have been romantic to see him at Bologna where great strikers from Beppe Signori to Roberto Baggio traditionally went to resurrect themselves, or Palermo, the city where he was born. But the media attention would have been too intense. He would never have been left alone even at Chievo. The other options were Ajax, Sion, Besiktas and Wolves. Again, with all due respect, that's how far his standing has fallen.
You can hope Nice's intentions are good and that this isn't just a publicity stunt by the new owners, who could be accused of wanting a big name just for effect and an excuse, rather appropriately in Balotelli's case, to set off some fireworks. Manager Lucien Favre didn't seem too enthused last week and spoke for many of his peers when he said: "He hasn't played in I don't know how long. I haven't seen him on TV for years."
Although right to be sceptical, Favre would be wrong, as we all would, to write Balotelli off as a completely lost cause. Nice fans appreciate this better than most. They have seen wasted talent belatedly and improbably fulfilled before. Hatem Ben Arfa, who for the record is a full three years older than Balotelli, surprised us all last season by finally playing to his potential, scoring 17 goals and laying on six assists for his teammates before realising his dream and moving to PSG on a free.
For now this is the model for Balotelli to follow, as is the story of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italy's great unifier who was born in Nice. For someone who divides his country and opinions around the world, Balotelli could think of few better people to be inspired by. "Garibaldi sent me," he quipped on Instagram and who knows this could be his personal Risorgimento -- the Resurgence his career so badly needs.
James covers the Italian Serie A and European football for ESPN FC Follow him on Twitter @JamesHorncastle. |
DENVER (CBS4) – Denver police are investigating an armed robbery that took place early Thursday morning.
The robbery happened near 7th Avenue and Albion Street in Denver and involved a Lyft driver.
Driver Cory Anderson spoke exclusively with CBS4’s Dillon Thomas, just days after nearly losing his life.
Anderson was shot at as he attempted to drive away from the armed robbery.
Anderson said he was waiting in his car, just moments after completing a separate drive, when the incident took place.
“I hear a tap on my window, it sounded like a ring,” Anderson said. “I look up, and it was a gun in my face.”
Denver police said three black men are the center of the investigation.
“There were six arms that are reaching in (my) car,” Anderson said.
Anderson said he gave the robbers everything they asked for except his cellphone. He said there was a gun to his head the entire time he was dealing with the suspects.
“(The gunman) was like, ‘don’t move, or I will blast you,’” Anderson said.
Anderson said he noticed the gun slightly re-positioned when the gunman adjusted his stance. With the gun barrel no longer pointed directly at his head he decided to run.
“I slammed (the car) into drive, and slammed on the accelerator,” Anderson said.
As he sped away from the robbers, Anderson said he heard a loud noise.
“(The door) slammed shut a little bit, and I hear pop, as loud as it can,” Anderson said.
It wasn’t until Anderson pulled over to call for help blocks away, that he noticed how close he came to losing his life. A hole, created by a bullet, was located on the shaft of the door, only inches away from his head.
Though he was not hit by the bullet, Anderson noticed how fortunate he was to be alive.
“(The bullet) came within inches of hitting me right in the head,” Anderson said.
Police had to pull the bullet from the vehicle. The damage done by the bullet showed that it stopped near a metal plate in the door frame of the car, the last part of the car before reaching Anderson’s head.
Police were unable to immediately locate the suspects.
Meanwhile, Anderson said he was dealing with significant hearing damage and migraines caused by the gunshot.
“(My hearing) is super muffled. You can barely hear out of it,” Anderson said.
Anderson said frequent flashbacks to the shooting have caused him to have early stages of PTSD. He told CBS4 driving was difficult to do as he had frequent flashbacks.
Driving for Lyft was Anderson’s only source of income.
While the company investigated the shooting, Anderson was unable to drive for profit. He set up a GoFundMe page, to help pay his bills while he awaits a new job.
“I am really lucky to be alive. On the other hand, it angers me people would take a life over a few dollars,” Anderson said. “I didn’t get shot. I lost some money and things, but your life is worth more than that it.”
Dillon Thomas is a reporter at CBS4 and a Colorado native. He believes everyone has a story, and would love to share yours! You can find more of his stories by following him on Twitter, @DillonMThomas. |
On 24 July 1908, the final day of athletics at the Olympics, 100,000 people crammed into the stadium at White City in London to witness the conclusion to the marathon, with estimates putting the number locked outside at up to a million. If this seems an unusual amount of interest in viewing just the final 400 yards, or 0.87%, of what is widely seen now as the least explosive race in the Olympic lineup, it was to be fully justified.
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“It would be no exaggeration,” the New York Times wrote the following day, “to say that the finish of the marathon at the 1908 Olympics in London was the most thrilling athletic event that has occurred since that Marathon race in ancient Greece, where the victor fell at the goal and, with a wave of triumph, died.”
When it came to drama, intrigue and occasional comedy, there was little to beat the early Olympic marathons. The event was created for the first modern Games in 1896, and its habit for creating scandal and legend, which was to reach its apogee that warm summer’s day in London, had been immediately evident – the third-placed finisher in Athens, Spyridon Belokas, was disqualified for travelling part of the course by carriage. In Paris four years later the course markings were so poor that confused athletes could be seen running randomly through most of central Paris; American Arthur Newton finished fifth but insisted that nobody had overtaken him all day, while his compatriot Richard Grant said he had been deliberately run over by a cyclist as he was about to catch up with the leaders. In a blow to fans of nominative determinism an athlete called Champion came second, and one named Fast finished third.
In St Louis in 1904, John Lorz had come home 16 minutes ahead of his nearest rival and soaked up the applause of the crowd and the congratulations of the first lady, Alice Roosevelt, before upon the arrival of the “runner-up” admitting that he had actually retired at the nine-mile mark and travelled most of the remaining distance in a car. He was banned from sport for life (though was allowed to return the following year). In that same race South Africa’s Len Tau, who with John Mashiani in the same event became the first ever black African Olympic athlete, managed to finish ninth despite running barefoot and at one stage being chased a mile off course by a particularly ferocious dog.
That race was held in 35C heat and over a course described by the trainer of the eventual champion, Thomas J Hicks, as “the most difficult a human being was ever asked to run over”. The winner’s performance was assisted, if that is the appropriate word, by regular doses of strychnine (now most commonly used as rat poison), egg whites and brandy, though Hicks is practically carried across the line (not the first time he got a helping hand that day, if this picture is anything to go by).
And that brings us to London, and those 100,000 people crammed into White City Stadium. They included the Daily Mail’s correspondent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – “I do not often do journalistic work, but I was tempted chiefly by the offer of an excellent seat,” he wrote in his autobiography – and Queen Alexandra, who was so excited about the event that she demanded to be involved in both the start and the finish. Not only was she to witness its conclusion in person, but she also sent a telegram whose arrival was to prompt the Princess of Wales to signal the start of the race.
This was originally to take place on a street outside Windsor Castle, but the princess (the current Queen’s grandmother) wanted her children to watch, so the start was moved by a few hundred yards inside the castle grounds, to a point just outside the nursery. That and the desire to place the finish line directly in front of the queen extended the length of the marathon, which had previously been loosely set at between 25 and 26 miles, to 26 miles and 385 yards, which remains the official marathon distance to this day. Those extra 385 yards, though, were to prove extremely important.
The telegram arrived at precisely 2.33pm and the princess launched the 55 athletes along a course crowded with onlookers. In London the swelling crowd was entertained with heats of the 110m hurdles, “catch-as-catch-can” wrestling and diving – the Olympic pool was in the main stadium, just inside the athletics track. And roughly every five minutes, after each mile of the route, the name of the current marathon leader was read out: first Thomas Jack then Jack Price, both Englishmen, then for most of the second half of the race, Charles Hefferon. The South African was still leading at the 24-mile post, which stood outside No28 Railway Cottages, Willesden Junction. As he passed, a rocket went up to signal to those in the stadium that their wait was almost over. But Hefferon was fading, and with two miles to go he was passed by the Italian Dorando Pietri. Inside the stadium, the crowd turned towards the gate and waited for the first sight of the leader.
“We are waiting anxiously, eagerly, with long, turbulent swayings and heavings, which mark the impatience of the multitude,” wrote Conan Doyle. “Through yonder door he must come. Every eye in the great curved bank of humanity is fixed upon the gap. He must be very near now, speeding down the streets between the lines of shouting people. We can hear the growing murmur. Every eye is on the gap. And then at last he came.”
If they were expecting some kind of muscled Adonis, the crowd were in for a shock: Pietri was 5ft 2in, a pastry chef by trade, and looked younger than his 22 years. Conan Doyle describes him as “a little man, a tiny boy-like creature”. Pietri pauses momentarily, as if physically blown backwards by the wall of noise that has suddenly struck him, and then starts to teeter around the track.
“As I entered the stadium the pain in my legs and in my lungs became impossible to bear,” he wrote in the Italian magazine Sport Illustrato seven years later. “It felt like a giant hand was gripping my throat, tighter and tighter. Willpower was irrelevant now. If it hadn’t been so bad I would not have fallen the first time. I got up automatically and launched myself a few more paces forwards. I no longer knew if I was heading towards my goal or away from it. They tell me that I fell another five or six times and that I looked like a man suffering from paralysis, stumbling with tiny steps towards his wheelchair. I don’t remember anything else. My memory stops at the final fall.”
When he first fell Jack Andrew, the clerk of the course – seen in pictures holding a comedy outsized loudhailer – and Dr Michael Bulger of the Irish Amateur Athletic Association and the chief medical officer that day, went to his aid. In doing so they destroyed his chances of success, and they were to be strongly criticised for their actions. Nearly 50 years later, when Andrew’s daughter was sorting through her late father’s effects, she discovered his account of the race.
“As Dorando reached the track he staggered and after a few yards fell. I kept would-be helpers at bay, but Dr Bulger went to his assistance. I warned him that this would entail disqualification, but he replied that although I was in charge of the race, I must obey him. Each time Dorando fell I had to hold his legs while the doctor massaged him to keep his heart beating. Each time he arose we kept our arms in position behind (not touching him) to prevent him falling on his head, and as he reached the tape he fell back on our arms.”
Conan Doyle is strangely moved by the Italian’s bravery. “It is horrible, and yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame,” he wrote. Pietri’s penultimate fall took place a few yards from his seat. “Amid stooping figures and grasping hands I caught a glimpse of the haggard, yellow face, the glazed, expressionless eyes, the long, black hair streaked across the bow. Surely he is done now. He cannot rise again.”
It is at this point that a second athlete enters the stadium. He has the stars and stripes on his chest: an American. This changes everything.
When the American team first arrived at the Olympic stadium for the opening ceremony, they were horrified to discover that amid the forest of flags decorating the roof their own was nowhere to be seen, and far from mollified when organisers explained that they simply couldn’t find one. Sweden, whose flag was also absent, refused to participate in the ceremony at all but though the Americans continued they were to have their revenge: as they paraded before the king their flag-bearer, Ralph Rose (organisers having presumably now found a flag for him to bear), refused to conform to protocol and respectfully dip the flag.
According to Amos Alonzo Stagg, of the American Olympic Council, this inspired considerable animosity – though America’s success in the Games might also have had something to do with it – and the two nations rarely stopped bickering for the remainder of the games. The highlight of this unfortunate episode came in the 400m final, which was contested the day before the marathon by three Americans and a single Briton. Though an American came first, he was judged to have illegally blocked the Brit, Wyndham Halswelle, and disqualified. When the race was re-run John Carpenter’s team-mates refused to have anything to do with it, resulting in the first and so far only walkover victory at an Olympic Games.
With an American victory the only alternative, every man, woman and child in the stadium would have happily picked up Pietri and personally carried him over the line. And that, more or less, is what happened, with the Italian bundled to glory by a posse of Brits.
The American, Johnny Hayes, completed his circuit of the track without drama and promptly lodged an appeal. The Press Association however reported that he himself had received assistance as he entered the stadium and, after finishing third, Hefferon launches an objection against both Pietri and Hayes, though he promised to withdraw it if the Americans similarly withdrew theirs. In the end he withdrew it anyway, the Americans did not and Pietri was disqualified, a measure described by Sport Illustrato as “draconian and pitiless”. Jubilant Americans carried their man around the stadium on a table. “Wasn’t it great,” the US team manager, Mat Halpin, said. “We can forget what has gone before, although we will always feel that we have been unfairly treated.”
Queen Alexandra, who when Pietri was first declared the winner had been so delighted she “beat a tattoo on the floor of the stand unrestrainedly with her umbrella”, insisted that the Italian should get some reward for his efforts, and during the closing ceremony presented him with a small silver cup. “When I was called to see Her Majesty I was trembling all over,” he said. “I felt as if I should fall as I did in the race. Then she spoke to me very kindly. ‘Bravo’ was the only word I could understand, but I knew what she meant by her smile. This cup is balm to my soul. I shall treasure it to the end of my life.”
“The cheering knew no bounds,” reported The Guardian. “He went as he had come, not with the other competitors, but alone. Behind him he left in the hearts of all spectators an imperishable impression – the impression of a solitary hero, to whom they would have liked to award the palm of victory, and for whom they made a scene of rare and remarkable enthusiasm.”
Pietri is also said to have indulged in some mid-race strychnine, but blamed his failure to complete the race on eating too much steak for breakfast. The extent to which sports nutrition has changed in the past century can be seen from the testimony of Joseph Forshaw, who won the bronze medal (having, incidentally, soaked his socks in beef fat to aid comfort). “We followed the plan adopted at previous marathon races, eating a good breakfast of steak, following this with two raw eggs, some tea and toast,” he said. “On the way we took nothing but water, except four miles from the finish, having a stitch in the side, I took a drop of brandy. Ordinarily I don’t believe in drinking spirits, but I had to do something as the side was giving me trouble.”
Pietri, despite speaking not a word of English, is immediately signed up by an enterprising promoter and sent on a tour of London music halls. Doyle starts a collection among readers of the Daily Mail that raises £300. When he finally leaves, two weeks after the marathon, a crowd gathers at Charing Cross station to see him off, and another awaits in Turin to welcome him home, where he was presented with another cup.
Life would never be the same for Pietri. Though his athletics career was not helped when, within three weeks of his return, the great Italian wrestler Giovanni Ralcevich accidentally knocked him from his bicycle, breaking a leg.
Two months later he boards a boat from Southampton to New York, where he has been challenged to a rematch with Hayes at Madison Square Gardens. He had, he said, “done absolutely no training since the day of the marathon” and had unsuccessfully asked for a delay “to give me an opportunity for some real training”. It was a very different occasion, run over 262 laps of an indoor track in an atmosphere heavy with dust and tobacco smoke, but was no less popular than the first: 20,000 fans fill the stadium, with 10,000 left disappointed outside. In what the New York Times described as “the most spectacular foot race that New York ever has witnessed”, Pietri won by half a lap, and again, more convincingly still, in a second rematch held the following March.
His fame was such that he inspired a young man in New York to pen his very first complete song, about an Italian man who sells his barber shop and bets the proceeds on Pietri winning a race. “He run-a, run-a, run like anything/One-a, two-a hundred times around da ring/I cry, ‘Please-a nunga stop!”/Just then Dorando he’s a drop/Goodbye poor old barber shop”. The man is paid $25 for the song, but goes on to do better with others such as White Christmas and There’s No Business Like Show Business. His name is Irving Berlin.
Pietri raced for the last time in Gothenburg in October 1911, by which time he had run 46 races in three years of professionalism, earning some £200,000. He opened a hotel with his brother in his native Carpi, and later moved to San Remo and opened a garage. In 1942, aged 56, he died.
In 1948, when the Games returned to London, the Evening News published an interview with Pietri. He was, they reported, now 65 and running a pub in Birmingham which had been called The Temperance, but had just been renamed Cafe Dorando. This news astonished and outraged residents of Carpi, who sent a four-man team led by the mayor to investigate the claims. They found that the bar owner had no trophies, no passport and could not even understand their dialect. His name, it turned out, was Peter Palleschi, from Calamecca near Pistoia. He was jailed for fraud.
They still haven’t forgotten him in Carpi, and four years ago, on the centenary of his most famous moment, a giant statue was unveiled in the town centre. The statue is called Dorando the Winner. “Though it’s true that I lost the race I won in fame, and started along a road that has taken me a very long way,” he wrote. “My current life is so happy that the race seems to me like divine providence.”
What the Guardian said
Saturday, July 25, 1908
The Marathon race of the Olympic Games was won yesterday by J.J. Hayes from the United States. The race was from Windsor Castle to the Stadium - a distance of 25 miles 385 yards. Fifty-five runners started, representing sixteen nations. It was 2.30 in the afternoon and the heat was great.
The first man to enter the Stadium was P. Dorando of Italy. Falling four times as he made the circuit of the track, he was helped along by friends, and reached the tape first. Hayes, who was about 80 yards behind Dorando, finished second and C. Hefferon, South Africa, was third. A protest against Dorando on the ground his having received help was upheld by the judges, who awarded the race to Hayes. Hayes did the distance in 2hrs. 55min. 18 2-5sec.
A rumour got about last night that Dorando had died from the effects of the terrible strain of the race. This was untrue. Though Durando was obviously in the greatest distress in the Stadium, he had sufficiently recovered by nine o’clock last night to walk out from the Stadium grounds to a motor-cab and be driven to his lodgings. Hayes also went away early in the evening, and, so far as is known, the other competitors have not suffered any serious effects.
At the dinner which was last night given by the British Government to the representatives of foreign countries taking part in the Olympic Games, and at which Sir Edward Grey was present, Lord Desborough said he wished to announce that the Queen would be pleased if the Italian representative would accept from her personally a cup in honour of the practical though not de facto victory of Dorando that day. The Queen wished to show her appreciation of the splendid running of the Italian by giving him personally a cup.
After all our high hopes that England was the land of the long-distance runner, we have still to win the marathon race. Our failure to do so at the former races was believed to be due to the fact that we were unable to be represented properly, but when the struggle was to be over our own roads many of us thought it was as good as won. As it happened, we were beaten by our own weather as well as 12 of our opponents. The little Italian Dorando, who stumbled round the tape after receiving help from his friend (which opened the unhappy business of protests), seemed, until the last mile, least of all to feel the heat. But the South African Hefferon, the Amercan Hayes, and even the Swede Svanberg were all much less distressed than the Englishmen. The success of the Americans, who had three men in the first five, however much they may supposed to revel in the hot weather, calls for another revision of our ideas about the athletic resources of that inexhaustible country. The finish of the contest, with its pitiable and dramatic incidents, will give the Marathon race a place by itself in the history of our sports, tinging it with something of the grimness of its origin...
News of the start at Windsor came to swarms of Londoners as they took their way to Paddington and Baker-street Stations to catch the race on the outskirts. The Prince of Wales had fired the electric gun, and the Crown Prince of Sweden had started off the field of 55 runners, these including the Canadian Indian Longboat, whose entry had been so severely opposed. Duncan, the Salford Harrier, who was favourite for the cup, had got off easily, and the running was being made by Clarke and Lord. All the places on the route where the train touched were buzzing with people. The City must have been half empty, the City man and his clerk were here in their tens of thousands, and there were huge clusters of Americans and foreigners with flags to betray them. There were few Frenchman for the nation was not competing. The heat seemed to be getting worse after two o’clock, and it was felt that whatever might be done no records would be broken near the half way post .... A programme somewhat deficient in interest had been arranged to occupy the earlier part of the afternoon at the Stadium before the Marathon race was timed to finish. The crowd, estimated at 70,000 at least, bore it in great patience, and even raised a little interest in high diving and pole jumping. But it was evident that the idea of a thrilling finish to the great race had caught the popular imagination. The heat of the blazing summer day had brought colour to the tiers of seats surrounding the arena. On the sunny side were rows of sunshades of every conceivable hue, and one could not help contrasting the scene with that of last week, when a handful of spectators had herded together under dripping umbrellas. Now they waved fans improvised from newspapers, and seemed uncomfortably hot at that.
The Stadium looked full at three o’clock, with streams of people steadily pouring up the gangway and finding room somewhere. The earliest moment at which the Marathon winner could could be looked for was five, so for two hours the spectators had to make the best of what the programme offered. They had the pleasure of seeing the Americans carry off every single heat of the 110 metres hurdle race and cheered so heartily that it was plain they bore no malice...
At length rumour, with one wild swan song of inaccuracy, had done with us, and in tense and painful silence the onlookers awaited the arrival of the first men. The gangway was clear. It looked as though the winner had only to burst through, run round a section of the track, and burst the tape, a little exhausted, perhaps, at the foot of the Royal stand. It was, however, a very different thing that actually happened. Over the cycle track came a string of officials, who stood aside. Then a gaunt, bony figure struggled through. His head was bound up in a handkerchief. Through the glasses, one could see his face, half dreamy, half frantic. It was easy to see that the man was almost delirious. He staggered across the cement track and was pushed in the direction he was required to go. He had run so far he lifted his legs mechanically and as he lifted them friendly hands gave him a push, so that he made some progress. Dimly at the back of his mind he seemed to know that he was wanted to run, and he went through the necessary motions.
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So Dorando progressed along the track till he came to a bend, where he fell. Willing hands – they were too willing - raised him and pushed him on again, but he collapsed once more. It looked as though exhortations to courage were being whispered to him, and they had the effect of rousing him to energies of which he was not truly capable. A crowd surged round him as he collapsed once more, and policemen were called onto the scene to keep it back, while the truly unfortunate man was put upon his feet and pushed once more towards the goal.
Five times in all did Dorando collapse in the short quarter of a mile that lay between the gate and home; and at the last, as he lay on the ground, only twenty-five yards to the tape, Hayes, the American, entered the course. Overcome as he was, the Italian seemed to understand the importance of the news; he staggered once more to his feet and was half carried, half propelled, to the finish, where he collapsed utterly. Hayes came along on his own legs, but did not arrive soon enough to catch the first cheer of the crowd, which spent the first of its enthusiasm on the Italian. And on the flagstaff the Italian flag fluttered, with the American just below it.
To the shouting spectators the finish was a marvellous spectacle of endurance under adversity. A man must run his own race, however, and if he falls by the wayside his supporters may succour him, but they may not propel him. It was obvious in their saner moments to many who had helped the Italian to finish that they were thereby utterly ruining his chances of any place at all in the race. As a result of this scene, which ought never to have happened, Hayes, the American, entered a protest, which was upheld by the judges and he was awarded the race. |
Don’t have a garden? You can still own a fruiting olive tree, grown in a container. A sunny balcony and the right climate are the essential things; that, and time.
Italians have grown fruit trees in containers for centuries, keeping them protected in special sheds during the winter.
Come spring, the trees are wheeled out to the sunshine again. While we can dream of owning an olive grove like the one we visited in the Galilee, olive trees successfully grow in pots too.
Assuming your climate suits the olive, you should acquire a sapling from a nursery. Olive trees grown from pits revert to the original wild olive, and if they produce fruit at all, it will be wizened and not very good to eat. Consult the nursery manager and choose the variety you’d like best. To maximize fruiting potential, you should actually have two of the same variety in the area. This may be impractical where there’s limited space, of course.
When to plant: Spring is the best time to re-pot the sapling into its permanent container. Tender saplings suffer under frost or harsh winter weather, so it’s best to transplant after all danger of frost has passed. When the temperature threatens to dip under 50°F/10ºC, the tree should be brought indoors. It may be taken out to enjoy the sunshine on warmer days. A trolley, on which the container stands permanently, is useful there.
Choose a spot that gets plenty of full sun and only partial shade. Have a clay pot about 2 feet/61 centimeters deep and the same width at the ready. No need for pebbles or other drainage device at the bottom. Pour enough soil in to cover the bottom thickly. Knock the sapling out of its original container and place in the new pot. Fill the pot with soil around the tree and make sure it stands stable. Water thoroughly.
Soil and watering: ordinary potting soil; no special fertilizers or compost at first. Wait until there are signs of growth in the following spring to add compost or concentrated fertilizer to the soil.Keep the soil lightly moist, but not over-watered. A mature tree can withstand drought, but until a sapling is established and thriving in its new environment, it needs light moisture.
Care of the tree: the very good Olive Oil Source site recommends pruning with caution for the first four years: remove branches under 3 feet/91.5 centimeters as well as suckers. Others recommend watching for flowering and then pruning off the tips of the branches, above a pair of leaves, as well.
Plant hygiene: watch out for scale infestation. Buy a natural insecticide product from the plant nursery. Traditional Mediterranean farmers whitewash the bottom half of the trunk to keep ants away. Weed out any wind-born seedlings the minute you notice them.
The next step is to enjoy the lovely sight of the tree’s silvery-green foliage moving while the breeze rustles through it. Because it may take up to five years before it produces any fruit for you. You’ll need to discuss when you can expect fruit with the gardener at the nursery. But by then you and the tree will have become good friends, and the fruit will be a nice bonus.
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"A homely and savoury dish" according to Mrs Beeton, toad in the hole was originally made with any old meat that came to hand – the original domestic goddess suggests rump steak and lamb's kidney, while a reference a century earlier glosses it as "baked beef in a pudding" and Hannah Glasse gives a recipe for pigeons in a hole.
Charles Francatelli's Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes (1852), meanwhile, is frank about the main attraction of the toad – its price. "To make this a cheap dinner, you should buy 6d. or 1s. worth of bits or pieces of any kind of meat, which are to be had cheapest at night when the day's sale is over. The pieces of meat should be first carefully overlooked, to ascertain if there be any necessity to pare away some tainted part, or perhaps a fly-blow, as this, if left on any one piece of meat, would tend to impart a bad taste to the whole, and spoil the dish" he writes, temptingly.
Clearly toad in the hole (a phrase that tellingly makes its way into the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue), was a way of stretching meat – any meat – a bit further, with a filling and thrifty batter. It does the same for its modern-day incarnation: you can get away with serving one sausage each if you've got enough batter and a good gravy. But, whether you're on a tight budget or not, toad in the hole is no croak of a dish: enjoy it, warts and all.
The toad
Nigel Slater's toad in the hole. Photograph: Felicity Cloake
There are several modern recipes that draw on the more ancient tradition of the toad in the hole: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Meat Book suggests a "flying toad in the hole" with pheasant breasts and prunes, while the Ginger Pig Meat Book stuffs the sausages into pieces of chicken. Although in a straight fight pheasant would clearly win, choosing between different meats seems a rather silly exercise in this context, so I'm going to stick to a sausage-only toad.
After trying almost every variety under the sun, those sausages should, I think, be pretty plain affairs – tasting mostly of pork rather than leek, apple or (shudder) chilli – anything too strident makes the batter seem unfairly bland by comparison. That said, the more mildly spiced British sausages, a herby Lincolnshire, or a peppery Cumberland, can also work well.
My devotion to Nigel Slater prompts my one deviation from the sausage-only path; he wraps his sausages in pancetta, like posh pigs in blankets, before baking. It's rare for me to veto cured pork, but here I'm not keen: the fat from the pancetta melts during cooking, so the sausages seem to stew in it rather than browning, and the whole thing tastes overwhelmingly of bacon.
Delia Smith's toad in the hole. Photograph: Felicity Cloake
As in the recipe in Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham's nostalgia-fest The Prawn Cocktail Years, Nigel skins his sausages before baking. Nigella also does this, complaining that "I really don't like the way that the sausages, when this is prepared in the traditional manner, go a spooky braised pink as they cook within the batter".
I'm also a bit squeamish about pallid bangers, but baked skinless sausages end up dry – much better to do as Smith, Dorothy Hartley, Paul Gayler and Jane Grigson do, and pre-cook the sausages before adding them to the batter. Brown them well and there's no danger of flabby disappointment: frying, as Mrs Grigson suggests, works better than Smith and Gayler's baking – it's easier to turn them, they stay juicier and you can use the delicious sausage-flavoured cooking fat to grease the baking tin.
Better batter
Dorothy Hartley's toad in the hole. Photograph: Felicity Cloake
A good sausage is always a treat but tasty batter takes a little more work. I experiment with milk (Grigson), milk and water (Slater and Smith), milk and sparkling water (Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham) and milk and pale ale (Gayler). The all-milk pudding is definitely richer, but also noticeably softer and doughier. Water gives a crisper result, and sparkling water, as the authors note, an even lighter batter – but the flavour isn't as good. Using a mildly sparkling beer instead means the batter is both light and tasty, and handily leaves you with most of a bottle to enjoy while the toad cooks.
I don't find Smith allows enough batter for the number of sausages: it's too thin and, although it does rise, it doesn't put on the spectacular display of Grigson or the Prawn Cocktail Years' puddings. Nothing can match the batter from Hartley's Food in England though, which adapts a batter pudding recipe for toad in the hole, and whisks the egg whites to stiff peaks before folding them in. This rises over the sausages, completely encasing them, and creating something more akin to a toad cake – unusual, certainly, but not quite what my testers were hoping for when I promised them toad in the hole.
More successful is the Prawn Cocktail Years batter, which is deemed to boast the perfect balance of crisp top and soft, slightly gooey interior. I suspect this is partly down to the prolonged beating of the eggs, which gives the batter real volume.
Like most other recipes, save for Smith's, the batter is left to rest for 15 minutes before use, which the Leith's Meat Bible helpfully explains allows the starch cells in the flour to swell, which apparently makes for a lighter end product. Smith says she's never found that it makes a difference, but as far as I'm concerned, the results speak for themselves: the toad don't lie.
Paul Gayler's toad in the hole. Photograph: Felicity Cloake
Getting the pan nice and hot, as almost everyone suggests, is essential for a crispy base – the fat (I like dripping or lard; Smith's groundnut oil is deliberately bland, and Gayler's olive oil all wrong here) should be smoking, and the batter must sizzle as it hits it. Grigson coats the base of the tin with a thin layer of batter and bakes for 10 minutes "to set" before adding the remainder, along with the sausages, but I don't find it makes much of a difference. Batter first, sausages immediately afterwards seems to work best: sausage first, a la Delia, means the toad has a leaky bottom.
Gayler makes individual toad in the holes in a muffin tin. They look cute – and one of my testers argues passionately that they ensure a more equitable ratio of batter to sausage – but I find them soggy in the middle: there's just not enough room for both the batter and the sausage to live in peace.
Extras
Simon and Lindsey coat their sausages in ketchup and add sage leaves to their batter, both of which I find overpowering. A much happier a match, in my opinion, is Nigel Slater's wholegrain mustard, which studs the toad with crunchy seeds and lends a welcome heat to proceedings. That's about as fancy as Mr Toad should get.
Perfect toad in the hole
Felicity Cloake's perfect toad in the hole. Photograph: Felicity Cloake
Serves 2–4 depending on appetite
3tbsp beef dripping or lard
6 sausages
2 eggs
100g plain flour, sifted
85ml whole milk
85ml ale
1tbsp wholegrain mustard
1. Preheat the oven to 220C. Heat half the fat in a frying pan over a medium heat and brown the sausages on all sides (this is labour-intensive but worth it).
2. Meanwhile put the eggs in a large bowl and beat, preferably with an electric hand whisk, until thick. Beat in the flour and milk alternately until smooth, then stir in the ale and mustard and leave to sit for 15 minutes.
3. Put the remaining fat in a roasting tin (mine's about 26cm x 21cm) and put in the oven to heat. Once the sausages are browned all over, and the batter has rested, take it out of the oven and put over a medium flame. Pour in the fat from the sausage pan, followed by the batter, which should sizzle as it hits the tin. Add the sausages and return to the oven.
4. Bake for about 35 minutes until well risen and golden, then serve immediately, preferably with good gravy and lots of peas.
Toad in the hole: a school-dinner classic, or a waste of good sausages? Is there a better batter pudding out there, and, most importantly of course, does anyone know how on earth it got its name? |
About
Thrill seekers, horror enthusiasts, and technology lovers, here is an experience you won't want to miss.
The VRcade Nightmare Machine is the world's first full-motion virtual reality haunted house attraction, and it's exclusive to Seattle.
Put on the custom 3D VRcade headset and headphones, and wirelessly move, duck, hide, and panic in wireless, unconstrained space for 5 intense minutes with no controller to fumble with; just your natural movement, your wits, and a world of infinite terror.
Unlike a horror movie, you get to actually interact with the experience in ways never before possible. Are the footsteps real or just your imagination? What happens when the floor collapses beneath you? Will your flashlight be enough to ward off bats, spiders, demons, and zombies? Absolutely not.
What cannot exist in the real world is very much possible in The Nightmare Machine. You cannot imagine the terrors that await when the impossible is staring you in the face.
The Nightmare Machine is our twist on a haunted house. For the entire month of October, Seattle will be the first city in the world to experience VRcade's platform as it powers this intense horror experience, hosted at the iconic EMP Museum.
See our local news coverage below for a more in-depth look at the teaser experience.
VRcade is the world’s first virtual reality services facility, located in Seattle Washington. Our aim is to create a virtual reality experience that cannot yet be obtained in the home without spending 100’s or even 1000’s of dollars. We have created our own platform, which is a combination of custom and 3rd-party hardware and software, which when combined, deliver the exact experience we wanted to achieve. The result of our years of hard work allow us to deliver a level of intuitive interaction, fidelity, range, and flexibility, exceeding what users are currently used to in the home. We then take all of this technology and let you enjoy it! There are no longer any barriers to a quality VR experience.
While we strive to cater to all markets, our main focus remains on architectural visualization, which allows brokers, architects, interior designers, and their clients to see, hear and interact with their space in ways that were previously impossible. Underneath the professional services, we still remain connected to our gaming and entertainment roots. In fact, The Nightmare Machine is not our first successful immersive experience. In December of last year, we contributed our own ‘fan art’ to EMP's Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Celebration. We measured our success by the fact that we had the longest line at around 3 hours! Needless to say, it was wildly successful for us. So we've improved the system, we've expanded our standard formula, and we are back with The Nightmare Machine.
There are several technologies and concepts that make the VRcade platform unique and immersive. For instance, the system uses optical motion capture cameras for tracking both props and users, including any and all parts, down to the fingers. We take this tracking and apply it to how the user sees, hears, and interacts with the simulation using a custom HMD (Head-Mounted Display), binaural audio, pumped through high-quality headphones, and their own natural movements. This creates an intuitive way to experience and control a virtual world, that suddenly seems less virtual and more 'reality'. Because of this combination of technology and software, we do not need to rely on other forms of input and interaction, such as a joystick or omni-directional treadmill.
On top of that, we deliver the whole experience to up to 4 users wirelessly, removing the need for a pesky tether of cables that can disconnect a user from the immersion we are trying to maintain. The end result is so immersive, that your mammal brain knows it couldn't possibly be real, but your reptilian brain responds as though it is. This experience delivers the first steps to the promise of VR we all remember from the 90's, and it's only going to get better from here.
We will be using Faceshifts markerless motion capture technology to scan the heads of select backers to be featured in The Nightmare Machine. With accurate color representation and 3D geometry, the results are spooky. As the heads sit on the shelves of the Doctor's twisted laboratory, each pair of eyes will dart between the current victims participating in the experience.
Head Scan Technology:
At VRcade, we use faceshift technology to accomplish 2 goals. One, we provide a means for you to get your head scanned and placed into The Nightmare Machine as part of the horror attraction. As you can see, your friends will be able to easily recognize a familiar face once inside.
The other way we use faceshift is to record the animations of all of our actors to provide the most convincing and immersive performances. We can even control characters like Dr. Virago live, breaking the barrier between what is real and what is just a virtual world.
One of the most rewarding things about building a new platform is getting developers involved and building their own unique projects that use it. So we are inviting any and all developers to collaborate with us on this exciting and unique opportunity. It doesn’t matter if you are local or remote, we will facilitate the collaborative effort in whatever way we can. We are looking to build relationships with all developers who want to explore or create in VR. We feel this is a great way to foster that relationship, so throughout this campaign, we will be hosting Nightmare Machine game jams at our VRcade HQ, allowing you to create short, intelligently terrifying experiences which will debut in October at the EMP. We will work side by side with our developers, giving them access to our facilities (including all of our hardware and software), guidelines for creating an experience, and of course credit for their contribution to a historical moment in virtual reality.
So if you are an artist, musician, code-monkey (or code-ninja), game designer, narrative designer, hardware specialist, visit our humble little developer portal and get in touch!
By backing this event you will receive one or more of the following rewards based on your backer tier:
To make it easier to understand where all the money is going, we've divided this zombie into easy-to-visualize parts:
As you can see, the majority of the money raised in this campaign will go towards building hardware. A chunk gets set aside for Kickstarter, a small portion goes to indie developers who win the game-jam competitions, and then the last major piece will go towards paying for additional staffing and decorations for the event. We want to make sure you have the best end-to-end experience, and this means making everything look and feel like a traditional haunted house and make sure there is plenty of assistance to make the whole process run smoothly and make sure nobody gets hurt.
You will notice that no initial percentage goes towards Experience Development. That is because we are going to be doing this one way or another. We're hoping the horror development community will help in a big way, but we're also dedicated to making this a success. That being said, any extra funds raised from the campaign that exceed the target goal will go towards additional experience development on our end. That is just like it sounds: the more money we raise, the better and more terrifying the experience for you! So tell everyone you know, get your head scanned and come to the party. Most of all, let's have a lot of fun with this!
Thanks to our friends at OCVR, we have unknowingly completed our first game jam for The Nightmare Machine. We have scheduled the remaining game jams for August and are well on our way to completing the software framework that brings the entire experience together. We also recently hosted our first two play-test sessions, provided some decent scares, and have received some good feedback to make the experience even scarier for the rest of you.
Each weekend during the campaign we will be holding a game jam to get us closer to our first live test at EMP museum on September 15, 2014.
Nightmare Machine
Children under 7 may not be admitted into The Nightmare Machine.
If you are pregnant, elderly, have a heart condition, or you have a history of seizures, it is not recommended that you use The Nightmare Machine.
All participants must sign and agree to a waiver of liability for injury or other personal damage.
Anyone with a condition which is worsened by fear, anxiety, 3D visuals, or intense images and sounds should not attend The Nightmare Machine.
Intoxicated individuals may be asked to leave the line or The Nightmare Machine at any time.
Tickets and Scheduling
ALL Kickstarter backers must schedule their time to attend The Nightmare Machine through the VRcade approved scheduling system.
Tickets are valid only after ticket holder has scheduled time in the VRcade approved scheduling system. Tickets are valid only on the dates assigned through the scheduling system. No refunds on unused tickets, rainchecks, or replacements. Tickets may only be used during normal operating hours. There is no guarantee of make-up time if a scheduled time is missed by ticket holder.
General EMP terms of use apply (http://www.empmuseum.org/about-emp/terms-of-use.aspx).
Tickets are not valid if reproduced in any manner. Tickets will be scanned before entry.
Due to maintenance and other unseen circumstances, Nightmare Machine entry may be temporarily suspended.
Head Scan
Backers must be present IN SEATTLE on designated days to have their head scanned.
Certain unforeseen conditions may prevent a perfect head scan.
Experience
Contact lenses are preferred over glasses for maximum comfort in the VRcade head mounted display. Very few people have ever reported discomfort while wearing the VRcade HMD.
If you feel sick, dizzy, or nauseous, simply close your eyes and ask for help in removing your head mounted display.
Users must adhere to VRcade rules and regulations while in the experience to avoid personal injury to themselves or others.
VRcade, Inc cannot be held responsible for any Acts of God that may result in personal discomfort or unforeseen technical conditions. |
Source: PDF: Remote Timing Attacks are Still Practical Researchers Billy Bob Brumley and Nicola Tuveri have used a "timing attack" to calculate the secret key of a TLS/SSL server which uses the Elliptic Curve DSA. The attack is based on the idea that the time required for performing a multiplication allows conclusions to be drawn about the multiplication's operands.
Elliptic Curve Cryptography is often used for asymmetric methods, such as RSA or DSA, that usually require very long keys. These methods derive their security from the high level of difficulty involved in calculating the discrete logarithm for the group of points on the elliptic curve. With ECRSA, for example, a 160-bit key provides a level of security that is similar to the level a 1024-bit key offers with RSA.
For their tests, the researchers set up an SSL server with OpenSSL and measured the time it took to create a digital signature using Elliptic Curve DSA (ECDSA). This allowed them to calculate the server's secret key. When establishing an SSL connection via the local loopback interface, they managed to do this almost instantaneously. While packet transfer times on a local network caused measurement uncertainties, these uncertainties could be compensated for with some further calculations. Overall, the attack described in Remote Timing Attacks are Still Practical also proved feasible over a network.
No working countermeasures have so far been found; the US-CERT advises that ECDSA should no longer be used for digital signatures. To prevent this type of attack, the researchers recommend implementing time-independent functions for operations on elliptic curves.
(crve) |
South Carolina has added another graduate transfer to its roster for this season. Maine guard Wes Myers will enroll this year and play the 2017-18 season for the Gamecocks, according to a report from Jon Rothstein.
Maine grad transfer Wesley Myers has committed to South Carolina, per a source. Immediately eligible. Averaged 16.9 PPG. — Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) August 16, 2017
This will be Myers' third Division I program. He began his collegiate career at Niagara for the 2014-15 season and then transferred to Maine the next year and had to sit out due to NCAA transfer rules. This past season, he averaged 16.9 points per game for the Black Bears. Playing in 28 of his team's games, Myers averaged 30.1 minutes played and 4.5 rebounds per game. He hit 78 percent of his free throws and 44 percent of his shots.
Myers stands 6-foot-2 and 186 pounds.
South Carolina also added Florida Atlantic graduate transfer Frank Booker to the roster this season. |
Mitt Romney has a 40-point lead over President Obama among active and reserve service members, according to a new poll from the Military Times.
The survey found Romney with a wide 66-26 lead that is similar to the advantage enjoyed by Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R-Ariz.) over Obama in the 2008 race.
For military voters, the economy was by far the most important issue, with 41 percent of respondents saying it was most important issue for them in the upcoming race. National security came in at just 16 percent.
The Military Times poll surveyed 3,100 active duty, National Guard and reserve troops via email who subscribe to the paper.
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Romney’s lead is 2 points less than the advantage McCain held, who was up 68-23 with military voters. McCain might have had a greater advantage given his military service. The senator is a war hero whose years in a Vietnam POW camp are well-known. Neither Obama nor Romney served in the military.
Both campaigns have made an active pitch to veterans, particularly in battleground states such as Florida that have a heavy military presence. Romney has consistently led in polls among veterans as well.
The Military Times poll found respondents were most critical of Obama on the defense budget, but also disapproved of his handling of the war in Afghanistan by a 2-to-1 margin.
The troops supported his decision to keep the U.S. military out of the Syrian conflict 44 to 38 percent, and were split the other way, 36-47, on the withdrawal from Iraq.
Poll respondents disapproved of the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy preventing gays from serving openly in the military. Fifty-three percent disapproved of the repeal compared to 34 percent who approved of it. |
by BRIAN NADIG
The 41st Ward Zoning Advisory Committee is scheduled to discuss a proposal to build a two-story home in the Norwood Park Circle at its meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 7.
Plans call for the demolition of a one-story frame garage on the 6,870-square-foot parcel at 6854 W. Thorndale Ave. and for construction of a 2,363-square-foot house with three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. The meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. at the Olympia Park fieldhouse, 6566 N. Avondale Ave.
The site is in the Norwood Park Special Character Overlay District, which was created to preserve the single-family home atmosphere and oversized lots in the area. Under the RS-1 zoning of the site, the minimum lot size is normally 6,250 square feet, but the overlay district increases the minimum to 7,500 square feet.
The developer for the project is seeking a variation from the Zoning Board of Appeals to allow the construction. A variation can be sought if the existing lot is not less than 90 percent of the required minimum area.
However, a resident recently informed Alderman Anthony Napolitano’s office about a 1978 ruling in which the Illinois Appellate Court said that a house could not be built on the site because it had been improperly subdivided from two nonconforming lots on East Circle Avenue. The Thorndale property is behind the lots at 5901 and 5909 N. East Circle Ave., and those lots do not conform with side-yard requirements.
Under the zoning code, properties generally cannot be subdivided if it would create a nonconforming condition or increase an existing one. In some instances, properties can be rezoned to reduce yard and density requirements, allowing the subdivision.
Napolitano’s chief of staff Chris Vittorio said that he is seeking clarification from the city Bureau of Zoning and Land Use on whether the project would be feasible under the zoning code. He said that the developer is planning to purchase the foreclosed property from a bank.
Meanwhile, the committee tentatively plans to meet in early October to discuss a proposed four-story building with 44 residential units and a 156-space parking garage at 6655 N. Oliphant Ave. The developer is seeking to have a parking study conducted for the project, Vittorio said. |
17 August 2009
[Federal Register: August 17, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 157)] [Notices] [Page 41482] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr17au09-131] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DEPARTMENT OF STATE [Public Notice 6730] In the Matter of the Designation of Revolutionary Struggle aka Epanastatikos Aghonas as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Pursuant to Section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224, as Amended Acting under the authority of and in accordance with section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224 of September 23, 2001, as amended by Executive Order 13268 of July 2, 2002, Executive Order 13284 of January 23, 2003, and Executive Order 13372 of February 16, 2005, I hereby determine that the organization known as Revolutionary Struggle (aka Epanastatikos Aghonas) has committed, or poses a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States. Consistent with the determination in section 10 of Executive Order 13224 that ``for those persons * * * determined to be subject to the order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States * * * prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual,'' I determine that no prior notice needs to be provided to any person subject to this determination who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, because to do so would render ineffectual the measures authorized in the Order. This notice shall be published in the Federal Register. Dated: July 31, 2009. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, Department of State. [FR Doc. E9-19723 Filed 8-14-09; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4710-10-P |
Mindfulness has become a trendy word that is used to describe everything from yoga exercises to colouring activities. It can be hard to find a simple way to explain it, especially to children.
This is how I explain modern secular mindfulness to both kids and adults. I try to keep it simple.
How to explain mindfulness to young kids:
Mindfulness is simply… noticing what is happening right now.
Mindfulness is taking notice of how your body feels and what you see, smell and taste. Maybe you even feel emotions in your body, perhaps through a tightness somewhere, or a good sensation.
Mindfulness is also noticing what your mind is doing.
What happens when you start noticing these experiences?
When you notice what is happening around you, you focus more deeply, and that attention to your own senses will help you improve in diverse areas of your life.
Improved focus can help you achieve at higher levels in sports, school or music. It will help you score higher on tests, too. We always do better when we’re able to pay attention to what we’re doing, right?
But there’s more…
When you notice what is happening around you, it can help you to calm down when you’re sad, angry or frustrated. Mindfulness helps you deal with tough emotions, and mindfulness can make you happy and feel good.
Would you like to try it out? I would!
That’s a great way to start talking about mindfulness with younger children.
How to explain mindfulness to teens:
When talking with adolescents, you could simply expand on the previous explanation and say that mindfulness is a basic life skill that can benefit us in many ways.
A popular way to put it is to say: mindfulness is about paying attention in a particular way – on purpose, in the present moment and without judgment.
The non-judgment part means that we simply have an experience without contemplating if the experience is good or bad. By doing this, we develop more self-awareness, emotional balance, and impulse control. It’s about recognising our inner and outer experiences and understanding how they affect our well being.
How does mindfulness work?
We tend to be reactive. For example, when someone says something we don’t like to hear, we react. Sometimes we say something that we would like to take back the moment after we blurt it out. Or we are knocked down by a heavy emotion and it can take days to bounce back, sometimes even weeks.
Mindfulness helps us create space between a strong emotion and our actions. We learn to deal with positive and negative experiences more calmly and by making better decisions.
When we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings, we can respond in a more clever way, without hurting our own feelings or the feelings of others.
As we create more emotional balance, we are less easily knocked down by our emotions, but in moments when we are knocked down, we bounce back faster.
Pretty awesome, isn’t it? Most adolescents deal with strong emotions, and mindfulness skills can really make a difference. Now that you know more about mindfulness, would you like to give it a try?
What is the goal of mindfulness practice ?
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom” – Victor Frankl
Mindfulness helps us sustain our awareness more often and for longer periods. We can begin to practice mindfulness by adding many brief moments of awareness into our lives on a daily basis.
This awareness comes with lots of benefits.
Here are some of the good things mindfulness can bring to your life:
Mindfulness helps us create space between the emotions we have and the actions we use to respond to them.
Mindfulness helps us focus.
Mindfulness can make us feel better emotionally and physically.
If you need studies as proof to practice mindfulness, you’re in luck: thousands of studies have documented the physical and mental health benefits of mindfulness. Benefits such as;
decreased stress and anxiety,
improved health,
better sleep,
improved focus and awareness,
better problem solving,
improved impulse control,
increased compassion and kindness,
stronger relationships,
altruism,
and even higher life satisfaction.
Wow, now that’s an impressive list! :) Did you know that studies have shown that practicing mindfulness, even for just a few weeks, can bring a variety of physical, psychological, and social benefits?
Before we start believing mindfulness is a panacea, it’s important to point out that mindfulness is not the silver bullet that will solve every problem.
Even if we practice mindfulness, we will still experience difficult feelings and mental chatter. However, with mindfulness, we can change our relationships with our emotions, thoughts and negative self-talk.
We don’t have to believe every thought we have, or be knocked down so often by our emotions. Sometimes we can let our thoughts drift by and then disappear, just like a cloud in the sky.
Here’s one more fun definition. A friend of mine says mindfulness is… like being the best possible parent to yourself. Present, gentle, attentive, compassionate and grateful for each moment. I love that definition.
I hope this short introduction will help you communicate the idea of mindfulness to your family.
If you are new to mindfulness with children we recommend our online courses: Get notified here!
May you be happy and healthy!
Chris ( Chief Mindfulness Ninja @ Blissful Kids )
See also:
Mindfulness And The Brain Made Easy
Chris Bergstrom is the co-founder of BlissfulKids.com and a dad who is thrilled to practice mindfulness with his son. He is a certified mindfulness facilitator, and trained to teach mindfulness to students in K-12. He’s also an executive consultant, and has taught meditation for more than 10 years. |
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Sterling Silver 6 Piece Puzzle Ring
Product Code: S02426
Face Height: 11 mm (0.43 inch)
Metal Material: Sterling Silver
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With the 50th anniversary of the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair upon us, the Queens Museum has unveiled a new exhibit featuring everything from one of the animatronic brontosauruses from GM’s “Futurama” attraction to a Bell System Picturephone that was created way before FaceTime.
If you’re a fan of Mad Men–era NYC you should definitely see the exhibit, on view till Oct. 18, along with the museum’s long-term display of over 900 smaller artifacts from the fair. But let’s face it, all of the ephemera can’t do justice to what was truly a mind-blowing extravaganza made up of 150 fantastically designed pavilions offering everything from utopian visions of the future, to Jurassic Park-style dinosaur battles, to canoe rides through replicas of exotic island paradises — not to mention, of course, the Unisphere and the Panorama, among the few attractions that outlasted the fair.
Running from mid-April to mid-October in both ’64 and ’65, the fair was immense. Which is why the 312-page guide put out by the editors of Time-Life Books featured a welcome message in which Robert Moses, the event’s proud president, implored visitors to “study the fair. Come often. When you get here, don’t rush.”
We recently acquired a copy of that official guide and gave it a read. Here’s what we learned.
1. You could get there by helicopter and by hydrofoil.
Helicopters regularly traveled between Wall Street and the fair’s 120-foot-high heliport (still home to a banquet hall). Rides were $8, or about $60 today. Hydrofoil boats, “which skim over the water on winglike foils,” went from South Street and East 25th Street to the Fair Marina (also still home to a restaurant). You can see the hydrofoils at 5:14 in this video.
2. You could dine in a teahouse.
The Korea pavilion featured “dancing drummer girls” as well as a teahouse serving exotic dishes like kimchi.
3. Or you could dine in a tree-house.
The Africa pavilion, made up of huts on stilts (shown at 1:09 in the video above), featured caged wild animals and $500 diamonds on display. And there was tree-house dining: “The multilevel rooms of the tree-house restaurant and bar are reached by a winding staircase that girdles the tree’s massive trunk.”
4. There was a robot Lincoln created by Walt Disney.
Seriously, peep the video above. “With mannerisms characteristic of the great Civil War President, the animated figure recites excerpts from Lincoln’s speeches on liberty, civil rights and freedom. Dimensions of the figure duplicate the physical statistics found in biographies; the facial features were taken from Lincoln’s life mask.”
5. There was a 100-dish Viking smorgasborg.
The buffet in the Minnesota pavilion “groans with over 100 foods” from the state, including venison, pheasant and pike.
6. There was a gorilla on a bike and bowling porpoises.
Plus a “dog that models fashions.” That would be Lady Greyhound, the live mascot of Greyhound buses.
7. There was a million-dollar money tree
At the American Express pavilion, “a million dollars’ worth of real currency ‘grows’ on a money tree.”
8. There were “rest alcoves” with “nap robes.”
Wandering the fairgrounds could be tiring. So, “uniformed attendants escort visitors to their rest alcoves, set a timer outside and rouse them gently if they sleep beyond the half-hour limit. Each alcove is carpeted and furnished with bed, shelf and full-length mirror.”
9. The Vatican pavilion cost $2 million.
The sum was raised by churches around the U.S. It was the first time Michelangelo’s Pieta left Old St. Peter’s Basilica. The pavilion was eventually relocated to Groton, Connecticut, where it became a church. You can see the interior above and the exterior here.
10. There was a Formica house
“The first house to use Formica laminated plastic on exterior walls. Its interior includes an indoor barbecue pit and natural illumination from skylights.”
11. Boy Scouts told stories at night.
The Boy Scouts of America pavilion featured a “nightly campfire with singing and storytelling.”
12. Rheingold recreated old New York.
The brewery’s pavilion recreated a “cobblestoned, gaslighted New York City street of 1904,” with occasional appearances by a barbershop quartet and Miss Rheingold herself. It took two years of study and planning.
13. Schaefer created the longest bar in the world.
The brewer’s pavilion included an illuminated 12-foot-tall fountain, “ornamental trees that at night appear to be filled with twinkling fireflies,” and a 100-foot-long bar.
14. There was a transparent chocolate factory.
The Chunky Candy pavilion showed candies being made in slow-motion.
15. There was an “autoparts harmonic orchestra.”
Inside of the Ford pavilion there was a harp made of transmission housing and brake cables, and a trumpet fashioned from a section of axle and fuel pump parts. See them perform at 6:30 in the video above.
16. Pepsi created a small-scale Disneyland.
The “It’s a Small World–A Salute to UNICEF” boat ride carried spectators past the Eiffel Tower, a Dutch windmill and the Taj Mahal.
17. There were massive smoke rings.
At the General Cigar pavilion, “a machine blows 12-foot smoke rings 100 feet into the air.”
18. There was a “nonsense machine.”
Kids could crawl through the maze-like device consisting of a hall of mirrors, “squeeze-bulbs that emit strange noises and cranks that operate robots.”
17. There was an “international sandwich garden.”
At the Seven-Up pavilion, you could sample sandwiches from 16 countries while a five-piece ensemble played American show tunes and music from all over Europe and Latin America.
18. You could get converted by Billy Graham.
The evangelist’s pavilion included a 400-seat theater and a 100-foot-high tower “topped by a brilliant sunburst.” A 50-foot “wrap-around” screen played a movie “recounting the story of mankind from the beginning of time”; “for those who accept the invitation to receive Christ, given by Dr. Graham in the film, a trained staff offers guidance and counseling, also in several languages.”
19. There were 1,400 public “push button” phones.
And over 450 million feet of telephone wire under the grounds.
20. You could “explore the mysteries of a woman’s mind.”
At the IBM pavilion, “a new kind of living picture entertainment comes to you from nine separate screens,” per an ad. “It puts you inside the mind of a racing car driver at 120 miles per hour. You will explore the mysteries of a woman’s mind as she plans the seating of a dinner party.”
21. You could also get inside the mind of a missionary.
The Wycliffe Bible Translators, a missionary group, exhibited blowguns (“just one of the hazards WBT missionaries have encountered”) along with panels showing “the conversion of an Amazon jungle headhunter.”
22. You could eat duckling stuffed with shark fin.
At the Hong Kong pavilion, which was dominated by three Chinese junks, “Chinese opera singers, acrobats and other groups perform during the dinner hour.”
23. You could see the world’s biggest wheel of cheese.
The 17-ton cheese wheel in the Wisconsin pavilion was “protected against mice by glass, even though experts figured out that it would take one average-sized mouse 27 years to devour the whole cheese.”
24. You could see a million volts of electricity go “crackling” through someone’s body.
At the Sermons from Science pavilion, a Christian endeavor that aimed to “illustrate the compatibility of faith and knowledge,” a demonstrator sent the electricity coursing through his body to ignite a block of wood in his hands.
25. You could see “gaudily dressed clowns” and drink at a 1,500-seat rathskeller.
The Belgium pavilion (shown at 0:20) was a copy of a walled Flemish village from 1800 and included replicas of over 100 houses and Antwerp’s Gothic Church of St. Nicholas. “Four times each day gaudily dressed clowns wearing wooden-shoes, ostrich-feather headdresses and bells dance through the streets.”
26. The Fair’s exhibits were worth $300 million.
That’s according to an insurance estimate that didn’t count irreplaceable art objects.
27. You could ogle Pakistani models.
They appeared in periodic fashion shows to exhibit the country’s “progressive present.”
28. You could see someone hit 30 MPH with a jet pack.
“The actor who ‘flies’ cross-stage in the last scene of the Ampitheatre show, ‘Wonderland,’ is propelled by a hydrogen-powered jet engine strapped to his back.”
29. There was a pain-in-the-ass reproduction of the Santa Maria.
After it made the trip from Barcelona, “tree limbs were cut, telephone lines taken down, street lights swung out of the way, street signs removed, and the truck carrying the 110-ton ship became mired in soft asphalt. Cost of the five-mile trip: about $30,000.”
30. And a reproduction of the Bounty, packed with hogsheads.
The replica of the boat from Mutiny on the Bounty traveled more than 40,000 under sail after it was built in Nova Scotia.
31. You could watch Polynesians dive for oysters.
The Polynesia pavilion (shown at 7:30 in the above video) included “a lagoon where beautiful Polynesian girls pilot outrigger canoes and natives dive for oysters. The oysters were transplanted to Flushing Meadows from Pacific pearl beds.”
32. You could see a million dollars in gold nuggets and ride a mechanical buffalo.
At the Montana pavilion there was also an encampment of American Indians offering “several shows daily of tribal dancing.”
33. There was a model railroad atop a 50-foot map of Long Island.
The map included models of Jones Beach, Montauk Lighthouse, JFK and more.
34. There was a women-only “color carousel.”
At the Clairol pavilion, ladies could enter one of 40 private booths on a slowly circling turntable in order to receive a “complete hair-coloring analysis” that showed them how they looked in various styles.
35. Joan Crawford and Kirk Douglas signed autographs with the help of robots.
At the Hollywood pavilion, they were assisted by “a multiple-writing machine that signs 100 at a time.”
36. In addition to the 1964 panorama, there was a model of the city in 1664.
Plus “a Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority theater that shows color films of the many bridges and tunnels of New York.”
37. You could actually fly over the panorama.
“Passengers enter helicopter-like cars at the Narrows. The cars rise just high enough (two feet) to clear the model. As they fly over the city the lighting changes to evening, while a recording tells of the city’s history and operations.”
38. There were robot dinosaur battles staged by Walt Disney.
As you can see at the 5:12 mark of the video above, the Ford pavilion featured “huge dinosaurs engaging in combat while primitive creatures soar overhead. Life-sized cavemen appear, in a triumph of electronic animation.”
39. An 80-foot-tall tire served as a ferris wheel.
Above, check out the reproduction of the ferris wheel at the U.S. Rubber pavilion. It’s now on display in Allen Park, Michigan.
40. “Hell Drivers” performed in an Auto Thrill Show.
“In the show’s climax, a driver pilots a truck on a dangerous ramp-to-ramp ‘flight,’ hurtling more than 70 feet through the air.”
41. The monorail was awesome.
It could carry 6,000 passengers an hour, including (as you can see in the above video) those Boy Scouts we mentioned.
42. The circus featured chimpanzees playing musical instruments.
43. Members of more than 100 American Indian tribes were on staff.
And 50 American Indians were involved in the construction of the Unisphere “without a single injury.”
44. There were $2 million in wax statues.
Walter’s International Wax Museum featured a 20-by-30-foot copy of the Last Supper.
45. The “Tower of Light” was equal to 50 fully illuminated Yankee Stadiums.
The “world’s most powerful searchlight” was part of this exhibit that also included an animated penguin and polar bear acting out the wonder of air conditioning.
46. There was a Pearl Bailey puppet wearing $15,000 worth of chinchilla.
Plus puppet versions of Sinatra and Elvis, courtesy of the “Les Poupees de Paris” show.
47. There was a “bull in a boudoir.”
In the Texas pavilion, “a real bull is sumptuously stabled in an elegant French bedroom, surrounded by displays of the latest improvements in raising and breeding cattle.”
48. You could eat a 12-course luau and get a canoe ride from a “beach boy.”
At the Hawaii pavilion, naturally.
49. There was an “aerial tower ride and waffle” restaurant.
A “typically European eat-and-ride attraction,” apparently.
50. At the time, the Unisphere was the “largest globular structure ever built by man.”
“All told, more than 500 major structural elements were assembled to mount a 120-foot diameter armillary sphere on a 20-foot base, at a total weight of nearly 900,000 pounds.” And she’s still a beauty, if you ask us. |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump created a commission on Thursday to investigate voter fraud and suppression, the White House said, a move that follows Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud in the 2016 U.S. election.
U.S. President Donald Trump returns from a weekend at his New Jersey golf estate home via Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S. May 7, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Trump signed an executive order creating the bipartisan Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which would be chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.
The move provoked anger among top U.S. civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers, who called it a voter suppression tactic.
Trump, who took office in January, has said there was widespread voter fraud in the November election. The Republican won the White House through victory in the Electoral College, which tallies wins in states, but lost the popular vote to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by some 3 million ballots.
Trump said in January he would seek an investigation into voter fraud in the election, even though the consensus among state officials and election experts is that it is rare in the United States.
“The President’s ‘Election Integrity’ Commission is purpose-built to encourage and enable voter suppression,” said U.S. House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi in a statement. She said the commission would lend legitimacy to state efforts to enact discriminatory voting laws.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Elijah Cummings, ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued similar statements.
Top civil rights leaders said the commission would encourage voter suppression by justifying new barriers like requiring identity cards for voting.
“When Attorney General Jeff Sessions led a similar effort as a former prosecutor in Alabama, it had a chilling effect on the black vote,” said Kristen Clarke, the head of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union voting project, said, “Signing a piece of paper will not make Trump’s false statements about voter fraud true.”
The bipartisan commission would not be limited to investigating Trump’s election fraud claims but look at issues that have been raised over many years.
“The commission will review policies and practices that enhance or undermine the American people’s confidence in the integrity of federal elections, and provide the president with a report that identifies system vulnerabilities,” Huckabee Sanders said. She said the report would be complete by 2018.
The new panel coincides with several U.S. investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the November election, including selectively leaking hacked emails and circulating false news reports. Russian officials have denied such interference. |
Google has always been a proponent of clean energy, and solar power has been a central part of our vision. Over the past year, Project Sunroof has been helping homeowners explore whether they should go solar - offering solar estimates for over 43 million houses across 42 states. Solar installations today are growing rapidly, but there remains tremendous untapped potential as only a half a percent of US electricity comes from solar power.
Today we’re excited to be taking Project Sunroof a step further by launching a new data explorer tool to enable solar estimates for entire communities, in addition to individual homes, by leveraging 3D rooftop geometry from Google Earth to estimate the solar potential for millions of rooftops in America. The tool helps communities, cities and municipalities easily visualize how many rooftops are suitable to install solar, how much power they could collectively generate, as well as how much carbon could be displaced by deploying rooftop solar at scale. Sunroof’s solar potential reports can also be easily shared amongst community members, researchers and policymakers directly from the the tool itself. Anyone can use this tool for free, by simply entering in a state, county, city, or zip code to receive a custom analysis. |
Andy Sinton appointed QPR club ambassador
Former QPR and England international will promote the name of the R's
Sinton commences new position from 15th June 2015
FORMER QPR winger and England international Andy Sinton is returning to Loftus Road as Rangers’ first club ambassador.
Sinton, who made 161 league starts for the Hoops during his four and a half year stay in W12, will embark on his new role from June 15th, working for the club and its charitable arm, QPR in the Community Trust.
In his new role as an ambassador, Sinton’s initial duties will include attending matches, working with commercial partners, supporting club-wide events and initiatives, and working closely with the PR, marketing, and community departments to help promote the name of QPR.
“I’m very excited about the new role,” Sinton told www.qpr.co.uk.
“Ever since I left the club I have always said that I wanted to come back in some capacity at some stage and this feels like a perfect fit, promoting the good name of Queens Park Rangers Football Club across a variety of mediums.
BACK: Andy Sinton has returned to a new role at Loftus Road
“Football is everything I know and love and to stay involved in the game is fantastic. To do that at QPR, where I enjoyed the best years of my career, is even better
“I’ve always had a good relationship with the fans, on and off the field, better than anywhere else I played, so to work closely again with them in the community and on matchdays is going to be an amazing experience for me.
“It’s going to be an absolute pleasure and a privilege.”
QPR Chairman, Tony Fernandes, added: “This is a really important appointment.
“Andy is one of a number of former players who share a great affiliation with QPR and utilising him across all areas of the club to promote what we do is a massive step in the right direction for us.
“It's important that he gets out in the community and shows what QPR is – a family football club.
AMBASSADOR: Sinton will help promoted the name of QPR in the community
“He is a vibrant, infectious personality and I am sure he will flourish in this role.
“With Andy and Les back at QPR, we now have people with very deep roots in the club, which we – as a board – deem hugely important.”
QPR’s Head of Media & Communications, Ian Taylor, will work closely with Sinton and is excited about the return of the 49 year-old, commenting: “Andy lives and breathes football, and especially all things QPR, so when the opportunity arose to bring someone into this role, he was the ideal candidate.
“He will play an integral role across all areas of the club, working closely with the Trust especially, to promote QPR on a local, national and international scale.”
Further details regarding Sinton’s involvement at QPR will be made in due course, but in the meantime, welcome back Andy!
See also ... |
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>| Git
Title text: If that doesn't fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of 'It's really pretty simple, just think of branches as...' and eventually you'll learn the commands that will fix everything.
Explanation [ edit ]
This is Git [ edit ]
Git is a version control system, used to manage the code in many millions of software projects. It is very powerful, and was amongst the first widely adopted tools to use a distributed version control model (the "beautiful graph theory tree model"), meaning that there is no single central repository of code. Instead, users share code back and forth to synchronise their repositories, and it is up to each project to define processes and procedures for managing the flow of changes into a stable software product.
How do we use it? [ edit ]
Although very powerful, the command line of Git is notoriously difficult to learn and master. Dozens of blog posts and websites (see [1], [2]), and even books ([3], [4]) have been written to help users navigate this complexity.
The difficulty of using Git in common situations is contradicted by the apparent simplicity of its use in tutorial-style situations. Committing and sharing changes is fairly straightforward, for instance, but recovering from situations such as accidental commits, pushes or bad merges is difficult without a solid understanding of the rather large and complex conceptual model. For instance, three of the top five highest voted questions on Stack Overflow are questions about how to carry out relatively simple tasks: undoing the last commit, changing the last commit message, and deleting a remote branch.
This comic thus explores the difference between the idealised view of Git's architecture, and its actual typical usage. Tutorials for Git tend to use simple systems in their examples, and only deal with the most basic commands to get started, which can create the misleading impression that Git can be used effectively without extensive study.
Due to this problem, compounded by the fact that Git's commands are named differently from similar commands in other version control systems, many users (including Cueball) are unable to use it beyond basic commands, and might try to avoid problems by saving their code outside Git, downloading a newer copy, and then re-applying their changes to the new copy instead of trying to understand and use the features that exist in Git to accomplish this task.
Memorize these shell commands [ edit ]
Cueball suggests "just memoriz[ing] these shell commands and type them to sync up". He is probably referring to a sequence of commands such as:
git pull # remote changes have now been received, so work on your file git add file.txt git commit -m "Added some text" git push
If you get errors... [ edit ]
As long as every contributor to the project follows these principles, this may suffice for a while. But many situations may cause "errors":
merge conflicts (two people editing the same part of the same file)
unmerged changes (another person committed a change before you did, so you need to merge their changes first)
attempting to recover from a situation such as an accidental merge, and making the situation worse.
In a situation such as a merge conflict, Git will show an error message such as:
CONFLICT (modify/delete): README.md deleted in HEAD and modified in branch-b. Version branch-b of README.md left in tree. # Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.
Save your work elsewhere... [ edit ]
Although Git experts can of course deal with such situations, the remedy proposed by Cueball is "save your work elsewhere, delete the project, and download a fresh copy". That is, to copy the files out of their local repository's working directory, delete that whole structure, then clone the remote repository again (and, implicitly, copy the saved work back again):
# Copy files elsewhere mkdir /tmp/myproject cp * /tmp/myproject cd .. # delete the project rm -rf myproject
# Download a fresh copy git clone https://github.com/myorg/myproject cd myproject
# Copy saved work cp /tmp/myproject/* .
Abandoning the old project likely means losing some work, but may be faster and give a more predictable outcome than attempting to salvage the situation. Applying this method to a mere merge conflict issue may prolong the issue however, as the merge conflicts may still be present.
Title text [ edit ]
The title text suggests an alternative method for working around Git's complexities, which reflects common practice: knowing a "Git expert" who can help in any situation. Such experts are somewhat notorious for waxing lyrically about Git's strengths, so it may be necessary to win their favour by first letting them ramble enthusiastically about it. They will hopefully eventually give the exact commands needed. In practice, the question-and-answer site Stack Overflow is frequently used for this exact purpose.
It may even be a reference to the infamous tweet "Git gets easier once you get the basic idea that branches are homeomorphic endofunctors mapping submanifolds of a Hilbert space" which has been discussed here but it is inconclusive whether a meaningful interpretation exists.
Putting a telephone number of someone who "understands Git" into such a file is humorous because:
Software teams would more normally use electronic means of communication
Explaining Git over the phone to team members should not be necessary, as there is extensive help available online, and
In the situation where many team members would need phone support to avoid or fix basic Git problems, this would be extremely distracting to the person whose phone number was given in the file.
In short: programmers use version control systems to track changes to code. Most of these version control systems are quite similar and easy to learn if you already know another one. Git is a version control system based on completely different principles, and most programmers find it difficult to wrap their heads around it (although Git also offers a large number of nontrivial benefits over standard version control systems, which is why it is used). Cueball is one of those programmers.
Trivia [ edit ]
This comic is referenced on what if 153, the page where Randall, due to a problem with git, erroneously posted a draft of his what if? piece on peptides. As of December 17th, 2016 the page reads:
Whoops This article is still in progress. An early draft was unintentionally posted here thanks to Randall's troubled approach to git, and it took a little bit to get everything sorted out and rolled back. Sorry for the mixup!
The comic 1296: Git Commit also features Git.
Transcript [ edit ]
[Cueball points to a computer on a desk while Ponytail and Hairy are standing further away behind an office chair.] Cueball: This is git. It tracks collaborative work on projects through a beautiful distributed graph theory tree model. Ponytail: Cool. How do we use it? Cueball: No idea. Just memorize these shell commands and type them to sync up. If you get errors, save your work elsewhere, delete the project, and download a fresh copy.
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ripper234
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Ron Gross
LegendaryActivity: 1274Merit: 1000Ron Gross Re: [ANNOUNCE] BTCtoX - Rate Converter between BTC and other currencies June 23, 2012, 11:35:16 AM #11 I just deployed a new version with these improvements:
1. Fixed the API documentation page, it didn't work well.
2. Added weighted average over 1,7,30 days to the API (not to the app itself ... not sure it's needed there, and the app should be redesigned in a nicer way anyway).
3. Added caching! I discovered that BitcoinCharts doesn't like it when API requests are made more than once every 15 minutes... so now I'm caching all outgoing API requests to speed up the process. BitcoinCharts data will be cached for 16 minutes, Mt. Gox and Open Exhcange will be cached for 2 minutes just to get a speed boost.
I'm particularly happy about bullet number 3, because it gave me a chance to play around with Memcached for the first time (it's a bit of an overkill for this project, but it's really simple using Play Framework & Heroku, so I wanted to give it a try ... and it was really easy to implement & deploy).
Please give it a test drive and report any issues.
Ron
Executive Director
Co-founder of the Israeli Bitcoin Association Please do not pm me, use [email protected] instead Mastercoin Executive DirectorCo-founder of the Israeli Bitcoin Association
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Sr. MemberActivity: 274Merit: 250 Re: [ANNOUNCE] BTCtoX - Rate Converter between BTC and other currencies June 24, 2012, 07:49:12 PM #14 This is an idea, since I'm not in trading -- but if there was an API to retrieve a dump of prices in many exchanges, one could build a graph structure and try to compute a cycle of trade to make money. For example, I know that I can buy bitcoin at the cavirtex for CAD for less than mtgox, then sell it for USD on mtgox, move the money accross the border back to canada with RBC USA free cross-border transfer, and be in net profit. Of course there are commission fees in the exchanges, but it is a matter to have all the data quickly retrieved in one location, and running some search and optimization code on it. Since you are querying all those exchanges anyways, maybe you can bunch up all the data into one json, and allow people to make such an application of off your api? Just10.com -- Ad-Free Private Social Network for just 10 of your friends. |
EXID member and one of the hottest stars of the moment, Hani, will be joining Jinusean on the stage of “KBS Music Bank.”
Numerous broadcast insiders have told the media that Hani will be part of Jinusean’s “Tell Me One More Time” for the May 8 broadcast of “KBS Music Bank.”
Previously, Jinusean announced that they will be featuring numerous different female musicians in the song, which was originally sung by YG-trainee Jang Hana. 2NE1‘s Sandara Park and Akdong Musician‘s Lee Suhyun have also joined them on stage for the song so far. This will make Hani the third female star to be guest-featured on a performance of the song.
EXID has recently released “Ah Yeah” and is currently undergoing promotions.
Source: (1)
See also: Jinusean Invites Female Singers to Feature in Performances; First Up Is Sandara Park! |
CLEVELAND -- A 12-member jury has acquitted Westlake police detective Robert Toth of using excessive force on a suspect and making a false police report.
Toth was accused of choking, kicking and punching Teddie Abadie during interrogation.
Toth was represented by attorney Kevin Spellacy. Toth has been on unpaid leave since the charges were filed.
In response to the verdict, Westlake police capt. Guy Turner said, "We are very satisfied with the jury’s verdict."
Following the verdict, Acting U.S. Attorney Carole Rendon said in a statement that "We respect the jury’s verdict. Prosecution of excessive use of force cases are always challenging. Police officers make incredible sacrifices daily and we remain grateful to all of those officers who are working to keep us safe."
Documents filed back in January by federal prosecutors also say Toth wrapped a seatbelt around Abadie's neck after driving him to the cemetery.
Toth was indicted in June on federal charges of using unreasonable force, and two counts of obstruction of justice force for allegedly filing a false report about the incident and lying to a federal agent. He had pleaded not guilty.
This article will be updated. |
NEW DELHI: An 18-year-old rape survivor has alleged that Aam Aadmi Party MLA from Kasturba Nagar in south Delhi, Madan Lal, has been pressuring her to withdraw the case, police said on Monday. The girl has given a written complaint (accessed by TOI) to south Delhi police in this regard after which they have begun an inquiry. The MLA will soon be called for questioning, police said.The rape was reported in December last year, police said. The survivor had been allegedly accosted by the man and sexually assaulted. However, the accused later apologized and married the girl. "As the woman was only 17 at the time and she and her family members had complained to police, we initiated legal action," said a senior police officer.An FIR under sections of IPC pertaining to sexual assault, abduction and POCSO Act was registered at Kotla Mubarakpur police station. The accused was arrested following a raid at his home. He was sent to judicial custody and the police began filing the chargesheet.A month later, however, the survivor again sought help from the police saying Madan Lal, the local AAP MLA, was putting pressure on her to stop pursuing the case. In the written complaint addressed to the deputy commissioner of police, south district, she demanded a speedy probe into the matter.The police immediately sent a written reply to the survivor, informing her that police investigations into the case were complete and that the accused had been arrested and sent to jail. The girl was informed that the department had submitted a chargesheet and trial was to begun shortly.However, police said they are yet to probe the MLA's role in pressuring the victim. "As far as allegations against the local MLA are concerned, an inquiry has been initiated. If the allegations are found true, action will be taken. We will be asking him to join investigations," the senior police officer said.Madan Lal did not respond to repeated calls and text messages.He was recently in news when he alleged at a press meet that he had received a call from an "unknown number" and the person who spoke to him said he would make him talk to a "big person" and mentioned Arun Jaitley's name. Lal had also alleged he was approached by two people on behalf of Gujarat chief minister and BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi a few days ago but said he had no proof to back his allegations. |
Written by Stefanie Fogel
The Walking Dead Season Two is almost here. Telltale's Dennis Lenart, director of the Season Two premiere, and writer/season designer Mark Darin recently spoke to us about the series and its new pre-teen protagonist, fan-favorite Clementine.
PC Gamer: Child protagonists are not all that common in video games. Why did you guys decide to make Clementine the lead for season two?
Mark Darin, writer/designer, Telltale Games: I think choosing Clementine as a protagonist let us really experiment in the way that the gameplay plays out. It lets you experience--like you said, child protagonists are not generally used that often--but it provides us a unique perspective on a world that you've already seen. You spent a lot of Season One playing as Lee bringing up Clementine in a way that you think is going to be best for her. Now, putting you in her shoes and seeing how that plays out, that's something that really resonated with us.
For me, one of the things that is really special about it is that she is not special. She's just a little girl dealing in this world of paranoid and intense people with zombies running around, and she has only herself to get through it. She isn't special. She's not running around with guns. She doesn't have any magic powers. She's just doing everything she can to survive, as any one of us would.
Clem's a normal child, but she did learn how to shoot in Season One. So, are we going to see some of that same kind of action gameplay in Season Two, and how is that going to work with a child character?
Dennis Lenart, director, Telltale Games: You're going to see action sequences at the start of the game, but it's not the same as Lee was. Lee was a full-grown man. The way he deals with people and the way he deals with zombies is very, very different from Clementine. She can shoot a gun, but she's not running around the world with a bunch of guns just taking out zombies right and left. She's got to use her environment. She's got to use everything she has to her advantage. So, the way we're approaching action sequences in Season Two is a little bit different. It's focused on her vulnerabilities and the different strengths that she has, which is very, very different from what Lee brought to Season One.
Does that mean Season Two will include more puzzles?
Lenart: Not necessarily, no.
Darin: I think a lot of Clementine's biggest struggles are not going to come from the action sequences, but it's going to come from the ways the world treats her, and the way you
have to interact with people, and that space that you have as a young girl dealing with new people that you're meeting. How do they trust you? Do you trust them? What level of manipulation is going on, and how do you perceive those things? These are all the really dramatic and intense things that are going to be happening across the season.
Writing believable and interesting child characters can be a bit of a challenge. We've even seen this in AMC's The Walking Dead show with Carl in Season Two, who was not exactly a favorite amongst viewers. How are you guys approaching that challenge with Clementine?
Darin: A lot of shows and games fall into the pitfall of using a child character's inexperience to cause problems, and that makes you not like the character at all, because they're just causing problems. We try to be mindful of that when we're writing our stories, and that's one of the things I think that made Clementine not a hated character in Season One, made her a beloved character. She was not just causing problems through her inexperience, and we're carrying that through Season Two as well.
How much time has passed between the final scene of Season One and Season Two? Where is Clementine when we catch up with her again?
Lenart: That would be a spoiler. We're trying to leave some stuff for the excitement of playing the game for the first time. She's still not a teenager, we'll say that.
The Walking Dead is known for its tough moral choices. In Season One, it was an adult making them. Now, you have this child who could potentially decide who lives and who dies, or who might have to chop somebody's leg off with an axe to save them from the walkers. How is that going to work with Clem, and how will that affect her character?
Lenart: Well, one of the really interesting things you touch upon there is that in Season One, a lot of times, people made good decisions with Clementine around, based on wanting to show her this is how the world is. “You need to learn how to survive,” or “You don't need to see this, I'm trying to keep you, retain a sense of your humanity as much as possible.” There's things you can do that she didn't know about, but now … you're the one who's going to be making Clementine have to go through these terrible times and make these tough decisions. So, there's a lot more of the feeling of ownership, but also, at the same time, I think it really puts you in an interesting head space, where you really feel like the world is just all hits, pressing down around you. It's “The Walking Dead,” so no one's safe at any time. You know that everything you do has repercussions. So, I think the fact that it is Clementine that you're playing as, it makes every little thing a lot harder.
How will some of the choices players made in Season One affect Clementine?
Darin: Basically, we're always looking for little places to call back to things. The choices you made in Season One and the things you did with Clementine color who she is in Season Two. That's an important thing for us. We're trying not to be super heavy-handed with it, but we're really retaining that sense of feeling like the Clementine you helped raise in Season One, this is the logical progression of that arc that you went through with her.
Earlier this week, you guys teased a screenshot of Omid from Season One. What role does he play in Clementine's life at this point?
Lenart: That would be probably spoiler territory, actually.
What about the 400 Days DLC? How does that figure into everything?
Lenart: We did make the promise that 400 Days, and Season One, those choices are going to carry over. A thing that happens in both Season One and in 400 Days, those events, those choices that you made, they will figure into the story in possibly unexpected ways.
How much of Clementine's success as a character do you credit to Melissa Hutchinson and her performance?
Lenart: She's awesome, so a lot of it. Definitely. Melissa's performance is fantastic. She brings this innocence to [Clementine] and this need to want to protect her as well, and her performance--she's an amazing actress.
It's funny. I feel like even in the booth with her recording lines, you feel oddly protective of her as she's recording. It's really weird to be able to, you're sitting there focusing on a line, and you hear Clementine, and you just want to save her. Then you look over and it's Melissa sitting there with headphones. “Oh, yeah, everything's fine.”
Darin: I try not to look at her in the booth. It's just weird. You're sitting there looking at your paper, looking at the script and hearing the line, but you're picturing Clementine in the other room. You look up and it's Melissa. She's so good.
When you made the decision to cast Clementine as the playable character, were you at all concerned about how it'd be received by an audience that's used to playing beefy space Marines and sexy adventurers?
Lenart: Not at all. For me, that was the draw to it, and so maybe it's not as much of a concern. To me, it was more excitement, I guess.
Darin: It's great being in the creative world, that you can jump into and have these meaningful relationships with characters and enjoy that and still be able to, when you're done with this episode, go back and shoot some aliens and have fun with that. There's so many different kinds of games, and you don't have to be limited to one kind. You don't need to stereotype people and say, “This is what gamers want, they just want to run around and shoot things.” They want a perspective. There's room for all these kind of games to exist, and people want to play a variety of things and they're offering that to people.
I think part of the core of this whole game, too, is making her the opposite of a space Marine. So, she doesn't have different guns. She doesn't have special powers. She's not super-oddly strong for a young girl. We really try to make you feel like you are a young girl in the zombie apocalypse, and you have all the same limitations that she would have. I think that's what we're really excited about with Season Two. It's a challenge that you get personally involved in. That's what makes it fun to play, is you put yourself into unique situations and you have to make the decisions, and you have to try to roleplay them in a variety of different ways. That's what's fun about it.
Thanks, guys. |
Arctic Is Warming At 'Astonishing' Rates, Researchers Say
Enlarge this image toggle caption Greenland Travel via Flickr Greenland Travel via Flickr
Scientists released this year's so-called Arctic Report Card on Tuesday, and it is a dismal one.
Researchers say the Arctic continues to warm up at rates they call "astonishing." They presented their findings at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.
"The Arctic as a whole is warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the planet," says Jeremy Mathis, climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and one of the report card's authors.
The cause of the warming is in part due to a feedback loop unique to the Arctic's northern climate. Normally, the region stays cool because snow and ice reflect a lot of sunlight back into space. But warmer temperatures are melting that snow and ice. The melting snow exposes darker ground and water that absorb more of the sun's heat. That makes the Arctic warm up even faster.
NOAA YouTube
Mathis adds that the warming is getting progressively worse.
"The Arctic is getting persistently warmer; sea ice is continuing to show declines, particularly during the summer months," he says. "The second big story for 2016 has been the winter temperatures."
Mathis says it wasn't so long ago that the temperature in Fairbanks, Alaska, where he lives, would drop to minus 40 F for weeks at a time in the winter.
"Now since about 2012 and 2013, it's pretty rare for the temperature to even hit minus 40 in Fairbanks," he says.
Warmer winters have created what polar scientist Marco Tedesco calls a new "precondition" for a higher rate of melting in the spring, when the sun first rises, ending the dark Arctic winter.
"You change the physics of the snowpack so that snow becomes more vulnerable to melting as soon as the sun comes up," he says.
Tedesco, from the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, says polar regions are not as resilient to warming as other places. That's because it takes only one or two degrees to change the Arctic from a frozen world to an unfrozen — and very different — one.
"In other places, going from 75 F to 80 F might not make such a great difference," he says. "But if you cross the melting point, you are basically stepping into a completely new world." |
Matt Bettencourt spent Wednesday night in the hospital because of an issue with his wife’s pregnancy. Everything turned out OK, but Sunday night, the Bettencourts were back in the hospital — only this time it was for his wife’s brother, Brian Rush.
Rush was caddying for his brother-in-law Sunday during the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am when Rush slipped on the rocks off Pebble Beach’s 18th fairway. Rush hit his head twice on the rock, and suffered a concussion, a broken shoulder and a compound fracture in his forearm.
"I hit a tee shot that bounced into the hazard and there was three or four balls down on the tide," Bettencourt said. "The tide was out on the beach, so we made our way down the hill there and his left heel caught a piece of moss on the rock. And I tried to grab him, was a couple inches away and the next thing I know, I mean, he hit his head twice on the rock. He just bounced."
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After about 25 minutes, Rush was put on a stretcher and transported to the hospital.
"We had to let a group play through us because they couldn’t figure out how to get him back up the hill," Bettencourt said. "They had to put him on a board to get him up the hill."
Bettencourt grabbed a friend out of the gallery to carry his bag for the remaining nine holes. He shot 5-over 77 to finish 63rd before rushing to the hospital after his round.
"Getting to know this little hospital here, quite too well," Bettencourt said.
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The Eastern Conference semfinal is turning into a war of attrition between the Raptors and Heat.
Toronto's DeMarre Carroll is questionable for Game 6 Friday in Miami after injuring his wrist in Toronto's 99-91 win on Wednesday. He has a left wrist contusion.
Like Carroll, Miami's Luol Deng left Game 5 in the third quarter with a left wrist injury.
Raptors all-star DeMar DeRozan spent time in the locker-room in the fourth quarter, having a bum thumb attended to, but returned with 4:17 remaining. He said it felt "like a blow torch on my hand."
Miami centre Hassan Whiteside (knee) didn't even make the trip to Toronto and remains day-to-day. Raptors big man Jonas Valanciunas (ankle) was seen after the game, minus his walking boot but moving slowly with a big limp. He is out for the series.
Toronto all-star Kyle Lowry is sporting new Band-Aids each game and is nursing a sore elbow. Heat point guard Goran Dragic needed eight stitches when his teeth went through his bottom lip after a hard collision with DeMar DeRozan in Game 2.
Carroll's absence is cause for concern given he has been defending Heat star Dwyane Wade for large chunks of time.
Carroll crashed to the ground after running into a Miami player attempting to set a block and appeared to land awkwardly on his wrist. He was on the ground for some time, with teammates looking on as he was attended to under the Heat basket. When Carroll got up, he headed slowly to the Toronto locker-room in obvious pain, holding his left wrist.
"It was very scary," said Raptors forward Patrick Patterson. "I didn't know what happened, I didn't really get a good look at it. But I stood up and he was still laying down on the ground.
"Hopefully he's OK. Hopefully whatever tests they do, they all come back negative and he's able to play. But yeah it was definitely scary. Of course we were thinking the worst. With JV going down, we can't afford to lose DeMarre."
X-rays were negative. Carroll did not speak to media after the game.
He had six points in 26 minutes 22 seconds. The six-foot-eight 212-pounder has had an injury-plagued season, playing just 26 regular-season games due to a knee injury.
The Heat said X-rays were inconclusive on Deng, who had four points in 24:20. An MRI is planned in Miami.
"Luol is about as tough a competitor as I've ever been around so we'll see," said Miami coach Erik Spoelstra. "I don't even want to jump to a conclusion right now." |
50 Cent has donated $100,000 (£69,000) to charity after he mocked an autistic airport worker.
The rapper publicly apologised to Andrew Farrell after he tweeted a video of himself teasing him at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport.
In a statement 50 Cent said he wanted "to make good with Andrew Farrell".
He explained that he wanted "to turn this misunderstanding into an understanding".
"There are people that are ignored, mistreated and neglected with disabilities that need our support," he said.
"Today, I have made a donation of $100,000 to this worthy cause through Autism Speaks.
"I am calling on my fellow musicians, actors, entertainers and all others who may not have fully considered this cause to join together to help in any way they can."
50 Cent posted the video writing that the janitor seemed "high" and that "the new generation is crazy" but Andrew Farrell didn't appear to respond.
The rapper, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, deleted the video.
It was Andrew Farrell's first job, which he'd been working in for a month.
After the video was posted a school friend of Andrew Farrell's left a comment, saying: "He has extreme social difficulties, just to let you know.
"He has a hard enough time getting through life without jackasses like you making fun of him. I hope you feel good about yourself. You just lost a huge fan."
50 Cent said he personally apologised to the family.
In a statement, they said: "As requested we have received a letter apologising for 50 Cent's behaviour and we have chosen to accept it, along with a request that a donation be made to Autism Speaks.
"Though a letter of apology will not undo what 50 Cent has put our family through, we are choosing to forgive.
"A great lesson can be learned from this heartbreaking situation. Regardless of the way that another person appears to you, it is never OK to publicly humiliate them via social media."
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