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The Queen's Bands cheer at the 2009 Vanier Cup (Queen's University photo)
Carleton University, with a football playoff spot at stake, is silencing one of Canadian university sport's longest-standing traditions on Saturday. .
Not that the some 80 members of the Queen's University Bands are being silent about being barred from bringing instruments to Saturday's Queen's Golden Gaels-Carleton Ravens clash in Ottawa. As per Carleton's request, they will leave the flutes, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, French horns, sousaphones, and drums at home in Kingston. Instead, they will have another noisemaker that is permissible under Ontario University Athletics rules.
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"Our solution that we've been given, basically, is that we are bringing vuvuzelas," said Bridget Rusk, a highland dancer who is also the Bands' finance manager, referring to the notorious noisemakers that assailed eardrums worldwide during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. "We'll be very noisy, so I hope that Carleton is happy that they asked for no instruments.
"Anyone in that stadium can bring vuvuzelas, so we're going to bring them too," the third-year geography student added. "And the athletic department at Queen's is providing the vuvuzelas."
"We have pretty great lung capacity," added fellow highland dancer Laura Stemp, the Bands' operation manager.
On Tuesday, after receiving confirmation for a purchase of 80 tickets in the 4,000-seat stadium, the Bands received a friendly reminder that they would not be allowed to perform.
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The Bands — pluralized since it encompasses a colour guard, brass band, pipe band, drum corps, highland dancers, cheerleaders and a mascot, Boohoo the bear — have played at Queen's home and away football games since 1905. The organization is older than the Grey Cup. It's generally accepted among fellow Canadian football-playing schools that when the Gaels come to town, the Bands come too.
Queen's retaliatory move also includes offering a vuvuzela to any fan with a ticket.
'Keep all the home-field advantage that we can'
Carleton relaunced football in 2013 and can secure an OUA playoff berth by beating the 2-5 Gaels, who are out of playoff contention and are playing for pride. It is also trying to incorporate its own fledgling pep band, which is fundraising to buy instruments, into its gameday presentation.
The Bands say they have filed a complaint to the OUA, but it appears a century-old tradition has been benched by a second-year team with post-seasoon dreams.
"The Queen's band has been around for a really long time; our band was a little bit concerned about them coming and we wanted to make sure that our band got an opportunity," said Shannon Chinn, Carleton's manager of interuniversity sport, adding that Ravens use a 'compressed' gameday script that skips having two media timeouts in each quarter.
"They even have a hard time getting in, because of the rain we've had at a couple games and with the instruments they happen to have. So we've had a challenge getting our band into a game to date this year. They played out front a couple times and played at the Panda Game [which was held off-campus].
"Our program is on a bit of surprising upswing right now and this is an important game for us," Chinn added. "We want to keep all of the home-field advantage that we can. We had some concerns with the size – they have 80 people in their band, when we're on offence and whatnot. So our request was that we keep our home-field advantage. We spend a lot of money on our DJ and our game-day experience that we're trying to establish here."
Rusk said there has "never been an issue about us bringing our instruments" when the Bands have followed the Gaels to other OUA stadiums and they have followed rules about when to be quiet. Their performances at both Guelph and McMaster earlier this season coincided with those universities' homecoming games. Guelph beat Queen's 66-0 that Saturday, by the way.
Hence being taken aback.
"I was a bit surprised when I got an e-mail saying 'no instruments for our band,' " said Ed Charbonneau, Queen's drum major. “I had a short conversation with them regarding whether they were actually serious about this. Essentially, it boiled down to, they were very serious.
"They said it was best for our university to leave all of our instruments at home, due to the fact... well, they cited a number of reasons. The first being that their coaches that had personally requested that we not bring instruments. Other reasons that they cited was that their own university band is rather inexperienced and young and they didn't want to, I suppose, overshadow them."
Chinn cited her experience working with the CFL's Saskatchewan Roughriders, noting that its Gainer the Gopher mascot was once barred from a crucial late-season game in Calgary.
"There were many times I wasn't allowed to bring our cheerleaders," she said. "We'd gone to Winnipeg many times for the bounce-back game after the Labour Day Classic. But there were times when it there was a big game down the line where there was a lot at stake and they didn't want the visiting team to have that little bit of an advantage of getting some fans onside and getting momentum going.
"Like I said, our band is really brand-new and we're just figuring out how to get them into our game day. Our timing of the entertainement part is shorter because we run a compressed script [with no mid-quarter media timeouts]."
Chinn maintained the move was not driven by Ravens coach Steve Sumarah and his staff.
"We collaborate as a department, all together," she said.
(Speaking of collaboration in the OUA, the Bands and the Western Mustangs cheer team performed together in 2008. So anything is possible.)
Carleton and Queen's did not play during the former's first season back in 2013.
Over the years, the Bands have followed the Gaels across Canada from Halifax to Saskatoon, even performing during national semifinal games that had much higher stakes than Saturday's game. That's an exception to the rule in Canada, and they believe a rule was flouted.
"I don't think they're really within their rights to do this, it's really confusing," said Stemp, a fourth-year student who will be performing at her final football game on Saturday. "If you look at the OUA's strategic plan for this year, they've specifically emphasized that they're looking for exposure, visibility and attendance at games. And this is 80 people who are happily planning to attend and pay for tickets, bring a lot of supporters to the game whether or not they're for Carleton.
"If the OUA is looking for visibility and exposure, one way to get it is to allow us to attend and perform."
Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet. |
I’m not going to belabor this discussion; this topic is being debated all over social media and blogs today and I have just a few simple points I’m going to target and then call it good.
If you haven’t heard, Author of the Twilight Saga, Stephanie Meyer, has released (or will be releasing? I’m not sure) her rewrite of the books with genders swapped: Edward is now Edythe and Bella is now Beau.
Heads are rolling, to say the least.
From what I understand, Meyer’s rewrite was inspired by criticisms that Bella is an insecure, submissive character – she wants to prove that wrong. I actually find that fascinating because I think we sometimes unknowingly project our perceptions of gender roles onto characters based on the exact biases we’re trying to fight; it will be interesting to see if Meyer can bring this to light.
Now I’m not going to debate her motivation for this rewrite, except to say that if you think she’s completely money-focused you’ve never actually watched an interview with her; and if you think she doesn’t care about money you’re probably a tad idealistic. Yes, it’s about the money, and yes it’s about the writing, the art, and the curiosity.
The big question for me is this: is this a brilliant artistic and gender-identity literary exploration or is it a stupid attempt at sucking as much life as possible out of a successful franchise?
My background: I loved the Twilight books and saw all the movies, but I’ve never been a major Stephanie Meyer fan. I’m a bit critical of her writing ability, TBH, and I tend to like more deep and gritty explorations of characters. That said, the storyline of Twilight, I believe, VERY intriguing. I’m a bigger fan of the Fifty Shades of Grey version of the “I want to kill someone I love” concept simply because I think it’s far more layered and nuanced and dives deep into trauma psychology which I find fascinating, but Stephanie Meyer gets a lot of credit for building the first widely-appealing and jaw-dropping iteration of this storyline.
And now, she’s taking it to a new level. And I’ve officially become a fan.
I think her rewrite is huge. If you think it’s stupid and money-mongerong, consider this: it can be difficult to tell a story from the viewpoint of your opposite gender (think Grey by E.L. James). Consider now, telling the exact same story, but rather than just telling Edward’s side, tell Edward’s side as if he were a female and Bella were a male. This is not fucking easy, folks!!!
But that’s not the only reason I’m supportive of this idea – there’s lots of literary exercises that are difficult. I’m supportive simply because this approach is COMPLETELY FUCKING NEW. I know, you can complain all day that it’s the same goddamn story, but tell me, what author has ever done this before? Who has ever rewritten their story (the exact same story) with the genders switched? What are the implications on our perception of gender and gender stereotypes? This could be huge! Now, it could suck too. It could completely reinforce everything society already believes and be a complete failure. But until I read it, I’m willing to give Meyer my applause for at least taking on such a formidable task. Because who does this?? No one does, that’s who. And that’s how history is made.
And if you don’t find that convincing, let’s just consider the reaction she’s getting from her rewrite. The first three posts I saw on the subject were raving mad people who think this is the stupidest thing they’ve ever heard of. I still have yet to see someone say something positive about it.
And that’s when I knew: this might be the move that turns me into a fan.
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Three teen police cadets are in custody on suspicion of having stolen LAPD black-and-white patrol vehicles and they may have also impersonated police officers, Chief Charlie Beck said Thursday.
Investigators realized two cruisers were missing about 5 p.m. Wednesday, and immediately focused their suspicions on a 16-year-old female cadet assigned to 77th Street Division, Beck said.
At 9:30 p.m., the two missing vehicles were located, being driven in tandem within the station’s patrol area. The drivers refused to pull over for police, Beck said.
A chase began, with the vehicles ultimately going different directions. Both vehicles crashed and the occupants were taken into custody – the two drivers and a passenger.
One of the stolen vehicles crashed into an unrelated driver, Beck said.
Beck revealed Thursday that those in custody were all cadets, ages 15, 16, and 17. Their names are not being released because they’re juveniles.
They were booked on suspicion of charges related to the theft of the vehicles and “other property.”
During an inventory of the 1,800 black-and-whites owned by the Los Angeles Police Department, one more vehicle was discovered missing, the chief said. That was soon tied to the cadet suspects, and interviews with them led to the discovery of the vehicles near 76th Street and Central Avenue.
The cadets may have impersonated police officers, Beck said, asking for the public’s help.
“We would like anybody that has information about that kind of activity being conducting by very young-appearing male and female partners to call the Los Angeles Police Department,” Beck said.
Such incidents might have occurred in the south or central parts of L.A. or areas to the west, such as Inglewood, he said.
No police firearms were missing, Beck said, but investigators recovered two LAPD Tasers, two police radios and an expired bullet-resistant training vest, which was being worn by one cadet.
The cadets were familiar with tracking systems and were able to sign the vehicles out of an automated vehicle inventory system, logging in as a vacationing sergeant, Beck said.
“The cadets were sophisticated enough to sign these cars out … not in their own names, but in the names of police officers who had a right and a responsibility to use these cars,” Beck said. “They gamed that system.”
It’s unclear how long they had the vehicles, but one may have been out for two weeks, Beck said.
“We do daily inventories of equipment. It obviously didn’t work in this case,” the chief said.
However, a watch commander did notice a vehicle missing and came across a video showing a “young-appearing female” fueling up at an LAPD gas pump, Beck said.
There are more than 2,300 active cadets, many of whom come from “difficult” neighborhoods and are seeking mentorship and increased opportunity, the chief said. The cadet program will be completely reviewed, as will equipment management systems.
“We’re very proud of our cadet program and I don’t want the actions of these three individuals to reflect negatively on the other 2,300,” Beck said.
He said the investigation is in its preliminary stages and many interviews still need to be conducted.
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Donald Trump once again refused to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin in the final presidential debate – saying Putin has 'no respect' for his rival, Hillary Clinton.
An angry debate had some of its harshest and most rapid-fire charges yet between the two on the same stage when Wallace asked about Russia, a strategic rival to the United States.
Hacking that the U.S. government says Russia has been behind has roiled the campaign, exposing awkward emails with the release of thousands of messages by Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in recent days.
Trump once again refused to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin – who he said wasn't his 'best friend.'
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Who's the puppeteer: Trump faced accusations that he was Vladimir Putin's puppet -which he rejected, saying he was not the Kremlin overlord's 'best friend'
Puppet too? Trump accused Clinton of being the plaything of her donors
'I don't know Putin. He said nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good,' Trump said.
Trump, who has previously said Putin is a stronger leader than President Obama, said, 'He has no respect for her, he has no respect for our president, and I'll tell you what, we're in very serious trouble.'
He continued: 'Putin, from everything I see has no respect for this person,' driving home the point.
'Well that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States,' Clinton countered.
A supporter of hers, former CIA deputy director Michael Morell, has said Trump may be an 'unwitting agent' of the Russian Federation, citing a series of campaign ties and policy positions.
'You're the puppet!' shot back Trump.
Clinton countered that Trump was willing to 'spout the Putin line' and implement his policy 'wish list' in Syria and other countries.
'You continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race,' Clinton said.
Clinton then pivoted to the repeated hacks on Democrats, including her campaign chair and on the Democratic Party.
'This is such an unprecedented situation,' Clinton continued.
Attack: The exchange on Russia began in a discussion of immigration, veered to Wikileaks and went on to cover hacking
'Hillary, you have no idea,' Trump interjected.
'She doesn't like Putin because Putin has outsmarted her at every step of the way,' Trump said.
Trump at one point in the campaign invited Russia to hack Clinton's emails, but said he was being sarcastic. During the debate he brought up some of the emails, which have been dumped on WikiLeaks.
'John Podesta said some horrible things about you, and boy was he right,' Trump said.
Wallace asked Trump point blank whether he would condemn Russian hacking – and Trump did, though in language that was vague.
'By Russia or anybody else,' Trump responded – keeping alive the possibility that someone else was behind the hacking. 'Of course I condone,' he said – leaving out a direct object in his sentence instead of saying he condoned Russian hacking.
Later in the debate, Trump responded to Clinton's charge that he put NATO allies at risk with past comments that he might not jump to defend those who are owing in their dues to defend the alliance. |
Time and again I run into this word in the work I do as an advocate for open space in Duluth, Minnesota: gentrification.
Nearly every time I’ve heard it, it’s been used to describe the revitalization and restoration of communities and how such restoration is pushing out the lower and middle income folks to the benefit of those with more money. Increasingly, though, this same term can be applied to the outdoor culture.
In our case, maybe it should be called “bro-ification.”
Bro-ification describes the disconnect between how outdoor recreation activities are marketed and portrayed in the media–particularly sports like skiing, climbing, and off-road cycling–and the reality of who actually does those sports, and where.
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I’ve observed how the outdoor industry and the media have portrayed getting outside for nearly my entire life, and what used to be a very “volkssport,” inclusive, hippy-like identity has transformed into a super-elitist and entitled one. The destinations presented in the media are generally so unattainable by most people that they might as well be on the moon–and don’t even bother going if you’re not wearing expensive, high-tech apparel and using modern, high-priced gear. Exotic and expensive are the norm.
Meanwhile, nearly everywhere here in the United States, we have incredible public lands that can deliver experiences on par with those in far-away locations that cost a fortune to get to. And you can walk out your door and have those experiences every day.
I have been a party to this bro-ification in the jobs I’ve held, the images I have created, and in promoting the places I worked. But I have to admit that even though I am a lifelong off-road cyclist, nordic skier, and backcountry wanderer, even I am intimidated by some of the people, images, places, and marketing campaigns thrust upon us today.
We are finally at the extreme edge of the bro-ification of outdoor recreation. The public images of the outdoor enthusiast, our playgrounds, and our experiences are those the entitled and elite. And that sense that outdoor adventure belongs to the wealthy and well-connected is pushing aside the common participant.
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Who cares, right? The answer is, we all should. We need everyone to keep our outdoor playgrounds safe and accessible–people of diversity, at-risk youth, urbanites. When even the most mundane piece of equipment is marketed through expensive-to-get-to environments with a smiling, suffering-to-live-the-dream Caucasian person, the message is that these pursuits are not for everyone. Finding adventure outdoors is only for the jetset–for the young, white and rich. The places you need to go are beyond your reach.
Okay, I’m a white guy, born and bred into these activities. But even as part of the establishment, I can see this is a problem. My bet is that the young Latino, black, or native American kid hears this messaging even louder.
The more I dig into the access work I’m doing here in Duluth, Minnesota, the less I can deny the impact of this messaging on my ability to get things done. Bro-ification is cited as a reason for cities to not get involved in access projects that would pull more people across the community into outdoor recreation. These sports, I’m told, are not for the diverse populations we have in Duluth; rather, they offer value only to an elite, wealthy segment of the population. Meanwhile, on the ground, we are actually getting more millennials interested in the outdoors and in the quality of life it brings, and the demographics of that generation tend to be more diverse, more family-oriented, and include more female participation. These are the folks of the future and the people that communities like Duluth need to survive.
Outdoor recreation has traditionally been about being accessible and simple–about getting outside to enjoy nature. Sports like skiing and cycling were created because of a need for transportation and were enjoyed by a broad spectrum of people regardless of economic status. Climbing and camping started out as simple ways for folks to enjoy the outdoors, to commune with nature out the backdoor. Simple pleasures.
These activities could be a strong tool to help cities that are down on their knees economically to stand up and take advantage of long neglected open and natural spaces, to make the lives of their citizens healthier and happier.
Equity is the new buzz word on the leadership circuit. I believe in this concept and I believe that it will drive how future leaders work in their communities going forward. If we as outdoor advocates are positioned as elitist, our work will not be seen as creating equity at all; it will be seen as the opposite, as creating divides. I have to push back constantly on what my staff sees in the media and takes for granted as how users will act or look on the trails or outdoors.
I remember a lot of jeans and flannel shirts when I was nordic skiing as a kid, and I remember the sports I grew up with had both horrible athletes and amazing ones. The primary reason for doing them was literally to just have fun. It’s been an interesting arc to witness: outdoor sports apparel went from tattered, overly loved clothing used in passionate pursuit of a simple adventure to high-tech, high-priced modernity that–if you were to believe magazines and catalogs–are best paired with billion dollar ranches and restored wooden yachts and kitted-out Mercedes Sprinter vans in Jackson Hole or Aspen or other places that are unaffordable for the majority of the population.
We have arrived at this point not only in our industry but also in some of our conservation and advocacy groups. I recently sat through a presentation given by the group called Shift. I generally agree with the conversation Shift is trying to pursue, and support the main idea of their group. However the way it was presented and the space it addresses offers very little for the grass-roots outdoor advocate in the trenches. I found myself cringing not only at the language used in the presentation but also at the imagery and the lack of actual direct action Shift was taking on its own vision. I saw nothing but privileged people living the dream and talking a good game about changing society through base jumping in Yosemite. If I were to have made a similar case in a city council meeting here in Duluth, I would have been laughed out of the room. Unfortunately, Shift is not the only group making this mistake.
It’s time that the industry and the media to pull back from the current marketing trends and begin spreading a message of inclusion and finding unmitigated fun in our own backyards–not near-death experiences in remote locations and exotic resort towns. Otherwise, we risk alienating the very people we need to grow our numbers and keep our natural playground open–regardless whether they’re wilderness areas or a more urban-oriented park.
For outdoor brands, think of the opportunity. The industry has stepped so far beyond what’s real, the brand that embraces inclusion is going to differentiate itself. The question is, in an arms race that rewards helicopters and ends-of-the-earth travel, can anyone even remember what “real” is?
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International supply chains are increasingly at risk from production losses due to heat stress, study says
By Megan Rowling
BARCELONA, June 10 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The globalisation of the world's economy this century has made it far more vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather, including heat stress on workers, scientists said on Friday.
A study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Columbia University showed production losses caused by high temperatures, predicted to rise further with climate change, now spread more easily from one place to another as they ripple through global supply chains.
In just a decade, the susceptibility of the world's economic network to heat stress - which causes workers to tire quickly among other physical effects - has doubled, researchers found.
This is because production has become more interlinked since the turn of the century, said co-author Anders Levermann, a top climate change expert at the Potsdam Institute.
The first decade studied, from 1991 to 2001, did not suffer increased production losses, in contrast to the decade from 2001 to 2011, he noted.
"Weather extremes are not really factored into the thinking of a lot of industries, and in particular not weather extremes far away," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "But our study shows it's really one world with respect to climate impacts."
The researchers looked at the effects of small daily disruptions to production from extreme temperatures leading to heat stress among workers in construction, agriculture and other economic sectors.
They covered economic flows between 26 industry sectors and final demand in 186 countries, running computer simulations of heat-stress consequences to find out more about how production losses are propagated along supply chains.
"It is really a global phenomenon - whichever sector... is hit by weather extremes is going to have the same response, the same problem," said Levermann.
The researchers said the findings, published in the journal Science Advances, pointed to the need for societies and businesses to adapt to more intense weather extremes.
For example, they could make better use of insurance against production failures or expand their pool of suppliers, Levermann noted. But for that to happen, there must be greater awareness of climate change and its effects on the global economy, he added.
FLOOD LINK TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Work is underway, meanwhile, to strengthen evidence on the links between extreme weather events and climate change.
This week, scientists collaborating on the World Weather Attribution (WWA) programme concluded that human-caused climate change played an important role in the heavy rains that pounded parts of France in late May and early June, triggering flooding and destruction.
The probability of three-day extreme rainfall in this season in France has increased by at least 40 percent because of global warming, they said.
For the Seine river basin, it is likely to happen roughly 80 percent more often than in the past, and for the Loire around 90 percent, they added.
But there were no conclusive results from a similar analysis of late-spring thunderstorms in Germany, they noted.
In parts of central and northeastern France, historic flooding of rivers led to widespread power outages and forced Parisian landmarks like the Louvre art museum to close. The deluges are reported to have killed at least 18 people in Germany, France, Romania and Belgium, the WWA team said.
"These latest lethal floods in Europe illustrate the rising impact of extreme weather events, including (on) developed and well-prepared countries," said Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.
"Sadly we saw that even advanced infrastructure and water management cannot prevent some areas and neighbourhoods being overwhelmed and people sometimes dying."
(Reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. |
An Armenian man holds a placard at a rally in Yerevan | Karen Minasyan/AFP via Getty Images Foreign Affairs Why we need to contain the Caucasus crisis Armenia and Azerbaijan are two or three steps away from a Bosnia-style conflict that could be deleterious for the wider region.
Four days of violence in April unfroze the generation-old Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. A new truce was signed to halt the recent outbreak of violence in the Caucasus between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. But it is fragile and has already been broken. As Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan acknowledged, there could be more fighting “at any moment.”
It is no exaggeration to say that Armenia and Azerbaijan are two or three steps away from a Bosnia-style conflict that could be deleterious for the wider region. What can be done to stop that happening?
* * *
The Karabakh conflict is as old as it is intractable. From 1991-94 Armenians and Azerbaijanis fought a hot war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The territory was part of Soviet Azerbaijan but its population was three-quarters Armenian. The Armenian side prevailed, leaving 20,000 dead and displacing more than 1 million.
A ceasefire was signed in 1994. Armenians were given de facto possession not just of Nagorno-Karabakh itself, but (in whole, or in part) of seven Azerbaijani regions unrelated to the original dispute. The Armenians called the territory a protective buffer zone.
The 1994 ceasefire was supposed to be a prelude to the peace agreement that never came. The international community’s eyes and ears in the region consist of just six monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
The ceasefire has been under heavy strain for a couple of years now. Azerbaijan has been building up its store of heavy weapons and both sides have engaged in rhetoric more extreme than at the height of the conflict in the 1990s.
The ceasefire finally cracked on April 2. The most likely cause was an Azerbaijani attempt to test the Armenians’ defenses and force them to negotiate from a weaker position. The Azerbaijani military regained some slivers of lost territory — and an awful lot of lost pride. But the human price was high. Officially, several dozen people were killed. Experts put the death toll nearer to 200, including many civilians.
The four-day war stirred up long-seated anger and sharpened mutual insecurities. Azerbaijanis still feel humiliated by defeats suffered more than 20 years ago. There was a patriotic upsurge of euphoria throughout the country, a useful distraction from the socioeconomic crisis that has seen its currency, the manat, devalued twice in the last year. The temptation — and, worryingly, the public pressure — to try this kind offensive again is enormous.
Armenia saw a similar surge of nationalist emotion. Caught flat-footed by fighting, the country witnessed a sobering few days. Young Armenians volunteered to join the front line.
Given the massive arsenals of weaponry both sides now possess, new fighting could easily escalate into an all-out conflict far more destructive than the 1991-94 war. Baku and Yerevan could invoke their military assistance treaties with Turkey and Russia respectively. Neither wants to get involved, but would be under big pressure to honor their commitments in the region.
Other regional neighbors are also alarmed. Georgia, in particular, could become caught in the crosshairs. Armenians and Azerbaijanis constitute Georgia’s two biggest minorities. The BP-run Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that runs through the country could also become a target.
A security vacuum has opened up around Karabakh. It will only be filled by serious peace talks — or by more fighting.
The formal peace process has been close to moribund for five years. Neither President Ilham Aliyev nor President Sargsyan has said anything constructive or conciliatory. The conflict’s three mediators and co-chairs of the OSCE’s “Minsk Group” — France, Russia and the United States — have had to limit themselves to shuttle diplomacy. Their modest ideas are routinely rejected.
The three co-chairs have said they want to launch “comprehensive negotiations.” These could take the form of a peace conference chaired by the three foreign ministers.
It’s an important step, but the two presidents want very different things. The Azerbaijani side wants new negotiations and to use its military force as leverage. The Armenian side is digging in harder — they are reluctant to agree to anything that might look like submission to Azerbaijani military pressure and have demanded “security guarantees.”
* * *
Can this crisis be contained before it escalates? We first need to challenge one common preconception: the idea that Russia can fill that security vacuum and manage the conflict.
Russia’s top officials did swing into action and negotiate a verbal ceasefire on April 5. But Russia has done little since then. Its problem is that it has simultaneously mediated and destabilized the conflict.
The Russians have been selling arms to both sides. An estimated 85 percent of Azerbaijan’s weaponry comes from Russia, while Russia has a military alliance with Armenia, sealed by a new treaty signed in 2010.
This balancing game means that Russia is unable to set the agenda in Karabakh. Both Baku and Yerevan are skeptical of Russia’s intentions. In Armenia especially, the new backlash against Russia is significant. Because Russia has no military presence on the ground and no monopoly on the peace process, both countries can block plans for a Russian peacekeeping force that would reassert its influence in the region.
So the common belief that, if things get worse “Russia can handle it,” is misplaced. This poses a challenge to the United States and France. Neither has done enough to offer a balanced international plan.
Unless progress is made now, more fighting is likely to break out after the international spectacle of Azerbaijan’s much-coveted Formula 1 race in Baku ends in late June. We can only hope that the prospect of more intense fighting in the Caucasus, and its dangerous implications for the region, will concentrate minds on solving a conflict that has been ignored for too long.
Thomas de Waal is a senior associate at Carnegie Europe in Brussels. |
× Expand Desmond Cole, right, with Ford supporter William. Photo by Jonathan Goldsbie
I set out for Ford Fest on July 25, the latest in a series of public picnics held by Mayor Rob Ford, with a mission: to engage black Ford supporters, and only them, in conversation about our mayor's consistent expressions of anti-black racism.
Many of the hundreds gathered at Thomson Memorial Park in Scarborough were people of African and Caribbean descent.
But of the 30 or so I spoke with, very few were willing (or able) to problematize Ford's use of the word "nigger," his description of blacks as "fucking minorities" or his claim that no one has helped black people more than him.
A middle-aged woman named Sheila, who attended with her husband, Roy, bristles at my questions.
"He's not racist," she said definitively. "The people don't like him, so they would say anything about him."
I asked if those who reported Ford's language had simply made it up. "Yes, they would do that," Sheila quickly responded.
A young man named Mark and his friend Steve were similarly eager to explain away Ford's bigotry.
Said Mark, "I use the same words and I'm black, so how am I going to knock him for it?"
When I asked if white people have licence to call blacks "nigger," he said, "It depends on what context they use it in."
"If there's anger behind it, then there's a problem," Steve added. Does he believe Ford's "fucking minorities" comment betrayed anger? "That's his opinion," he said. "And technically speaking, that's what we're considered as: minorities."
Mark added, "Maybe he meant minorities in an economic sense. I'm sure everybody else in politics is using even more derogatory words. It's just not publicized."
Kevin, who came across the city from Etobicoke with his wife and young children, said he's supported Ford since his early days on city council. His son clung to his leg and listened as I asked about Ford's discriminatory remarks.
"I'm a teacher, and I've heard a lot of other teachers use the N-word at school," he offered. "I say it's more ignorance... a lack of knowledge. Rob Ford probably doesn't know the meaning of the word. People use it as a friendly term."
Kevin added that the media are out to get Ford "because he opposes gay marriage," a stance the teacher said he appreciates.
The unwillingness among Ford's black supporters to confront his racism seems extremely nuanced and strategic. As black Canadians, they've experienced racism first-hand and know how badly it stings. When these folks deny, obscure or ignore Ford's racism, they're delivering a grim message: all politicians look down on black people, but at least Ford will occasionally grace them with the privilege of his presence.
Everyone who spoke with me suggested that our politicians and the system they serve are generally corrupt and specifically racist or indifferent toward black people.
Such low expectations of public service make Ford a hero for offering his black supporters a hamburger and a little attention. A woman who gave her name as Flavour told me passionately, "I've been living in Scarborough for many years, and this is the only mayor I've ever gotten to shake hands with."
This sort of desperation and insecurity would be comic if it weren't so consistent among the blacks I interviewed.
Ford may not be perfect (I heard this at least a dozen times), he may even be racist sometimes, but he performs token positive gestures toward blacks that others won't, and that's good enough for many.
Those I spoke with sounded resigned to some racism in politics. For them, Ford's divisive brand represents an awkward but acceptable compromise. Despite the depth of disillusionment among many black people about our status in this city and country, it is naïve to assume that we are universally intolerant of anti-black racism.
Black Torontonians are, we cannot forget, facing a disproportionately grim set of social and economic circumstances: as children we're more likely to be kicked out or suspended from school; as adolescents we're the targets for non-investigative stops by police; as adults we're less likely to find good jobs. Many blacks identify with Ford as victim, as someone whose behaviour is over-scrutinized, and they jump on his bandwagon.
The consequences of black disillusionment played themselves out in a powerful way at Ford Fest. While I conducted interviews, a group of LGBTQ protesters arrived at the picnic. A large and angry throng of Ford supporters, including many black people, taunted the queer protesters and chanted at them to "go home."
This is civic engagement Ford-style, and the mayor has employed the same rallying cry against black people in different circumstances. Only two years ago, he used a shooting in Scarborough to propose his race-baiting suggestion that the city deport people convicted of gun crimes. This is how Ford repays the unwavering loyalty of his black supporters, but many of them are too caught up in his game of patronage to fight back.
I did meet a couple of dissenters. A man named Andrew said he was loyal to Ford and repeated the opinion that his bigotry has been taken out of context. But when I asked black people who support Ford should still condemn his language, he gave a reply I hadn't heard all evening.
"Definitely [they] should. Because there is a racial boundary. We came from very far, and some wounds never heal. So because of who he is, it's not right even for him to say it, even though I support him."
A woman named Josine spoke with me just after her daughter had her photo taken with Rob's brother Doug, who'd been working the crowd for hours.
Her response to the Ford brothers' repeated comments that no one has helped black people more than the mayor? Josine wrinkled her nose and said, "They haven't done anything for our community... but I don't know anything."
[email protected] | @nowtoronto |
References to Watergate, impeachment, even Richard Nixon, are being tossed around these days as if they were analogous to the current so-called scandals. But the furors over the IRS , Benghazi, and the Justice Department’s sweeping investigation of the Associated Press, don’t begin to rise—or sink—to that level. The wise and pithy Matt Dowd, a former Republican operative, said recently, “We rush to scandal before we settle on stupidity.” Washington just loves scandals; they’re ever so much more exciting than the daily grind of legislation—if there is any—and the tit-for-tat between the president and the congressional Republicans over the budget was becoming tedious. Faux outrage is a specialty here.
Obama, anxious not to be seen defending everybody’s punching bag, the IRS , quickly ceded ground on what could be perfectly defensible actions. He may come to regret taking what seemed a trigger-happy decision to order a criminal investigation of the Internal Revenue Service, a sure way to drag people who may have—may have—simply made errors of judgment through a long and expensive legal process that is likely also to keep the agency from examining the validity of the application for tax-free status of any group with powerful allies. If, following the Citizens United decision, there is a sudden doubling of the number of new organizations with similar names and missions, and these organizations apply for tax exempt status—and also the right to hide the names of their donors—might it not make sense to use a search engine to find them? This what the just-fired sacrificial acting IRS commissioner, testifying before a congressional committee on Friday, termed a “grouping” of the cases that had already been almost universally condemned as “targeting,” which he insisted it wasn’t. But this simple explanation wouldn’t do, didn’t warrant the term “outrage” routinely conferred on the IRS case. Could it just possibly be that the Tea Party and their allies see a great benefit in making a stink over this? How better to freeze the IRS examinations of these groups?
According to press reports none of the Tea Party groups have as yet been denied 501(c)(4) status, though this has happened to some liberal organizations. The real problem is that the process takes a long time and the questions are excessive, some even ridiculous. Pinning the whole thing on Obama—pinning all that they can of these “scandals” on him—gladdens most Republicans’ hearts. I say “most,” because such prominent conservative commentators as Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol have urged the Republicans to proceed with more caution, fearing that as often happens they will overdo it. And Republican congressional leaders have begun to worry that the troops may go too far, inviting the sort of backlash that smacked Newt Gingrich and his fellow revolutionaries in 1998, following their reckless impeachment of Bill Clinton, losing them seats and costing Gingrich his Speakership. It’s quite possible that some lower-rank government employees did some stupid things, and it’s clear that the agency had poor leadership (under a Bush-appointed director) but there is no evidence that any of this was directly or indirectly on the president’s orders.
Meanwhile, new information about what happened in Benghazi keeps coming in, changing that story. The Talmudic scholarship that’s been applied to the administration’s talking points—what the various agencies urged that a representative of the administration should say on the Sunday talk shows—has led to the conclusion that that mushy and somewhat misleading statement was the typical product of a typical inter-agency struggle over blame-shifting. The omission of some material from an original draft—on the not unreasonable ground that the terrorist groups that perpetrated the attack shouldn’t be put on notice that the US knew who they were—hardly ranks as a cover-up. Was the administration confused or was it anxious to avoid the acknowledgement that the US consulate in Benghazi was attacked by terrorists from the start, by saying that they came in later? The administration later released all of the emails among the agencies to Congress but few members bothered to go to the briefing or read the material. And as it turned out, the White House didn’t play a hand in doctoring what the talking points would say.
In order to stoke the conspiracy theories, Republican congressional aides leaked false versions of the interagency emails and ABC ran with them without checking. Republicans focused the controversy on Hillary Clinton rather than David Petraeus, the CIA director at the time, though Petraeus also agreed to the talking points and was responsible for hiring the local defenders who melted away at the first shot, and the misinformed intelligence on what happened that night was a failure by the CIA. (But Petraeus was most unlikely to run for president in 2016.) That the US presence in Benghazi was essentially a CIA operation was kept quiet. The inability to adequately protect our foreign missions has been a bipartisan failure and Congress’s stinginess with funds for the protection of our assets in foreign countries also bears some responsibility. In any case, the Republicans might be well advised to tread carefully on the matter of ignored warnings. So far, the George W. Bush administration has got by amazingly with their obvious failure to act on indications months before September 11, 2001, that a major terrorist plot was in the works .
The Justice Department clearly overreached—even its own guidelines were ignored—in its effort to gather information about a leak to the Associated Press about the CIA foiling a terrorist plot in Yemen—a leak which the AP delayed publishing at the request of the White House and the CIA, and only ran when it heard that the White House was going to release information. But this doesn’t reflect a crusade against the press—though the news media make a lot of noise about such actions, and perhaps rightly so. It is true that Obama has been especially fierce (if selectively) about national security leaks, but there’s a long history of administrations going too far to stop leaks and intimidate potential leakers. Even if the president urged Attorney General Eric Holder, a close friend, to go after the AP, does anyone seriously believe that he spelled out how it was to do so?
Thus far, not one of these so-called scandals has reached the Oval Office. Even in the event, which seems unlikely now, that one of them does, it still wouldn’t come close to the pattern of actions taken by Nixon and his aides that nearly undid our democratic system of government four decades ago. Barack Obama couldn’t be Richard Nixon if he tried. No one could. Nixon was, fortunately, sui generis. So, what was Watergate about, and how does it differ from what is going on now?
Compared to Watergate, on the basis of everything we know about what are the current “scandals” amount to a piffle. Watergate was a Constitutional crisis. It was about a pattern of behavior on the part of the president of the United States abusing power to carry out his personal vendettas. It was about whether the president was accountable to the other branches of the government; it was about whether the Congress could summon the courage to hold accountable a president who held himself above the law. It was about a president and his aides who were out of control in their efforts to punish the president’s “enemies.”
It was also about, though this has still gone largely unrecognized, an attempt by a sitting president to determine the nomination of the opposition party’s presidential candidate. Potentially strong challengers were spied upon, their offices broken into and files disappeared, their campaign events disrupted by what were diminished by their categorization as laughable “dirty tricks.” It was about black bag jobs and paying criminals to carry out ideas that sprang from the fevered brain of a president who saw opponents, political and otherwise, as enemies, and then trying to hush the whole thing up. The attempt, not unsuccessful though not exclusively their doing, to try to get the opposition party to nominate its weakest candidate was a step along the road to fascism. It was a putsch by a head of state.
Nixon’s extraordinary abuse of his new power started almost as soon as he had put away his Inaugural finery. In February 1969 he told his staff that he wanted private funds raised to establish an intelligence unit within the White House to carry out around-the-clock surveillance of political opponents. This led to the hiring of a group of fanatics, bums, fools, and losers—most of them paid for with private funds but run by White House aides and right out of the Executive Office Building, next door to the White House. Some were of Cuban origin and had participated in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba; to motivate them Nixon instructed that they be told that their mission was to root out Communists in the Democratic Party. (He even ordered that they be required to read the chapter of his memoir Six Crisis that recounts his exposure of Alger Hiss as a spy for the Soviet Union. But Nixon was always telling people, even Mao, to read Six Crises. The shrewd Mao had beat him to it.).
The following year Nixon signed off on a plan (the “Huston plan”) that included not just wiretaps also but break-ins and intercepting mail; the plan was so extreme that even the powerful FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, no civil libertarian, objected; though Nixon said that the plan had been rescinded parts of it were implemented. The list of “enemies” he ordered John Dean to draw up, was considered by many who were on it funny and even a point of pride, but it was a chilling exercise of power: the president used the levers of government, including the IRS , to audit and harass his opponents, a wide swath of people in public and private lives. Nixon was often heard on the tapes telling his aides he wanted them to “get the goods” on this or that perceived enemy. Edward Kennedy, presumably Nixon’s most powerful opponent for reelection, was put under twenty-four hour surveillance for a time by one of the clowns hired by the White House to carry out Nixon’s plan.
Nixon’s most serious problems arose out of his obsession about the leak of the Pentagon Papers, in 1971. This led—shortly after the Papers were first published in The New York Times—to the establishing, four days later, the White House “plumbers” office in the EOB . A sign saying PLUMBERS was on the door. But even before the plumbers office was fully set up Nixon’s aides implemented “Special Operation No. 1”: in a first step toward punishing the leaker, Daniel Ellsberg, the White House sanctioned the gravest offense—a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in order to get the files of this particular patient. A raid of the office of the psychiatrist of a private citizen on the orders of the president of the United States. This clear flouting of the Fourth Amendment protection of private property from searches and seizures was the most disturbing act during this extraordinary period and it shook even conservative senators; Nixon knew that its discovery was the single greatest danger to him, and this was what he was so frantically trying to cover up. As it happened, even though one of the plumbers had cased the place, the psychiatrist’s office contained no files at all.
The obsession over the leak of the Pentagon Papers also led to the mad suggestion by the president of the United States that the offices of the Brookings Institution be firebombed in order to get to the safes in the offices of former Kissinger aides, Leslie Gelb and Morton Halperin, who were suspected of keeping the drafts of some unpublished chapters of the Pentagon Papers. The president could be heard on the tapes instructing his aides: “Godammit. Get in there and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.” You see, Kissinger had ordered up the study. Ellsberg had been assigned by Kissinger to do a super-secret study on the papers and had been given access to them, which were stored at Rand. Though one of the burglars had searched Brookings and reported that the files existed, there were none. In any event, some White House aides thwarted that plan before it was fully carried out.
In this context the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building on June 17, 1972 was almost routine. This one, when the burglars were caught, which started the unraveling of Nixon’s secret plots against his enemies, was actually the burglars’ fourth attempt: in the first attempt they faked a banquet to get into the building but ended up locked in a closet; the second time they couldn’t break the lock on the DNC office door; the third time, on Memorial Day, they got into the DNC office but put a bug on the wrong phone, so on they went back to fix it. Perhaps because breaking in had become so habitual they got sloppy and left the immortal piece of tape on a door. That the plumbers were stumblebums doesn’t negate the sinister nature of what they were told to do.
In October 1973, Nixon rattled through a series of beheadings of those who got in the way of his desperate attempts to prevent the tapes into which he had sealed his own fate—as he was oddly aware—from being turned over to the prosecutors. He first ordered the attorney general, Elliott Richardson, to fire Archibald Cox, the Independent Prosecutor who had subpoenaed the tapes and got a court order that they must be released. Richardson, a Boston Brahmin, also refused and was fired by the president; the next in line, Bill Ruckelshaus, a popular environmentalist, also refused and was fired. Finally, the next in line, Robert Bork, agreed to fire Cox. The prosecutors’ staff was barricaded in their offices trying to protect their files from the FBI , who had surrounded them and told them they could not remove their papers. As the bulletins rolled in, one after another on that dark Saturday night, it felt as if we were living in a banana republic and now there were grounds for fearing a President who was irrational and out of control. There was a run on the bookstores to buy legal scholar Raoul Berger’s Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems (1969). No one knew how to impeach a president.
When the House Judiciary Committee took up its work at the beginning of 1974, trying to impeach a sitting president who still had a fairly strong political base was a daunting prospect. Impeachment had not yet been cheapened by the zealots who conducted a trivial pursuit of President Clinton. The triumphalism came later, spurred on by the myth that Watergate was a victory of the good guys over the bad guys. It was about something far deeper: whether our constitutional system would survive. If the Committee did vote for articles of impeachment by a bipartisan and definite majority it was probable that the House would agree and vote to impeach—indict—the president. Next would come a trial in the Senate. And the president remained defiant. The committee had to get it right.
Almost forgotten is the part played by an obscure New Jersey congressman, Peter Rodino, who had been chairman of the committee for only a year. (Inevitably once the spotlight fell on him, rumors circulated, without any evidence, that he must have ties to the mob.) Rodino was not the most articulate member by far but the miracle of the Judiciary Committee’s adopting on a bipartisan basis three articles of impeachment was due to the fact that ordinary people rose to the task and did extraordinary things; Rodino’s choices made a critical difference.
Showboat attorneys or flashy advisers were turned away. As it was, Rodino had to struggle against some committee members who wanted to conduct a prosecution of the president. The two people who along with Rodino shaped not just the committee’s action but the history of the downfall of Richard Nixon were a twenty-seven-year-old Francis O’Brien, who had no prior experience in such matters but was recommended to Rodino for his uncommon judgment, and John Doar, the counsel whom O’Brien had found. Doar had served in the Eisenhower Justice Department and then was a civil rights hero in Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department. He was methodical and low-key and built the case against Nixon brick by brick, slowly earning the trust of committee members, the press, and the public.
These three men had concluded that if there were to be articles of impeachment that would be accepted by a still-divided country they had to be seen as arising from a fair process, be bipartisan and come from the center of the committee members: those on the right who defended Nixon to the end and the most partisan Democrats on the committee had to be contained, and moderate Republicans and southern Democrats had to be convinced that voting for articles of impeachment was necessary and urgent. James Madison’s writings and the Federalist Papers became as familiar in the discussions as morning newspapers.
The atmosphere in Washington was unlike anything that had gone before or has happened since. We lived in fear. Knowing that the telephones of some of the presidents’ “enemies” were being tapped, we joked in our telephone conversations about our phones being bugged. (No Internet then, but just think of the Nixon people’s probable temptation to trace emails.) One Sunday morning when the newspaper delivery was late, a perfectly sane woman I knew said, “They’ve stopped the papers.” It got to the point where, near the end, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger felt compelled to send a memo to military commanders to obey no command that came from the White House to dispatch the troops to restore order.
This brings us to the strange character of Richard Nixon, probably the most peculiar person to serve as president of the United States. He was also an unlikely successful political figure. He didn’t particularly like people and few people liked him. He had very few friends, trusted almost no one. He was awkward in many ways, from his odd motions at times to his virtual inability to make small talk. Nixon’s confusion of opponents with enemies and his indulging his long nurtured grievances gave us a president who came to office filled with hatreds and was willing to use the instruments of government to “get” them. The president was a dangerous man.
But even then, we didn’t know just how dangerous were Nixon’s personality traits. Not until I was doing research for a book about him for the American Presidents series did it become clear that he was often drunk, barking out orders in after-midnight calls to his aides, his words slurred, and they would have to decide whether to carry them out. Worse still, on the advice of a wealthy backer who kept him stocked, Nixon began to take Dilantin, an anti-convulsive drug, on the grounds that it would lessen depression, though it had never been approved for that. Dilantin served to enhance the effects of too much alcohol: mental confusion, slurring of words, physical clumsiness. Often Nixon was holed up with his best and only close pal, Bebe Rebozo, outside the White House, in Key Biscayne or at Camp David. On the eve of the “incursion” into Cambodia, a disastrous spreading of the Vietnam War, the two men were at Camp David and one or the other would call Kissinger to make sure that the incursion went forward. “It’s your ass, Henry,” said one of them, their drunken voices hard to distinguish.
So contrary to the myths that have been built around it, or the use that later politicians want to make of it, Watergate wasn’t about the mistakes of a bureaucracy, it wasn’t a cops and robbers story, or about courageous journalism. It was about a pattern of acts by a president that threatened the constitution, the law, and the Bill of Rights.
Nothing happening now comes close to that. |
Who hasn’t wanted to be a pirate? Like a Hollywood-style, Monkey Island, Pirates of the Caribbean Pirate I mean. My college class on pirate history quite firmly disabused me of the desire to ever be a real pirate, because in reality it was pretty nasty and they didn’t have toothbrushes at sea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upokTRX7ubI
For those looking to live through the highlights of the pirate experience, you’ll want to check out the upcoming game Sea of Thieves. Being developed by Rare Ltd, Sea of Thieves is a multiplayer online pirate experience that aims to be unlike any other, and in their recent time visiting the port of New York Comic Con 2017, the development team behind the game shared some insights and news with lucky panel attendees. In attendance at the panel were executive producer Joe Neate, senior designer Shelley Preston, marketing art lead Pete Hentze, and design director Mike Chapman.
The panel started with an overview of the game and its goals, for those unfamiliar with Sea of Thieves already. When gamers hear the term “multiplayer,” what usually comes to mind now are trolls, bullies, insanely leveled people who have been playing an MMO for the last 8 years of their life, and microtransactions. While there are plenty of people out there who enjoy MMOs, the fact is that the toxicity of the experience can be a major turn-off for a lot of gamers, and the ridiculous amounts of leveling that are required to keep up with others can be a big turn-off to casual gamers and those pressed for time. Sea of Thieves aims to change that. Developed specifically with the intention to avoid toxic gameplay without censorship or neutering player choices, the developers also aim to create a level playing ground that doesn’t segregate players based on the amount of time put into the game.
In addition to showing a peek into the development process, the team also revealed some new information for fans in attendance. First up was the addition of a brig (pirate jail) to the hold of each ship. A new way to deal with trolls and deliberately unhelpful players, if a majority of the crew votes to send one of four teammates to the brig, off they go. It’s not an irreversible decision, however, so if a player changes their minds and decides to make nice, they can be allowed back up on deck. Or they can be left in jail to re-enact that scene from the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie with 18 Johnny Depps on screen—player’s choice.
Another exciting announcement was the addition of single or two player ships. While Sea of Thieves is still intended as a multiplayer game, the devs acknowledged that sometimes people will want to try the game out without the hassle of joining a crew and that people also want to play when their crew members are offline. These smaller ships are meant to be crewed by only one or two people and have distinct advantages and disadvantages when compared to a standard four person ship, meaning that each cater to a different playstyle and neither is inherently a better way to play.
These new features, along with others, are soon to be rolled out in the game’s currently running alpha testing mode the team announced. And after a round of fan questions, I was able to talk to the team for a more in-depth look at the world of Sea of Thieves. Interested? You’ll find it above.
Sea of Thieves is scheduled to be released in early 2018 for PC and Xbox One platforms.
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Scientists at the University at Buffalo are developing a graphene-based composite that will hopefully serve as a rust-proofing alternative to the toxic coatings that are now being used. The researchers believe graphene’s hydrophobic and conductive properties may help prevent corrosion, repelling water and stunting electro-chemical reactions that transform iron into iron oxide.
Buffalo, New York — University at Buffalo researchers are making significant progress on rust-proofing steel using a graphene-based composite that could serve as a nontoxic alternative to coatings that contain hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen.
In the scientists’ first experiments, pieces of steel coated with the high-tech varnish remained rust-free for only a few days when immersed continuously in saltwater, an environment that accelerates corrosion.
By adjusting the concentration and dispersion of graphene within the composite, the researchers increased to about a month the amount of time the treated steel can survive in brine. (Because brine is an extremely harsh environment, the coated steel’s survival time in the real-world would be many times longer.)
The UB chemists leading the project are Sarbajit Banerjee, PhD, an assistant professor, and Robert Dennis, a PhD student. Their next step is to use a $50,000 grant from the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute to enhance the graphene composite’s lasting power, as well as the quality of its finish.
Tata Steel, an international company that has provided past funding for Banerjee’s projects, has been helping the scientists test larger sample sizes, Banerjee said.
Bringing the coating to the market could not only benefit public health, but also save jobs, said Dennis and Banerjee.
“Our product can be made to work with the existing hardware of many factories that specialize in chrome electroplating, including job shops in Western New York that grew around Bethlehem Steel,” Banerjee said. “This could give factories a chance to reinvent themselves in a healthy way in a regulatory environment that is growing increasingly harsh when it comes to chromium pollution.”
Graphene, the thinnest and strongest material known to man, consists of a single layer of carbon atoms linked in a honeycomb-like arrangement.
The material’s hydrophobic and conductive properties may help prevent corrosion, repelling water and stunting electro-chemical reactions that transform iron into iron oxide, or rust, Banerjee said.
UB’s Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach (STOR) has submitted a provisional patent application to protect the coating Banerjee and Dennis are refining. As sponsors of the research and due to inventive contribution by Tata employees, Tata Steel also has certain rights to the technology.
“Tata Steel has always displayed leadership in motivating innovative research and product development by leveraging partnerships with universities. UB has been one of our choices for cutting-edge coatings technology development on steel substrate,” said Debashish Bhattacharjee, PhD, Tata Steel’s group director for Research, Development and Technology.
“The development of an environmentally friendly alternative to hexavalent chromium would truly revolutionize this sector,” said Anahita Williamson, PhD, director of the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP2I), a research and technology transfer center funded by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. “The metals plating industry identified this as a high-priority research project and NYSP2I is excited to support UB researchers in their efforts to develop solutions.”
The New York State Pollution Prevention Institute, headquartered at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), is a partnership between RIT, Clarkson University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, UB and the state’s network of Regional Technology Development Centers.
Banerjee, a materials chemist, has worked closely with industry and STOR to commercialize his research since joining UB in 2007.
In addition to his work on graphene, Banerjee has spoken to companies in the building materials industry about his research on vanadium oxide, a synthetic compound that could be used in “smart” windows that reflect heat from the sun only on hot days.
“UB 2020, our university’s long-range plan, asks faculty to take an active role in translational research, and our rust-proofing project is an example of research that benefits communities on both a global and local scale,” Banerjee said.
Images: University at Buffalo |
Recently, Paren took on its first mobile project using ReactNative. As a web developer, I’m excited to move into the mobile world. However, this transition came with a lot of frustrations. In this article I share my thoughts on the current state on React Native and its ecosystem from my perspective as a web developer. What follows are the most common ReactNative questions asked of me by my web developer friends.
Is ReactNative stable and ready for real world use?
Yes, ReactNative is ready for real-world use. There are a lot of production apps written using ReactNative.
But stability is subjective. Compared to React, ReactNative is still very new. Web development (with or without React) is also a lot more mature than mobile development. Therefore, ReactNative tooling is not nearly as stable as web development tooling. To put React and ReactNative maturity into perspective: React currently has over 66k stars on Github and fewer than 600 issues while ReactNative has fewer than 50k stars but over 1,200 issues. React is a lot more stable and has a more adoption.
What sort of apps is ReactNative good for?
If you want to build an app that doesn’t use a lot of mobile-specific or complex functionality, like tracking footsteps, ReactNative and community libraries should cover most if not all of your requirements.
However, if you want to build a more complex app and ReactNative doesn’t provide the APIs you need, you would have to write native bridges to expose the native functionality. You can also rely on open source projects to provide native bridges for you, but that is not guaranteed to provide a complete solution.
In this project, we are using Expo. Expo is awesome; it helps us move fast (and not break things, hopefully). Here are some of the things Expo provides:
Additional APIs and components not provided by ReactNative
A GUI and CLI that eliminate the need for XCode and Android Studio
An iOS and Android app for running Expo apps
Hosted infrastructure for instant deployment
The biggest problem with Expo is that, to fully benefit from Expo’s features and infrastructure, you cannot use custom native code. Most good ReactNative open-source libraries are incompatible with Expo because they use native code. We discussed tradeoffs of using Expo in more details in our talk.
Is ReactNative good for prototyping?
Yes, ReactNative is great for prototyping and with Expo it is even better. Expo makes ReactNative mobile development more like web development. When you make JavaScript-only changes, you can push directly via Expo, instead of going through Apple’s or Google’s approval process. Expo uses Ngrok during development, allowing you to open and hot-reload builds on any device, just like you would with a website and any browser.
If you already know and use React, getting started should be pretty easy. Surprisingly, styling proved to be the most challenging aspect for me. I say “surprisingly” because I know CSS quite well. However, there is no CSS in ReactNative; everything is styled with JavaScript. Inline styles are the only way to style components. If you aren’t familiar with inline styles, I encourage you to view these slides.
Inline styles do not cascade. The cascading property of CSS allows one to easily set global styles. For example, in CSS you could do something like * {font-face: helvetica} and that should cascade to all DOM elements. In ReactNative, you would have to create a text component with the font styling that you want, and reuse that throughout the app. This makes sharing generic components in ReactNative more challenging than in React.
On the bright side, with ReactNative, you don’t have to deal with CSS insanity or supporting old browsers.
How much Objective C or Java do I need to know?
As long as you are willing stay within the bounds of the ReactNative community, none. That’s one of the points of ReactNative. You only need to know how to write JavaScript with ReactNative. Although, a little bit of background in iOS and Android ecosystem would certainly help. If you decide not to use Expo you may occasionally need to do some configuration with Xcode or Android Studio.
How much code can I realistically expect to share between iOS and Android?
There are significant differences between iOS and Android which we talked about at Clojure/west. Each came with its own default styling, APIs, and UI components. Some behave similarly on both, some don’t. If you are building a generic app that doesn’t require a lot of native functionality, then almost all of the code can be shared.
How should I structure the code base to support iOS and Android builds?
If you plan to use Expo like we do, you won’t have to worry about this. Without Expo, you will need to have two entry points; one for iOS and one for Android. You can start a basic Expo app by using create-react-native-app .
Conclusion
If you already know React and choose to use Expo, it should be pretty easy to get started. ReactNative is far from perfect but it’s good and getting better quickly. Giving it current stage and its cross-platform strength, it is hard to beat. For web developers who are already familiar with React, the pros definitely outweigh the cons. |
The pall wraps Dogtown in dirt and brown. The air is burnt, acrid. Stay outside for the day and the coughing begins, a dry hack at the back of the throat that clears nothing and leaves you dry.
Every year it’s the same, the palm oil plantations are cleared, fires spring up across all of Indonesia and the smoke goes up an apocalyptic season unto itself. As heavy as the smoke lies the sense of resignation, it’s another country, the government is powerless, too much money in back pockets and brown envelops for anything to change.
“We stay indoors” say the people who can. Houses, air-conditioned cars, offices, all sealed tight and the shopping malls fit to burst. It’s a marker of status, a new culture emerging, who gets to stay indoors, who has to go out.
In the workshops and warehouses of Dogtown there is no indoors, just a roof for the rain. No one wears a mask, there doesn’t seem to be much point. This is the raw edge of environmental destruction, a hard reality and an everyday practicality, a dream of blue skies turned to brown. |
by LetsRun.com
February 18, 2015
Previous versions of The Week That Was – our weekly recap – can be found here. We already gave many of our thoughts on the great action at the 2015 NYRR Millrose Games when it took place.
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What goes up, must come down…..
Isaac Newton once said, “What goes up, must come down.”
Since we’re not sure if Newton was a sports fan, over the years we’ve taken that phrase and applied it to the sport and particularly running with our line of “everything averages out to be average.”
What are we talking about?
There seemed to be one overarching theme last week at the 2015 NYRR Millrose Games: hardly anyone ran as fast as they wanted.
American miler Shannon Rowbury , who had run a 4:22.66 mile on a flat track coming in, only managed a 4:24.32 mile on the quick, banked Armory oval.
, who had run a 4:22.66 mile on a flat track coming in, only managed a 4:24.32 mile on the quick, banked Armory oval. Cam Levins , who had looked invincible in completing a 3:54/8:15 double at the Armory two weeks ago, looked at best mediocre in running 13:33.
, who had looked invincible in completing a 3:54/8:15 double at the Armory two weeks ago, looked at best mediocre in running 13:33. Nick Willis , who had run a 3:51.61 mile in his season opener in Boston, winning by a ton, only managed a 3:51.46 at the Armory in a losing effort – a time he was disappointed with as not only did he have competition, but he also told us he thinks the Armory track is a few seconds faster than Boston’s.
, who had run a 3:51.61 mile in his season opener in Boston, winning by a ton, only managed a 3:51.46 at the Armory in a losing effort – a time he was disappointed with as not only did he have competition, but he also told us he thinks the Armory track is a few seconds faster than Boston’s. Erik Sowinski, who 2:19.12 for the 1k a week before at the NBIGP in Boston only managed a 2:21.18 in New York.
“Everything averages out to be average.”
Often in track and field, you’ll see someone run a huge early-season time and think, “man, imagine what they’ll run later in the season,” only to be disappointed that the bigger improvement doesn’t come. Similarly, you’ll often see a person make a huge breakthrough in a given year and think, “imagine what they will do next year,” only to see that they regress.
Whenever someone makes a huge breakthrough, either from year to year or within a season, one thing we are very much aware of is everything had to go right for the breakthrough to occur.
In terms of indoors, the runners above likely all overachieved in their first efforts. Shannon Rowbury wasn’t expecting to run 4:22 on a flat track, she was just hoping for 4:25. So she overachieved but then expected to continue to improve off of that overachievement, which is probably unrealistic. More likely than not, if you overachieve one week, you underachieve the next.
In 2010, Andrew Wheating went from 3:38.60 to 3:30.90 in the 1500 and people started speculating, “imagine what he’ll do in his first year as a full-time pro in 2011.” The reality was, he improved by nearly eight seconds in 2010. Everything had to go perfectly for that to happen so the odds of it going even better the next year weren’t good (Wheating’s best 1500 in 2011 was 3:34.39).
So who had a monster year last year?
One guy that comes to mind is Hassan Mead. Will Mead, who ran 13:02.80 last year, become just the seventh American under 13:00 in 2015? We hope so, but doubt it. He’s had two monster years back-to-back, going from 13:28.45 to 13:11.80 in 2013 and then from 13:11.80 to 13:02.80 in 2014. Having three in a row is very hard to pull off.
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One last thing about Millrose. Almost everything about Millrose was incredible from our perspective– the press conference, the fields (particularly the men’s NYRR Wanamaker Mile, one of the greatest indoor mile fields ever assembled), the races — except for one thing that baffles us, there definitely were some empty seats. The fans who were there were definitely into it, but not all the seats were full. Now many of these seats were behind the weight throw cage with poor views, so many people “sitting” there moved down and stood track side as meet organizers told us there were just a “handful” of unsold seats and more than 5,000 in the building.
But come on New Yorkers. Millrose, the best pro indoor track meet in the US, should sell out months in advance. The fact that a city of 8.4 million can’t sell out a 5,000-seat venue is a bit depressing for our sport. Yes, there were a lot of things working against Millrose this year – it was during a 3-day holiday weekend, it was on Valentine’s night and the NBA All-Star game was in the city. Plus it was Fashion Week.
But track as a spectator sport continues to struggle in the US (editor’s note: and this despite the fact Millrose was an advertiser on LRC trying to pack the Armory). If you’ve got suggestions on how track meets (in particular in NYC) can get more butts in the seats, email us at [email protected] Or if you are a track fan in the NYC area and didn’t go to Millrose we’d like to know why as well too.
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Florence Kiplagat Does It Again
The winning times for the mid-d and distance races may have been a tad disappointing at Millrose (we really want to see that sub 3:50 mile) but Florence Kiplagat more than made up for it in Barcelona. At the 25th Mitja Marató de Barcelona, she broke her own women’s half marathon world record of 1:05:12 by running a 1:05:09, setting world records at 15k (46:14) and 20k (1:01:54) en route.
Her 5 km splits were 15:39, 15:33 (31:02), 15:12 (46:14) and 15:40 (1:01:54). At 15k, she was 22 seconds up on her time from last year but had to ease off a bit and missed the sub 1:05 barrier. She told the IAAF:
“I began to believe I could break records at 11km, then I got to 15km and through that was enough, especially as I am preparing for the London Marathon. I also had to ease back twice in the next five kilometres so I was amazed I was still on world record pace at 20km.
“In the final few hundred metres, my coach (Renato Canova) was yelling at me, ‘C’mon, you can do it’, so I just said to myself, ‘Right, we are going for it!’”
It will be interesting to see how the 27-year-old Kiplagat, who initially got into athletics hoping to get a scholarship to a U.S. university, does in London.
Given her CV, which includes a World XC title and the Kenyan national 10,000 record of 30:11.53, both achieved in 2009, it’s surprising that her fastest marathon was the first one she’s finished — 2011 Berlin (2:19:44) — when Kiplagat became at the time just the second woman in history to finish her first marathon under 2:20 (now three have done it).
Last year, she was the runner-up in both London and Chicago but winning 2015 London won’t be easy as Mary Keitany is in great shape as shown by her 66:02 win at the RAK Half on Thursday.
More: Florence Kiplagat Runs 1:05:09 To Break World Half Marathon Record At Mitja Marató de Barcelona That’s 4:58 pace. An amazing run as the course has turns and no other woman has come within 41 seconds on a legit course.
*SPIKES Gives A 13-Point Timeline Of Florence Kiplagat’s Career Leading Up To Her 1:05:09 13.1-Mile WR
*Full Coverage of 2015 RAK Half
*MB: The Future Is Here: Drone Used to Film the RAK Half Marathon
*RAK Half Live Thread!!!
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Video of the Week
Annually, the RAK Half Marathon is the richest and often one of the fastest — if not the fastest — half marathons on the planet. Here, you can read about last week’s race, where Ethiopia’s Mosinet Geremew (60:05) got the win on the men’s side alongside Keitany. More than who won, the race for us will forever be remembered as the first pro race that we’ve seen employ a drone to shoot video. Boy, was the footage stunning.
We’ve contacted the race organizers to see if we can get more footage as the two video clips below don’t come close to showing you how great the footage was.
Here is three seconds of the drone:
And eight more seconds:
Other races apparently have used drones like the St. Olaf Cross Country Invitational in the States, but the drone in the RAK got very close to the runners and got incredible closeups. Liability concerns in the U.S. likely are a huge issue moving forward.
More:*Full Coverage of 2015 RAK Half
*MB: The Future Is Here: Drone Used to Film the RAK Half Marathon
*RAK Half Live Thread!!!
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Email of the Week / Free Training Advice: Break Up With Your Girlfriend / Start Dating A Boy
On Thursday, we received the following email which included a guaranteed Millrose win for one athlete. The email was right on the money.
I ran for Steve Spence at Shippensburg University. He used to tell us the best way to get ready for a big race was to break up with your girlfriend. He said it would clear your mind and get you motivated. I think he was 49% serious. He might say otherwise. One year I tried it. It worked great. I was angry, I was motivated, I was free. I ran great.
Move forward to **Name Redacted**. He was dating track hottie **Name Redacted** (come on guys we need more track TMZ). This was obvious via some Instagram posts and such. Over winter it seems they have broken up. **Name Redacted** was even seen subtweeting (look it up) on Twitter about it. Since then he has set the track on fire. He has a clear mind, he’s focused, and about to win the Millrose Games because of it. Trust me.
For the record, this email’s prediction was right on the money.
When LetsRun.com co-founder Robert Johnson was coaching at Cornell, the conclusion that he and many coaches came to was college-aged males did best when they were on the prowl (being recently broken-up counts, unless the guy was totally devastated). College-aged women were the opposite — they did better when they were in a relationship.
So if there was a courting process between a guy on the team and a woman on the team, the men’s and women’s coaches both benefited -p just at different times. The men’s coach benefitted until it became a relationship — the women’s coach afterwards.
It may be total BS. Let us know what you think on our messageboard.
MB: True or False: Young men run better when on the prowl/recently broken up – Young women run better when in a relationship
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Speaking of the messageboard, we always laugh when people say pros “don’t go on there anymore.” We know they do as many complain privately to us about the criticism they get on the boards — failing to realize that fan stands for fanatic and that megastars like Tom “Cheater” Brady and Lebron “Choker/Not Clutch” James get ripped all the time. Getting criticized by fans means you are big enough that they care how you do.
Proof that the pros still very much lurk on the messageboard appears below:
MB: Emma Coburn only learned her AR wouldn’t be ratified from postings on the LetsRun Message Board
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Getting Ready For World Cross Country Championships
The 2015 World Cross Country Championships are coming up in Guiyang, China, next month and we’re starting to get pumped for the purest event in all of running.
The Kenyan Trials were last week and taking a quick look at the Kenyan and Ethiopian teams on the men’s side, we are giving the early edge to Ethiopia.
Credentials Ethiopia Kenya # Sub-13 or Sub-27 Guys 2 1 # Sub-60 or Sub-2:07 Guys 2 1
Ethiopian Top 6 At XC Trials / PBs
1 Tamirat Tola 35:08 – 28:24 road/61:27/2:06:17
2 Bonsa Dida 35:08 – 13:41/28:03 road/61:12/2:12:33
3 Atsedu Tsegaye 35:12 – 27:28/58:47
4 Hagos Gebrehiwet 35:18 – 7:30/12:47
5 Tesfaye Abera 35:20 – 28:21 road/60:32/2:09:46
6 Muktar Edris 35:25 – 12:54 Kenyan Top 6 At XC Trials / PBs
1. Bedan Karoki, 35:08 – 13:15/26:52
2. Geoffrey Kamworor, 35:19- 13:12/27:06/58:54/2:06:12
3. Leonard Barsoton, 35:28 – 13:19/27:20
4. Moses Mukono, 35:51 – 13:19 (World Jr. bronze)
5. Phillip Langat, 35:55 – 27:28 road/61:05 half
6. Joseph Kiptum, 36:02 – 13:30/28:11/60:26/2:09:56
We learned at World XC in Kenya in 2007 that many Kenyans take way more pride in having the individual male champ than the team champ. The individual male champ is the king — like the lion in the jungle. There is no dominant favorite in the list above.
More: IAAF Recap of 2015 Ethiopian XC Champs
*IAAF Recap of 2015 Kenyan XC Champs
*LRC Archives From 2007: 2007 World Cross Country Championships Recap in Mombasa, Kenya: Controlled Chaos
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Tweet / Stat of The Week
36 sub-4 minutes miles yesterday is the best ever. Previous best was 29 on Feb 11, 2012. Best outdoors is 26 on May 31, 2014. #milestats — Mirko Jalava (@mjalava) February 15, 2015
Saturday was quite the day for the mile as a record 36 men broke 4:00 — all of them at meets in the United States. Twelve guys did at BU, 10 at Millrose, eight at Iowa State, and six at Washington.
Currently at the NCAA D-I level, 26 guys have broken four this year (29 are sub-4 with flat track/altitude conversions). The milers still have a little work to do as the most NCAA D-I sub-4s in a given year is 31.
Number of NCAA D-I Sub-4 Milers
2015 – 26 (29 counting flat track/altitude conversions).
2014 – 18 (26 counting flat track/altitude conversions).
2013- 27 (30 counting altitude conversions).
2012 – 31 (33 counting altitude conversions)
2011 – 21 (22 counting flat track conversions)
2010 – 20 (22 counting flat track/altitude conversions)
If you like the indoor mile, you might also enjoy this article from last week: Extensive Interview With US Miler, Jim Beatty, The First Person To Run A Sub-4:00 Mile Indoors. Beatty ran 3:58.9 on February 10, 1962, a little less than eight years after Roger Bannister ran the first sub-4:00 mile outdoors.
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More Mile Facts
Georgetown leads the way with four sub-4 milers so far this year. They all did it in a single heat last week at BU. That’s the good news for the Hoyas. The bad news is only one of the four is in the top 16 on the NCAA list – Amos Bartelsmeyer, and he’s at #16 (16 guys will race at NCAAs in the mile).
More: MB: 12 guys – including 4 Georgetown Hoyas in the same heat – go sub-4 at BU!!
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Hard to believe, but before last weekend distance powerhouse Colorado, which has traditionally focused on longer distances, had a grand total one, yes one, sub-4 miler in school history. Before Saturday, only one runner ever broke 4:00 indoors in a CU uniform: Stephen Pifer, who ran 3:59.55 in 2006. They now have two as Jake Huysz ran 3:58.13 in Washington (three counting outdoors, a LRC visitor wrote that on June 01, 1974, Ted Castaneda ran 3:58.4 a week before finishing second in the 6-mile at NCAAs).
It’s worth noting that CU’s Blake Theroux (who has no indoor eligibility and competed unattached) ran 4:00.84 on Saturday at UW (at the Husky Classic), then came back the next day and tried again at the UW Indoor Open and ran 4:00.71. Tough luck for him, not getting under.
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Speaking of distance powers, Oregon’s got three sub-4 milers this year and a new school record of 3:56.43 (Edward Cheserek at Millrose) but that time would only be #3 all-time at Montana State.
Montana State’s Cristian Soratos went into last weekend with a 4:05.18 mile pb (3:43.73 1500 pb), but left with a 3:55.27 pb after running the NCAA leader in Washington. Amazingly, Soratos’ 3:55.27 pb will be only listed as the #2 time on the Montana State website as Pat Casey ran 3:59.76 in Bozeman, Mont., in 2011 (elevation: 4,820 ft), which converts to a 3:54.59 at sea level. Before you think the sea level conversions are absurd, please realize that the NCAA converted Soratos’ 4:05.18 to 3:56.87 (giving him time for having done it both at 4,820 feet of altitude and on a flat track; when Casey ran his time, the track was banked) much to the chagrin of quite a few messageboard posters, who thought the conversion was far too generous. Soratos showed the conversion has merit with his 3:55.27.
The conversions have merit but we know one thing, school records should list the absolute fastest time run. Soratos should be the school record holder at Montana State.
More: MB: Soratos (Montana State University) Runs 3:55.xx!
*January: MB: Cristian Soratos MSU – Runs 3:56 mile
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The sub-4 talk for HSer Grant Fisher will die down for a little bit as he was just third in a college mile in St. Louis last weekend in 4:06.72.
More: MB: Grant Fisher 3rd in 4:06.72 *Video
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Lastly, we do have to point out one thing. Ole Miss has zero sub-4 guys.
Why did we point that out? Well Ole Miss has had a great year in 2014-15. They made NCAA XC for the first time in the fall and then when they had five guys run 4:05 or faster in January, one messageboard poster got carried away and asked, Ole Miss – Best mile school in the country?
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On the women’s side, the biggest significant pb of the weekend went to Florida State’s Colleen Quigley, who ran a 5+ second pb of 4:29.67 in the mile at BU (previous pb: 4:34.80) to move to #1 in the NCAA (and #5 all-time).
More: MB: Florida State’s Colleen Quigley runs 4:29.67 in mile at BU!! Moves to #5 in NCAA history.
Wanamaker Mile Men: Centrowitz Wins Wanamaker Mile In Thrilling Stretch Run Over Willis As Year Of Lagat Continues
Wanamaker Mile Women: A Wobbly Shannon Rowbury Hangs On To Win Women’s Wanamaker By Over 3 Seconds
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Photo of The Week
Since we are talking about the mile, might America have selected its first 2040 Olympic 1500 runner?
More: Did America Just Get Itself a Gold-Medal Contender in the 1500 at the 2040 Olympics? Wife of 2012 Olympic 1500 Bronze Medallist Abdelaati Iguider Gave Birth To A Son, Mohamed Mourad Iguider, On Friday in Philadelphia
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Recommended Reads
Bob Hersh Responds To USATF Board’s Memo That He Claims “Contains Many Incorrect And/Or Misleading Statements” You can discuss Hersh’s memo here.
* RunnersWorld: USATF Versus Its Critics: Who’s Off Track?
NY Times: “Forget Barefoot; New Trendsetter, If Not Pacesetter, Is Cushioning” Articles on Hoka One One running shoes and the new “maximalist” shoe fad. Includes quotes from Leo Manzano and Lauren Fleshman.
Kenyan 2:34 Marathoner Hyvon Ngetich Crawls To 3rd Place In The Austin Marathon; RD Is So Inspired Gives Her Runner-Up Prize Money (includes video) She was winning by a good margin, but collapsed around 2-blocks from the finish and crawled the rest of the way, refusing a wheelchair that was offered to her. The race was won by Cynthia Jerop in 2:54:22. The race director awarded Ngetich the 2nd place prize money despite her 3rd place finish.
Extensive Interview With US Miler, Jim Beatty, The First Person To Run A Sub-4:00 Mile Indoors Beatty ran 3:58.9 on February 10, 1962, a little less than eight years after Roger Bannister ran the first sub-4:00 mile outdoors.
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Quote of The Day and Last Week’s Home Pages
To see the quotes of the day from last week or last week’s homepage or any homepage, go to our archive page.
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That is it, if you were gone over the weekend. We had extensive coverage and analysis of the 2015 NYRR Millrose Games when it took place.
Questions, comments, please email us or post them in our running fan forum. |
As Sony prepares to unleash The Amazing Spider-Man 2, producers Matt Tolmach and Avi Arad are busy plotting the expansion of the studio’s Marvel franchise with spin-off movies for The Sinister Six and Venom, and during a chat with SFX the duo have revealed a little about their plans to develop a fully-fledged Spidey movie universe.
“It’s a challenge in every sense,” said Tolmach with regards to The Sinister Six. “Obviously questions of traditional hero/villain dynamics have to be looked at. At the same time it’s an awesome challenge, because some of the greatest characters are in fact villains, and how you construct that is so much fun. People love those bad characters if they’re good bad characters, and love to watch them. And nobody’s all good, nobody’s all bad, and so where we end up with that story, I think, is a really awesome challenge, and we all smile when we think about what you can do. It’s definitely a bad-ass group of people and I think it’s going to be a ton of fun to watch them.”
Meanwhile Arad offered a few thoughts on Venom and how they plan to position the fan favourite as an antihero: “Venom hated only one guy – Spider-Man. He wasn’t innately bad, he was a shortcut guy, not really into fighting hard for achievement. That’s the Venom story. Can he also be a good guy? As you know, Venom was also called ‘lethal defender of the innocent’. We had a great history with him, especially caring for the homeless, which is a very sensitive issue and something that many of us are very concerned with. Our villains all represent a different side of the misunderstood, and some of them unfortunately turned to the dark side. Venom happened to be a phenomenal character. With Eddie Brock, or if you do Flash Thompson, it doesn’t matter who is going to be inside the suit – what’s important is that a man like him is going to realize there comes a time when you wake up in the morning and say ‘How did I get here? There must be a better way.'”
It’s still early days for both movies, with Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) busy writing The Sinister Six and Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jeff Pinker (The Amazing Spider-Man 2) working on Venom. Meanwhile the franchise will continue with the release of The Amazing Spider-Man sequel, which swings into cinemas on April 18th in the UK and May 2nd in the States, followed by The Amazing Spider-Man 3 in 2016 and The Amazing Spider-Man 4 in 2018. |
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WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. -- A 10-year-old service dog had one of her legs amputated after being shot while defending her owner during an assault at a motel last week, the Wheat Ridge Police Department said Friday.
A male and a female broke into an occupied room at the American Motel near Kipling Street and Interstate 70 about 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 10, police said.
The male suspect allegedly assaulted one of the victims with a handgun. The victim's service dog Nalla was shot while defending her owner, police said.
The suspects stole some personal belongings, then fled the motel, police said.
Nalla was found in the parking lot by Wheat Ridge officers and taken to a veterinarian. She survived, but lost one of her legs. Nalla is recovering well, police said.
Police posted photos of the suspects to their Facebook page in the hopes of capturing them.
Anyone who can identify either of the suspects is asked to call police at 303-237-2220.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help pay for Nalla's recovery. |
Adam Halverson is fast becoming the most recognizable police officer in Lino Lakes.
From July 1 to Aug. 27, he made 535 traffic stops in the north metro city of 21,000. That’s two more than the rest of the 25-officer department combined made in the same period.
If he keeps up that pace, Halverson, the city’s dedicated DWI enforcement officer, will have pulled over the equivalent of 15 percent of the city’s population in a year’s time.
During the same period, he issued 261 citations, arrested 22 suspected drunken drivers and made two drug busts. In a single 12-hour shift, he makes 10 to 30 stops. He heavily patrols Lino Lakes’ Main and Birch streets, as well as part of Interstate 35W and 35E, where they converge.
“It’s pretty remarkable. He grew up around here, and he lives around here. He cares for this community,” said his boss, Deputy Director of Police Kelly McCarthy, who said even she is more careful driving, knowing Halverson is patrolling the streets.
And that’s the point. For every traffic stop logged, dozens of other motorists driving by those flashing squad lights ease up on the gas or put down the smartphone.
"That visibility reduces crime," Lino Lakes police officer Adam Halverson said. "It makes the roads safer for everyone."
“That visibility reduces crime,” Halverson said. “It makes the roads safer for everyone out there. The driving public slows down and watches their driving, which reduces the total number of crashes.”
Anoka County has the dubious distinction of being a hotbed for drunken driving. From 2010 to 2014, it recorded 18 drunken-driving-related fatalities and 6,875 DWI arrests, according to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. It ranks second in the state for alcohol-related traffic deaths and serious injuries, after Hennepin County.
Lino Lakes, Coon Rapids and the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office all have received federal dollars for an officer dedicated to drunken-driving enforcement. The grants cover the salary of the officer, plus the cost of a squad car and other traffic safety equipment.
In Coon Rapids, dedicated DWI enforcement officer Adam Jacobson has made 30 of the department’s 70 drunken-driving arrests since June 1.
“It makes a big difference to have a dedicated DWI officer,” said Coon Rapids Police Capt. Jon Urquhart. “One out of every five people involved in a fatality are impaired, whether it’s alcohol or drugs. We get an officer solely dedicated to keeping people safe.”
The power of the traffic stop
Increased DWI and traffic law enforcement annoys some folks, but in the suburbs, dangerous driving is what bothers people the most.
“The number one complaint [the city police department gets] is traffic — speeding, passing on the shoulder, reckless and careless driving,” McCarthy said.
And she has a quick response to the question speeders often ask: “Don’t the police have anything better to do?”
“How do you think you catch murderers or rapists? Traffic stops,” McCarthy said.
Increased traffic patrols also could be deterring thieves. As the number of traffic stops climbed this summer, the number of thefts, including of motor vehicles, dropped from 56 in June to 31 in July to 17 in August, according to McCarthy.
“While we are not 100 percent sure there is a direct correlation, it is certainly good news,” she said.
Lino Lakes Mayor Jeff Reinert said he’s been happy to tap into federal dollars to help improve safety.
“This position is a new program for our city, and so far I have heard that Officer Halverson is doing a great job,” Reinert wrote in an e-mail. “Statistically, traffic stops [are] how criminals are caught. When they come into Lino Lakes, we now have a new program to catch them before they have a chance to do any harm.”
Halverson, who previously was a school resource officer, requested the traffic assignment. He said he got a taste for doing traffic stops at his first job with the Bayport Police Department, where there was time to work traffic because emergency calls were infrequent and sporadic. The Centennial High School graduate joined his hometown police department in 2001.
The most common offenses he sees are passing on the shoulder, speeding and failing to wear a seat belt.
Lino Lakes police officer Adam Halverson stopped a truck and wrote up a citation by hand.
One emerging trend that’s surprising police: the number of highly intoxicated drivers caught in the early evening hours. “It’s the happy hour crowd, which we did not expect at all,” McCarthy said.
Halverson said all but two of his drunken-driving arrests occurred between 5 and 10 p.m.
“I was surprised, too,” he said. |
In a full-page advertisement in the Sunday October 23, 2016 edition of the Los Angeles Times, the union representing Los Angeles teachers, challenged the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) to a "public debate on key educational issues relating to equity, access and accountability." United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) also posted the challenge in Spanish in Hoy and La Opinion.
The advertisement, written as an open letter to parents, attacks CCSA for "indefensible tactics, such as trying to shield charters from financial accountability and lobbying to defeat a bill protecting charter students from unfair expulsion."
According to Alex Caputo-Pearl, UTLA President. "We believe it is time for the community and parents to hear CCSA explain why they oppose financial transparency, student equity and access, open meeting laws and a democratically elected oversight body in schools that are funded by taxpayers. While charter schools use taxpayer money, they are privately run. This has led to documented cases of financial malfeasance, self-dealing and profiteering."
Groups associated with the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) are pouring money into legislative campaigns trying to elect a pro-charter majority in California. According to California's Secretary of State pro-charter forces spent more than $3 million on contested races. More than $1 million is being used to influence voters in just one state senatorial district. According to Colin Miller, acting Senior Vice President for Government Affairs at the CCSA, the group's top legislative priority is to make it easier to open new charter schools and expand existing schools.
With support from private philanthropy, the number of charter schools in the L.A. Unified school district has exploded to 225, the most in any American school system, attracting about 16% of enrollment. Many educators in traditional schools worry that this expansion could force L.A. Unified into bankruptcy, hurting public school students.
CCSA is a lobbying organization for the charter industry. UTLA charges that it "promoted an environment that is rife with discriminatory enrollment practices and biases against special needs students and English language learners at many charters across the state."
CCSA is funded by Eli Broad, the Waltons of Walmart, and other wealthy privatizers. CCSA and its Super PAC spend millions each year to promote the unchecked expansion of charter schools at the expense of neighborhood schools and the public education system.
Charter school operators in Los Angeles have recently come under fire from elected oversight agencies. On Oct 18, the Los Angeles Unified School Board refused to renew operating agreements for five charter schools, three campuses operated by Magnolia Public Schools and two others run by Celerity Educational Group. Some district officials were concerned with Magnolia's past practice of importing teachers from Turkey with their families and using taxpayer funds to pay their immigration fees. Magnolia officials also have ties to a controversial Turkish cleric implicated in a failed coup in Turkey last summer.
Other Los Angles charter schools have also been in trouble recently. Alliance College-Ready Public Schools (Alliance), the largest charter school chain operating in Los Angles, California faces an investigation for using public funds to while trying to defeat a teacher-led union drive at its schools. State Senator Tony Mendoza (D), who initiated the move against Alliance charged, "The purpose of those funds is to educate children inside the classroom -- not to intimidate teachers and parents." The LAUSD Board is now pushing for the resignation of the executive director of El Camino Real Charter School for misuse of school funds. In spring 2016
In spring 2016 The Los Angeles Times published a list of the 100 lowest performing high schools in Los Angeles County based on student performance on SAT tests. Eight of the ten worst performing schools, including one that has already been closed, were charter schools. This included the Animo Locke Charter High School #1 operated by the Green Dot Corporate Charter Schools chain whose founder, Steve Barr wants to run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2017 based on his record of educational "success."
The advertisements are part of UTLA's "We Are Public Schools" campaign to hold charter schools accountable and to fight to build community schools. The campaign web site includes a petition to get CCSA to debate UTLA representatives in a public forum.
Carol Burris, Executive Director of the Network for Public Education, and Valerie Strauss have produced a four-part in-depth expose of problems with California charter schools for the Washington Post. Among other findings, the South California branch of the ACLU and a group called Public Advocates charge that more than 20% of California charter schools have enrollment policies that violate state and federal law. |
Creed Bratton of 'The Office' proud of his 'cult following'
'The Office' gave his music and acting careers a big promotion
Some of those details are true both of the actor and character. Creed Bratton is the actor's name. And the real-life Bratton, like the Dunder Mifflin worker, had been a hippie, went through financially difficult times and created great music as a member of the 1960s pop-rock group The Grass Roots.
Bratton will separate fact from fiction, as well as play music from "The Office" and the six solo discs he released since leaving The Grass Roots, when he performs 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Sellersville Theater 1894.
"The Creed character has got this cult following," Bratton says in a phone call from California. "The college kids just love this guy. I hope sometimes they're not too disappointed to find out I'm actually an actor playing him."
Bratton says fanatics aren't likely to be disappointed with the live show. "I will bring him out on stage to annoy the people, for sure," he says with a laugh. "I tell them how to be Creed, basically. How to Creed-up their life a bit, you know? Creed-ify their existence."
Bratton says the show will be a "Samuel Clemens-y, hopefully humorous" series of anecdotes about his life, from "all the crazy stuff I went through before The Grass Roots even happened, then The Grass Roots, then all the very down periods — which there's always humor in that, too."
He'll talk about "The Office," the mockumentary show that became a cultural phenomenon, ranked atop many critics' lists, and won four prime time Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series in 2006. He'll punctuate each tale with a song.
If the stories are anything like the real Bratton's life, they're sure to be interesting.
Bratton, 71, became a professional musician during his college years, and played throughout Europe before forming The 13th Floor in 1966.
A year later, producers/songwriters P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri were scrambling to find a band to play songs they recorded themselves as The Grass Roots, including the hit "Where Were You When I Needed You." The 13th Floor became The Grass Roots.
Bratton's group lost its bassist to the Vietnam War draft and brought in new vocalist Rob Grill, who sang on the group's biggest hits, "Live For Today" and "Midnight Confessions." Bratton recorded four albums, appeared on "American Bandstand" and toured with The Grass Roots as it set a record for most continuous weeks having a song on the charts.
But Bratton says he became disillusioned when producers chose to have famed Los Angeles studio musicians The Wrecking Crew play on the albums rather than the real band. The iconic guitar riff on "Let's Live for Today," for example, was Sloan's, Bratton says.
"The other guys were fine with it; I was not fine with it," Bratton says. "Because I play, I'm an artist. It's not the ego as much as it's, 'Hey, this what I do,' and I take pride in it. So c'mon. So anyway, that was the big bone of contention why I left the group, basically." |
The Daily Times, Augusta Liddic/AP Ricky Gilmore, 49, shows the pair of pants he was wearing when he dragged himself four miles down a road for three days last week near Tocito, N.M. after a man and woman he met while he was hitchhiking left him without his wheelchair, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012 in Farmington, N.M.
When Ricky Gilmore recovered, he realized he had been flung out of a truck by a couple whom he had wanted to invite home for steaks.
Gilmore, who lost the use of his legs in a car accident 19 years ago, was hitchhiking from his home in Newcomb, N.M. to a liquor store in the nearby town of Shiprock, when a couple pulled over to give him a ride. He remembered the man to be in his mid-20s, with cursive writing tattooed on his neck. The woman looked plump and 20 years older than her male companion, he later told the Farmington Daily Times. Gilmore says they dropped off his wheelchair at his house, where he’d offered to make them dinner, and then went for a joyride — which is where things turned ugly.
The couple became angry after Gilmore refused to share his alcohol. The tattooed man grabbed Gilmore by his paralyzed legs and tore him away from the truck, abandoning him on a rarely used road in the New Mexico desert.
Gilmore began to scoot himself with his hands and hips across the scrubland. When the temperature plunged overnight, he shelterd behind a bush from the desert winds.
Gilmore spent the entire next day dragging himself along the road. Twice, cars passed him by, but the drivers did nothing but honk at the 49-year-old as he waved for help.
He woke up sore and dejected after another night in the desert. There was no water, no food, no one.
“I could have easily gave up and said forget it, but I said I’m not going to freeze out here and I just kept on going,” Gilmore later said to the Associated Press. Which is what he did — dragging himself an estimated four miles from where he was abandoned until a man in a blue pickup spotted him and called an ambulance.
The doctors at Northern Navajo Medical Center in Shiprock found Gilmore’s wrist sprained and the flesh of his left leg and buttock cut to ribbons. The exertion and lack of water had left him with acute kidney failure. Holes riddled his jeans and shirt from days of rubbing against dirt and rock.
Gilmore said he has successfully hitchhiked for 19 years, but from now on, he will take a break from getting a ride from strangers. |
The Nevado del Ruiz volcano, pictured on January 3, 2015, erupted in an ash cloud on Sunday, prompting authorities to temporarily close two airports in the area (AFP Photo/Santiago Osorio)
Bogota (AFP) - Colombia's Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted in an ash cloud on Sunday, prompting authorities to temporarily close two airports in the area.
The civil aeronautics agency said it closed airports at Manizales and Pereira as a precaution after the 8:30 am (1330 GMT) eruption.
This resulted in the cancellation of at least 16 flights on Sunday.
A major eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz in 1985 melted the volcano's snowcap, unleashing mudslides that wiped out the town of Armero, killing an estimated 23,000 people.
The volcano, which has been active for an estimated 150,000 years, is 220 kilometers (137 miles) west of Bogota. |
The overwhelming majority of Israel’s political, military and intelligence leadership reportedly believes the time is not ripe for an Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and shares the assessment that an Israeli strike would, at best, merely set back rather than destroy the Iranian program.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated that a decision on striking Iran will be made in the next few months, and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak said last week that it was time to gear up to put the Iranian program to “a decisive end,” this assessment is not shared by President Shimon Peres, the chief of staff of the Israeli army and his predecessor, the head of the Mossad intelligence service and his predecessor, at least five of the most senior ministers in the government and the leader of the opposition, Kadima party chairman Shaul Mofaz, respected Israeli media analysts said Saturday night.
The issue is headline news because the former head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service, Yuval Diskin, on Friday publicly branded Netanyahu and Barak as “unfit” to lead the country in confronting the Iranian nuclear threat, and wrong in their approach to the danger, sparking a political firestorm.
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Diskin served for six years as Shin Bet chief until a year ago, and so worked closely with the two leaders in whom he said he has “no faith.” Working alongside him, as head of the Mossad, was Meir Dagan, a lifelong intelligence veteran who has repeatedly warned against the “stupid” notion of Israeli military intervention at this stage. According to Emmanuel Rosen, a respected analyst for Channel 10 news, Gabi Ashkenazi, the IDF’s chief of staff until last year, “essentially shares” Diskin’s assessment.
Peres, Netanyahu’s deputy prime ministers Moshe Yaalon, Silvan Shalom and Eli Yishai, as well as other top ministers Dan Meridor and Benny Begin, also feel this is not the time to strike at Iran, Rosen said on Saturday night, adding that the consequence would be merely to set the Iranians back a little, while ostensibly legitimizing a subsequent accelerated push by Tehran to the bomb.
Alon Ben-David, the TV station’s military analyst, who has been given wide access of late to the Israeli Air Force’s training for a possible attack, said Saturday night that the current chief of staff, Benny Gantz, also opposes an attack at this juncture, as does the current Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo.
“No decision has been taken to attack Iran,” Ben-David said. But he added that the “window of opportunity” was this summer — after the next round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 powers, at which Iran, he said, would presumably give “an unsatisfactory response” to Western demands for the guarantees and openness necessary to ensure that it was not pursuing, and would not pursue, a nuclear weapons program. |
GOP hopeful Mitt Romney found himself backtracking during the second presidential debate after moderator Candy Crowley challenged his assertion that President Barack Obama had not referred to recent attacks on Americans in Libya as terrorism.
“The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world we are going to find out exactly what happened, that this was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime,” Obama explained following Romney’s suggestion that the president had been more concerned with fundraising than national security after the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
“I think it’s interesting that the president just said something, which is on the day after the attack he went in the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror,” Romney replied. “Is that what you’re saying? I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.”
“Get the transcript,” Obama insisted.
“He did, in fact, sir,” Crowley pointed out to Romney.
“Can you say that a little louder, Candy?” the president asked Crowley as the audience applauded.
“He did call it an act of terror,” the moderator agreed. “It did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea of there being a riot out there about this tape to come out.”
“The administration indicated that this was a reaction to a video,” Romney said, rephrasing his attack with a slight stutter. “It took them a long time to say this was a terrorist act by a terrorist group. And — and to suggest — am I correct in that regard?”
“I want to move you on,” Crowley told the candidates. “People can go to the transcripts.”
Watch this video from CNN, broadcast Oct. 16, 2012. |
FILE PHOTO - The Ford logo is pictured at the Ford Motor Co plant in Genk,Belgium December 17, 2014. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/File Photo
(Reuters) - Ford Motor Co (F.N) said on Wednesday it was recalling about 91,000 vehicles worldwide to replace faulty fuel-pump parts that could potentially cause a car to stall without warning.
Ford said it would replace fuel-pump control modules in about 88,151 vehicles, including certain of its 2013-15 model year Ford Taurus sedans, Ford Flex crossover utility vehicles, Lincoln MKS sedans, Lincoln MKT SUVs and Ford Police Interceptor sedans. (ford.to/2bOOxjg)
The company also said it would recall about 2,472 Ford Transit vans to replace fuel-injection pumps in certain models manufactured in the year 2015-16.
The carmaker said it was additionally recalling 23,150 Ford Escape SUVs of 2017 model year to update power-window software.
Ford said is was not aware of any accidents or injuries associated with the issues.
(This version of the story has been corrected to say the recall is ‘worldwide’, not just in ‘North America’) |
Ohio State lost to Michigan State to put its Big Ten East and College Football Playoff chances on life support, due in part to a weak offensive performance. Oddly, star running back Ezekiel Elliott only got 11 carries, and he railed on his coaches for that in the postgame press conference.
In case you were wondering if Zeke Elliott was being taken out context or something. https://t.co/c7DopZmPOK pic.twitter.com/RwXRJuHAzy — Matt Hinton (@MattRHinton) November 22, 2015
Elliott: "I deserve more than 11 carries. I really do. I can't speak for the playcaller. I don't know what was going on." — Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) November 22, 2015
#Buckeyes running back Ezekiel Elliott:"coaching staff didn't put us in position to win. That's a team (Michigan State) we should beat." WOW — Rick Pizzo (@BTNRickPizzo) November 22, 2015
Elliott was so upset that he claims he's not coming back to Columbus for his senior season.
Ezekiel Elliott: "Honestly, that was my last game at the Shoe. There's no chance I'm coming back next year." — Austin Ward (@AWardESPN) November 22, 2015
Enjoyed my last buckeye walk. Gonna miss all the fans who had a couple too many trying to break my hand with the high fives — EzekielElliott#⃣1⃣5⃣ (@EzekielElliott) November 22, 2015
Cardale Jones also announced that he's leaving this year. Ohio State still has a regular season game to play at Michigan. For his part, OSU linebacker Darron Lee seemed to agree with Elliott.
Truth hurts like this loss bruh https://t.co/ydJPKfCGKX — Darron Lee (@DLeeMG8) November 22, 2015
To be fair to Ohio State's coaches, Elliott's health could have been a perfectly legitimate reason why he didn't get more carries.
Elliott had a leg infection and was in the hospital for three days this week. Said he was depressed, didn't think he'd play, was crying. — Ryan Lewis (@RyanLewisABJ) November 22, 2015
Here's the video.
* * *
SB Nation presents: Baylor and Michigan State highlight explosive Week 12 |
Former Liverpool player Didi Hamann has told current manager Jurgen Klopp to "stop protecting" Daniel Sturridge and to give the fans the truth about the injury-prone striker's continued absence.
“The club has got a responsibility to tell the paying public what is wrong with him. If he has got a hamstring injury, an ankle injury, or whatever he may have, the people who pay for a season ticket have got a right to know what is wrong with him," Hamann told Talksport.
“Judging by the way Jurgen Klopp answered his questions [ahead of the Manchester United game], I don't think there is too much wrong with the player. If there is nothing wrong with him, it is more important to be honest and truthful with the paying public than to protect a player who has hardly played in the last 18 months, who seems to choose when he wants to play.
“He has got three years left on his contract and I don’t see any reason, if there is nothing wrong with the player, why the club should protect him.”
Hamann also recalled the time he spent alongside a young Sturridge hoping to break into the first team at Manchester City when, he claims, it was clear from a very early stage that Sturridge was not prepared to push his body to the limit.
“There was always something wrong with him on the Thursday or the Friday. His back, his hamstring, there was always something," Hamann said.
• 'Liverpool attempt to sign Barcelona's Tello'
“If you look at his record since he has played professional football he probably doesn’t average half the games a season - and it has got worse at Liverpool. I am not saying he is pretending to be injured, I’m not sure. But if he is injured, say it. Nobody knows what is going on with him.
“People have spent £800 or £1000 to watch Liverpool at home and sometimes even away, and the star player is not playing and nobody knows where he is. If there isn’t a problem with him, then it is time to stop protecting the player.”
Liverpool are ninth in the table after 22 games with Sturridge having started three of those. His best performance of the season came when he scored a brace in the 6-1 Capital One Cup win at Southampton at the start of December, but he has since managed only 28 minutes of action in any competition. |
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann didn’t hold anything back Wednesday when he announced the news that the “delusional liar” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) was planning on retiring.
Lieberman, Connecticut’s state’s former Attorney General who rose to become the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee in 2000, spoke to reporters during a press conference and depicted himself as a victim of Washington’s modern brand of partisan politics.
“Along the way, I have not always fit comfortably into conventional political boxes — maybe you’ve noticed that — Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative,” Lieberman said. “I have always thought that my first responsibility is not to serve a political party but to serve my constituents, my state, and my country, and then to work across party lines to make sure good things get done for them.”
“The end of the line for Joe Lieberman, self-described ‘moderate Democrat,'” Olbermann began his show by announcing. “Don`t let the delusional liar door hit you in the delusional liar butt on the delusional liar way out.”
“Tonight, goodbye, Joe Lieberman, and good riddance,” he later said.
The MSNBC host noted that in comparing himself to President John F. Kennedy, Lieberman had implied that today’s Democrats were either anti-civil rights, anti-growth or weak on defense.
“As far as his civil rights record, he was rightly praised for helping to repeal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ in the Senate,” Olbermann said. “Civil rights for Muslims on the other hand? Unlike JFK, Mr. Lieberman supported the American government tossing Muslim suspects into detention, denying them Miranda rights, seeking to strip even US citizens suspected of terrorism of their basic civil rights.”
“On tax policies, Mr. Lieberman, like Mr. Bush, supported taxing the rich at the lowest rates they could get, about half of the 65 percent rate favored by President Kennedy,” he noted.
“Mr. Lieberman’s standard formulation is that he was a Republican on foreign policy and Democrat on domestic, except for the estate tax, the Bush tax cuts, school vouchers, gay marriage, homeland security, the public option, the Medicare buy-in, privatizing Social Security, and tort reform. Did I leave anything off the list?” Olbermann asked Slate’s Dave Weigel.
“That was almost complete,” Weigel replied. “I think you might have left off in 2006, when Lieberman supported — opposed a bill in Connecticut that would have forced all hospitals to treat rape victims, even if they were seen to be ovulating. It was the Catholic hospitals were against it. He took the side of them. At the time he famously said, in Connecticut, it’s only a short ride to the next hospital, in case you are going to one of these hospitals that doesn`t allow you to get the treatment you need.”
“So OK, add that to the list and I think you have got a pretty comprehensive list of reasons why liberals do not like him,” he concluded.
This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Jan. 19, 2010.
— With earlier reporting by Sahil Kapur |
Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust! Rust is a systems language pursuing the trifecta: safe, concurrent, and fast. This is a weekly summary of its progress and community. Want something mentioned? Send me an email! Want to get involved? We love contributions.
This is the busiest week in This Week in Rust’s history, and the pull request queue isn’t getting any shorter. This is a mixed blessing: tons of work is getting done, but it takes forever to get merged.
What’s cooking on master?
89 pull requests were merged this week. This is the most pull requests merged in a week, ever. 10 1.0 issues were closed this week, and 0 opened.
Breaking Changes
Other Changes
New Contributors
Axel Viala
Craig MacKenzie
Douglas Young
Dylan Braithwaite
Ehsanul Hoque
Sterling Greene
Weekly Meeting
The weekly meeting discussed the Hash changes, debug assertions, and commit log administrivia.
This Week in Servo
Servo is a web browser engine written in Rust and is one of the primary test cases for the Rust language.
This week, we landed 15 PRs.
Notable additions
Sankha Narayan Guria made drawing a single line much more efficient in #1709
Lars Bergstrom removed the last of the @mut s not in script in #1712
s not in script in #1712 Junyoung Cho fixed up a bug where we were removing s in #1727
s in #1727 Youngmin Yoo added support for the <object> element in #1664
element in #1664 Keegan McAllister made use of the border box more consistent in layout in #1699
Peiyong Lin fixed up the naming of some of our flow methods in #1693
Simon Sapin refactored the cascade methods in #1706
methods in #1706 Adam Sinnett corrected the parent type names of Text, Comment, and PI types in #1702
Patrick Walton added some inlining that sped up flow contruction even more in #1602
New contributors
Peiyong Lin (lpy)
Adam Sinnett (quandrum)
Meetings
We did not have a meeting this week because of President’s Day in the US.
Announcements, etc |
Meet Mosab Hassan Yousef. He’s the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the founders of Hamas. He’s now an evangelical Christian , living in the U.S. after being granted political asylum , and a former operative with Shin Bet, a branch of Israeli intelligence, which led to his father disowning him back in 2010
In the letter, he said his family announced its "complete renunciation" of Mosab Yousef. The father said he was sorry to take such a step but said he had no choice after his son "disbelieved in God...and collaborated with our enemies," he said. The elder Yousef, who helped found the militant Islamic group two decades ago, was humiliated last year when his eldest son announced he had converted to Christianity. Then the son told an Israeli newspaper last week that he had helped Israeli intelligence foil militant attacks and hunt down Hamas leaders — including his father.
As the Gaza conflict rages on, Yousef appeared last this week on CNN with Don Lemon where he said, “Hamas doesn’t care about the lives of Palestinians. Does not care about the lives of Israelis or Americans. They don’t care about their own lives. They consider dying for the sake of their ideology a way of worship. And how can you continue in that society?”
Lemon asked if peaceful co-existence was possible with someone who wishes to see you destroyed.
Yousef was blunt:
Well, Hamas is not seeking co-existence and compromise. Hamas is seeking conquest and taking over. And, by the way, Israel – the destruction of the state of Israel is not Hamas’ final destination. Hamas’ final destination is building the Islamic Caliphate, which means an Islamic state on the rubble of every other civilization. These are the ultimate goals of the movement. |
Our new issue, on what a President Bernie Sanders could actually do in office, is out now. Subscribe today to receive it !
Just as the 2014 Argentine presidential race was getting under way, Ernesto Laclau was interviewed by the conservative La Nación newspaper. Asked about the prospects of neoliberal candidate Mauricio Macri, he replied, “He has the same odds of becoming the constitutionally elected president of Argentina as I do becoming the emperor of Japan.” Shortly after, Macri and his Cambiemos coalition pulled off a shock victory in the 2015 presidential race. This year, Cambiemos achieved another vital win in the August 12 primary elections. More than an election, the primaries represented a nationwide straw poll to gauge the general political mood. The largest takeaway lesson is that Cambiemos, with a firm hold on one-third of the electorate, is the nation’s minority-majority party of choice, while the remaining two-thirds in the opposition finds itself completely fragmented among a half-dozen competing parties. The Left now has to come to grips with a sobering reality: Argentina’s first democratically elected right-wing party has shown itself capable of becoming the nation’s majority political force. The results hit hardest in the camp of former president Christina Kirchner. Kirchner had gambled that, fragmentation notwithstanding, her candidacy in the Buenos Aires province was strong enough to run unopposed on her own platform and outside the Peronist political machine. Thus, focus was trained all last month on Argentina’s most populous region, with 40 percent of the electorate, where the race between Cambiemos’s conservative candidate Esteban Bullrich and Cristina Kirchner was held up to scrutiny in an attempt to divine the political future of the nation. Although the results of that race are still in dispute (a technical tie seems the most likely outcome), and even though a second-place finish in midterm general elections in October would be enough for Kirchner to take a seat in the national senate, the numbers emerging from the primary have put a damper on progressive hopes for a leftist turn-around in 2019: where the progressive candidacy of Kirchner represented a Hail Mary for the opposition, her failure to win in anything but strongest terms possible would represent a major fumble on the path to her 2019 bid for the presidency. One major current event may throw a wrench into Cambiemos’s plans: the most high-profile case of a disappeared person since the end of the dictatorship. The disappearance of Santiago Maldonado — and eyewitness accounts alleging he was captured by the militarized police — has sparked huge protests, and interrupted Cambiemos’s careful attempts to paper over the historical relationship between the Right and authoritarianism.
A Brave New World The recent election cycle has shed new light on the ambitious nature of the Cambiemos project: first and foremost, to build a governing consensus among the different sectors of Argentine society; second, Macri’s team of technocrats and business elites wants to establish itself as a beacon of reaction on the continent. As far as the latter is concerned, Cambiemos enjoys the unique privilege of being the only political force to notch an electoral victory against Latin America’s “pink tide.” As if to drive that point home, Cambiemos candidates could be seen during the recent election campaign boasting of their “republican” credentials and inveighing against Venezuela’s “socialist authoritarianism” in the same sentence. Leaving behind the halcyon years of the pink tide, Latin America finds itself entering a revanchist political cycle: in Venezuela, there are public lynchings of citizens who “look like Chavez supporters” (i.e., dark skinned), and in Brazil, the runaway popularity of presidential aspirant and hate-monger Jair Bolsonaro portends a dark future, to say nothing of the virulent racism that drives the anti–Workers’ Party rhetoric on the right; it is perhaps only in Argentina that one finds the semblance of a peaceful political transition. Yet despite appearances, in Argentina too there are mobilizations of class resentment against the perceived beneficiaries of the Kirchner’s “Won Decade,” invariably the poor and marginalized. In a recent stump speech, Kirchner’s conservative opponent Bullrich boasted that the Cambiemos project was progressing day-by-day, “laying another meter of asphalt, putting another kid behind bars.” Later dismissed as a slip of the tongue, Bullrich’s criminalization of poor youth goes hand in hand with an emerging cultural politics that sees political corruption, government welfare, and petty criminality as part of a sinister Mobius strip of authoritarian-populist-clientelism. In fact, for the last two years the government and media has attempted to stigmatize any social expression that does not walk in perfect lockstep with the neoliberal program: the popular sector is painted in broad strokes as “mafioso,” and political opposition is branded a Kirchnerist conspiracy. Before the primaries there were still lingering doubts whether Cambiemos had what it took to become a majoritarian political force. The reason, in the most immediate context, is the government’s dismal economic performance: plummeting consumption, diminished real wages, creeping inflation, rising unemployment, depressed industries, and an estimated third of the population living below the poverty line. All things considered, one could reasonably expect the kleptocratic party to be on its last legs. But the government’s economic blunders are offset by their political acumen, a fact reflected in the polls where most of the party’s major political figures enjoy approval ratings that hover consistently around 50 percent. Defying a common Argentine adage, the people clearly don’t “vote with their wallet.” Kirchner had hung her success on the eternal validity of that kind of thinking and had rebranded herself as a committed anti-austerity warrior (admittedly, she may have more right to the title than her counterparts in Brazil’s Workers’ Party). On the face of things, with successive rounds of austerity and, in the last months, a savage attack on labor and worker militancy, it seemed like a reasonable maneuver on the part of the ex-president. But the Cambiemos platform has revealed that, beyond the immediate experience of the economy, the electorate is oriented even more by the prevailing interpretation of the brute economic reality. And on that account the Cambiemos narrative has taken the upper hand.
The Cambiemos Formula Cambiemos began life in 2005 as PRO (Propuesta Republicana), a political platform with its base in the city of Buenos Aires. It was there that Macri and his main political adviser Horacio Rodriguez Larreta began to hone their formula: initially, the twin pillars of “security” and “post-material values” proved successful in capturing the sizeable middle-class vote concentrated in the nation’s capital. The latter values, including “green” initiatives, free Wi-Fi, organic food markets, bike paths, etc., spoke to the middle-class’s self-perceived commonality with their counterparts in the First World, while the security protocol would represent a cordon sanitaire against those in the slums and outskirts. The natural outgrowth of an increasingly segmented society, that platform expanded as PRO assumed a national projection in the form of Cambiemos: the crown jewel in the new “values-driven” platform was undoubtedly the “culture of work,” a meritocratic social vision that is slowly displacing Argentina’s longstanding “culture of the worker.” The Cambiemos government is neoliberal, but its particular brand of neoliberalism is tailored to the domestic balance of powers: adopting what some call a “gradualist” policy, the government’s basic tack has been to announce dramatic measures — regressive tax hikes, deep budget cuts, the redistribution of income towards the wealthiest sectors — and then backpedal as necessary in the face of popular reaction. Where the Left has regarded these about-faces as popular victories, the government has managed to capitalize and present them as a token of their conciliatory, democratic spirit. In fact, Cambiemos seems to have an inch-perfect read on public opinion: with little fuss they have preserved the outgoing government’s most popular social spending programs, and more generally, there are few outward signs of orthodox neoliberalism’s anti-government ideology on display. In a country where the neoliberal label is political kryptonite, Macri’s Cambiemos choreographs a careful dance with Argentina’s neoliberal past. Throughout the 1990s, Carlos Menem’s neoliberal government was still reading from the Peronist libretto, paying lip service to shared abundance and redistribution as it slashed government funds and privatized public utilities. The Cambiemos project, by contrast, conflates the “enthusiastic citizen” with the “entrepreneurial subject,” encouraging the precarious and unemployed to channel their civil unrest into individual, market-based solutions rather than roadblocks and strikes. Forming an even starker departure from the neoliberalism of the 1990s is the current government’s political inheritance: Menem came to power in 1989 on the heels of a massive hyperinflationary crisis that was temporarily tamed by neoliberal nostrums. By contrast, Macri assumed the mantle of a nation that was emerging from a period of unparalleled (albeit uneven) economic growth. In other words, Macri has entered the terrain on significantly more stable political and economic ground than previous administrations, with the full backing of the national bourgeoisie but also, and equally important, with considerable pushback at the level of popular resistance. One of the masterstrokes of the Cambiemos project has been to seize on Argentina’s national culture of “self-management” and translate that DIY value into a vision compatible with neoliberalism’s “culture of precarity.” From the insurrectionary response to the 2001 crisis — with its factory takeovers and horizontal assembly democracies — to the integration of informal work into micro-cooperatives during the Kirchner years, all the way up to the “neoliberal subject” of the Cambiemos project, there is a paradoxical connection between the post-2001 experiments in worker self-management and the “worker-entrepreneur” at the heart of Macri’s cultural revolution. In an important sense, the last year and a half has seen the neoliberal wheat separated from the progressive chafe: Macri has been more than happy to preserve and even expand on Kirchner’s Argentina Trabaja (Argentina Works) program, which provides a meager income for thousands of cooperatives across the nation. Despite the patina of worker control suggested by the term “cooperative,” the practical reality is that Argentina Trabaja represents the height of precarity, where beneficiaries are more like welfare recipients than workers capable of negotiating the terms of their employment. The coup de grace for Cambiemos was their ability “depoliticize” the state, to step back from the agonism that defined the Kirchner regime and present politics as a routine matter best handled by experts. In practical terms, this has meant separating government programs from any broader social vision. The Right is hastening the end of the era when social rights — rather than individual rights — framed the public’s relationship to government. |
I recently came to the realization that lately I hadn’t been doing much gaming at all, so I’ve decided to start going to the gaming shop on Sundays. This week, that coincided nicely with the Star Wars Destiny launch event.
If I’m honest, I wasn’t particularly excited by the series of preview articles by Fantasy Flight Games. I think this is because of a mixture of ‘yet another Star Wars game’ and also that I’m still pissed about Warhammer 40,000 Conquest LCG being discontinued (I know I should stop moaning about it, but it was my favourite card game, and I’m still annoyed about FFG’s handling of the news regarding it’s demise).
The first comments from most people looking at this game are regarding the dice. Just in case you haven’t read the preview article (or can’t be bothered to read this link):
“Unlike many games, the dice in Star Wars: Destiny do not use stickers. Instead, the dice are plastic-injected like normal dice and rolled in a tumbler to add a fine, smooth polish to every die. The images on each side are then physically heat-pressed onto the dice, essentially printing the artwork directly onto the plastic. Finally, the die is covered in a scratch-resistant coating, allowing you to roll these dice without their quality deteriorating.”
In short, they don’t have stickers and they’re excellent.
I ended up enjoying this A LOT more than I thought that I was going to, so after I bought the Kylo Ren starter deck, I decided to pick up a second one for extra copies of the First Order Stormtrooper and Mind Probe (along with a load of booster packs). There was lots of deck-building going on during the event, as you can see in the pictures above and below.
After finding the rules text for the cards from the set (courtesy of the very handy site, swdestinydb.com), I started coming up with lots of different team ideas. Basically, I was hooked!
Once the shop had closed (and we’d bought as many packs as we could), a few of us went back to mine to continue playing. We lent each other some cards and dice so that we could get our teams closer to what we wanted them to be, as we’re all shameless optimizers (we also proxied a second die for any character that we wanted to try the two-dice version of).
I also introduced the game to my house mate, who for a long while has left collectible games behind, but was also a Conquest LCG player and might be open to another game to sink his teeth into. He enjoyed SW Destiny, but it remains to be seen if he’s hooked like I am (not long until official release though!).
So far I’ve only mentioned that I really like it, but I should tell you how it plays. The first game people will try and compare it to is Dice Masters, but I don’t think that is a good comparison. I’d be more inclined to compare is to Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, as SW Destiny is a card game that also uses dice.
I think the Ashes comparison is better, because as in that game, players take it in turns to do lots of little actions. The game sequence is very back and forth, meaning that short and long-term decisions are important (do you use up your high value ranged damage die now, or wait until you’ve activated another character/support who has a chance of modifying that ranged damage? However, if you leave that die in your pool, there is a chance that your opponent could remove it.).
Customizing your deck of cards that go along with your characters also has plenty of scope for depth. If your team consists of different classes of character (represented by the different colours in game) then you have a wider variety of cards available, but sticking to one colour opens up other options (some cards reference how many of a particular colour upgrade you have in play, for instance).
I’ve decided that I’m going to collect the Villains in SW Destiny, as a friend of mine is only interested in the Heroes, so we’re going to split a booster box upon release. I’ve got a few teams in mind already (one of them is definitely featuring Jango Fett, as he’s great!) and am very eager to get my hands on some more boosters!
Cheers!
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Throw back your head and let out a long celebratory birthday howl for Nikai! Welcome to the terrific twos, kiddo! The Wolf Conservation Center‘s youngest Ambassador has been an inspiration from his adorable start. Within a month of joining the WCC family the little beast huffed, puffed, and hiccuped his way into the hearts and minds of a global audience. His viral video “Wolf Pup Hiccups” almost broke the internet!
Today the stunning ambassador continues to awe and help open the door to understanding wolves by forging a connection between the public and his wild kin. Although he remains a “ladies man,” having yet to completely outgrow his uneasiness around men, his trepidation is natural and his behavior offers WCC guests a glimpse of how elusive wolves naturally are.
Physically Nikai is no longer the baby of the family; he has become equal in stature to older siblings Alawa and Zephyr. He does, however, remain the “child” within the family hierarchy. Zephyr is the self-appointed leader of the family – expressing his status with erect posture and tail carried high. Most of the time Nikai exhibits his lower position through submissive/puppy-like behavior. With lowered tail and posture, he acknowledges his role and rank in the family order. He is often pawing, tucking his tail, and licking the muzzles of his siblings – some of the natural submissive gestures expressed by less dominant wolves. However, during the winter months Nikai did test Zephyr. He incessantly egged on his older brother until the two had it out while Alawa wisely steered clear of the mayhem. Thankfully it took only a few bumps and scratches to return peace and order to the pack with Zephyr at the helm once again.
So a new chapter opens for our Ambassador trio. And what an honor to watch the family transition into such powerful players in the fight to preserve wolves’ rightful place in the environment.
Help support the Wolf Conservation Center‘s efforts to protect and preserve wolf populations in North America by adopting the birthday boy! We offer several adoption levels. No matter what the level, each adoption kit includes an 8×10 wolf photo, wolf biography, adoption certificate and a subscription to our newsletter. Learn more.
Happy Birthday, Nikai! |
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE (I) on Friday blasted President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE's reported selection of Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn for a top economic adviser role.
“It’s called a rigged economy and this is how it works,” Sanders tweeted.
It’s called a rigged economy and this is how it works. https://t.co/npoLcKQmfJ — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 9, 2016
News outlets reported Friday that Trump has chosen Goldman Sachs president Cohn to direct the National Economic Council, which advises the president on economy policy.
Sanders, a staunch critic of Wall Street, made the "rigged economy" one of his main campaign issues during his run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“We’re going to transform America and create an economy that works for all of us, not just the billionaire class,” Sanders says on his website.
Trump struck a populist tone during the campaign as well, promising to "drain the swamp" in Washington.
But critics like Sanders say Trump's Cabinet selections undermine that promise, with Cohn the second figure with ties to Goldman Sachs to get a major appointment.
During a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday night, Trump defended his Cabinet selections.
“One newspaper criticized me, ‘Why can’t we have people of modest means?’" he said. “Because I want people that made a fortune. Because now they’re negotiating with you.” |
Overview Though Apple was highly-recruited out of high school, Buckeyes head coach Urban Meyer wasn't sure of what he had during the New Jersey native's first year on campus. But Apple was diagnosed with an iron deficiency that prevented him from giving full effort on the field, in the weight room, and in the classroom. Once that was under control, Meyer and the rest of the coaches saw Apple begin to fulfill his potential. Apple (whose given surname was Woodard, but changed it to honor his stepfather) started 14 of 15 games as a redshirt freshman during Ohio State's run to a national title. In fact, he sealed the Buckeyes' win over Oregon in the championship game, intercepting Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota's final collegiate pass. For the season, he totaled 53 tackles, 5.5 for loss, three interceptions and 10 pass breakups. Although Apple's statistical production decreased in 2015 (33 tackles, two for loss, one interception, eight pass breakups), Big Ten coaches recognized his ability to shut down opposing receivers by voting him second-team all-conference.
Analysis Strengths Good height, weight and arm length combination. Clean footwork in transition with natural ability to mirror and match from press coverage. Won't open hips early and rarely turned around off line of scrimmage. Has foot quickness in short spaces to maintain feel for his man. Extremely competitive when ball is in the air. Has play strength to redirect receivers from their routes. Aggressive hands in coverage and fights hard to disrupt the catch by any means necessary. Finished with 22 passes defensed over last two years. Scouts praise him for work ethic and technical improvement over last two years. Will come downhill against run and is diligent with contain responsibilities. Has optimal size/speed numbers for an early round cornerback. Weaknesses Can be slow to diagnose and anticipate quarterback's plans. Average reactive athleticism. Doesn't feature the balance or twitch to rocket forward and challenge throws if he's not shadowing his man. Won't always play to his size as a tackler. Dragged 18 yards after a catch against Penn State. Shows some stiffness as an open field tackler and allowed four broken tackles this season. Slow to turn head and find ball on deep throws. Becomes Mr. Grabs if he senses receiver is getting over the top of him or when he's trying to crowd the top of routes. Had four holding and seven pass interference penalties from 2014-2015. Draft Projection Round 1 NFL Comparison Trumaine Johnson Bottom Line Highly recruited two-year starter who is entering the draft as a draft eligible redshirt sophomore. Apple's size and strength allows him to compete against physical receivers, but he also has the talent to mirror and match as a man defender. Covering for longer could be challenging early on after playing with talented defensive fronts who ravaged quarterbacks. Apple will have to learn to trust his feet rather than grabbing so often or he'll find that quarterbacks and refs will find him often. Related Links -Lance Zierlein |
Protesters in Rome torch cars after Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi narrowly survived two confidence votes Tuesday. ((Giampiero Sposito/Reuters))
Silvio Berlusconi pulled off another astonishing escape from the political dead, scraping through two confidence votes Tuesday in a dramatic parliamentary showdown.
But the Italian leader's hold on power remains precarious as his razor-thin victory makes political gridlock a near certainty — and violent street protests show growing unease with his rule.
Masked protesters torched cars and trash bins, smashed shop windows and clashed with police.
Clouds of white tear gas and orange flares engulfed streets, as shops full of Christmas goods hurriedly closed down. Employees at one bank cowered in fear as a group of stone-throwing youths swept by.
Protesters rampaged in the area around parliament and Berlusconi's residence, which had been cordoned off by heavy police presence.
By sundown, almost 100 people, both protesters and police, were reported injured, including about two dozen hospitalized. About 40 were reportedly taken into police custody.
The chaos followed speculation in recent weeks that the end of the Berlusconi era was near.
Weakened by sex scandals and a bitter breakup with his one-time closest ally, Berlusconi seemed destined to be sent packing. The split with Gianfranco Fini had eroded the premier's once comfortable parliamentary majority and left him vulnerable in the lower house.
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi applauds following a confidence vote at the lower chamber in Rome on Tuesday. ((Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press))
But Berlusconi battled back, as he has countless times when his political career seemed to be on the ropes. Tuesday's drama confirmed his status as the ultimate political survivor — but he emerges from the battle severely weakened and one top opposition lawmaker called his success a "Pyrrhic victory."
In the most dramatic and closest of the two tests, Berlusconi survived the no-confidence motion in the lower house by just three votes. Scuffles between lawmakers forced a brief suspension in the voting session.
Earlier in the day, Berlusconi had secured a more comfortable victory in a confidence vote at the Senate.
The vote's slim margin means Berlusconi can no longer count on a secure parliamentary majority for passing legislation. Some experts predict he might resign in upcoming weeks, a move that could lead to early elections, which he hopes to win again.
Berlusconi survived Tuesday's challenge by exploiting rifts inside Fini's camp — at the moment of truth, three supporters defected — and managed to sway a handful of undecided lawmakers to his side. In the process, he drew accusations of vote-buying, amid claims of cash changing hands and favours lavished. Berlusconi's allies reject the allegations.
"I'm not a survivor — I'm strong, robust," a smiling Berlusconi joked after the vote.
Pressing his case before lawmakers on the eve of the showdown, the premier argued that his government had successfully worked to protect Italy from becoming engulfed in the eurozone's debt crisis. He warned that political instability would hurt Italy as it fights for its economic future.
Italy is plagued by a high public debt level and slow growth. The country is still widely viewed as low-risk due to the low level of private debt, a relatively sound banking system and experience in dealing with high public debt levels.
Still, markets were closely monitoring the results of the votes; Italy's main bourse closed little changed on Tuesday. |
President-elect Donald Trump really isn’t going to like this week’s “Saturday Night Live.”
In its cold-open sketch, the show tore into Trump’s reportedly friendly relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his misspelled tweets and his controversial Cabinet picks.
The skit began with Alec Baldwin (playing Trump) explaining to Kate McKinnon (playing his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway) why he went on his “thank you” tour and chose former Texas Gov. Rick Perry as energy secretary.
“Wasn’t that a great choice? I saw him on ‘Dancing With the Stars,’” the Trump character said.
“This guy has so much energy. Unpresidented,” he added, referring to a misspelled tweet Trump posted Saturday.
“SNL” also poked fun at Trump for reportedly having a tough time finding musicians to perform at his inauguration. Beck Bennett ― playing a shirtless Putin ― then came out of the fireplace to give Trump a special Christmas “Elf on the Shelf” gift, in reference to a CIA report that Russia interfered with the presidential election.
When Baldwin-as-Trump said he feels bad at not getting him anything, Bennett-as-Putin replied: “Please, Mr. Trump, you are the gift.”
Finally, actor John Goodman made an appearance to play Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson.
Tillerson is friendly with Putin in real life, so Goodman arrived on the scene to do a special dance with Bennett’s character before discussing business. Meanwhile, all Trump could do is talk about his meeting with Kanye West. |
The painting known as A Charge to Keep, by W.H.D. Koerner
Wikipedia
Former President George W. Bush had his official presidential portrait unveiled at a special ceremony at the White House today. It’s fairly standard issue: Bush stands in the Oval Office, his hands on a chair, with a look that Roland Barthes noted decades ago is typical of political portraits. (“The gaze is lost nobly in the future, it does not confront, it soars and fertilizes some other domain, which is chastely left undefined.”) You can see the new portrait over at Talking Points Memo.
One detail stands out, though: President Bush’s favorite painting, the one he kept by his desk, and the one for which he named his 1999 autobiography, A Charge to Keep. Bush loved to regale visitors with what he thought was the story behind the painting, telling how it depicted the famous circuit riders who in the nineteenth century spread the message of Methodism across the Alleghenies. Bush, a Methodist since the 1970s, identified with the quest of the noble cowboy missionary, and visitors often noted the resemblance between Bush and the lead rider.
There’s only one problem with that story: As Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg wrote in his 2008 book The Bush Tragedy, “that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting.”* Weisberg explains:
The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”
Whether or not Bush ever learned the true story behind the painting seems to be unclear, but if so, he’s sticking to his guns, unwanted ironies be damned. Indeed, President Bush seems determined to ride off with Koerner’s painting into history.
*Update, June 1, 2012: While Bush’s story of the painting’s origins still appears to be false, aspects of Weisberg’s account have also been disputed. As University of Illinois professor Cara Finnegan points out on her blog First Efforts, an illustration that ran with the horse thief story “The Slipper Tongue” in The Saturday Evening Post is actually a very similar-looking but different Koerner composition, also depicting a man working his way up a hill on a horse. The Google Books archive, similarly, shows the same similar-looking but different Koerner illustration.
Contacted about the dispute, Weisberg agreed that he may have confused the two illustrations, and explained that his photocopy of “The Slipper Tongue” may simply have been blurry.
Not disputed by Finnegan is the later appearance of the composition, also mentioned in Weisberg’s book, with the 1918 Country Gentleman story “A Charge to Keep.” Both Finnegan and Weisberg note that this illustration, now the first confirmed appearance of the painting, is not about Methodist missionaries either. As Weisberg points out, the story—about a son’s fight to keep his land, inherited from his father, from “rapacious timber barons”—may contain a different irony altogether. |
A smorgasbord of goodness
Quiches are one of our favorite make-ahead meals. Not only are they easy to throw together, but you can add just about anything into them, making a smorgasbord of goodness. You can make them with any random fixings you might have leftover in your fridge (ham from Easter or turkey from Thanksgiving!), or if you’re fancy, you can combine the perfect concoction of ingredients to mimic some of your favorite dishes. Which is exactly what we did here with this dangerously good Reuben Quiche.
What’s in our Reuben?
Traditional Reuben sandwiches are made with corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and Russian dressing, served on rye bread. Ever wondered where the Reuben Sandwich came from? You can read about its creation here. We love stories like these! |
Zia Rana
January 25, 2012
The Kangaroos declared their first innings at 604 runs for the loss of seven wickets and the visitors were reeling at 61 after losing two key wickets.
The second day’s play came to an end on January 25, 2012 at Adelaide Oval where the fourth and final Test is being staged.
Earlier Australia started the day at 335 for the loss of three wickets in 90 overs, Ponting was unbeaten on 137 and Clarke was playing at 140 and they had shared a partnership of 249 runs for the fourth wicket.
The duo started the day from where they left on the first day and the runs were accumulated easily with occasional boundaries. Clarke achieved his 150 with style by dispatching a four on the third ball of the 93rd over and Ponting followed him in the same manner three overs later.
The game was geared up by the two batsmen and the Indian bowling attack proved ordinary. Clarke celebrated his double century on the fourth ball of the 114th over by earning a four through extra cover few overs before lunch. He tried to accelerate the innings but was clean bowled by Umesh Yadav on the third ball of the 121st over just after the break. The dashing Captain contributed 386 runs for the fourth wicket as he went back to the pavilion at the total of 470 runs.
Ponting accomplished his sixth double ton on the third ball of the 123rd over while securing a four off a pull on the square leg boundary. He added 50 runs for the fifth wicket with Michael Hussey who was run out at 25 runs. The 37-year-old, ex-Captain lost his wicket after thrashing 221 runs once he was caught by Sachin Tendulkar at deep midwicket off Zaheer Khan.
Australia declared their first innings at 604 as they had lost seven wickets, Brad Haddin and Ryan Harris were unbeaten on 42 and 35 runs respectively.
Ravichandran Ashwin was the highest wicket taker with three, Zaheer held two victims and Yadav claimed one wicket as well.
India opened their first innings with style as Gautam Ghambhir dispatched the first ball for a four and gathered eight runs with Virender Sehwag in the initial over. Sehwag got a life at five runs when he was dropped at midwicket by Ed Cowan on the fifth ball of the second over bowled by Ben Hilfenhaus. He could not utilise the chance and was caught and bowled by
Peter Siddle on the first ball of the sixth over at 18 runs.
The first wicket fell at 26 runs and their worries were multiplied when Hilfenhaus uprooted the stumps of the wall of their batting, Rahul Dravid just after six runs were added in the total.
Gautam Ghambhir and Sachin Tendulkar saw the day off as India managed 61 runs without losing any further wicket at stumps, they were batting at 30 and 12 runs respectively. They are still 543 runs away from the first innings total of Australia, the pitch is helpful for the batting and requires determination from the batsmen. They can respond well with proper application and Tendulkar has an upright chance to clinch his 100th hundred. |
The Anonymous hacker who was exposed after leaking evidence that was used to convict two of the Steubenville, Ohio rapists is facing more time in jail than the sexual offenders he helped bring to justice.
Deric Lostutter leaked a viral video made by the rapists themselves that clearly showed their 16-year-old victim was unconscious and unable to consent.
The home of the 26-year-old “hacktivist” was raided by the FBI last April and Lostutter eventually admitted to distributing the clip.
Despite the fact that his involvement in the Stebenville rape case brought about the convictions of two rapists, Lostutter is facing 10 years in jail for obtaining tweets and social media posts that contained details about the rape and for threatening action against the rapists, and the school officials who have since been indicted for their roles in covering up the crime cover up the crime.
One of the convicted rapists, Ma’Lik Richmond, was recently released from juvenile detention two months early for “good behavior” after serving less than a year.
Richmond’s family released a statement about how hard the past 16 months have been for the 16-year-old. The statement failed to make an apology to the rape victim, according to her lawyer.
“Although everyone hopes convicted criminals are rehabilitated, it is disheartening that this convicted rapist’s press release does not make a single reference to the victim and her family -- whom he and his co-defendant scarred for life,” said attorney Robert Fitzsimmons.
“One would expect to see the defendant publicly apologize for all the pain he caused rather than make statements about himself. Rape is about victims, not defendants. Obviously, the people writing his press release have yet to learn this important lesson.”
[Geek Republic] [WTRF] |
Courting controversy again, Tripura Governor Tathagata Roy tweeted what he called a 1946 diary entry made by Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who later founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which stated that “the Hindu-Muslim problem won’t be solved without a Civil War”. This drew sharp reactions on Twitter and several exchanges later, Roy put out another tweet, saying “couple of dozen dimwits” trolled him for “advocating a civil war”, and that “I was quoting, not advocating”.
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At 12.23 am June 18, Roy took to Twitter: “Syama Prasad Mookerjee wrote in his diary on 10/1/1946: “The Hindu-Muslim problem won’t b solved without a Civil War”. So much like Lincoln!” This was followed by sharp exchanges with some accusing him of instigating communal violence, others calling for his sacking and arrest.
Nineteen hours later, Roy tweeted: “Instantly couple of dozen dimwits began trolling that I was advocating a civil war. None stopped to ponder that I was QUOTING, not ADVOCATING.” He continued: “I was quoting a diary of 70 years back, pre-partition India. And it was prophetic. Because Jinnah unleashed that civil war 7 months later. And Jinnah won that civil war and got his Pakistan. That is ALSO something Dr Mookerjee predicted.”
Earlier, while engaging the Twitterati, Roy posted a photograph of a banner attributed to “Shyampur Masjid Committee and the residents” and wrote “See this notice. It says “All music forbidden. Violators will call forth penalties.” Not ISIS. Not Taliban, not Saudi. But West Bengal, India”.
The Governor did not respond to phone calls, email or text messages from The Indian Express for comment. This is not the first time that Roy has made controversial remarks on Twitter. In August 2015, in one of his tweets, he described people who had attended Mumbai blast convict Yakub Memon’s funeral as “potential terrorists” and said “they ought to be kept under surveillance.”
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In September 2015, replying to a tweet, he said: “Whatever gave you the notion I am secular? I am a Hindu. My state, India, however is secular since 1976.” His Twitter handle then identified him as “Governor”, “but still a proud Swayamsevak”. As of today, Roy identifies him as “Civil Engineer, Swayamsevak, Professor, Politician, Writer, Lawyer, Hindu. Now Governor of Tripura. Love travel, music; hate hypocrisy and double standards.” |
IPR Details
Nokia Corporation's Statement about IPR related to RFC 6386
Submitted: March 21, 2013 under the rules in RFC 3979 as updated by RFC 4879
Note: Updates to IPR disclosures must only be made by authorized representatives of the original submitters. Updates will automatically be forwarded to the current Patent Holder's Contact and to the Submitter of the original IPR disclosure.
I. Patent Holder/Applicant ("Patent Holder") Holder legal name Nokia Corporation II. Patent Holder's Contact for Licence Application Holder contact name Kalle Moilanen Holder contact email [email protected] Holder contact info T: +358 50 366 2022
III. Contact Information for the IETF Participant Whose Personal Belief Triggered this Disclosure Name Markus Isomäki Email [email protected] Other info T: +358 50 522 5984
IV. IETF Document or Other Contribution to Which this IPR Disclosure Relates RFC: RFC6386 ("VP8 Data Format and Decoding Guide") V. Disclosure of Patent Information i.e., patents or patent applications required to be disclosed by RFC 3979 as updated by RFC 4879 A. For granted patents or published pending patent applications, please provide the following information: Patent, Serial, Publication, Registration, or Application/File number(s) Country:DE:Filing date:22.05.1998, Filing number:98660050.0, Pub.number:0884911, Grant number:69825220
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B. Does this disclosure relate to an unpublished pending patent application?: Has patent pending No VI. Licensing Declaration The Patent Holder states that its position with respect to licensing any patent claims contained in the patent(s) or patent application(s) disclosed above that would necessarily be infringed by implementation of the technology required by the relevant IETF specification ("Necessary Patent Claims"), for the purpose of implementing such specification, is as follows(select one licensing declaration option only): Licensing Unwilling to Commit to the Provisions of a), b), or c) Above Licensing information, comments, notes, or URL for further information (No information submitted) Note: The individual submitting this template represents and warrants that he or she is authorized by the Patent Holder to agree to the above-selected licensing declaration. VII. Contact Information of Submitter of this Form Submitter name Kalle Moilanen Submitter email [email protected]
Only those sections of the relevant entry form where the submitter provided information are displayed. |
ALLEN WEST: They are not discussing the real issues. What they continue to do, especially on the case of the Democrat[ic] Party -- the progressive socialist left -- is they obfuscate, they deny, they lie about the real issues. You know, we need to talk about the restoration of the family in the black community. When I was born in 1961, between 75 to 77 percent of the households had two parents. Today, it's at 24 percent, and you can trace that right back to a failed policy from Lyndon Johnson, where the government provided checks to women who had children out of wedlock as long as they did not have a man in the home.
STUART VARNEY (HOST): Allen, can I just jump in for a second here? What's your solution to that problem, children out of wedlock or without two parents at home? What's your solution; is it a withdrawal of the welfare state?
WEST: Well, yeah. I mean, Jason Riley wrote a great book, he is a Wall Street Journal editor, saying "please stop helping us." You know, the black community was stronger it seems during the issues of segregation; when you had families that where intact, when you had communities that were standing up, when you had better education opportunities. I think that is another important thing. |
Scott Leibrand and Dana Lewis on their wedding day, August 1, 2015. Dana Lewis On their first date, Scott Leibrand asked Dana Lewis why she was wearing a pager. This was 2013 after all.
Surprisingly, Lewis did have a pager for work because she was on-call as a communications lead for a healthcare company. But the black box sitting on her waistband was not that.
It was an insulin pump, and it wasn't the only equipment Lewis carried around to manage her diabetes.
Her date couldn't see the other device in her purse that monitored the glucose levels in her blood and would sound an alarm if her levels got dangerously high or low.
An alarm that Lewis slept through all the time.
Moving to Seattle and living on her own had been daunting for Lewis. Her friends and family worried that she would die in the middle of the night, like a number of diabetes patients do, because she wouldn't wake up to correct her levels.
So Lewis and Leibrand, a former Twitter engineer and an expert in networks, did the natural thing for two people versed in programming.
They built an artificial pancreas.
A new pancreas and a new relationship
Diabetes is a condition where there's too much glucose in the blood. Typically, the pancreas produces insulin, a hormone, to balance the glucose and help it get from the food you eat into your cells. If the pancreas doesn't create enough insulin or it doesn't work, the blood sugar levels become too high or too low — a dangerous fluctuation that can lead to death.
It's a lifelong condition with no cure. Lewis, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 14, used to manage her diabetes in a way many people do, by pricking her finger 12 times a day to check her blood or wearing a glucose monitor and an insulin pump. She also used a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), which inserts a tiny sensor with a transmitter into the skin and sends data every five minutes to a monitor. If the glucose is too low, it sets off an alarm.
The DIY pancreas project started out as only as a way to make that alarm louder.
"I had recently gotten a CGM in April around the time I started dating Scott, so we had about six months of him watching me use these devices and thinking it was a really stupid way to manage a chronic disease," Lewis said.
Making the alarm on a glucose monitor louder isn't as simple as hooking it up to speakers or transmitting it over Bluetooth. It's like trying to get an alarm on your microwave to sound on your radio.
The breakthrough came in late 2013 when another developer created a way to feed the data off of the glucose monitor and onto a computer. Lewis had always been able to view the data retroactively by uploading files from a USB-like device, but a few new lines of code let Lewis set up a Windows laptop on her nightstand and have the computer instantly read her data and sound the alarms all night long.
"Just shut up everything": An early prototype of the DIYPS shows Dana Lewis' glucose information on the computer. The system let Lewis snooze or input information on the computer screen. On Leibrand's Pebble watch, he could see the basic information on the go. Dana Lewis
They later switched to an iPad with push alerts to notify Leibrand if Lewis had slept through the alarm. If that was the case, he'd drive 20 miles to wake her up. Otherwise, she would click a button to let Leibrand knew she had taken care of it.
"I used to wake up, and I would have been low for hours and hours and hours. That's dangerous and also really frightening," Lewis said. "The immediate benefit was just peace of mind and feeling safe because he had access to my data from afar. If I didn't wake up, he could call me and drive down and check on me."
Push notifications and a louder alarm were just the beginning.
The human guinea pig
Diabetes care has always been a system of trial and error.
For years, Lewis has run the calculations in her head or on a computer of how much insulin she needs. It's a complex math equation involving current blood sugar, activity levels, and whether she's about to eat something.
"What people don't understand is that you're self-dosing insulin 24/7, 365 days a year until the day we get a cure or something else happens," Lewis said. "So people are constantly doing trial and error. Sometimes they're guessing. Sometimes they do tests. Sometimes they don't."
Looking at it from an engineering perspective, Leibrand and Lewis realized it was just an algorithm. They needed the data to train it, and they could get that data from their new alarm system.
"So, being trained as a guinea pig to push these specific buttons, we figured we might as well put in specific commands and say this is exactly what I'm doing: I'm taking insulin, I'm reducing insulin, or I'm eating something, and these are the precise amounts," Lewis said.
As Lewis put in more data, they were able to tweak the algorithm until it got more precise. Still, it took Lewis awhile to trust it, Leibrand said.
"A lot of time people say 'Oh, people with diabetes need to track all this stuff!'" Lewis said. "For the first 11 years, I tracked nothing. I never downloaded my meter. I never logged things."
The original DIYPS, in red, shows how many alarms would go off in the night. When Lewis turned on the closed loop to allow the pump to dose the recommended amounts, the number of alarms fell dramatically. Dana Lewis Leibrand added, "Just like you would figure out how to dose a drug effectively, there's gonna be trial and error in that method. It's just a learning curve of how everyone deals with diabetes."
Soon she was able to put in her blood-glucose levels into the algorithm and get predictions on what her levels would be 30, 60, or 90 minutes out. She could decide if she needed to add more or less insulin — information so valuable that she started taking the system with her during the daytime too.
Initially, Lewis was the safety check herself. If their DIY pancreas system recommended levels too high or too low, she could ignore it and administer what she thought was the correct level. Having self-dosed insulin for more than 11 years, she had an idea of what her body needed.
"There's still a human at the end of the line, making all the decisions, pushing all the buttons, validating that this is what works," Lewis said. "This system actually reduces some of the elements of human laziness because it's going to be precise, really up to date, and it will always work based on available data and not guessing. If you lose an element of data, it will tell you 'I don't have the data to perform this calculation.' That's a lot safer than me just running around doing math in my sleep."
Closing the loop
There wouldn't always be a human at the end of the line, though.
Dana Lewis A year after training the algorithm, Lewis and Leibrand started exploring how the could "close the loop" on their artificial pancreas.
If her blood glucose levels were going too high, the program would instruct the insulin pump to add the recommended insulin level from the algorithm. Lewis wouldn't need to check if that was the correct amount or push the buttons herself — she trusts it.
The only problem was that the DIY pancreas system they had created couldn't give commands to the insulin pump. Whatever it recommended, Lewis still had to push the buttons.
They soon assembled an "artificial pancreas" to manage Lewis' insulin for her.
This isn't a new organ or something inside her body, but a group of electronics that can mimic the functions her pancreas is missing. A Raspberry Pi mini computer takes data from the USB stick and glucose monitor and transfers the recommendation to the insulin pump. It's all online, so Lewis and Leibrand can track it on their watches, although she does have to carry around a stack of electronics.
"We picked August 1 to close the loop because that's our wedding date and because we thought it was funny," Lewis said. "But what was most funny of all is that two weeks later, we got it working."
The one missing piece had been finding a way to command the insulin pump to actually do something. But another engineer had figured out how to exploit a security flaw in an old Medtronic insulin pump that would let someone write commands to it. What the researcher made a big stink of as a cybersecurity scare turned out to be the missing piece for Lewis.
The company had stopped manufacturing the pump, but Lewis found one, and then let the algorithm take over for a night and keep her levels in range.
"The first live test turned into just live using it," Leibrand said. "We didn't actually turn it off after that."
Helping other patients
Like any piece of software, there are always bugs. But delivering the wrong dose of insulin is a bit more serious than a computer game freezing.
A few times, the system hasn't worked. One time it was caught in a loop and reduced her insulin for a period of time, Lewis said. Recently, Leibrand caught the system not updating in the middle of the night. He stayed up debugging a solution with other members of the diabetes community before he was able to reset it.
With the closed loop, Lewis' levels remain in range more and at steadier levels. Here, the system has been running for 12 hours even as Lewis is recovering from jet lag. Dana Lewis "We maybe had two what we would call adverse events with serious concerns like 'that wasn't supposed to happen,'" Lewis said.
"But that's going against like hundreds of bad things that would have happened if we didn't take action," Leibrand added.
To make sure a software glitch doesn't equal death, Leibrand programmed it to have a maximum amount of insulin dispensed in a period. Lewis, too, can always revert to the normal standard of diabetes care if something is wrong with the system.
Her artificial pancreas system is a better normal though, at least for her. Now they want to grow the test beyond one person.
Since February 2015, Leibrand and Lewis have been working on helping others to close the loop, too.
They've built a GitHub repository for the Open Artificial Pancreas System (Open APS) that contains pieces of the code like building blocks (not the full artificial pancreas). Ultimately, the patient has to come up with the algorithm and trust the software before it can be used.
Although there are some closed-loop systems in testing from medical companies, a movement among people with diabetes has spawned Facebook groups and Twitter hashtags to say #Wearenotwaiting. A group of engineers and fathers of children of diabetes created the NightScout project help parents see the glucose levels of their children when they're away at school, for example.
The US Food and Drug Administration is aware of these projects — and none of them are officially approved, although the FDA hasn't taken issue with them either. Lewis and Leibrand are in regular communication with the agency to make sure their work doesn't cross the line of distributing medical devices, but can still help other people with diabetes close the loop and take control of their care.
Scott Leibrand carrying the DIYPS system on their wedding day. Dana Lewis During a trip to Portugal, they found a way to take the system offline and use it without an internet connection — something that would come in handy during their two-week honeymoon.
By the time they reached their wedding day — the deadline for closing the loop — they had already spent eight months trying to help people achieve the same.
Lewis is likely the first person to get married with this type of artificial pancreas. Unlike many insulin-dependent people with diabetes, she didn't have to cut into the lining of her dress to make a pocket for her monitor. It was Leibrand who wore the monitor under his shirt.
"No alarms — no problems," Lewis said. "Diabetes wasn't in the picture during the wedding, and that was exactly how it should be." |
"Escaping the inequality trap is the 21st century’s most critical challenge," says UNDP Chief Marc Andre
ISLAMABAD: The concentration of public spending is politically driven and only restricted to a few developed districts, which is increasing inequality between the rich and poor regions of Pakistan, said the outgoing chief of United Nations Development Programme, Marc Andre, Tuesday.
“Investment (of public funds) in Lahore, the most developed district of Punjab, is six times more than the allocations of the Seraiki belt of the province,” said Andre, while speaking at a seminar organised to highlight the growing inequality in the country.
Govt’s tight pockets could hamper CPEC project
Politically driven fund allocations, absence of land reforms, anti-poor, pro-rich tax system and privatisation are said to be the key reasons for the growing inequality in Pakistan.
According to Andre, the allocation of fund is a political decision and there were structural problems in the way money was allocated in Pakistan. “A good amount of public fund is allocated to the members of assemblies under political consideration.”
The UNDP Chief’s comments highlight growing frustrations over the way federal and provincial governments have been allocating resources, which, according to experts, is becoming a cause for growing inequality among various districts of the country.
A recent UNDP-funded report revealed that Pakistan’s richest 20% now consumed seven times more than the poorest 20% population due to rising inequality.
The income share of the lowest 20% population has further shrunk to only 6.8% while that of the richest 20% increased to 48.9%.
The report states that 38.8% of Pakistan’s population lives in poverty.
A majority of the rural population (54.6%) lives in acute poverty while this ratio is only 9.4% in urban areas, emphasising the need to make rural-centric economic policies.
Overall budget up but development allocation down
“As much as 80% to 85% of total physical expenditures of the province are incurred in Lahore,” said Dr Akmal Hussain, a renowned economist and social activist.
He said in Punjab, some districts were as well off as any developed country; while some districts are at par with sub-Saharan African countries.
On the human development index (HDI) ranking, Lahore is at number 1 position compared to Rajanpur that ranks 69, Dera Ghazi Khan 64, Muzaffargarh 58 and Bhakkar 51.
Instead of channelling funds to the underdeveloped Seraiki belt districts of Punjab, funds are heavily concentrated in Lahore.
Dr Hussain said the state was becoming an ‘economic apartheid state’ due to concentration of funds in the few already developed districts. “Public policy is the source of growing inequality as it is focused on providing services to the rich.”
Meanwhile, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund Head Qazi Azmat Essa suggested the Planning Commission to devise a mechanism to determine whether the new public sector spending was going to Lahore or southern-Rajanpur district, which is at the bottom of HDI.
“In case of Balochistan, excluding Quetta; the province’s best performing districts are worse than the worst performing districts of Punjab,” said Planning Commission Social Sector Member Dr Naeem-ul-Zafar.
Money sent through illegal channels cannot be traced
However, Punjab Chief Economist Dr Amanullah said that after the publication of the ‘Multidimensional Poverty’ report in June this year, the Punjab government was in the process of formulating a strategy to focus on developing the bottom 10 districts.
“Escaping the inequality trap is the 21st century’s most critical challenge,” said Marc Andre. “The governments have sufficient resources in their hands and the actual issue is proper utilisation of the allocated funds.”
Also present, the economist S Akbar Zaidi suggested the state to distribute its 2.6 million acres of land among peasants to reduce inequality in the country.
Published in The Express Tribune , August 10th, 2016.
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In this small show, organized by the curator David C. Ward, images become more powerful than argument. What can be read in Lincoln’s features — of his leadership of the Union, his milestone emancipation of slaves, his rededication of American ideals based on the inalienable rights proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence? Could another figure of his age have done the same?
There is some resemblance between Lincoln and Winston Churchill in Britain in 1941, during the blitz of London. Had Churchill not used his rhetorical gifts to strengthen and unite his citizenry and cabinet, defining the character of their island nation and outlining what was at stake, the course of the 20th century might have been different.
And had Lincoln not, with almost ruthless firmness, taken the ideal of the Union as the highest good and defended it with his own rhetorical gifts, had he not believed — as so few others did — that the stakes were worth the war’s unprecedented horrors and sufferings, then the world’s greatest experiment in self-government would have failed, and questions would have been raised, as Lincoln said, about whether any nation so conceived could long endure.
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I have fallen under the spell of Lincoln, which means that for every book read, there are several lifetimes’ worth of books to follow. It is a field in which there are so many opinions that no one could ever be lonely. I walk around hearing voices — though not, perhaps, the voices that Mary Todd Lincoln sought in White House séances after her 11-year-old son died.
I have been listening to audio books of recent Lincoln works: Fred Kaplan’s “Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer” and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals.” I have even tried audio books of Lincoln’s speeches, though I have not heard a speaker do justice to the rhythms and music of those late, condensed orations, like the Gettysburg Address or the Second Inaugural, in which Lincoln strips away all accident and incident, laying out the counterpoint of high principle.
The bicentennial will not allow much silence to intervene for contemplation of this man’s open-minded, sad nobility, but no complaints here.
The historian James Oakes, who is a contributor to Eric Foner’s valuable new anthology, “Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World,” has suggested that for a time Lincoln historians paid attention to large, abstract forces, market conditions, abolition movements or other political pressures, but that in recent years attention to Lincoln has again become almost minutely personal.
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Mr. Foner’s anthology of academic essays strikes a balance between the personal and the abstract, and a daylong conference last month at Mr. Foner’s home base, Columbia University, featured the book’s contributors and was often exhilarating. But Lincoln the man looms largest and is likely to loom larger still with the inauguration of Barack Obama, who, like Lincoln, was once an Illinois state legislator.
Mr. Obama has so identified himself with Lincoln that he invoked him while announcing his candidacy in Lincoln’s onetime political base, Springfield, Ill. He has suggested that his political career has been an extension of the arc of racial progress begun by Lincoln. In Mr. Obama’s victory speech he quoted Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address. The theme of Mr. Obama’s own inauguration will be “A New Birth of Freedom,” an allusion to the Gettysburg Address. And the president-elect has admiringly cited Ms. Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” saying he has been influenced by the way Lincoln composed his cabinet.
All of this heightens the relevance of the coming flood of Lincolniana. Coming in January is a much anticipated two-volume biography of Lincoln by Michael Burlingame, drawing on the author’s discoveries of letters and newspaper writings (as well as a lost 1865 eulogy of Lincoln by Frederick Douglass).
Another new biography is imminent from Ronald C. White Jr. Lincoln’s marriage to the manic Mary Todd is the subject of the recent book “The Lincolns” by Daniel Mark Epstein. She is made an even more sympathetic figure in “Mrs. Lincoln” by Catherine Clinton — though Mr. Burlingame’s research will make further rehabilitation much more difficult.
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Mr. Kaplan’s book is a study of Lincoln’s development as a writer. James M. McPherson’s book is about Lincoln’s military prowess, and Harold Holzer’s account is of the months between Lincoln’s election and his taking office in 1861 — months in which Southern secessions began.
Yet another new book, compiled by Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt Jr. (“Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon”), is an illustrated history of Lincoln’s posthumous image. The Library of America, in “The Lincoln Anthology,” is doing something similar in prose: Mr. Holzer compiles almost 150 years of reactions to Lincoln by writers ranging from Horace Greeley and Nathaniel Hawthorne to E. L. Doctorow and Mr. Obama.
Yet for all the detail, the probing and the analysis, something remains uncanny. If Lincoln had died in 1860, we probably wouldn’t remember him. He had failed to gain much political power during his one term in Congress beginning in 1847; he lost the 1858 election to the Senate; and while he was a diligent party man and lawyer, his legislative track record was not terribly distinguished. He was last out of four Republicans in line to get the party’s nomination in 1860.
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He would have a legacy of a few good speeches and some powerful argument in the debates with his rival, Stephen A. Douglas, but it would have been a career far less influential than that of the antislavery politician of the previous generation whom Lincoln most admired, Henry Clay.
So how is it that, within five years, Lincoln ended up worthy of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton’s comment on his death, “Now he belongs to the ages”? The closer you look, combing through these mountains of material, the more ambiguities appear.
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Beginning in the 1960s, for example, Lincoln’s stature was knocked down a few notches; he had equivocated about some issues for which he is now most admired. In one debate with Douglas, for instance, he was eager to reassure the audience that he had no intention of urging “political and social equality between the white and the black races.”
And at first, ending slavery was not one of Lincoln’s goals in the Civil War. In 1862 Lincoln said in a letter to Greeley that his ambition was to save the Union, which he would do “without freeing any slave” or “by freeing all the slaves” or “by freeing some and letting others alone.” And his grand scheme for freed slaves? Initially they were to be encouraged to migrate to a special colony in Africa.
As for the elegiac prose of his great speeches, where are they anticipated in the many stiff and uninspiring speeches of his earlier life or in his reputation for off-color joviality? Mr. Holzer points out that The New York Daily News mocked the president-elect as an “inveterate old anecdote monger.”
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“Is the precious time of Cabinet Councils to be wasted with stories?” the paper asked. “Will he go down to South Carolina and assuage her wrath” with an anecdote? It is almost as if there were no connections between the lawyer in Springfield and the president in Washington.
Of course, that is an exaggeration. Continuities abound. But what happened is still remarkable. Lincoln had a tragic vision of the world; he grew up surrounded by familial death and disregard; his marriage was difficult; two children died; his career was pockmarked by failures. He suffered greatly but acted as if he had a right not to happiness itself, but only to its pursuit.
As in life, so in government. He believed that political compromise was the motor of democratic life. And the biggest compromises at America’s founding were those involving slavery. It was only by allowing slavery into the Constitution that the Constitution was made possible; it was only by settling for containment rather than elimination that the better angels of early America could even create a United States.
Lincoln, though, rose to the presidency at the very moment when that tragic compromise failed. So in this respect, the flexible politician became an absolutist. There was, in his mind, a fundamental principle that could not be abandoned: the Union. He cleaved fiercely — almost fanatically — to it because it already was a compromise, though one generated out of an ideal toward which the nation would have to move.
That conviction forced him to refine his thinking and discipline his actions. In a debate with Douglas, Lincoln referred to an “eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world.” The wrong, he said, was “the divine right of kings.” The right was “the common right of humanity.” The notion of “divine right” left a stain in the form of American slavery; the notion of “common right” was America’s founding principle.
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Those inalienable rights of humanity could be guaranteed only by something like the Union, so even when it came to abolishing slavery, Lincoln was cautious and protective, hewing strictly to the Constitution, knowing the wrong could be fully undone only with an amendment, but believing, finally, that he could at least, as commander in chief in time of war, free slaves in the rebellious territories. The Emancipation Proclamation is written in stolid, legalistic prose in which all of Lincoln’s rhetorical gifts are shunted aside. That too was done in service to the Union.
Then he was freed to define his larger vision. Andrew Delbanco, in Mr. Foner’s anthology, argues that the Civil War, for all its trauma, was unlike many other wars in that it did not produce a crisis that left the country without a sense of purpose. That is because, he suggests, Lincoln found “transcendent meaning in the carnage” and affirmed that meaning for both sides. He really became another founding father.
Look finally, in the National Gallery, at the Alexander Gardner photograph taken soon after the late-life mask was made, less than two months before Lincoln’s death. A crack shattered the glass plate, its scar running, almost prophetically, across the top of Lincoln’s head. The president’s left eye is in finely etched focus, gazing off in deep introspection, while the rest of the face softens into a gentle blur. Lincoln’s eye, surely, has seen much that haunts him.
But on Lincoln’s mouth are the hints of an enigmatic smile, as if in the closing weeks of the war, Lincoln saw, despite the struggles to come, a sign of what might be. The clarity of his gaze and the promise of his smile remain. |
Between 1908 and 1913, American filmmaker D. W. Griffith made over 400 movies. Over that time, he, along with his fellow Hollywood directors, developed continuity editing. Using such tools as matching eyelines – cutting so that the actors appear to be looking at each other across different shots – and the 180-degree rule – which keeps the actors from switching places on the screen – Griffith and his cohorts created a visual grammar that let audiences forget the film’s artifice and disappear into the story. By the time Griffith released his hugely influential (and hugely racist) masterwork A Birth of A Nation in 1915, the rules of continuity editing had more or less been worked out. This form of storytelling was so successful, and profitable, that it has been used for just about every Hollywood movie that has come out since.
Yet just as these rules were being codified, filmmakers, mostly European, looked for other ways to tell a story. German directors like F. W. Murnau and Robert Wiene experimented with cinematic depictions of the subconscious. French filmmakers like René Clair used camera tricks and odd framing to create works of formal beauty. But it was the filmmakers in the newly formed Soviet Union that really contributed a new way of thinking about film – Soviet Montage. You can watch a video about it above.
When the Bolshevik Revolution washed over the country, the number of films in the USSR dried up. One of the few movies available at VGIK, aka The Moscow Film School, was Griffith’s sprawling Intolerance (watch it online here). Lev Kuleshov, a young teacher there, started to take apart the movie and reorder the images. He discovered that the meaning of a scene was radically changed depending on the order of the shots. This led Kuleshov to try an experiment: he juxtaposed the image of a man with a blank expression with a bowl of soup, a young corpse in a coffin and a pretty girl. You can watch it below.
Invariably, audiences praised the actor for his subtlety of performance. Of course, there was no performance. The connection between the two images was made entirely within the head of the viewer. This realization would forever be commemorated in film schools everywhere as the Kuleshov Effect.
Using the French word for assemble, Kuleshov called this "montage." At the school, however, there was considerable debate over what montage exactly was. One of Kuleshov’s students, Vsevolod Pudovkin envisioned each shot as a brick, one small part that together with other small parts created a cinematic edifice.
Another student, Sergei Eisenstein, proposed a far more dynamic, and revolutionary, form of montage. Eisenstein saw it “as an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots.” An intellectual well versed in theory, Eisenstein compared montage to Karl Marx’s vision of history where a thesis smashes into its antithesis and together, from that wreckage, forms its synthesis.
Eisenstein’s greatest example of montage, and indeed one of the greatest examples of filmmaking ever, is the Odessa Steps scene from his masterpiece Battleship Potemkin. In it, Czarist soldiers massacre a group of protestors, mostly women and children. You can watch it below.
As you can see, it’s a powerful piece of propaganda. There is no way to come away from this movie and not feel like the Czarists are anything but murderous villains. (Nevermind that the movie is wildly inaccurate, historically speaking.) Shots of a grieving mother juxtaposed with images of bayonet wielding troops result in a surprisingly visceral feeling of injustice.
In his writings, Eisenstein outlined the varying types of montage – five kinds in all. The most important, in his eyes, was intellectual montage – a method of placing images together in a way to evoke intellectual concepts. He was inspired by how Japanese and Chinese can create abstract ideas from concrete pictograms. For example, the Japanese symbol for tree is 木. One character for wall is 囗. Put the two together, 困, and you have the character for trouble, because having a tree in your wall is certainly a huge pain in the ass. You can see an example of intellectual montage in the end of the Odessa steps sequence when a stone lion seemingly rises to his feet.
Eisenstein decided to push this idea to the limit with his follow up, October. The movie is deeply strange to watch now. In one famous sequence, Eisenstein compares White Russian general Alexander Kerensky to a peacock and to a cheap Napoleon figurine. It’s proved to be an interesting intellectual exercise but one that left audiences, both then and now baffled.
And below is another, slightly funnier, certainly more contemporary, example of intellectual montage.
Many of the landmark films mentioned above can be found in our collection, 1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc..
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The Filmmaking of Susan Sontag & Her 50 Favorite Films (1977)
Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veeptopus, featuring lots of pictures of vice presidents with octopuses on their heads. The Veeptopus store is here. |
The US Supreme Court on Monday extended the constitutional protection of the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms to every jurisdiction in the nation.
The action places in serious doubt the constitutionality of a handgun ban in Chicago, and sets the stage for more legal challenges to an array of tough gun-control laws across the United States.
The 5-to-4 decision means that in addition to the federal government, state and local governments must comply with the high court’s 2008 landmark ruling recognizing an individual right to possess handguns in the home for self defense.
IN PICTURES: The debate over gun rights
Two years ago, in a decision called District of Columbia v. Heller, the high court struck down a handgun ban in Washington, D.C., ruling that it violated the right of individuals to keep and bear arms.
Because the District of Columbia is a federal enclave – rather than part of a state – the question remained open whether the newly articulated Second Amendment right would apply beyond federal jurisdictions like Washington, D.C., to states and municipalities.
That was the issue in Monday’s case, McDonald v. City of Chicago. Chicago maintains a handgun ban similar to the ban struck down in Washington. But it wasn’t clear from prior Supreme Court precedent whether Second Amendment protections extended to cities and states.
The high court has now made clear that they do.
“We have previously held that most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights apply with full force to both the federal government and the states. Applying the standard that is well established in our case law, we hold that the Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the states,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito for the majority.
A 'fundamental' right
The majority justices said the right to keep a handgun for self-protection in the home is a “fundamental” right, deeply rooted in America’s history and tradition.
Justice Alito quoted England's Sir William Blackstone as asserting that the right to keep and bear arms was “one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen.” He said the American colonists shared that view and decided to protect it.
“The right to keep and bear arms was considered no less fundamental by those who drafted and ratified the Bill of Rights,” Alito said.
In a dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the majority opinion overturned more than a century of Supreme Court precedent. “Although the court’s decision in this case might be seen as a mere adjunct to its decision in Heller, the consequences could prove far more destructive – quite literally – to our nation’s communities and to our constitutional structure,” he said.
“Today’s ruling marks a dramatic change in our law,” he said. “I would proceed more cautiously.”
Chicago's handgun ban on tenuous ground
The decision sends the case back to the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago to reconsider the constitutionality of that city’s handgun ban. In effect, the appeals court judges must apply the same test the high court used to invalidate Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban.
Most legal analysts expect Chicago’s ban to be struck down.
The next major issue will be what legal standard lower court judges should apply when assessing whether a particular gun-control measure violates the Second Amendment.
A plurality of justices offered some guidance. “It is important to keep in mind that Heller, while striking down a law that prohibited the possession of handguns in the home, recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” Alito wrote.
“We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as ‘prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,’ ‘laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,’ ” he said.
“We repeat those assurances here,” Alito said. “Despite municipal respondents’ doomsday proclamations, incorporation does not imperil every law regulating firearms.”
'Due process' is basis of majority decision
In extending the Second Amendment to cities and states, the justices declined an invitation by gun rights lawyers to overrule prior legal precedents dating to 1873, 1876, and 1886.
Lawyers for the Second Amendment Foundation had asked the justices to consider relying on the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th Amendment. But that part of the high court’s jurisprudence has remained largely dormant since the 1800s and would have required the court to announce a major shift in the law.
Only one justice, Clarence Thomas, embraced this approach. Nonetheless, Justice Thomas joined the majority in most of its decision and concurred in the result.
Alito’s majority decision relied on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, the provision most often cited by the Supreme Court when the high court has moved to enforce the protections in the Bill of Rights to the states.
The Bill of Rights was written and adopted as a check on the power of the national government. It was only later that the Supreme Court began enforcing those same rights against state and local governments. For example, state and local governments must respect free speech rights guaranteed in the Constitution, and state and local police must adhere to the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment.
But the Supreme Court has not applied all of the rights in the Bill of Rights to the states. Some state courts do not recognize a right to a grand jury indictment or a jury trial in certain civil cases. Yet both of those rights are guaranteed in federal court by the Constitution.
On Monday, the high court extended its holdings in this area to declare that the Second Amendment must now be enforced at the state and local levels.
“In Heller we held that the Second Amendment protects the right to possess a handgun in the home for the purpose of self-defense,” Alito said. “A provision of the Bill of Rights that protects a right that is fundamental from an American perspective applies equally to the federal government and the states.”
Alito was joined in the majority opinon by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas.
In addition to Stevens, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.
“The Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self-defense,” Breyer wrote. “There has been, and is, no consensus that the right is, or was, fundamental,” he said. “No broader constitutional interest or principle supports legal treatment of that right as fundamental. To the contrary, broader constitutional concerns of an institutional nature argue strongly against that treatment.”
IN PICTURES: The debate over gun rights
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So we are inviting everyone to have a go with a competition! The best story submitted will win a prize of £100 to spend at our site!
With all the current zeitgeist for erotic fiction on the back of 50 shades of Grey, more and more people are starting to have a go at writing short stories themselves. An old girlfriend and I used to write half a story each and text it to each other to finish off, it certainly made getting home lots of fun. Whilst sitting poolside on our holiday, she picked up a book from the book exchange. She had been reading erotica all holiday and had run out so picked up one that somebody had left behind. I’m not sure of the author but in comparison to what she had just read this wasn’t hitting the same spot.
As I was happily reading my book she kept interrupting me with giggles reading out various passages to me. What was making us laugh so much was the language used. Some of the words just didn’t sound erotic or you just wouldn’t use in everyday talk and therefore sounded alien when read from the page.
There was one sentence that was describing a blow job that went something like this :- I gripped his **** in my hand stroking the shaft from tip to base in long deliberate motions, I stopped to sensuously lick the pre cum that glistened on his glans and my sex ached for him.
It was the use of the words ‘my sex’ and ‘glans’ that made it sound unrealistic and made us laugh but then I wondered if other words would put other people off? Words that don’t do it for me are his or her sex, Mons, glans, penis and vagina seem too medical others just silly.
Sylvia Day uses a liberal peppering of the words c*nt and c*ck which personally I like but I know the ‘c’ word is still taboo for many, I used to work with a girl for whom the words ‘moist gusset’ was as bad as swearing. Even panties is weird for some people and lingerie can sound too pretentious.
So what words do it for you? How do you want it laid out for you? Do you want Mills and Boon style euphemisms such as ‘ I felt his passion’ or ‘my heat’ do you want scientific words such as vagina, penis, glans etc or like me would you prefer more honest words such as pussy, clit, c*ck etc?
I guess as always whatever floats your boat is different for each person….
If you would like to enter you need to:-
First register on the main site here (So if you win we can add your credit)
Then use the contact form below to send over your story (email a copy to [email protected])
We will set a minimum of 500 words as a requirement and a maximum of 5000 (not including titles headers and spaces etc)
Don’t be shy and feel free to write in whatever style you like about whatever you like as long as it is not illegal. All entries will be posted on our blog (once we have read them!)
Some brief rules:-
Minimum 500 words Maximum 5000 (does not include titles, spaces etc
The story can be in any style and on any subject as long as it contains some erotic content
Nothing illegal will be considered and will be disqualified
You can write as an individual or as a team with a maximum of 3 writers per team (only one prize will be issued to a team)
The work remains your own but by submitting it you give us the right to post it on our site and affiliated sites
Entries will be posted under the competition tab and we encourage you to read and comment on each others. Please keep it supportive though. All comments will be vetted first and any comments deemed to be abusive or unfairly negative will not be posted
The closing date for entries is the 18 th of April 2014 and the winner will be announced by the 25 th of April 2014. The prize will be immediately available from that date
of April 2014 and the winner will be announced by the 25 of April 2014. The prize will be immediately available from that date Full T’s and C’s here
Let those creative juices flow!
Want to read the entries so far Click Here |
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Pontypridd overcame the elements and a determined Merthyr side to advance to the semi-finals of the Swalec Cup, running out 6-5 winners at Sardis Road.
The hosts enjoyed the first real attack of the game when they were held up over the Merthyr tryline during the opening exchanges.
A driving maul close to the line was halted by the visitors and Ponty scrum half Lloyd Williams darted towards the line before being dragged down just short by Osian Davies.
The forwards carried it on and powered over the line but referee Craig Evans couldn't see a grounding with bodies everywhere.
Both teams struggled to get a foothold in the game with the rain lashing down, before the kicking game of Merthyr fly-half Dean Gunter began causing problems for the Pontypridd back three.
Watch: The awful conditions during Pontypridd v Merthyr
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Recap:
Merthyr enjoyed plenty of territory with their Premiership side persistently infringing and the visitors were soon in front.
With the half hour mark approaching, a powerful driving maul charged through the Pontypridd defence and Osian Davies was the man with the ball in his hands at the bottom of the pile.
The hosts responded with a penalty from Ceri Sweeney with six minutes remaining in the half, but it was the Championship side who went in leading at the break.
A change of kit was required for the hosts at half time with both sets of players trudging off caked in mud.
Referee Evans must have been considering whether or not the game could continue with standing water all over the field.
But out they came for the second 40 and captain Dafydd Lockyer soon had the home support cheering.
(Image: Huw Evans Agency)
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His scything break was eventually ushered into touch but the hosts would go on to enjoy a sustained spell of possession in the Merthyr half.
After missing an earlier shot at goal, Sweeney sorted his radar out to boot the hosts into the lead midway through the second half after former Pontypridd second row Craig Locke was pinged for going offside.
The visitors missed a big opportunity in the final 10 minutes when Pontypridd coughed the ball up in attack.
The ball was hacked through and Merthyr winger Terri Gee was racing after it, but he couldn't control it and the chance went begging.
Former Pontypridd fly-half Dean Gunter had a kick to win it late on, but struggled to get any purchase on it, kicking out of a puddle.
The visitors didn't go down without a fight and, but for a handful of missed penalties, they would have come away with the win.
But, in the final play, they coughed the ball up deep in the Pontypridd 22 and that was it.
Pontypridd advance in the cup, but only just.
Attendance: 4,800
Pontypridd
Tries:
Cons
Penalties: Ceri Sweeney (2)
Matthew Nuthall; Chris Clayton, Geraint Walsh, Dafydd Lockyer, Alex Webber; Ceri Sweeney, Lloyd Williams; Chris Phillips, Huw Dowden, Keiron Assiratti; Hemi Barnes, Owen Sheppeard; Jake Thomas, Rhys Shellard, Dan Godfrey
Replacement: Joel Raikes, Lewis K Williams, Bradley Coombes, Ashleigh James, Wayne O'Connor, Shaun O'Rourke, Jordan Grass, Corey Domachowski.
Merthyr
Tries: Osian Davies (27)
Cons:
Penalties:
Matthew Jarvis; Dan Parry, Tom Hiscock, David Bishop, Terri Gee; Dean Gunter, Rhys Downes; James Howe, Rhys Williams, Gary Powell; Craig Locke, Miles Normandale; Tom Daley, Osian Davies, Phil Rees
Replacements: Rhys James, Meurig Davies, Gary Way, Ben Murphy, Andy Powell, Martin Luckwell, Cameron Gardner, Adam Hoskins |
We don’t see much of The Wasp in Ant-Man (much to some people’s chagrin), but we might have seen a different side of her had the costume designers gone with their original vision for her.
As seen in a YouTube video posted by Parka Blogs, the coffee table book The Art of Ant-Man contains a page featuring alternative designs for The Wasp’s look. And girl looks pretty fly in all of them. Just look at those wings in the last two!
In the comics, we’re used to seeing The Wasp with, well, wasp-like coloring of yellow and black. But the behind-the-scenes team on the movie seems to be set on her rocking red and black, much like her pal Ant-Man (and unlike Yellowjacket). The question is what was it about these variant designs that made them not worthy of the final cut of the movie?
They could have looked great on Janet or Hope, right?
(via SlashFilm)
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This article is about the Confederate general. For people with similar names, see Joseph Johnston (disambiguation)
Joseph Eggleston Johnston (February 3, 1807 – March 21, 1891) was a career United States Army officer, serving with distinction in the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), and Seminole Wars. After Virginia seceded, he entered the Confederate States Army as one of the most senior general officers. (He was unrelated to Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston, who was killed in early 1862.)
Johnston was trained as a civil engineer at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, graduating in the same class as Robert E. Lee. He served in Florida, Texas, and Kansas. By 1860 he achieved the rank of brigadier general as Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army.
Johnston's effectiveness in the American Civil War was undercut by tensions with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Victory eluded him in most campaigns he personally commanded. He was the senior Confederate commander at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, but the victory is usually credited to his subordinate, P.G.T. Beauregard. Johnston defended the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, withdrawing under the pressure of Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's superior force. He suffered a severe wound at the Battle of Seven Pines, and was replaced by Robert E. Lee.
In 1863, in command of the Department of the West, Johnston was criticized for his inaction and failure[1] in the Vicksburg Campaign. In 1864, he fought against Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in the Atlanta Campaign. Facing an enemy with a massive numerical advantage, Johnston maneuvered to avoid having his forces surrounded or cut off from Atlanta, while looking for a chance to make a decisive stand that would turn back the tide. Although he successfully repulsed Sherman's attempt to defeat him through direct assault at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, he was ultimately outflanked again forced to withdraw from northwest Georgia to the outskirts of Atlanta. Fed up with Johnston's constant withdrawal from Confederate territory, Davis relieved him of command and replaced him with John Bell Hood. In the final days of the war, Johnston was returned to command of the few remaining forces in the Carolinas Campaign. He surrendered his armies to Sherman at Bennett Place near Durham Station, North Carolina on April 26, 1865. Union generals Ulysses S. Grant and Sherman both praised his actions in the war, and became friends with Johnston afterward.
After the war, Johnston served as an executive in the railroad and insurance businesses. He was elected as a Democrat in the United States House of Representatives, serving a single term. He was appointed as commissioner of railroads under Grover Cleveland. He died of pneumonia.
Early years [ edit ]
Johnston was born at Longwood House in "Cherry Grove", near Farmville, Virginia on February 3, 1807. (Longwood House later burned down. The rebuilt house was the birthplace in 1827 of Charles S. Venable, an officer on the staff of Robert E. Lee. It is now used as the residence of the president of Longwood University.) His grandfather, Peter Johnston, emigrated to Virginia from Scotland in 1726. Joseph was the seventh son of Judge Peter Johnston (1763–1831) and Mary Valentine Wood (1769–1825), a niece of Patrick Henry. He was named for Major Joseph Eggleston, under whom his father served in the American Revolutionary War, in the command of Light-Horse Harry Lee. His brother Charles Clement Johnston served as a congressman, and his nephew John Warfield Johnston was a senator; both represented Virginia. In 1811, the Johnston family moved to Abingdon, Virginia, a town near the Tennessee border, where his father Peter built a home he named Panecillo.[2]
Johnston attended the United States Military Academy, nominated by John C. Calhoun in 1825 while he was Secretary of War. He was moderately successful at academics and received only a small number of disciplinary demerits. He graduated in 1829, ranking 13th of 46 cadets, and was appointed a second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Artillery.[3] He would become the first West Point graduate to be promoted to a general officer in the regular army, reaching a higher rank in the U.S. Army than did his 1829 classmate, Robert E. Lee (2nd of 46).[4]
U.S. Army service [ edit ]
Johnston resigned from the Army in March 1837 and studied civil engineering.[3] During the Second Seminole War, he was a civilian topographic engineer aboard a ship led by William Pope McArthur. On January 12, 1838, at Jupiter, Florida, the sailors who had gone ashore were attacked. Johnston said there were "no less than 30 bullet holes" in his clothing and one bullet creased his scalp, leaving a scar he had for the rest of his life. Having encountered more combat activities in Florida as a civilian than he had previously as an artillery officer, Johnston decided to rejoin the Army. He departed for Washington, D.C., in April 1838 and was appointed a first lieutenant of topographic engineers on July 7; on that same day, he received a brevet promotion to captain for the actions at Jupiter Inlet and his explorations of the Florida Everglades.[5]
On July 10, 1845, in Baltimore, Johnston married Lydia Mulligan Sims McLane (1822–1887), the daughter of Louis McLane and his wife. Her father was the president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a prominent politician (congressman and senator from Delaware, minister to London, and a member of President Andrew Jackson's cabinet). They had no children.[6]
Johnston was enthusiastic about the outbreak of the Mexican–American War. He served on the staff of Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott in the Siege of Veracruz, having been chosen by Scott to be the officer carrying the demand for surrender beforehand to the provincial governor. He was in the vanguard of the movement inland under Brig. Gen. David E. Twiggs and was severely wounded by grapeshot performing reconnaissance prior to the Battle of Cerro Gordo. He was appointed a brevet lieutenant colonel for his actions at Cerro Gordo. After recovering in a field hospital, he rejoined the army at Puebla. During the advance toward Mexico City, he was second in command of the "U.S. Regiment of Voltigeurs", a unit composed of light infantry or skirmishers. He distinguished himself at Contreras and Churubusco, was wounded again at Chapultepec, and received two brevet promotions for the latter two engagements, ending the war as a brevet colonel of volunteers. (After the end of hostilities, he reverted to his peacetime rank of captain in the topographical engineers.) Winfield Scott remarked humorously that "Johnston is a great soldier, but he had an unfortunate knack of getting himself shot in nearly every engagement." Johnston's greatest anguish during the war was the death of his nephew, Preston Johnston. When Robert E. Lee informed Johnston that Preston had been killed by a Mexican artillery shell at Contreras, both officers wept, and Johnston grieved for the remainder of his life.[7]
Johnston was an engineer on the Texas-United States boundary survey in 1841; he returned to the area, appointed as chief topographical engineer of the Department of Texas, and serving from 1848 to 1853.[8] During the 1850s he sought his previous rank, sending letters to the War Department suggesting that he should be returned to a combat regiment with his wartime rank of colonel. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, an acquaintance of Johnston's from West Point, rebuffed these suggestions, as he did later during the Civil War, much to Johnston's irritation. Despite this disagreement, Davis thought enough of Johnston to appoint him lieutenant colonel in one of the newly formed regiments, the 1st U.S. Cavalry at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, under Col. Edwin V. "Bull" Sumner, on March 1, 1855. (At this same time, Robert E. Lee was appointed lieutenant colonel of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry under Col. Albert Sidney Johnston (no relation).) In this role, Johnston participated in actions against the Sioux in the Wyoming Territory and in the violence over slavery in the future state, known as Bleeding Kansas. He developed a mentor relationship and close friendship with one of his junior officers, Capt. George B. McClellan. Later McClellan faced him from the Union Army.[9]
In the fall of 1856, Johnston was transferred to a depot for new recruits at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. In 1857 he led surveying expeditions to determine the Kansas border. Later that year, Davis was replaced as Secretary of War by John B. Floyd, a native of Abingdon and a cousin of Johnston's by marriage. He had been a former guardian of Preston Johnston. Floyd made Johnston a brevet colonel for his actions at Cerro Gordo, a promotion that caused grumbling within the Army about favoritism. In 1859, President James Buchanan named Johnston's brother-in-law, Robert McLane, as minister to Mexico, and Johnston accompanied him on a journey to visit Benito Juárez's government in Veracruz. He was also ordered to inspect possible military routes across the country in case of further hostilities.[10]
Brig. Gen. Thomas S. Jesup, the Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army, died on June 10, 1860. Winfield Scott was responsible for naming a replacement, but instead of one name, he offered four possibilities: Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston (no relation), Robert E. Lee, and Charles F. Smith. Although Jefferson Davis, now a member of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, favored Albert Sidney Johnston, Secretary of War Floyd chose Joseph E. Johnston for the position.
Johnston was promoted to brigadier general on June 28, 1860. Johnston did not enjoy the position, preferring field command to administration in Washington. In addition, he suffered from the pressures of the imminent sectional crisis and the ethical dilemma of administering war matériel that might prove useful to his native South. He did not yield to temptation, however, as Secretary of War Floyd was accused of doing.[11]
Civil War [ edit ]
Manassas and first friction with President Davis [ edit ]
When his native state, Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, Johnston resigned his commission as a brigadier general in the regular army, the highest-ranking U.S. Army officer to do so. He would go on to state, " I believed like most others, that the division of the country would be permanent; and that ... the revolution begun was justified by the maxims so often repeated by Americans, that Free government is founded on the consent of the governed, and that every community strong enough to establish and maintain its independence, has a right to assert it. Having been educated in such opinions, I naturally determined to return to the State of which I was a native, join the people among whom I was born, and live with my kindred, and if necessary, fight in their defense."[12]
He was initially commissioned as a major general in the Virginia militia on May 4, but the Virginia Convention decided two weeks later that only one major general was required in the state army and Robert E. Lee was their choice. Johnston was then offered a state commission as a brigadier general, which he declined, accepting instead a commission as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army on May 14. Johnston relieved Colonel Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson of command at Harpers Ferry in May and organized the Army of the Shenandoah in July.[13]
In the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas), July 21, 1861, Johnston rapidly moved his small army from the Shenandoah Valley to reinforce that of Brig. Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, but he lacked familiarity with the terrain and ceded tactical planning of the battle to the more junior Beauregard as a professional courtesy. At midday, while Beauregard was still unclear about the direction his Union opponent was taking in the battle, Johnston decided that the critical point was to the north of his headquarters (the Lewis house, "Portici"), at Henry House Hill. He abruptly announced "The battle is there. I am going." Beauregard and the staffs of both generals followed his lead and rode off. Johnston encountered a scattered unit, the 4th Alabama, all of whose field grade officers had been killed, and personally rallied the men to reinforce the Confederate line. He consoled the despairing Brig. Gen. Barnard Bee and urged him to lead his men back into the fight. (General Bee's exhortation to his men was the inspiration for Stonewall Jackson's nickname.) Beauregard then convinced Johnston that he would be more valuable organizing the arrival of reinforcements for the remainder of the battle than providing at-the-front tactical leadership. Although Beauregard managed to claim the majority of public credit, Johnston's behind-the-scenes role was a critical factor in the Southern victory. After Bull Run, Johnston assisted Beauregard and William Porcher Miles in the design and production of the Confederate Battle Flag. It was Johnston's idea to make the flag square.[14]
It [the ranking of senior generals] seeks to tarnish my fair fame as a soldier and a man, earned by more than thirty years of laborious and perilous service. I had but this, the scars of many wounds, all honestly taken in my front and in the front of battle, and my father's Revolutionary sword. It was delivered to me from his venerated hand, without a stain of dishonor. Its blade is still unblemished as when it passed from his hand to mine. I drew it in the war, not for rank or fame, but to defend the sacred soil, the homes and hearths, the women and children; aye, and the men of my mother Virginia, my native South. —Johnston's letter to Jefferson Davis, September 12, 1861 [15]
In August, Johnston was promoted to full general—what is called a four-star general in the modern U.S. Army—but was not pleased that three other men he had outranked in the "old Army" now outranked him, even though Davis backdated his promotion to July 4. Johnston felt that since he was the senior officer to leave the U.S. Army and join the Confederacy he should not be ranked behind Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Robert E. Lee. Only Beauregard was placed behind Johnston on the list of five new generals. This led to much bad blood between Johnston and Jefferson Davis, which would last throughout the war. The crux of Davis's counterargument was that Johnston's U.S. commission as a brigadier general was as a staff officer and that his highest line commission was as a lieutenant colonel; both Sidney Johnston and Lee had been full colonels. Johnston sent an intemperately worded letter to Davis, who was offended enough to discuss its tone with his cabinet.[16]
Johnston was placed in command of the Department of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of the Potomac on July 21, 1861, and the Department of Northern Virginia on October 22. From July to November 1861, he was headquartered at the Conner House in Manassas.[17] The winter of 1861–62 was relatively quiet for Johnston in his Centreville headquarters, concerned primarily with organization and equipment issues, as the principal Northern army, also named Army of the Potomac, was being organized by George B. McClellan. McClellan perceived Johnston's army as overwhelmingly strong in its fortifications, which prompted the Union general to plan an amphibious movement around Johnston's flank. In early March, learning of Union offensive preparations, Johnston withdrew his army to Culpeper Court House. This movement had repercussions on both sides. President Davis was surprised and disappointed by the unannounced move, which he considered a "precipitate retreat." At about this time, Davis moved to restrict Johnston's authority by bringing Robert E. Lee to Richmond as his military adviser and began issuing direct orders to some of the forces under Johnston's ostensible command. On the Northern side, McClellan was publicly embarrassed when it was revealed that the Confederate position had not been nearly as strong as he had portrayed. But more importantly, it required him to replan his spring offensive, and instead of an amphibious landing at his preferred target of Urbanna, he chose the Virginia Peninsula, between the James and York Rivers, as his avenue of approach toward Richmond.[18]
Peninsula Campaign [ edit ]
In early April 1862, McClellan, having landed his troops at Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula, began to move slowly toward Yorktown. Johnston's plan for the defense of the Confederate capital was controversial. Knowing that his army was half the size of McClellan's and that the Union Navy could provide direct support to McClellan from either river, Johnston attempted to convince Davis and Lee that the best course would be to concentrate in fortifications around Richmond. He was unsuccessful in persuading them and deployed most of his force on the Peninsula. Following lengthy siege preparations by McClellan at Yorktown, Johnston withdrew and fought a sharp defensive fight at Williamsburg (May 5) and turned back an attempt at an amphibious turning movement at Eltham's Landing (May 7). By late May the Union army was within six miles of Richmond.[19]
Realizing that he could not defend Richmond forever from the Union's overwhelming numbers and heavy siege artillery and that McClellan's army was divided by the rain-swollen Chickahominy River, Johnston attacked south of the river on May 31 in the Battle of Seven Pines or Fair Oaks. His plan was aggressive, but too complicated for his subordinates to execute correctly, and he failed to ensure they understood his orders in detail or to supervise them closely. The battle was tactically inconclusive, but it stopped McClellan's advance on the city and would turn out to be the high-water mark of his invasion. More significant, however, was that Johnston was wounded in his shoulder and chest by an artillery shell fragment near the end of the first day of the battle.[20] G.W. Smith commanded the army during the second day of the battle, before Davis quickly turned over command to the more aggressive Robert E. Lee, who would lead the Army of Northern Virginia for the rest of the war. Lee began by driving McClellan from the Peninsula during the Seven Days Battles of late June and beating a Union army a second time near Bull Run in August.[21]
Appointment to the Western Theater and Vicksburg [ edit ]
Johnston was prematurely discharged from hospital on November 24, 1862, and appointed to command the Department of the West, the principal command of the Western Theater, which gave him titular control of Gen. Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee and Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton's Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana. (The other major force in this area was the Trans-Mississippi Department, commanded by Lt. Gen. Theophilus H. Holmes, stationed principally in Arkansas. Johnston argued throughout his tenure that Holmes's command should be combined with Pemberton's under Johnston's control, or at least to reinforce Pemberton with troops from Holmes's command, but he was unable to convince the government to take either of these steps.)[22]
The first issue facing Johnston in the West was the fate of Braxton Bragg. The Confederate government was displeased with Bragg's performance at the Battle of Stones River, as were many of Bragg's senior subordinates. Jefferson Davis ordered Johnston to visit Bragg and determine whether he should be replaced. Johnston realized that if he recommended Bragg's replacement, he would be the logical choice to succeed him, and he considered that a field army command was more desirable than his current, mostly administrative post, but his sense of honor prevented him from achieving this personal gain at Bragg's expense. After interviewing Bragg and a number of his subordinates, he produced a generally positive report and refused to relieve the army commander. Davis ordered Bragg to a meeting in Richmond and designated Johnston to take command in the field, but Bragg's wife was ill and he was unable to travel. Furthermore, in early April Johnston was forced to bed with lingering problems from his Peninsula wound, and the attention of the Confederates shifted from Tennessee to Mississippi, leaving Bragg in place.[23]
The major crisis facing Johnston was defending Confederate control of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which was threatened by Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, first in a series of unsuccessful maneuvers during the winter of 1862–63 to the north of the fortress city, but followed in April 1863 with an ambitious campaign that began with Grant's Union army crossing the Mississippi River southwest of Vicksburg. Catching Lt. Gen. Pemberton by surprise, the Union army waged a series of successful battles as it moved northeast toward the state capital of Jackson. On May 9, the Confederate Secretary of War directed Johnston to "proceed at once to Mississippi and take chief command of the forces in the field." Johnston informed Richmond that he was still medically unfit, but would obey the order. When he arrived in Jackson on May 13 from Middle Tennessee, he learned that two Union army corps were advancing on the city and that there were only about 6,000 troops available to defend it. Johnston ordered a fighting evacuation (the Battle of Jackson, May 14) and retreated with his force to the north. Grant captured the city and then faced to the west to approach Vicksburg.[24]
Johnston began to move his force west to join Pemberton when he heard of that general's defeat at Champion Hill (May 16) and Big Black River Bridge (May 17). The survivors retreated to the fortifications of Vicksburg. Johnston urged Pemberton to avoid being surrounded by abandoning the city and to join forces with Johnston's troops, outnumbering Grant, but Davis had ordered Pemberton to defend the city as his highest priority. Grant launched two unsuccessful assaults against the fortifications and then settled in for a siege. The soldiers and civilians in the surrounded city waited in vain for Johnston's small force to come to their rescue. By late May Johnston had accumulated about 24,000 men but wanted additional reinforcements before moving forward. He considered ordering Bragg to send these reinforcements, but was concerned that this could result in the loss of Tennessee. He also bickered with President Davis about whether the order sending him to Mississippi could be construed as removing him from theater command; historian Steven E. Woodworth judges that Johnston "willfully misconstrued" his orders out of resentment of Davis's interference. Pemberton's army surrendered on July 4, 1863. Along with the capture of Port Hudson a week later, the loss of Vicksburg gave the Union complete control of the Mississippi River and cut the Confederacy in two. President Davis wryly ascribed the strategic defeat to a "want of provisions inside and a general outside [Johnston] who would not fight."[25]
The relationship between Johnston and Davis, difficult since the early days of the war, became bitter as recriminations were traded publicly about who was to blame for Vicksburg. Davis considered firing Johnston, but he remained a popular officer and had many political allies in Richmond, most notably Sen. Louis Wigfall. Instead, Bragg's army was removed from Johnston's command, leaving him in control of only Alabama and Mississippi.[26]
The President detests Joe Johnston for all the trouble he has given him, and General Joe returns the compliment with compound interest. His hatred of Jeff Davis amounts to a religion. With him it colors all things. —Diarist Mary Chesnut[27]
While Vicksburg was falling, Union Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans was advancing against Bragg in Tennessee, forcing him to evacuate Chattanooga. Bragg achieved a significant victory against Rosecrans in the Battle of Chickamauga (September 19–20), but he was defeated by Ulysses S. Grant in the Battles for Chattanooga in November. Bragg resigned from his command of the Army of Tennessee and returned to Richmond in the role as military adviser to the president. Davis offered the position to William J. Hardee, the senior corps commander, who refused it. He considered P.G.T. Beauregard, another general with whom he had poor personal relations, and also Robert E. Lee. Lee, who was reluctant to leave Virginia, first recommended Beauregard, but sensing Davis's discomfort, changed his recommendation to Johnston. After much agonizing, Davis appointed Johnston to command the Army of Tennessee in Dalton, Georgia, on December 27, 1863.[28]
Atlanta Campaign [ edit ]
The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton to Kennesaw Mountain
Faced with Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's advance from Chattanooga to Atlanta in the spring of 1864, Johnston conducted a series of withdrawals that appeared similar to his Peninsula Campaign strategy. He repeatedly prepared strong defensive positions, only to see Sherman maneuver around them in expert turning movements, causing him to fall back in the general direction of Atlanta. Johnston saw the preservation of his army as the most important consideration, and hence conducted a very cautious campaign. He handled his army well, slowing the Union advance and inflicting heavier losses than he sustained.
Sherman began his Atlanta Campaign on May 4. Johnston's Army of Tennessee fought defensive battles against the Federals at the approaches to Dalton, which was evacuated on May 13, then retreated 12 miles south to Resaca, and constructed defensive positions. However, after a brief battle, Johnston again yielded to Sherman, and retreated from Resaca on May 15. Johnston assembled the Confederate forces for an attack at Cassville.[29] As his troops advanced, an enemy force of unknown strength appeared unexpectedly on his right flank. A skirmish ensued, forcing the corps commander, Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood, to halt his advance and reposition his troops to face the threat. Faced with this unexpected threat, Johnston abandoned his attack and renewed his retreat. On May 20 they again retreated 8 miles further south to Cartersville. The month of May 1864 ended with Sherman's forces attempting to move away from their railroad supply line with another turning movement, but became bogged down by the Confederates' fierce defenses at the Battle of New Hope Church on May 25, the Battle of Pickett's Mill on May 27, and the Battle of Dallas on May 28.[30]
In June Sherman's forces continued maneuvers around the northern approaches to Atlanta, and a battle ensued at Kolb's Farm on June 22, followed by Sherman's first (and only) attempt at a massive frontal assault in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, which Johnston strongly repulsed. However, by this time Federal forces were within 17 miles of Atlanta, threatening the city from the west and north. Johnston had yielded over 110 miles of mountainous, and thus more easily defensible, territory in just two months, while the Confederate government became increasingly frustrated and alarmed. When Johnston retreated across the Chattahoochee River, the final major barrier before Atlanta, President Davis lost his patience.[31]
In early July, Davis sent Gen. Braxton Bragg to Atlanta to assess the situation. After several meetings with local civilian leaders and Johnston's subordinates, Bragg returned to Richmond and urged President Davis to replace Johnston. Davis removed Johnston from command on July 17, 1864, just outside Atlanta. "The fate of Atlanta, from the Confederate standpoint, was all but decided by Johnston."[32] (His replacement, Lt. Gen. Hood, was left with the "virtually impossible situation" of defending Atlanta [33] which he was forced to abandon in September.) Davis's decision to remove Johnston was one of the most controversial of the war.[34]
North Carolina and surrender at Bennett Place [ edit ]
Johnston traveled to Columbia, South Carolina, to begin a virtual retirement. However, as the Confederacy became increasingly concerned about Sherman's March to the Sea across Georgia and then north through the Carolinas, the public clamored for Johnston's return. The general in charge of the Western Theater, P.G.T. Beauregard, was making little progress against the advancing Union force. Political opponents of Jefferson Davis, such as Sen. Louis Wigfall, added to the pressure in Congress. Diarist Mary Chesnut wrote, "We thought this was a struggle for independence. Now it seems it is only a fight between Joe Johnston and Jeff Davis." In January 1865, the Congress passed a law authorizing Robert E. Lee the powers of general in chief, and recommending that Johnston be reinstated as the commander of the Army of Tennessee. Davis immediately appointed Lee to the position, but refused to restore Johnston. In a lengthy unpublished memo, Davis wrote, "My opinion of General Johnston's unfitness for command has ripened slowly and against my inclinations into a conviction so settled that it would be impossible for me again to feel confidence in him as the commander of an army in the field."[35] Vice President Alexander H. Stephens and 17 senators petitioned Lee to use his new authority to appoint Johnston, bypassing Davis, but the general in chief declined. Instead, he recommended the appointment to Davis.[36]
Despite his serious misgivings, Davis restored Johnston to active duty on February 25, 1865. His new command comprised two military departments: the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia; he assumed command of the latter department on March 6. These commands included three Confederate field armies, including the remnants of the once formidable Army of Tennessee, but they were armies in name only. The Tennessee army had been severely depleted at Franklin and Nashville, lacked sufficient supplies and ammunition, and the men had not been paid for months; only about 6,600 traveled to South Carolina. Johnston also had available 12,000 men under William J. Hardee, who had been unsuccessfully attempting to resist Sherman's advance, Braxton Bragg's force in Wilmington, North Carolina, and 6,000 cavalrymen under Wade Hampton.[37]
Johnston, severely outnumbered, hoped to combine his force with a detachment of Robert E. Lee's army from Virginia, jointly defeat Sherman, and then return to Virginia for an attack on Ulysses S. Grant. Lee initially refused to cooperate with this plan. (Following the fall of Richmond in April, Lee attempted to escape to North Carolina to join Johnston, but it was too late.) Recognizing that Sherman was moving quickly, Johnston then planned to consolidate his own small armies so that he could land a blow against an isolated portion of Sherman's army, which was advancing in two separated columns. On March 19, 1865, Johnston was able to catch the left wing of Sherman's army by surprise at the Battle of Bentonville and briefly gained some tactical successes before superior numbers forced him to retreat to Raleigh, North Carolina. Unable to secure the capital, Johnston's army withdrew to Greensboro.[38]
The surrender of Gen. Joe Johnston - Currier & Ives lithograph
After learning of Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, Johnston agreed to meet with General Sherman between the lines at a small farm known as Bennett Place near present-day Durham, North Carolina. After three separate days (April 17, 18, and 26, 1865) of negotiations, Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee and all remaining Confederate forces still active in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. It was the largest surrender of the war, totaling 89,270 soldiers. President Davis considered that Johnston, surrendering so many troops that had not been explicitly defeated in battle, had committed an act of treachery. Johnston was paroled on May 2 at Greensboro.[39]
After the surrender, Sherman issued ten days' rations to the hungry Confederate soldiers, as well as horses and mules for them to "insure a crop." He also ordered distribution of corn, meal, and flour to civilians throughout the South. This was an act of generosity that Johnston would never forget; he wrote to Sherman that his attitude "reconciles me to what I have previously regarded as the misfortune of my life, that of having you to encounter in the field."[40]
Postwar years [ edit ]
Johnston struggled to make a living for himself and his wife, who was ailing. He became president of a small railroad, the Alabama and Tennessee River Rail Road Company, which during his tenure of May 1866 to November 1867, was renamed the Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad. Johnston was bored with the position and the company failed for lack of capital. He established in 1868 an insurance company in Savannah, Georgia, acting as an agent for the Liverpool and London and Globe Insurance Company, and within four years had a network of more than 120 agents across the deep South.[41]
The income from this venture allowed him to devote time to his great postwar activity, writing his memoirs, as did several fellow officers. His Narrative of Military Operations (1874) was highly critical of Davis and many of his fellow generals. He repeated his grievance about his ranking as a general in the Confederate Army and attempted to justify his career as a cautious campaigner. The book sold poorly and its publisher failed to make a profit.[41]
Although many Confederate generals criticized Johnston, both Sherman and Grant portrayed him favorably in their memoirs. Sherman described him as a "dangerous and wily opponent" and criticized Johnston's nemeses, Hood and Davis. Grant supported his decisions in the Vicksburg Campaign: "Johnston evidently took in the situation, and wisely, I think, abstained from making an assault on us because it would simply have inflicted losses on both sides without accomplishing any result." Commenting on the Atlanta Campaign, Grant wrote,
For my own part, I think that Johnston's tactics were right. Anything that could have prolonged the war a year beyond the time that it finally did close, would probably have exhausted the North to such an extent that they might then have abandoned the contest and agreed to a settlement.[42]
Johnston was a part owner of the Atlantic and Mexican Gulf Canal Company, a canal project approved in 1876. It was intended to construct a canal westward from the St. Marys River in Georgia to connect with the Gulf of Mexico on the coast of Florida.[43]
Johnston moved from Savannah to Richmond in the winter of 1876–77. He served in the 46th Congress from 1879 to 1881 as a Democratic congressman, having been elected with 58.11% of the vote over Greenback William W. Newman. He did not run for renomination in 1880. He was appointed as a commissioner of railroads in the administration of President Grover Cleveland. After his wife died in 1887, Johnston frequently traveled to veterans' gatherings, where he was universally cheered.[44] In September 1890, a few months before he died, he was elected as an honorary member of the District of Columbia Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and was assigned national membership number 1963.
Johnston, like Lee, never forgot the magnanimity of the man to whom he surrendered. He would not allow criticism of Sherman in his presence. Sherman and Johnston corresponded frequently, and they met for friendly dinners in Washington whenever Johnston traveled there. When Sherman died, Johnston served as an honorary pallbearer at his funeral. During the procession in New York City on February 19, 1891, he kept his hat off as a sign of respect, although the weather was cold and rainy. Someone concerned for his health asked him to put on his hat, to which Johnston replied, "If I were in his place and he were standing here in mine, he would not put on his hat." He caught a cold that day, which developed into pneumonia. Johnston died several weeks later in Washington, D.C. He was buried next to his wife in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland.[45]
Legacy [ edit ]
Johnston's personal papers are held by the Special Collections Research Center at the College of William & Mary.[46]
Joseph E. Johnston and Robert E. Lee in 1869–1870
Johnston statue in Dalton, Georgia, where he took command of the Army of Tennessee
Johnston statue at the location of the Battle of Bentonville, in North Carolina
Legacy and honors [ edit ]
Representation in other media [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
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The bizarre controversy revolves around the FDA's attempt to regulate the Centeno-Schultz Clinic in Colorado that performs a nonsurgical stem-cell therapy called Regenexx-C. It is designed to treat moderate to severe joint, tendon, ligament, and bone pain using only adult stem cells. Doctors draw your blood, spin it through a centrifuge, extract the stem cells and re-inject them into your damaged joints. It uses no other drugs. No drugs means no FDA oversight and that does not sit well with the administration.
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Funny, that sounds less like the FDA protecting the health of the country's citizens and more like the FDA defending its enforcement turf. The two parties have been at odds for over four years now, so we may have a while until we know if every American has in fact become a regulatable good subject to government regulation. [ANH-USA via Slash Gear]
Image via the AP |
Clinical-stage drug company Cempra Inc. CEMP, +0.15% said Thursday it has received a complete response letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regarding its new drug applications (NDAs) for solithromycin, a treatment for community-acquired bacterial pneumonia. The letter says that the FDA cannot approve the NDAs in their current form and says the company must provide additional safety data and resolve unspecified issues with its manufacturing facility. "Based on their review of the NDAs, the CRL stated that the FDA determined the risk of hepatotoxicity had not been adequately characterized," the company said in a statement. The FDA said the size of the safety database -- 920 patients -- is too small to measure adverse effects, and is recommending a study of about 9,000 patients. The company said it will seek a meeting with the FDA to discuss the issues raised in the letter. "With more than $225 million of cash on hand, patent protection for solithromycin through 2032 and a pipeline that includes fusidic acid and other potential programs for solithromycin, including an ophthalmic formulation, we have flexibility to determine the best course forward for solithromycin and Cempra," Chief Executive David Zaccardelli said in the statement. Shares tumbled 28% premarket and are down 80% for the year through Wednesday, while the S&P 500 SPX, -0.08% has gained about 10%.
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Jon Stewart highlighted Fox News' coverage from the past few days in politics on his show Thursday night, showing everything the network chose to cover rather than focusing on the economy, which correlates to voters leaning towards Barack Obama.
"I'm guessing you guys don't want to talk about the economy," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said to Gretchen Carlson on "Fox & Friends."
"Here's what Fox has been talking about just since Tuesday's debate," Stewart said, before showing clips of the following:
Megyn Kelly discussing voter fraud
Sean Hannity mentioning William Ayers
Megyn Kelly, Brian Kilmeade, and Steve Doocy discussing Newsweek's liberal bias
Sean Hannity mentioning Reverend Jeremiah Wright
Megyn Kelly referencing Obama's "deep secret ties" to the Kenyan government
"Fox & Friends" introducing country star Aaron Tippin's "Drill Here, Drill Now!"
and a collection of Bill Ayers clips, punctuated by Frank Luntz downplaying the results of a post-debate focus group that suggested Obama won the debate. |
The Tavern reached out to Iranian football writer & podcaster Sina Saemian for his expertise on Team Melli ahead of tomorrow’s crucial World Cup qualifier. Read on for info about what’s changed since Korea’s defeat at the Azadi Stadium in November of 2014, his thoughts about the rumoured 3-4-3 shape for Korea, and clarification on the religious situation.
Our sides last met in November 2014, when Uli Stielike wanted to test his side in Iran at the Azadi. Although Korea played quite brightly, they couldn’t find the back of the net and a controversial Sardar Azmoun header was the difference. Tempers flared and frustration abounded – yet another Iranian win. Anyway, in broad terms, how have Iran changed since then?
Well, certainly in terms of style, there hasn’t been many drastic changes in Queiroz’s philosophy. His main focus in the past two years has been to introduce many new young players and give Iran a younger look. The retirement of veteran captain and midfielder, Javad Nekounam, really symbolised the end of an era and his immediate replacement was an 18 year old midfielder in Saeed Ezatollahi.
The Koreans will most certainly recognise many names in the starting line up such as Jalal Hosseini, Ashkan Dejagah and Andranik Teymourian, but there’ll also be some new blood that will feature such as Ramin Rezaeian, Morteza Pouraligsnji and Alireza Beiranvand. However, Queiroz’s approach to this game will be very similar to past games between the two countries, with much of the focus being on the defensive phase of the game, especially with South Korea being the highest goalscorers in the final qualifying round.
For those of us not in the Iranian football loop, everything’s a bit confusing. Carlos Quieroz, your Portuguese manager, is still around! Wasn’t he on his way out? What does he bring to the team / what is his philosophy?
Where do I start with this one?! Queiroz’s tenure as manager of Iran, since 2011, has been full of controversies. There is a lot of tension between him and the Sports Ministry, due to various issues. From low quality training kits, to a lack of training camps and friendlies. He continues to engage in media war with local coaches and managers, which certainly does him no favours. In 2013, he even had his little rivalry, if you want to call it that, with Choi Kanghee who was South Korea’s manager at the time, and his infamous celebration at the end of that 1-0 victory really set the tone for future games between the two countries, including the upcoming game.
He is a character that divides opinion within Iran. He has his strong supporters who believe he is absolutely the right man to take Iran forward, but he also has some hardcore critics who believe his “negative” tactics and antiques off the pitch bring no good to Iran. On the other hand, one thing is for sure, the players absolutely love him. All the players constantly show their support for him and praise him in all their interviews. He’s certainly got the players on his side and you can see the players thoroughly enjoy playing for him in every game.
How has qualifying gone so far?
It’s been a decent start so far. I think looking at the results, we are in a comfortable situation and we’ve put ourselves in a very healthy position to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
But putting the results aside, the performances have been very below par. A 2-0 win against Qatar at home was only obtained once the Qatari goalkeeper decided to gift us a goal in the 93rd minute, before their whole team capitulated, and a dreadful performance in China resulted in a 0-0 vs the Chinese.
The 1-0 away victory against Uzbekistan was much much better, I think partly because the nerves had settled, we passed the ball around well and created chances, the home side didn’t have a single shot on target which is further proof to Iran’s solid defence.
How confident are you and Iranian supporters about a result in this match?
I think matches vs South Korea, in any competition or even friendly games, has its own excitement for the fans. The Iranian supporters have some good memories from our matches in the last few decades, and they are hopeful and confident that this match will be yet another positive memory. 3 clean sheets in a row, a team full of confidence, and also playing at the Azadi in front of our own supporters will certainly give us the edge going into this. But the media and fans alike, are aware of the threat South Korea poses. The likes of Son Heungmin and Ki Sungturns are very familiar names to the fans and they know the quality the South Koreans have.
A starting lineup prediction and a couple key players?
Carlos Queiroz named a very surprising line up against Uzbekistan on Thursday, with many of the first team players being rested. But I think we will see him going back to his usual starting 11. Alireza Beiranvand in goal, a back four of Ramin Rezaeian, Jalal Hosseini, Morteza Pouraliganji and Ehsan Hajsafi, in midfield there’ll be a return for captain Andranik Teymourian and he’ll play alongside Saeed Ezatollahi, Alireza Jahanbakhsh, Ashkan Dejagah and Vahid Amiri, with Sardar Azmoun leading the line. In terms of key players, of course Sardar Azmoun and Alireza Jahanbakhsh will be the names to look at certainly in attack.
But in my opinion Iran’s biggest threat in big games comes from set pieces, especially corners, so look out for Morteza Pouraliganji who is a good header of the ball and he’s proven that in the past. In terms of weaknesses, if Stielike has done his homework, he will most certainly target Iran’s right side of the defence. Ramin Rezaeian, who has featured as a regular right back in the past few games, is a very offensive full back but his defensive abilities are a concern and I’m sure the South Koreans will look to take advantage of that.
Are Iran still those same old, pesky defensive stalwarts of the 2014 qualifying campaign? What will Korea have to do (in your estimation) to beat this “Azadi jinx”?
Absolutely, Iran’s priority in every game under Queiroz has been to keep a clean sheet. So this game is no different, Queiroz would not want to lose this extremely important game, especially at home, so he will set his team up to nullify South Korea’s strong attack.
I’ve heard rumours that Stielike may be trying a back 3 in this game and I can somewhat understand that. China played a back 3 against Iran a month ago and Iran really struggled to break them down, Azmoun was really Isolated and the midfielders looked invisible going forward, so maybe such a formation may pay dividends.
But putting tactics aside, I think it’s all about mentality. The South Koreans need to play without fear, I know Azadi Stadium is intimidating when the fans are in full flow, but the players need to get over the atmosphere if they want to get a result. South Korea have a very, very good team and there’s no doubt that they have more than what it takes to take something from Tehran. But for me it’s all about mentality and approaching this game in the right manner.
Are you game for a score prediction? How do you think the game will pan out?
I’ve never met anyone worse than myself when it comes to score predictions! I think it’ll be a very tight game because it’s still early in the qualifiers and I don’t think either team would want to lose at this point, so in my opinion it may very well end up at 0-0 or 1-1. If I had to pick a winner I’d probably go for a 1-0 win for Iran and the goal coming from a set piece, as it has done in the past 3 meetings between these two teams in Tehran.
Oh, and one quick bonus questions. Our readers have been quite curious about this. It appears that this game is being held on a Shia day of mourning, Tasua. The Iranian embassy has instructed Korean supporters to wear dark colours and not cheer, while the religious clerics demanded the game be forfeited. What’s going on?
This is a very complicated matter. This week is a very important week in Iran in religious terms, which is why the IFF (Iranian Football Federation) contacted AFC over 2 months ago to try to postpone this game to another day. However, the AFC did not accept.
There’s been many debates amongst Iran’s religious leaders that this game should not take place. Fortunately for us, they don’t really make the decisions, so the game will go ahead. Rumours are that players maybe advised not to celebrate any goals in respect to the mourning ceremonies, and you may see black (religious) banners and flags within the stadium and fans, which have been organised from a few days ago by government officials.
I think if it was a game of less importance, it wouldn’t have mattered that much. But, since this is a huge game and tens of millions of people will watch the game across the country, it has caused some controversy from the clerics and religious leaders in Iran. They don’t want the attention to be on a football game during this week when there are important religious matters to be attended.
Thanks for this, Sina, and best of luck to Iran!
My pleasure!
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A woman who shouted threats against the prime minister during question time has been escorted from parliament’s lower house.
Jan Olson was removed from the public gallery by security guards after shouting “and we’re coming after you!” in the chamber.
Ms Olson was later met by a group of Australian Federal Police officers outside.
She told AAP her threat was centred on Tony Abbott and related to documents she was denied under Freedom of Information about his birth certificate and legitimacy as prime minister.
The disturbance did not disrupt proceedings but comes amid heightened security at parliament house in response to the terror threat level.
US president Barack Obama faced the same birth conspiracies with rumours circulating during his presidency campaign that he was not a US citizen.
Theories allege that Obama’s published birth certificate is a forgery and that his actual birthplace is not Hawaii but Kenya according to Wikipedia. Other theories allege that Obama became a citizen of Indonesia in childhood, thereby losing his US citizenship. Others allege that Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen because he was born a dual citizen (British and American).
However many have called these theories racist and Obama has never succumbed to pressure to show his birth certificate. |
For Tesla Model X owners, the Mars/SpaceX-themed Easter Egg wasn’t the only hidden feature in the latest update that the automaker started to push this week. For Christmas last year, Tesla programmed the lights and Falcon Wing doors on three Model Xs to do a light show to the sound of the Wizards in Winter by Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
At the time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the program will be an Easter Egg in the Model X, but it was never there until this week’s update.
Wizards in Winter by Trans-Siberian Orchestra has been a popular instrumental track for light shows since the 2005 internet phenomenon of Carson Williams’s 16,000 lights synchronized to the music.
Inspired by the feat, Tesla made its own light show using the Model X and its auto-presenting front doors and Falcon Wing doors.
To activate the new Easter Egg, Model X owners on the 8.0.2.50.15 software can enter “Holiday” as an ‘access code’ (holding the ‘T’ button for 5 seconds).
Update: Elon’s out with a good primer on the Easter Eggs:
To activate the Model X holiday performance, just type holidays or ModelXmas after pressing the logo. Also, Mars. pic.twitter.com/8Cy7YPlECX — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 24, 2016
The show will start after you exit the car, close all doors and press the lock button on the key fob. Tesla warns that the show “requires 6-feet of space above and around the vehicle.”
Some owners already released videos of the show:
This is the full version from Tesla staged with 3 Model X SUVs last year:
If you are interested in solar, we suggest you get quotes from more than one installer to make sure you get the best energy solution for your house or business. UnderstandSolar is a great free service to link you to top-rated solar installers in your region for personalized solar estimates for free. |
Las Vegas (CNN) Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been circling each other on electability for days, knocking one another from afar over which candidate stands a better chance to beat Republicans in November's general.
On Wednesday night in Las Vegas, they made their cases with the other candidate mere feet away.
"I am proud to be running in a Democratic primary with my opponents. They have a lot of good ideas and we share a lot of the same values," Clinton said with Sanders sitting at a dinner table nearby. "But your choice in the caucus really matters. On February 20th you will begin the process of choosing a president who has what it takes to stand up to the Republicans, to make a real difference for American families."
She then added, digging her critique a little deeper, "A president who can get the job done and not just on a few issue, but on all the complex challenges we face."
The comment was not taken kindly by Sanders supporters, many of whom booed the former secretary of state at points during her speech.
Sanders, speaking after Clinton at the dinner, responded in kind, teeing up his comment on electability by saying he wanted to be "clear" and "a little bit political" in his comments.
"All of us want to make sure that we defeat right wing extremism, that we make certain that no Republicans become president of the United States, all of us are united that we are going to take back the Senate and that we are going to do well all over this country," Sanders said. "But let me be very clear: That result will not happen with establishment politics and establishment economics. The only way that Democrats win elections, is when we have a large voter turnout."
Sanders supporters - keyed into the back and forth on electability - jumped to their feet at this comment. Clinton supporters did not, in part because many of them left after their candidate had finished speaking.
Clinton and Sanders were the main events at the dinner, but all three Democratic candidates - including former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley - tried to court their party's faithful at the Nevada Democrats "Battle Born/Battleground" First in the West Caucus Dinner.
But O'Malley, despite a more polished speech than past Democratic events, was largely an afterthought. While Clinton and Sanders supporters sat on opposing sides of the room, challenging each other to who could chant louder, O'Malley didn't have a noticeable cheering section.
Photos: Who's running for president? Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, John Kasich, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Hide Caption 1 of 6 Photos: Who's running for president?
"So, ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again," Trump told the crowd at his announcement. Businessman Donald Trump announced June 16 at his Trump Tower in New York City that he is seeking the Republican presidential nomination. This ends more than two decades of flirting with the idea of running for the White House."So, ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again," Trump told the crowd at his announcement. Hide Caption 2 of 6 Photos: Who's running for president?
"These are all of our stories," Cruz told the audience at Liberty University in Virginia. "These are who we are as Americans. And yet for so many Americans, the promise of America seems more and more distant." Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has made a name for himself in the Senate, solidifying his brand as a conservative firebrand willing to take on the GOP's establishment. He announced he was seeking the Republican presidential nomination in a speech on March 23."These are all of our stories," Cruz told the audience at Liberty University in Virginia. "These are who we are as Americans. And yet for so many Americans, the promise of America seems more and more distant." Hide Caption 3 of 6 Photos: Who's running for president? Ohio Gov. John Kasich joined the Republican field July 21 as he formally announced his White House bid.
"I am here to ask you for your prayers, for your support ... because I have decided to run for president of the United States," Kasich told his kickoff rally at the Ohio State University. Hide Caption 4 of 6 Photos: Who's running for president?
"Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion -- so you can do more than just get by -- you can get ahead. And stay ahead," she said in her announcement video. "Because when families are strong, America is strong. So I'm hitting the road to earn your vote, because it's your time. And I hope you'll join me on this journey." Hillary Clinton launched her presidential bid on April 12 through a video message on social media. The former first lady, senator and secretary of state is considered the front-runner among possible Democratic candidates."Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion -- so you can do more than just get by -- you can get ahead. And stay ahead," she said in her announcement video. "Because when families are strong, America is strong. So I'm hitting the road to earn your vote, because it's your time. And I hope you'll join me on this journey." Hide Caption 5 of 6 Photos: Who's running for president?
"This great nation and its government belong to all of the people and not to a handful of billionaires, their super PACs and their lobbyists," Sanders said at a rally in Vermont on May 26. Sen. Bernie Sanders , an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, announced his run in an email to supporters on April 30. He has said the United States needs a "political revolution" of working-class Americans to take back control of the government from billionaires."This great nation and its government belong to all of the people and not to a handful of billionaires, their super PACs and their lobbyists," Sanders said at a rally in Vermont on May 26. Hide Caption 6 of 6
Divided into camps
The audience was largely made up of decided voters. Campaigns gave supporters tickets to to the event and supplied them with different cheering paraphernalia. Clinton's supporters waved their now-common blue glow sticks, while Sanders' backers blew air-horns and hummed into vuvuzelas, the horns that became known for their annoying buzz during the 2010 World Cup.
"That music is really beautiful," Sanders said sarcastically to his supporters, before motioning for them to tone it down.
The argument over whether Clinton or Sanders is most electable has been playing out for the last three days on the Democratic side of the presidential campaign.
Touring through New Hampshire and Iowa, Clinton stressed her experience and her ability to hit the ground running if she were to win in November. She also urged her supporters to think about what a Republican presidency would be like, and cast her self as the best Democrat to stop that possibility.
"Let me ask you all to think hard about this job that you are interviewing for," Clinton said Tuesday night in Council Bluffs. "Think hard about the people who are presenting themselves to you, their experience, their qualifications, their positions, but particularly for those of us who are Democrats, their electability."
This comments annoyed Sanders aides - and the candidate.
Michael Briggs, Sanders' spokesman, quickly issued a statement in response to Clinton that questioned her ability to generate enough excitement to beat someone like Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
And when asked by CNN on Wednesday - before his dinner speech - whether he is more electable than Clinton, the senator bluntly said, "Yes," before explaining how he polls better than Clinton in certain head to head polls.
And the candidate's supporters have taken note, too.
When asked, a handful of Sanders supporters almost unanimously said they were confident in their candidate's electability, even if it wasn't a reason they were backing the Vermont senator.
"I doesn't concern me at all," Sean Dolstad, a graphic designed from Las Vegas, said bluntly, reflecting what many of his Sanders supporting brethren said on Wednesday.
Clinton supporters, on the other hand, said their candidate's electability was a top reason they were supporting her, especially given the state of the Republican field.
"It matters tremendously," said Linda Overbey, a union member from Las Vegas. "I want to win, because for me, Donald Trump is a moron." |
These are the notes for the Struts 2.3.16 distribution.
For prior notes in this release series, see Version Notes 2.3.15.3
If you are a Maven user, you might want to get started using the Maven Archetype.
Another quick-start entry point is the blank application. Rename and deploy the WAR as a starting point for your own development.
Maven Dependency <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.struts</groupId> <artifactId>struts2-core</artifactId> <version>2.3.16</version> </dependency>
You can also use Struts Archetype Catalog like below
Struts Archetype Catalog mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeCatalog=http://struts.apache.org/
Staging Repository <repositories> <repository> <id>apache.nexus</id> <name>ASF Nexus Staging</name> <url>https://repository.apache.org/content/groups/staging/</url> </repository> </repositories>
Internal Changes
Merged security fix from version 2.3.15.1, 2.3.15.2 and 2.3.15.3
Merged security fix from version 2.3.15.1, 2.3.15.2 and 2.3.15.3 Defined new factory interfaces to simplify extending ObjectFactory, see WW-4158
New interface ParamNameAwareResult was defined, see WW-4144
was defined, see WW-4144 Solved problem with global "error" result in the Convention Plugin, see WW-4100
Solved problem with global "error" result in the Convention Plugin, see WW-4100 RolesInterceptor was extended to allow check defined roles and also precedent was changed that disallowedRoles are examined in the first place, see WW-4118
are examined in the first place, see WW-4118 New parameter was added to <s:param/> tag to allow suppress empty parameters, see WW-4088
tag to allow suppress empty parameters, see WW-4088 During devMode user can explicit disable XML reloading, I18N reloading and any other, see devMode page
user can explicit disable XML reloading, I18N reloading and any other, see devMode page The action: and method: prefixes are be by default excluded and changed order to first check excludeParams and then acceptedParams in ParametersInterceptor, see WW-4023
The and prefixes are be by default excluded and changed order to first check and then in ParametersInterceptor, see WW-4023 Restored previous behaviour where both ParamatersInterceptor AND ParameterNameAware must accept parameter - there is no more precedence
Restored previous behaviour where both AND must accept parameter - there is no more precedence Added proper support for multiple ActionMapper 's used with PrefixBasedActionMapper , see PrefixBasedActionMapper and WW-4131
Added proper support for multiple 's used with , see PrefixBasedActionMapper and WW-4131 New DeprecationInterceptor was added, to warn users about unknown/deprecated options, see WW-4232
<s:debug/> tag was improved and now works properly under Jetty, see WW-4223
tag was improved and now works properly under Jetty, see WW-4223 New PostbackResult was defined, see WW-4229
Improved extending theme mechanism to allow override single template in parent theme, see WW-4145 and Extending Themes
Solved problem with creating empty map entries via Ognl, see WW-3603
Solved problem with creating empty map entries via Ognl, see WW-3603 org.apache.struts2.views.TagLibrary was split into two separated interfaces to allow moving Velocity support into plugin, see was split into two separated interfaces to allow moving Velocity support into plugin, see WW-4243
and other small improvements
Issue Detail
Issue List
Other resources |
Rolling blackouts across Darwin continued on Thursday night following a problem with gas supply to the Channel island Power Station, but authorities expect the power supply will gradually return to normal.
The NT Government issued a statement at about 8pm on Thursday night that said: “Eni has advised that gas flow from Blacktip has been restored and it is hoped that power will gradually return to normal across the Darwin and Katherine regions later tonight.
“This means it is business as usual from tomorrow and there will be no closures of schools or public service buildings.
“Public buses will run as usual tomorrow.
“At this stage, rolling outages are expected to run for a few more hours, with outages expected to last no longer than approximately one hour at a time in any one location.”
A widespread blackout hit parts of Palmerston and Casuarina on Thursday afternoon.
Rolling blackouts affected large parts of the Top End throughout the afternoon and evening. During the gas shortage generators at the Channel Island Power Station were run on both diesel and residual gas in the pipeline.
The Minister for Essential Services Willem Westra van Holthe said the scheduled stoppages were necessary to stretch fuel resources as far as possible and most customers were not affected for more than an hour.
“This approach meant minimal disruption to customers despite great uncertainty about when eni would be able to restore gas flow from the Blacktip Well. It was prudent to manage the response to the loss of gas in a manner that sustained generation capacity as long as possible,” he said.
He also thanked Territorians for their cooperation in dealing with the disruption to electricity supply, and Santos and Conoco Phillips for “securing additional gas supplies as part of our response to manage this failure of the eni well.”
Schools across Darwin and Katherine will be open on Friday and public servants will be working as usual.
POWER OUTAGES ON THURSDAY EVENING
The following suburbs and areas are expected to experience power outages at around 9pm:
- Nightcliff
- Bagot Road
- Rapid Creek
- Humpty Doo shops
- Howard Springs
- Coolalinga shops
- Stuart Park
- Hidden Valley
- Berrimah
- Harvey Norman area
- Farrar
- Zuccoli
- Johnston
- Mitchell Creek
The following suburbs and areas are expected to experience power outages at around 10pm:
- Pinelands
- Yarrawonga
- Ludmilla
- Coconut Grove
- Berrimah
- Stuart Hwy
- Vanderlin Dr
- Robertson Barracks
- Shoal Bay
- Gunn
- The Chase
- Farrar Medical Centre
- Moil
- Wagaman
- Yarrawonga
No further outages are expected following the 10pm shutdown to the suburbs listed above. |
Arkansas state Senator Jason Rapert took to Facebook to suggest that the best way to “quickly turn things around” in territory captured by Islamic State extremists would be a “strategically placed nuclear weapon.”
“With ISIS spreading all over the Middle East and Africa and Islamic Extremists carrying out violence in Europe, the United Kingdom and even in the United States, I wonder why the civilized world just sits by when we have weapons that could wipe out these barbarians where they are concentrated?” he asked.
“I believe,” Rapert continued, “it is time to annihilate the strongholds and pursue the rest till we have them all captured or killed. A strategically placed nuclear weapon would save the lives of our soldiers and quickly turn things around.”
“It is time for the insanity to be stopped.”
It is unclear in the borders of which nominal United States ally Rapert believes this nuclear weapon should be “strategically placed,” but there is no scenario in which fallout from a nuclear explosion would not endanger lives in staunch U.S. allies like Israel.
Earlier today, Rapert took to Twitter to claim that opposition to his plan indicates that “liberals love ISIS”:
Seems liberals even love ISIS more than stopping them cold in their tracks. They truly amaze me with their anti-American arguments. Bizarre. — Sen. Jason Rapert (@jasonrapert) February 16, 2015
View his entire Facebook post below. |
When you have an abundance of attention [1], it’s very easy to ignore any one person in this craze and chaos. Say, you were lucky enough to have the privilege to give a talk to an audience of 200 people on the topic you’re both knowledgeable and enthusiastic about. The talk generates a lot of attention and lots of people start coming to you with questions or requests for photographs. Having been on both sides of the table, I first-hand know how easy it is to take this attention for granted and not give your full focus (and attention!) to any single person approaching you. It’s the trap of maximizing the width (of your reach) forgetting about something way more valuable — the depth of the connections you make. Be mindful, and don’t fall into the trap of this proverbial busy loner.
As the speaker, you should be ungodly thankful (at least I am!) that even one person cared enough to approach you. One of the hardest things in this noisy world bombarding us with new and more exciting information is having someone’s attention. If you have it, don’t blow it. Be respectful. Don’t even try to think that by ignoring this one person or half-assing your answer to her, nothing changes in the big scheme of things. In fact, everything changes — it’s the tiny drops which make up the vast and endless ocean. If you’re starting to fall in the direction of this poisonous mindset, observe it and don’t’ let that happen. As the creator of Gmail Paul Buchheit famously noted, ‘It’s better to make 100 people happy than to make 1,000,000 people sort of happy’.
If you’re part of an audience, listen carefully and take notes of the thoughts you found the most surprising or worth remembering. Even jot down your one phrase reactions to them if you have a moment to spare. But don’t just listen, engage, ask questions to deepen your understanding. Approach the speaker if you have the burning thought on the subject. Hell — approach the speaker even if you don’t have anything other than ‘Thank you. That was a super insightful talk!’ to say. Do what you’re most fearful of. That tends to lead to growth. And if something brings you to higher state of consciousness, why not to take it? Even if the speakers, you approached, are clearly sloppy about their engagement with the audience (caring about width, not depth) [2], don’t blame them — they’ll eventually realize. Just don’t repeat the same mistake. Go for depth, not breadth.
Notes
[1] Common thing at conferences.
[2] Based on a few interactions and many talks I watched, notable author and former Apple evangelist, Guy Kawasaki (in the photo above) is clearly guilty of that. More often than not, he cuts off the people asking the questions and approaches the book signing or smiling in pictures as the conveyor belt. A bit hypocritical coming from the author of “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions”. No judgements, just saying ;) Let’s write it off to his tiredness, age and, honestly, simply unbearable ‘width’ to support. He’s a great Guy — and that’s what matters. |
New York Yankees star Didi Gregorius believes talented Kiwi kids should be dreaming big and aiming for a Major League Baseball career.
The 26-year-old shortstop – who had scores of budding baseballers enthralled at a coaching clinic in Christchurch on Tuesday – is living proof that players can reach the big leagues from outside the United States.
Gregorius was born in Amsterdam but grew up in Curaçao, a southern Carribean island with a population of around 158,000.
1 of 6 ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ New York Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius Didi Gregorius, who earned NZ$3.4 million with the Yankees in 2016, believes New Zealanders' softball prowess would allow them to quickly transition to baseball. 2 of 6 ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ Jai Pouaka-Grego, 8, during the baseball skills clinic lead by New York Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius. 3 of 6 ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ Didi Gregorius chats with his young fans. 4 of 6 ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ Didi Gregorius inspects the form of one of the junior players. 5 of 6 ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ Didi Gregorius runs the juniors through a drill. 6 of 6 ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ New York Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius.
The 1.9m tall left-handed hitter, who hit a career-best 20 home runs in 2016, said his career is proof "you can go a long way with baseball".
READ MORE: Yankees SS Gregorius to hold clinics in New Zealand
ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ New York Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius said his career is proof "you can go a long way with baseball".
"You can get an opportunity to go to the States and go to college and play baseball and study," he said.
Gregorius, who earned NZ$3.4 million with the Yankees in 2016, believes New Zealanders' softball prowess would allow them to quickly transition to baseball.
"You're already doing the sport; the only thing's different is you're throwing under-hand [in softball], now you've got to go on top [and pitch overhand in baseball].
ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ New York Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius coached a skills clinic with junior baseball players at Avonhead Park on Tuesday.
"There's a lot of talent here to play baseball."
Gregorius grew up playing football, basketball and baseball and was also a competitive swimmer, but he chose baseball as a pro career, "because it's in my blood".
His father Johannes Sr, brother Johannes Jr and grandfather Antonio were baseball pitchers and his mother, Sheritsa Stoop, who is in New Zealand with him, played on the Dutch national softball team.
He signed after high school for the Cincinnati Reds and first played in their farm system in 2008, working his way through the minor leagues to Major League Baseball in 2012.
Gregorius then had two seasons with the Arizona Diamondbacks but was signed by the Yankees in 2014 after legendary Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter ended a stellar 20-year career.
He will start his third season in New York in 2017 and said it was "an honour to play in the [Yankee] pinstripes."
Gregorius had a highly respectable .276 average in the 2016 season, hit 20 home runs and produced 76 RBIs (runs batted in) and is renowned for his athletic fielding.
But he said winning a World Series ring was his ultimate aim. "The ring is the thing..."
Gregorius, who is being hosted by Baseball New Zealand, enjoyed a visit to Christchurch's new Adventure Park on Tuesday. He will hold another clinic at Avonhead Park on Wednesday afternoon before moving on to Auckland and Wellington. |
Yuru Yuri Trading Card Game [English]
Staying true to the description of the site, yes we do have content about trading cards. But not Japanese trading cards so much. More of our tcg content will be made up of custom cards I make using art from anime series.
My latest project, as you can see, is a battling sort of tcg based off of characters from the Yuru Yuri series. After subbing the show I just fell in love with it. The cards combine grapuics and stats made up by me combined with screen caps from the episodes.
Anyway, what this post is meant to do is just introduce the card game and see if it garners any interest. Usually, whenever I post about my trading cards, they don’t attract much attention at all. So depending on what happens, I may or may not continue to pursue this endeavor.
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New law lets teens delete digital skeletons
State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg authored the bill to let minors request that online posts be scrubbed. State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg authored the bill to let minors request that online posts be scrubbed. Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close New law lets teens delete digital skeletons 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Remember that dance-party photo you regretted posting online? How about the time you over-shared your feelings about your ex or made that comment about Barack Obama?
All forever etched in the annals of the Internet.
Well, maybe not - at least if you're under 18.
Legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday will require Web companies, starting in 2015, to remove online activity - whether it be scandalous or simply embarrassing - should a California minor request it.
The thinking, say supporters of the new "eraser" law, is that boys will be boys (and girls, well, girls) and that the indiscretions of youth shouldn't haunt them down the road.
"Kids so often self-reveal before they self-reflect," said James Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group in San Francisco that advocated for the law. "Mistakes can stay with teens for life, and their digital footprint can follow them wherever they go."
The bill, authored by state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, pushes lawmakers deeper into the sticky debate over online privacy. As social media soars in popularity and Web companies cull more and more information about people's lives, questions continue to be raised about what Internet firms should and should not be doing with the data.
Small win for privacy
California already allows certain people, such as victims of domestic violence, to get information struck from the online record. And a pioneering 10-year-old state law requires companies to let visitors to their websites know what information they're collecting - and whom they're sharing it with.
A recently introduced amendment to that law, which is now in the hands of the governor, would force these companies to state whether they honor do-not-track requests that users make in their Internet browsers.
If the eraser law is a win for online privacy, it's a small one. The legislation has its limitations: Teens won't have absolute certainty that Mom and Dad - or college admissions officers or future employers - won't see their photo at a keg party, even if they ask for the photo to be removed.
If the underage drinking picture is posted by someone else, for example, it's not covered by the law. If the image is copied and posted to another Web site, that would not be covered, either.
Web companies also are not required to scrub their servers clean of personal data, just remove the requested item from public viewing. Under the law, sites can offer ways for users to make the redaction directly, or provide an avenue for users to request one.
Doesn't extend to adults
There's an additional catch: the law doesn't extend to adults who want to go back and delete material they posted as minors.
Many companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, already allow users to remove their posts.
Another facet of the new law, which may have a broader effect, bars Web companies and firms that deal in mobile apps from marketing products that are illegal for minors - such as alcohol, cigarettes and firearms - if they know, or should know, a minor is logged in. The companies also are not allowed to provide identifying information on minors to vendors of these products.
Opponents of Steinberg's legislation don't take issue with the new law's intent - to protect children. But they say it's not a productive solution.
The Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C., which works for freedom on the Internet, said burdensome restrictions could deter Web companies from creating content for children and even prompt sites to ban minors entirely.
Potential problems
"There's going to be a barrier to new and innovative services that want to target an audience of minors," said Emma Llansó, an attorney with the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Another potential problem, opponents say, is that California will have a different policy than other states, creating a patchwork of regulation that could be difficult for the industry to navigate.
Similar legislation on children's online privacy has been put forth at the federal level but has failed to gain traction. Federal law already limits the information Web companies can collect from those under the age of 13 but not for older children. And it does not include an eraser clause.
Steinberg praised the governor's approval of his law Monday as "groundbreaking protection" for kids.
OK with these teens
Outside San Francisco's Galileo High School, many students said the law sounded like a good idea. They said they might appreciate a chance to make a fresh start, digitally speaking, after they turn 18.
"As a youth, you make a bunch of mistakes," said Alicia Cabral, 17. "If you put it on the Internet, it follows you everywhere."
Her friend, 15-year-old Diana Cortez, added that caution is still in order.
Even if you make sure not to post photos of yourself, you can't stop your friends from doing so, she said. "If you use drugs and there are pictures of you doing that and you apply for a job, you won't get hired." |
Do you hear horror stories of China attacking services you use or of 4Chan taking out services with their Low Orbit Ion Cannon? After hearing stories like that, do you think, “Wait. What?” or, “How does this even work?” or even, “Why can random people take down other people’s websites?” Then this is the article for you.
I’m here to attempt to explain the world of denial-of-service attacks, and to offer some strategies for survival in this complicated Internet world.
What is a DDoS?
A DDoS is a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack. These attacks are happening constantly on the Internet, wars initiated by humans and played out by computers attacking other computers, hoping to make targeted computers inaccessible or overloaded.
The Digital Attack Map, built collaboratively by Google Ideas and Arbor Networks, displays a snapshot of Internet attack activity at any one time. Particularly interesting is the gallery, which shows a bunch of exciting days on the Internet.
One of my recent favorites is from April 16, 2014, described as, “Volumetric attacks targeting Poland with sustained levels of over 100 Gbps.” I haven’t taken the time to figure out why this attack happened (because often such things don’t make the news, nor does it matter), but it’s interesting to know that so much data is being thrown around. For reference, there are eight gigabits in a gigabyte, so one hundred gigabits per second is twelve and a half gigabytes of data. A 720p Blu-ray movie rip is approximately six and a quarter gigabytes in size (movies are often in the four- to ten-gigabyte range), so someone was pushing two entire movies every second to computers based in Poland.
The Digital Attack Map actually has a fantastic Understanding DDoS page. It includes a few videos on how to use the site, what each part of the site means, and what DDoS is.
The key point is that these attacks can come from any type of network connection. When I talk about defenses, this will be important. But first, let’s talk about the main types of attacks using the names that the Attack Map uses.
TCP connection attacks The Transmission Control Protocol, commonly known as TCP, is the networking protocol of the Internet. It provides reliable, ordered and error-checked delivery of data in the form of packets (unlike UDP). However, TCP connections can be made by attackers to never close, and computers (such as load balancers, HTTP servers, and routers) have a limited number of connections they can keep open. So if someone can take and hold the connections your computer has available to connect to others, others will not be able to connect to you.
Volumetric attacks A volumetric attack (relating to volume, or how much stuff a three-dimensional object can contain) is what it sounds like. Your network connection is like a pipe (joke) that can only transport a certain amount of data at once. Also, your computer can only process a finite amount of data at once. So if someone starts sending lots of bits to your computer, a couple of different things can happen. Either responses will start to slow down as your computer takes more and more time to process the large requests, or the network connection will slow down because the bandwidth between your server and the Internet is diminished by traffic congestion.
Fragmentation attacks Remember how I said TCP “provides reliable, ordered and error-checked delivery of data”? Well, an attacker can purposely send bad data. Some examples are SYN Floods, PING Floods and Teardrop Attacks, among many others. These attacks look different depending on their implementation, but they follow the high-level idea of forcing the target computer to spend an abnormally large amount of time repairing incoming data. A metaphorical example is: Imagine if every time you ordered something on Amazon, instead of getting the actual thing, you got a disassembled Lego kit with no instructions that could possibly be assembled to create the thing you wanted.
Application attacks Application attacks are interesting because they are hard to detect. They look like normal user traffic but target a specific part of an application to bring a server to its knees. For example, imagine a search engine called example.com that has a URL http://example.com/doallthework that, when visited, performs uncached lookups to the search engine’s database that are very CPU intensive. An attacker finds this and sends thousands of requests to this URL, which causes the servers to use up all of their CPU resources.
Not all of these attacks are necessarily malicious. Some readers may remember the term “Slashdotted,” which referred to a situation when a website was featured on Slashdot and the traffic directed to the site took it offline. We still see this effect from time to time when sites unexpectedly get featured on sites like Hacker News or Reddit.
Where is it all coming from?
Now that you have a rough idea of what DDoS attacks are, the next questions are, “How do attackers get all of this processing power?” and, “Where does it all come from?” These are valid questions. Sadly, the answers to these questions are complicated, because there are many avenues that can provide attackers with large attack pools.
Botnets
Botnets could be a topic all their own, but in a high-level sense, a botnet is a bunch of computers (usually at least ten and sometimes up to hundreds of thousands). Some botnets have done a lot of damage on the Internet. Botnets can be created in many ways, but one of the most common ways is to have a virus infect a computer and then wait for a command. Infected computers connect to an IRC channel or some other control center, and when the person in charge says, “Go!” they start some sort of attack or action. It should be noted that it is illegal in the United States to infect computers without the owner’s consent.
Many of these viruses exploit known security holes, so this is as good a time as any to remind you to update your passwords and keep your computer software patched. Windows users were historically the target of many virus exploits, but these days just about everyone is constantly targeted. I try to make sure all of my computers are up-to-date on the first day of every month, but you can also simply add automation to your system updates on many operating systems (tell your Mac to auto-install security updates, enable automatic apt-get updates, make sure Windows Auto-Updates are enabled, etc.).
To recap, a botnet is a group of compromised computers that listen for commands and then respond by carrying out attacks or actions. Many botnets are created by scanning the Internet for computers that are vulnerable to known exploits and then infecting them with code to make them unknowing members of a botnet.
DNS amplification and IP spoofing
DNS amplification attacks are one way to make it look like you’re being attacked from one location when you’re really being attacked from another. Basically, the attacker sends a request to one or more DNS servers. This request has a false source address, so when the DNS servers respond, they respond to the target instead of to the attacker who originated the request. The target then sees a lot of traffic from the DNS servers but has no idea where the requests originated. Making matters worse, these responses are often quite large in comparison to the initial request, thanks to DNS recursion, which allows someone to ask DNS servers for information that the servers do not know. The servers will query other DNS servers to get that information and then return it. For a 64-byte request, you could get a 3876-byte response, for example.
This type of attack is a form of IP spoofing. Similarly, last year we saw a string of NTP amplification attacks. NTP is the Network Time Protocol and is unauthenticated like DNS. It, too, can receive requests that cause the NTP server to send responses larger than the original request to computers that did not make the initial request. DNS and NTP are just two examples of IP spoofing. There is constant ongoing research by attackers to find new services that are susceptible to these types of attacks.
The US CERT article linked earlier on DNS amplification has a lot of data on these types of attacks, but one key detail is particularly important: In 2000, the IETF proposed Best Current Practice 38. Titled, “Network Ingress Filtering: Defeating Denial of Service Attacks which employ IP Source Address Spoofing,” this proposal suggested that ISPs verify packets on their networks are actually coming from their stated origin (i.e., where they say they are coming from). In 2012 it was suggested that 80% of the Internet does this, which is fairly good news. This relatively high level of adherence to best practices goes a long way toward helping protect you without you having to do anything, but these sorts of attacks still happen, and you should remain aware of them.
Many hosting providers and networks also implement egress filtering. Egress filtering is the opposite of ingress filtering. In egress filtering, routers examine traffic as it leaves the network. Checks are configured on a per network basis, but common checks are to verify that packets leaving the network have an IP belonging to that network and to make sure the traffic type is allowed (such as DNS, HTTP or SMTP). This filtering helps prevent traffic from going across networks that are unrelated to the request.
Why should I care?
Engineering is a never-ending problem of cost-benefit analysis. With no constraints, an engineering team can prepare for a large set of possibilities of failure given enough imagination, time and money. But in reality, every system has different reliability requirements. For example, my personal website does not need to be as reliable as gmail.com, which does not need to be as reliable as a plane’s fly-by-wire system.
Imagine your site is down for an hour. Now a day. Now a week. Will this hurt your livelihood? Will it cost you money? Will people die?
If yes, that’s a good thing to know, and you should be prepared to make investments to counteract bad outcomes. As the Digital Attack Map website mentions, your attackers can buy a lot of sustained attack power for $125.
What protections are available?
Protecting yourself from DDoS is complicated: As we have not created the Minority Report system to predict all of the possible attacks in the world, we have no idea who will become a target, when an attack will occur, or how large an attack will be.
But even if you’re small, don’t have a lot of resources to invest, and have a history of angering people who tend to initiate cyber-attacks against people they disagree with (such as the US Government, the Chinese Government, religious extremists or “hacktivists”), there are still some things you can do to protect yourself.
If you’re a source of free expression that a government or other group is trying to silence, you can apply for Google Ideas’ new Project Shield.
If you are not, you can use one of many for-pay services from large companies that have extra bandwidth and large networks to absorb attacks. Akamai, Amazon, CloudFlare, Google and others all have products like this.
Further reading and research
I mentioned in the introduction that there are strategies for surviving these types of attacks. The last section of this article gave a taste of some of these, but I have only included a small sampling of the vast body of knowledge that exists about countering DDoS attacks and keeping a popular website online. If you would like to explore this topic further, I have included links below to help you get started. |
Performing better (while older or younger)
Date: 29th May 2013
This spring I’ve put a fair number of days into sport climbing, and it has paid off. I’m climbing close–but not there yet–as hard on rock as I was in my mid-20s, even though I’m now 46. Yeah, that’s a dire number, I don’t know how I managed to live this long. It wasn’t planned. In any case, I’ve been thinking a lot about training, aging and life. In no particular order:
The first key to staying fit for climbing–or any sport–as you age is to goddamn well stay fit. This means not ever turning into a desk-jocky office sloth any more than is necessary to make a living. Move. Even if I’m not climbing I’m paddling, hiking, skiing, mountain biking, lifting weights, swimming, whatever, doing something, pretty much every day. I sometimes shudder when I see some of my friends who I haven’t seen in years; a few pounds is OK as we age and fighting that probably isn’t worth the effort, but for god’s sake it’s not OK to be the stoop-shouldered shuffling smoked husk of a human body that I see so often in North America. Gain 40 pounds, sit around, you can just see the toll it takes on a body and mind…
Eat well. The heaviest I’ve ever been was 185 pounds. To reach this weight I did a lot of Crossfit and not much other activity while eating a ton of meat and basic foods; my bodyfat was probably still under ten or 12 percent, but definitely higher than it normally is. The lightest I’ve been as an adult was 145, and I was, let’s face it, an anorexic stick boy at sub-4 percent or less body fat. That sucked. My best climbing weight when climbing “fit” is about 155 (best in terms of performance, the only “weight” that counts). I’m now about 160. Good enough given that I’m 20 years older, although I suspect my weight will drift toward 155 as I climb. I eat well enough, exercise enough, and don’t let some neurotic diet interfere with actually performing well at my sport, which right now is rock climbing but in general is life. I’ll get heavier during paddling season, lighter during climbing season, and lightest of all if I’m doing a ton of aerobic mountain sports where I lose muscle and burn fat for energy every day.
Attack your weaknesses. As I’ve aged my “natural” power has gone down. I have to work at this more. My endurance is as good as it ever was. I boulder more, do some fingerboard workouts, and rest adequately. If you don’t know your weaknesses then that’s your weakness. Most of the “general” workouts on the web and in print are for someone else’s weaknesses, not yours.
Be ruthless about distractions: You can’t climb hard and do Crossfit and ride your mountain bike and go to barbecues every night and have a family and a job and a new car and a perfect lawn and and. Ya gotta decide what’s important, and then do that. I coach athletes and often hear, “I’m too busy to do more.” Probably 30 percent or more of what we do in any given day is nonsensical BS. Cut the TV, internet, weight workouts, yoga, brunch, whatever, do your sport and what’s actually important in life. Yes, there are exceptions, but everyone seems to think their exceptions are relevant. Most aren’t. Doing your sport and what you really feel is important in life is what counts. Reading your kids books counts; keeping current on internet memes is not.
Avoid “performance boosters!” If anyone mentions “The Force,” homeopathy, magnets, “The Secret” or any of this sort of head-in-ass dreck avoid them and their products. They are idiots, and so are you if you buy into their snake-oil. There are a few supplements that demonstrably do something positive for our bodies and performance. Most of them are illegal, and I’ve yet to find one that is worth taking day in and day out other than my daily Red Bull or coffee prior to training. If the claims sound ridiculous or have no plausible (I’m not talking peer-reviewed double blind studies, let’s just start with plausible) explanation then in all likelihood the product or system is bogus.
Avoid any book with “Diet” on the front cover. It doesn’t work. That’s why there are thousands of diet books. If any one of them actually worked there would only need to be one. Eat basic unprocessed foods mostly, exercise lots, the rest is marketing hype.
Hang out with people who do what you want to do, are stoked, and are better at it than you (but chose fun over talent if it comes down to that). If your friends are really stoked on barbecues and brunch then you’re not going to be any good at anything but barbecues and brunch. Hang out with people who are psyched to do fun things regularly and you will be too. Avoid negative time-sucking people, they are evil and if life were fair would be struck down by lightning. All of my best sports performances have a psyched training partner in common.
And do ten sets of ten of exercise X… Or go do your sport with love, intensity and meaning, track your progress carefully and ruthlessly edit your training to get results. My goal for this spring is to rock climb as well as I did when I was 26. Right now I’m onsighting 12c/7b+ with about 50 percent consistency. I’d like to onsight some more 13a/7c+ routes this summer. Let’s see how that goes. Progress reports here. I like getting older so this isn’t about turning back the clock, this is about climbing hard routes without falling off. Game on.
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Richard III may have been the King of England and the subject of a Shakespearean play, but even that couldn’t keep him safe from ending up in a hastily-dug grave that ultimately became part of a parking lot, according to a new study published in the journal Antiquity.
And while a century of peace followed his death, the late king’s body was reportedly stripped naked, despoiled and publicly displayed for three days before it was buried in what was at the time the Greyfriars monastery in Leicester.
The grave, described for the first time in an academic paper, highlights five specific points regarding the ill-fated king who died in 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth.
First of all, the grave Richard III was placed in was “badly prepared,” which, the researchers from the University of Leicester said, suggests gravediggers were in something of a rush to get the corpse underground.
Second, the king is placed in an “odd position,” with the skeleton’s torso crammed into the small space and its head propped up on one side of the grave, which (and this is the third point), is “too short at the bottom to receive the body conventionally.”
Fourth, someone apparently stood in the grave at the time the body was placed in it in order to receive it, suggested by the fact that the body is not placed centrally in the grave.
And finally, there is evidence that the man’s hands may have been tied at the time of burial.
All of this, the researchers write, is in stark contrast to the other medieval graves found in the same area, which were all standard, correct lengths and dug neatly with vertical sides.
In short, either the gravediggers were in a hurry or they had little respect for the deceased, according to the study’s authors.
Such a find is in keeping with accounts from the medieval historian Polydore Vergil, who recorded the king’s death as having been "without any pomp or solemn funeral.”
Moreover, the authors of the study argue, the skeleton itself points to the fact that the man buried in the ignominious grave discovered within the last year is in fact Richard III.
"The radiocarbon dates, evidence on the male skeleton of severe scoliosis, trauma consistent with injuries in battle and potential peri-mortem 'humiliation injuries', combined with the mtDNA match with two independent, well-verified matrilineal descendants all point clearly to the identification of this individual as King Richard III,” the researchers said in a statement. “Indeed, it is difficult to explain the combined evidence as anyone else.” |
In Hollywood, both the Creative Artists Agency and United Talent Agency ban BlackBerry use at meetings. Tom Golisano , a billionaire and power broker in New York State politics, said last week that he pushed to remove Malcolm A. Smith as the State Senate majority leader after the senator met with him on budget matters in April and spent the time reading e-mail on his BlackBerry.
The phone use has become routine in the corporate and political worlds — and grating to many. A third of more than 5,300 workers polled in May by Yahoo HotJobs, a career research and job listings Web site, said they frequently checked e-mail in meetings. Nearly 20 percent said they had been castigated for poor manners regarding wireless devices.
Despite resistance, the etiquette debate seems to be tilting in the favor of smartphone use, many executives said. Managing directors do it. Summer associates do it. It spans gender and generation, private and public sectors.
A few years ago, only “the investment banker types” would use BlackBerrys in meetings, said Frank Kneller, the chief executive of a company in Elk Grove Village, Ill., that makes water-treatment systems. “Now it’s everybody.” He said that if he spotted 6 of 10 colleagues tapping away, he knew he had to speed up his presentation.
It is routine for Washington officials to bow heads silently around a conference table — not praying — while others are speaking, said Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton . Although BlackBerrys are banned in certain areas of the State Department headquarters for security reasons, their use is epidemic where they are allowed.
“You’ll have half the participants BlackBerrying each other as a submeeting, with a running commentary on the primary meeting,” Mr. Reines said. “BlackBerrys have become like cartoon thought bubbles.”
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Some professionals admitted that they occasionally sent mocking commentary about the proceedings, but most insisted that they used smartphones for legitimate reasons: responding to deadline requests, plumbing the Web for data to illuminate an issue under discussion or simply taking notes.
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Still, the practice retains the potential to annoy. Joel I. Klein , the New York City schools chancellor, has gained such a reputation for checking his BlackBerry during public meetings that some parents joke that they might as well send him an e-mail message. Few companies have formal policies about smartphone use in meetings, according to Nancy Flynn, the executive director of the ePolicy Institute, a consulting group in Columbus , Ohio . Ms. Flynn tells clients to encourage employees to turn off all devices.
“People mistakenly think that tapping is not as distracting as talking,” she said. “In fact, it can be every bit as much if not more distracting. And it’s pretty insulting to the speaker.”
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Still, business can be won or lost, executives say, depending on how responsive you are to an e-mail message. “Clients assume they can get you anytime, anywhere,” said David Brotherton, a media consultant in Seattle . “Consultants who aren’t readily available 24/7 tend to languish.”
Playful electronic bantering can stimulate creativity in meetings, in the view of Josh Rabinowitz, the director of music at Grey Group in New York, an advertising agency. In pitch meetings, Mr. Rabinowitz said, he often traded messages on his Palm Treo — jokes, ideas, questions — with colleagues, “things that you might not say out loud.”
The chatter tends to loosen the proceedings. “It just seems to add to the productive energy,” he said.
But business relationships can be jeopardized. Lori Levine, the founder of Flying Television, a talent-booking agency in Manhattan, said that in an effort to be environmentally sensitive she instructed employees to take notes on BlackBerrys instead of paper during client meetings.
“Then I got a call from a client screaming that our vice president spent an hour on his BlackBerry during a huge meeting,” Ms. Levine recalled. To soothe the client, Ms. Levine read aloud the notes the vice president had taken.
In Dallas , a college student sunk his chance to have an internship at a hedge fund last summer when he pulled out a BlackBerry to look up a fact to help him make a point during his interview, then lingered — momentarily, but perceptibly — to check a text message a friend had sent, said Trevor Hanger, the head of equity trading at the hedge fund, who was helping conduct the interview.
Very few companies have policies on smartphone use in meetings, which leaves it up to employees to feel their way across uncertain terrain.
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To Jason Chan, a digital-strategy consultant in Manhattan, different rules apply for in-house meetings (where checking BlackBerrys seems an expression of informal collegiality) and those with clients, where the habit is likely to offend. There is safety in numbers, he added in an e-mail message: “The acceptability of checking devices is proportional to the number of people attending the meeting. The more people there are, the less noticeable your typing will be.”
Beyond practical considerations, there is also the issue of image. In many professional circles, where connections are power, making a show of reaching out to those connections even as co-workers are presenting a spreadsheet presentation seems to have become a kind of workplace boast.
Mr. Brotherton, the consultant, wrote in an e-mail message that it was customary now for professionals to lay BlackBerrys or iPhones on a conference table before a meeting — like gunfighters placing their Colt revolvers on the card tables in a saloon. “It’s a not-so-subtle way of signaling ‘I’m connected. I’m busy. I’m important. And if this meeting doesn’t hold my interest, I’ve got 10 other things I can do instead.’ ” |
Qatar are set to offer £175m each to entice sides like United and Chelsea to play in the DFL
According to reports in a national newspaper, Qatari organisers want four Premier League outfits to take part in their 'Dream Football League' in the summer of 2015.
Bankrolled by the Qatari Royal Family - who are set to announce plans for the Dream Football League (DFL) next month - United, City, Chelsea and Arsenal are amongst the world's top sides set to be invited to compete.
Qatar is set to host the World Cup in 2022, and wants to raise the profile of the country as one of the globe's leading footballing powers.
Qatar is set to host the World Cup in 2022, and wants to raise the profile of the country as one of the globe's leading footballing powers
Each club is reported to be offered £175m just for taking part in the competition, which is set to involve 24 teams and take place in the summer every two years either side of international tournaments.
The DFL poses a direct threat to the Champions League, which paid out less than £50m in total last season to winners Chelsea.
Set to be played in Qatar and its nearby Gulf states, the plan would see 16 permanent members of the DFL supplemented with a further eight clubs from around the world handed invitations to each event.
The idea is for 24 of the world's top sides, like Real and Madrid, to compete against one another
None of football's major governing bodies have yet responded to the proposals, including the Premier League.
If the suggestions are to be believed, English top-flight sides such as Tottenham, Liverpool, Everton and Newcastle are likely to lead the charge against the tournament.
And despite the incredible sums of money on offer, it would require some careful negotiation from Qatari diplomats to convince FIFA or UEFA to agree to its plans.
Paris Saint-Germain are said to be backing the plans, due to their Qatar-based ownership |
This article is written by Matthew Austin and Anna Vella.
As stated in our recent article about the Queensland government’s proposed redesigned financial assurance framework for resource projects, the government is undertaking a broad review of mining projects to achieve a tailored solution for various types of operators within the resource sector– aimed at encouraging ‘best practice’ environmental outcomes, dealing with residual risk issues and to reduce the State’s risk in the event of environmental and rehabilitation obligations not being met.
In addition to announcing potential changes to the financial assurance framework and a broader jurisdictional review, the Queensland government has released a discussion paper which outlines a proposed new policy for mine rehabilitation in Queensland.
Existing rehabilitation issues
Mining project rehabilitation is required under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld) (EP Act). Where a proponent for a mining activity makes a variation or site-specific environmental authority (EA) application, the EP Act requires the proponent to provide details as to how the land the subject of the application will be rehabilitated after each relevant activity ceases. In approving an EA application for a mining activity, the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (DEHP) may impose a condition which relates to rehabilitating or remediating environmental harm caused by the undertaking of that activity.
For some time, the criticism of Queensland’s mining rehabilitation requirements have been gaining momentum as, among other things:
the progressive rehabilitation obligations for a mining activity are informed by the project’s plan of operations ( PoO ), which has a limited forward planning horizon;
EA approval conditions have not provided detail as to the environmental outcomes, environmental criteria and ultimate land uses which are to be achieved on the land upon which mining activities are carried out;
the regime does not provide a meaningful financial incentive for mining proponents to undertake progressive rehabilitation;
rehabilitation commitments as stated in an environmental impact statement or a PoO are not necessarily translated into enforceable conditions or obligations; and
little guidance has been provided to mining proponents to indicate what the DEHP requires to be satisfied with rehabilitation so that it can be progressively certified (as part of an ongoing mining project) or to be accepted upon surrender of an EA for the whole or part of a project.
Rehabilitation policy and delivery elements
The rehabilitation discussion paper released by the Queensland government is a key component of an integrated mined land management framework.
At this stage, the possible rehabilitation reforms are limited to the undertaking of mining activities – but may be broadened to eventually include the undertaking of petroleum activities.
The rehabilitation policies underlying the discussion paper are that:
all mined land in Queensland should be rehabilitated so that it is able to support another land use;
mined land is to be rehabilitated progressively to minimise risks of environmental impacts and to demonstrate the success of waste and land management solutions. Central to the policy and to provide certainty about the outcomes and timing of rehabilitation, mining companies with large mines will be required to prepare a ‘life-of-mine’ plan ( LOM Plan ) which encompass all states of the mine’s life – such as development, operation, care and maintenance, decommissioning, closure and post-closure monitoring - and will include binding milestones that support transition to its future use. In circumstances where major changes need to be made to the LOM Plan over the life of the mine – the public is to have an opportunity to comment on those changes;
when preparing a LOM Plan, future land uses will be identified having regard to community views and any desired use expressed in local and regional planning strategies, but may include retaining built infrastructure that will have ongoing value for the landholder or the community;
a LOM Plan will include actions and time-based milestones for achieving rehabilitation outcomes which are intended to be enforceable and enable the regulator to act if an operator fails to meet its obligations;
mined land will be considered available for rehabilitation unless it is:
being mined; or
being used for operating mining infrastructure; or
overlays a mineral reserve that has been assessed as economically viable for extraction within 10 years;
mined land will be considered to be rehabilitated when it can be demonstrated it is safe, stable, will not cause environmental harm and is able to support the post mining land use;
regular monitoring, assessment and public reporting of progress against rehabilitation outcomes stated in the LOM Plan are proposed which may in turn replace existing reporting processes – self-assessment by the operator is to be supplemented by independent auditing every three to five years as well as regular regulator checks;
guidelines will be produced which outline standard criteria for common types of rehabilitation outcomes and the process companies must follow to develop additional completion criteria for rehabilitation outcomes that reflect site-specific characteristics. Further guidance is also to be developed as to the standard of scientific evidence required to support EA surrender application and the process for assessing final rehabilitation.
The discussion paper also contemplates that, to incentivise compliance, a risk factor based on rehabilitation performance could be built into the annual fee calculation for environmentally relevant activities and fees discounted where auditing and compliance show full compliance. Increased fees could be imposed where substantial non-compliance is identified.
Proposed transitional arrangements
At this stage, the government expects that the legislative changes required to implement the intentions of the rehabilitation discussion paper are likely to be made in mid-to-late 2018.
The new rehabilitation framework is to apply:
to all new mines in Queensland that require an EA obtained through a site-specific assessment process; and
progressively to all current operating site-specific mines – with a varying transitional arrangements depending on whether a mine is considered to be:
‘high risk’ – based on factors which may include area of disturbance, proximity to significant environmental areas and the expected remaining life of mine - which will need a LOM Plan within 1 year of the legislative provisions commencing; or for the remaining existing mines, a LOM Plan will be required within 2 years after commencement of the legislative provisions.
Conclusion
The reforms outlined in the rehabilitation discussion paper seek to achieve – among other things:
binding and enforceable rehabilitation obligations for new and existing mines which will be developed through a LOM Plan which encompass all stages of mine development;
progressive rehabilitation of mined areas over the life of a mine;
mining companies planning and committing to enforceable rehabilitation obligations;
monitoring, assessment, auditing and reporting occurring on a regular basis with the opportunity for community scrutiny and third parties being consulted if major changes are proposed to made to the LOM Plan; and
more rigour around ‘care and maintenance’ obligations for mining projects.
The overall effectiveness of this aspect of the overall reform framework will become more clear once detail as to the regulator’s final certification requirements for rehabilitation requirements is made available.
Similarly to the financial assurance discussion paper, the Queensland government is seeking feedback on the proposed rehabilitation reform package by 15 June 2017.
If you would like information about how your business may be affected please contact us.
Better Mine Rehabilitation for Queensland, Discussion Paper, Department of the Premier and Cabinet, Queensland Treasury, Department of Natural Resources and Mines and Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, released on 4 May 2017: https://www.treasury.qld.gov.au/projects-infrastructure/initiatives/improving-outcomes-resources-sector/better-mine-rehabilitation-in-qld-discussion-paper.pdf
In circumstances where an environmental impact statement is prepared under the EP Act and/or as per the requirements of section 125(1)(l)(i)(E), EP Act.
Section 207(1)(e), EP Act. Guidance is also provided by the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection’s Rehabilitation requirements for mining resource activities guideline, Version 2, 23 May 2014: https://www.ehp.qld.gov.au/assets/documents/regulation/rs-gl-rehabilitation-requirements-mining.pdf
With a view to potentially removing the need to prepare PoOs, which is likely to duplicate LOM Plan requirements.
Better Mine Rehabilitation for Queensland, Discussion Paper, op. cit, p. 26. |
One of Spain's most high-profile financiers, Rodrigo Rato, has resigned as head of Bankia just hours after prime minister Mariano Rajoy announced a major shake-up of the troubled banking sector.
Rato's surprise departure on Monday was seen as proof that ailing Bankia, which holds 10% of the country's deposits, was about to be rescued by the Spanish government.
Bankia now looks likely be the centrepiece of a fresh round of financial-sector reforms as Rajoy tries to boost confidence in a country that lies at the heart of the eurozone crisis.
Rajoy looked ready to backtrack on pledges not to use more public money on banks. "The last thing I would do would be to inject or lend public money, but if it is necessary I would not hesitate to do it, just as other European countries have done," Rajoy told a radio interviewer.
He was speaking as the financial markets attempted to digest the implications of the election of the Socialist François Hollande as president in France and the outcome of the Greek elections, where the formation of a government looked unlikely.
Rajoy said details of the shake-up in Spain would come after Friday's cabinet meeting, but there were rumours that a Bankia announcement would come sooner.
Bankia is at the centre of worries about the impact on Spanish banks of toxic real estate assets left over from a residential housing bubble that burst in 2008.
It is reported to need up to €10bn, which could come via Spain's own bank restructuring fund.
Bankia is reportedly going to borrow at 8% interest through a form of debt known as contingent capital, which turns into equity in times of stress – effectively becoming a part-nationalisation.
Rato had consistently maintained Bankia could continue as an independent bank and had no solvency or liquidity problems.
The creation of a "bad bank" for toxic real estate assets is another option being explored by the government, though Rajoy said on Monday that he did not like the idea.
There have also been rumours that the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund could be used to prop up Spain's more troubled banks – which do not include the biggest two, Santander and BBVA.
Spanish banks escaped the subprime crisis after the central bank banned them from getting involved in riskier derivatives.
But they have largely rolled over the huge loans they themselves handed out to Spanish speculators, developers and construction companies in the boom years before 2008.
With land values plummeting and house prices also dropping dramatically, many developers have gone bust and banks have been caught out.
Rather than pull the plug on building projects, however, they have often encouraged companies to finish off residential projects in a country where some 700,000 new homes are estimated to remain unsold.
The finished homes have been taken by the banks in place of unpaid loans, but analysts worry they have not owned up to the full drop in value of this vast stock of housing and often worthless building land.
Banks have some €320bn of property, with half labelled as problematic by the country's central bank. Some €32bn of those toxic assets belong to the Bankia group, which had recognised €12bn of losses on them.
Bankia is the result of the merger of seven regional savings banks, which were the most reckless lenders during the housing boom.
The government has already spent €18bn cleaning up the country's financial sector. Dozens of savings banks have been forced into mergers and banks have been told to recognise more than €50bn in losses on property loans and assets.
But a February bank reform failed to convince markets that Spain, which has slumped back into recession and is suffering 24% unemployment, had solved the problem.
Spain's banks as a whole have until 31 May to say if they need to merge with other entities under the February reform plan.
Austerity measures aimed at slashing the government deficit from 8.5% to 3% of GDP over two years have helped tip Spain into recession – increasing the likelihood of banks also having to deal with a flood of mortgage defaults. |
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By Unicorn Riot
In August of 2015, a group by the name of “Minnesota 10,000 for Southern Heritage”, received a permit to rally at the capitol in support of the confederate flag.
A facebook event to counter-protest the permitted confederate flag rally, named Unity Against White Supremacy & the Confederate Flag, and organized by the IWW GDC (Industrial Workers of the World | General Defense Committee), drew the RSVP of over 400 people.
On the early morning of Saturday, September 5th, 2015, the counter-protest marched to the capitol from a location close to the site of Marcus Golden’s death by the bullets of St. Paul police officers.
Before the march took off to the capitol, a speaker announced that the confederate flag rally had been cancelled and that the action was victorious in not allowing space for racists.
While reaching the Christopher Columbus statue on capitol grounds, the crowd chanted of “tear it down”, referring to the statue, which is a representation of white supremacy to many of the participants.
Speakers ranging from Black Lives Matter organizers to Native Lives Matter to IWW and others spoke about the importance of collectively combating racism while a confederate flag was torn apart and burned. |
beyond markdown
bowerbird Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 2, 2014
— part 5
shining a spotlight on sections and headers
this is part 5 of an ongoing series. you can find
a list of links at the bottom of the article which
will direct you to the other parts of the series…
***
ok, this piece got a lot longer than i intended,
so let me give you a “tl;dr” option on this one.
the topic is headers, .html tags “h1" through “h6".
markdown’s example of headers goes like so:
markdown header input:
http://zenmagiclove.com/simple/markdown-input-headers.png
i’ll ignore the other ways markdown can do headers,
underlying with equal-signs and dashes. too obtrusive.
markdown header input and output from the dingus:
http://zenmagiclove.com/simple/markdown-dingus-headers.png
***
pretty hard to beat that for input simplicity, right?
just start a line with some hashmarks. that’s easy.
and you get “headers”, big and bold, as expected.
and sure enough, put the same text in z.m.l. and
you will get back similar “headers”, big and bold.
markdown headers take 1 minute to learn because
they are 1 minute deep. and z.m.l. headers can be
1 minute deep, if you want. or they can go deeper.
so if you want the 1-minute version, there you go.
we’ll consider the two to be “the same”. for now.
so, if you’re too busy for the whole story, which is
quite a bit more complicated, and more interesting,
you can leave now. ok, so much for the tl;dr version.
***
ok, demo examples are often “unrealistic”, so
this wouldn’t necessarily be a criticism per se,
but surely we agree this one _is_ “unrealistic”;
you don’t often see a set of 3 headers in a row,
each one containing no content underneath it.
(some cheat-sheets actually list all _6_ levels!,
in a very compelling example of input/output
that you will never ever see in the real world.)
what you usually see is a header announcing a
section of some type, with its content below;
a header without any section below it is weird.
what i am driving at is this: if your idea of what
defines a “header” is “a line that’s big and bold”
— via having the requested markup of h1 to h6,
while having no regard for the section below —
then know that z.m.l. offers you the same thing.
and you can also stop reading shortly after this.
but if that’s really what your idea of a “header” is,
then maybe you should just stay with markdown.
because headers — or, more precisely, sections —
are one of the most important concepts in z.m.l.
zen markup language is not a mindless converter
changing shorthand to .html in a reductionist way.
it’s a document-processor that encapsulates a text
in a holistic sum-is-greater-than-the-parts manner.
so, my friends, if your idea of a “header” involves
something more “semantic” than “big bold line”,
more like labeling the meaning and/or the content
of a section in a document, then you might wanna
settle in and read this entire piece at your leisure.
***
which, aside, reminds me that i really appreciate
the great response you’ve shown for this series!
lots of you are viewing it, and even reading the
entire pieces, at least according to medium.com.
even “part 4" — which weighed in at 18 minutes!
and let’s face the facts, folks, you’re essentially
reading the _manual_ for zen markup language,
and we all know how rare it is to read a manual.
(most of all, we few who typically actually _do_!)
i know that i didn’t really expect you to read it.
first, it’s kind of boring, and second, i’m really
terrible at writing this type of stuff, so sorry.
explaining stuff brings out my over-explainer,
and he can bore anybody, most especially me.
i was just writing this up so i could point to it,
if people ever started asking me any questions.
the old “i’m-not-your-mama, r.t.f.m.” brush-off.
i didn’t expect people to show any real interest
until i gave you all a real z.m.l. authoring-tool,
so you could fiddle around with it and see that,
hey, it really is very simple, and it really works,
and it really could be something that replaces
inconsistent markdown with a reliable format,
and it really does give writers a real advantage,
and i’m gonna start using it and telling people.
really.
and i still expect that all of that _will_ happen,
when i give you the authoring-tools — soon! —
but i’m pleasantly surprised at the interest that
you have _already_ shown, so thank you kindly.
oh, and in case you’re wondering, most of the
tools that i offer will be absolutely free of cost.
those tools run the full range, web and native,
cross-platform, and ported to many languages.
(so coders, resist the urge, because you’ll just
be reinventing the wheel now, when later you
can help make the wheels work even better.)
i might have to charge a small amount to offer
stuff out of the apple stores, because you must
pay apple their fee to be “an official developer”,
but in general i pledge most of this will be free.
ok, now “part 5". i know you’re so excited! ;+)
***
the series is discussing “zen markup language”
— “z.m.l.” — which is a light-markup solution.
it is thus very similar to “markdown”. however,
z.m.l. was designed independently of markdown
(and i started it several years before markdown,
even before “textile”, markdown’s inspiration),
so z.m.l. avoids some of the flaws in markdown
— ergo the “beyond markdown” series title —
although you might find they are more similar
than dissimilar; but one of the features where
they diverge in important ways is _“headers”._
headers, of course, are extremely important,
as they cordon off _sections_ in the document,
such as the _chapters_ of a novel, for instance,
individual _pieces_ in an anthology, and so on.
and because z.m.l. goes the most simple route,
it considers the _header_ for any section to be
the first chunk which is found in that section.
or, to say it another way, the first chunk found
in a section is ruled to be that section’s header.
so how does z.m.l. decide it has “a new section”?
well, easy.
just like one blank line signals “a new chunk”,
whether that chunk is a “paragraph” or a “block”,
a set of 5 blank lines signals “a new section”…
just like one blank line
signals “a new chunk”,
a set of 5 blank lines
signals “a new section”
and, since i have just said that the first chunk
in a section is defined as that section’s header,
we come to the startling realization that there
is actually no need to even _mark_ that header,
because the 5-blank-line sequence already did!
but now i’m getting way ahead of myself…
so let’s reel it back in, to start at the beginning.
and when we talk about sections, and headers,
then we should begin with the table of contents.
***
bow down to the table of contents
z.m.l. has a focus on long-form documents, like books,
reports, journal articles, etc. — documents of substance.
these types of documents usually make a large webpage,
or even a whole set of united webpages across a website.
markdown, on the other hand, is often used on things
such as blog comments (or the blog article itself), and
particularly user-generated content, where that text is
a little part of a webpage, or a relatively small webpage.
indeed, markdown is usually converted as a “snippet”;
you _add_ the .html elements, .css, etc., if you need ‘em.
not so with zen markup language.
z.m.l. always gets converted as a full webpage, or even a
set of related webpages, and you are expected to _delete_
the stuff that you don’t need for your specific use-case.
the .css, for instance, is provided, although you can also
tell the converter that you want it to bring in your own.
either way, what you receive is something fully functional
and entirely stand-alone. it’s explicitly not just a snippet.
this difference in focus is a very important distinction,
like the difference between a blog comment and a book.
a concentration on long-form material means _sections_
are a crucial organizing principle of the z.m.l. framework.
in fact, it’s not unreasonable, as a general rule of thumb,
to think that you should stick with markdown if you are
using it to create relatively small pieces of content, like
one-at-a-time blog articles just a couple paragraphs long.
but if you are writing pieces that have multiple sections,
you’ll find that z.m.l. probably meets your needs better.
if your documents are long enough that they can benefit
by having a table of contents, you are writing long-form,
and you need a light-markup system geared to that goal.
and when you are offering a reader a document that big,
the skeleton organization of the document is something
that needs to be made clear to the reader, and the vehicle
which provides that vital clarity is your table of contents.
thus it is very important just from that single perspective.
let me stress that. you _want_ your readers to see and use
your table of contents, just as soon as they start reading,
because it helps them wrap their mind around the piece,
and frames their approach, especially if they’re reading it
in an electronic-form, on a screen, where it’s amorphous.
that reader-orientation to the article can be so important.
moreover, the table of contents helps you, as the writer.
it is the guide that organizes your thoughts, and ensures
that your piece embodies an “arc” that makes it cohere.
it’s the “outline” your teachers told you to start out with.
although, truth be told, a good one is always evolving, so
the important thing is to stay current with it as it does,
so you’re aware where the path is, and where it is going.
i apologize for this wee excursion in a writerly direction,
but it’s not off-topic, because it is this focus on _writing_
which serves as the very bedrock of the z.m.l. philosophy.
z.m.l. is not merely a format to make .html for webpages.
one big goal of z.m.l. is to help writers do better writing.
***
so, because of its importance, to both writer and readers,
the table of contents occupies a “place of honor” as the
second section of z.m.l. documents, so everybody knows
where it is, and everybody knows that everybody knows.
the first section, of course, is the cover/title section, but
it’s very good to know that you can count on the fact that
the table of contents is at the top too, just underneath it,
especially since many viewer-apps can jump to the top,
thereby making your table of contents quite convenient.
furthermore…
z.m.l. makes it very easy to maintain a table of contents.
because, if you think about it, you want your headers to
be in two places. one is obviously where they already are
— situated atop their respective sections, naturally —
but the second place would be in your table of contents.
so, during conversion of your z.m.l. text-file to output,
your text is scanned to ascertain its header-structure,
thereby automatically generating a table of contents.
if your table of contents section is the word “autotoc”
— just that simple string of letters, by itself on a line —
the auto-generated contents is spliced into the output.
so, with “autotoc” in your z.m.l. input file, this might be
an example of what would get spliced into your output:
further, if you make a change to the text of a header,
it is displayed immediately, in the on-the-fly preview.
so the table of contents stays in sync with the headers.
so, if we were to leave the “autotoc” line just as it was,
but edit the old-fashioned non-useful roman numbers
— the ones on those actual headers, in the text itself —
the auto-generated version will come to look like this:
(and yes, in z.m.l., we include the title — and even the
“table of contents” header — _in_ the table of contents,
even though some people might consider it redundant,
because we might want to copy this section out to the
digital equivalent of a “card catalog” for our cyberlibrary.
so we really need that listing to be full-and-complete.)
z.m.l. makes it very easy to
maintain a table of contents.
or, if you prefer it the other way around, you can put in
the table of contents that you want, and the converter
will compare the actual structure of your actual headers
against the structure you listed in the table of contents,
and alert you to any discrepancies between those two,
so that you can edit the errors, wherever they might be.
consider this as the kind of alert you might get:
http://zenmagiclove.com/simple/alice-toc-check-alert.png
or, for instance, say the auto-generated table of contents
looked like this graphic below. how do you analyze this?
http://zenmagiclove.com/simple/alice-autotoc-improper-levels.png
well, the auto-generator pays attention to the _levels_
of your headers, and indents them appropriately, so
— compared to the “h2" for all the other headers —
this indicates that chapter 5 is mislabeled as an “h3"
and chapter 9 has been mislabeled as an “h4" header,
so we’ll need to edit those two to be the correct level.
so you can either use the auto-generation approach
all of the time and assume your headers are correct.
or you can create your “ideal” table of contents and
then be alerted if the actual headers diverge from it.
or you can combine both those approaches, so start
with the auto-generation, and then — once you have
satisfied yourself that it is correct as you intended —
include a copy explicitly, so if you accidentally make
a change to your header-structure, you’ll be alerted.
or, if you intentionally change your header-structure,
you will be alerted so you edit your table of contents.
this auto-generation is one way z.m.l. helps you out,
when it comes to the matter of the table of contents.
but it doesn’t stop there.
the converter routine goes on to link every item in the
table of contents to its respective section in the output.
because today’s readers have a right to expect such links.
and you don’t need to do a single thing to get the links,
which is exactly what you should expect from the tool.
because the converter is fully capable of creating them.
finally, because these links are in every z.m.l. document,
readers will expect them, with no need for you to explain.
and yes, since you likely know how internal links work,
z.m.l. does indeed assign an .html “id” to every header.
and it’s not some randomly-assigned nonsense, either.
it’s an i.d. that directly parallels the header itself, so you
can confidently predict what it is by knowing the header,
without any need to go “view source” to learn what it is.
> Chapter 10 -- The Lobster Quadrille
> #chapter_10_—-_the_lobster_quadrille
...or this works too...
> #chapter_10
...or this works too...
> #the_lobster_quadrille
***
but wait. there’s more…
each header is also linked _back_ to the table of contents,
so your readers have awesome navigational functionality.
(which you can also use, while you are writing the piece,
since all of the links are fully functional in your preview;
good navigation is needed when you’re writing long-form.)
the table of contents, with great navigational functionality,
is a true asset to the power and simplicity of z.m.l. output.
and it’s largely automatic, because of the long-form focus.
now that we’ve grounded ourselves in the mechanisms of
the table of contents, we can discuss sections and headers.
***
headers and sections
and gourds, oh my!
in z.m.l., the “technical” term we use for a “section”
is “gourd”. thus, “chunks” accumulate into “gourds”,
just as paragraphs accumulate into chapters in a novel.
but no, i’m not going to use the “gourd” term here;
i just thought you should be told its “official” name,
so if/when we use it later, you’ll know what it means.
now, to repeat something we said earlier,
the first chunk in each section is its header.
the first chunk
in each section
is its header
the next chunk or two can be headers too,
or subheaders, which is a technicality, but
the first chunk is _always_ a header, by rule.
and, just so you know, the requirement that
a header must be _followed_ by 2 blank lines
is so z.m.l. knows where the header-chunk
and all its possible subheader-chunks end.
next of all, remember that the “h1" header
is reserved for the title of your document,
which must be the first “chunk” in your file,
so there is no need (or ability) to assign “h1".
so we are essentially talking about levels of
headers “h2" to “h6”, if you need that many.
(quite often, you only need one level, “h2".)
so this means that headers in your document
will need to be identified, for z.m.l. to handle.
more precisely, _sections_ in your document
will need to be identified, for z.m.l. to handle.
the rule for sections in z.m.l. is clear and simple:
every z.m.l. section must be preceded by
at least 5 blank lines (or more), and
its header-chunk(s) must be followed by
exactly 2 blank lines.
——————————————————————-
every z.m.l. section
must be preceded by
at least 5 blank lines (or more),
and its header-chunk(s)
must be followed by
exactly 2 blank lines.
——————————————————————
this arrangement of blank lines tells z.m.l.
exactly where the sections break, as well as
where each header begins and where it ends.
so any time there is a 5-blank-line sequence,
the chunk that follows it becomes the header
for that new section. so, if you don’t want to,
there’s not even any need to label the header!
just put a space in column 1, to identify that
chunk as a “block”, and then type the header.
(to be honest, you don’t even need the space.)
got that? there’s no need to mark the header!
this is a good example of where the “zen” in
“zen markup language” comes in the picture!
if you wonder, this 5-blank-line rule is based
on the one used for project gutenberg e-texts.
the project gutenberg corpus was the model for
the plain-text conventions i wanted to emulate.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Volunteers%27_FAQ#V.111._How_should_I_handle_chapter_and_section_headings.3F
project gutenberg requires 4 blank lines, but for
a programming reason, i’ve changed that to _5_.
(hey, since you’re here reading a fucking manual,
you probably _wonder_ about what the reason is,
so i’ll tell you. to split a z.m.l. text into “chunks”,
we just split it by “
” — a pair of linebreaks —
which is how a blank line in a file expresses itself.
so when we require 5 blank lines before a section,
that translates to 6 successive linebreaks, meaning
2 successive empty chunks indicate a new section,
and we don’t have to do another split for sections.)
***
you can witness this in the project gutenberg e-text
for “alice’s adventures in wonderland”, which was
what i used above for the sample table of contents.
> http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11/11.txt
…or…
> http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11/pg11.txt
as you scroll through the e-text, you’ll notice that
the chapter-headers stand out nicely, due to that
relatively large amount of whitespace above them.
and there’s another appealing thing about this rule,
for me anyway, because i admire print-book design.
see this?
> http://zenmagiclove.com/simple/alice-header-midpage.jpg
> https://archive.org/stream/alicesadventures00carr3#page/30/mode/2up
that’s an image of a real hard-copy page from “alice”.
notice how the header is offset from the top the page?
that, of course, is something very common in books.
for me, the 5-blank-lines-above rule reconstrues this,
conjures in my mind a picture of this kind of design.
***
so, did you look at that project gutenberg “alice” file?
if so, did you notice the headers did _not_ have the
required 2-blank-lines below each chapter-header?
except chapter 12? unfortunately, project gutenberg
has always done a lousy job of “enforcing” its rules,
fearful that doing so would chase off its volunteers,
so its e-texts are rife with inconsistency issues. sad.
***
ok, so we know now that, in terms of marking the
existence of a new section, 5 blank lines will do it.
and that, given that, we don’t even need to mark
the header for it, since it’s always the first chunk.
and as long as we’re happy having all our headers
at the same level, then we can be “officially done”.
but we often do want a document-structure that
includes headers with a variety of different levels.
so how do we set the levels of these various headers?
***
setting the header levels
if your document has headers of different levels,
you’ll indicate the level of a specific header using
either of 2 different methods, the choice is yours.
set header level — method 1 —
setting the level via blank lines
you must have at least 5 blank lines preceding
each header, but that will only give that header
the “basic” level in that particular document.
for instance, if all the headers have 5 blank lines,
they will all be assigned the “h2" .html header.
however, if you vary the number of blank lines,
the assigned levels of the headers will vary too.
so let’s say you want “h2" and “h3" .html headers;
you could put 5 blank lines before the “h3" headers,
and (let’s say) 6 blank lines before the “h2" headers.
more blank lines indicate a higher-priority header;
you can remember this using the “offset” graphic,
because more blank lines will create a bigger gap.
so whichever headers have the most blank lines,
those are the ones that will get the “h2" markup.
the ones with the next most get “h3", and so on.
so let’s say you want to use all 6 levels of headers.
you might use 6 blank lines before the h6 headers,
8 before the h5 headers, 10 before the h4 headers,
12 before h3 headers, and 14 before h2 headers.
(read that last paragraph in the opposite order
if doing so will help you understand it better.)
i can hear your skepticism about this arrangement,
probably because i’ve heard it so often in the past,
something about not wanting to count blank lines.
i can tell you that, once you get used to this method,
it works very well, and you will come to embrace it.
all of the volunteers at project gutenberg learned it,
and i’ve used it too, quite nicely, for many years now.
“counting lines” isn’t all that hard to do. in fact, i find
that it is rather fulfilling to do it, knowing i’m starting
a new section, which means my writing is proceeding.
and remember, if you get the number of lines wrong,
the auto-generated table of contents will look weird.
here, let me show you that graphic again:
see? it’s very obvious what needs fixing there.
alas, i can still hear your skepticism.
you probably still don’t believe me.
so i’ll give you a second method that’s more explicit.
but you have to promise me you’ll actually _try_ to
use the blank-lines method, because it really works,
and if you just try it out, you’ll see that it’s very nice.
but ok, here’s that other method, which will look
familiar to you, because it’s the old hashmark one.
***
set header level — method 2 —
setting level via explicit hashmarks
you can set the level via the “hashmark” method instead.
each header still needs to be preceded by 5 blank lines,
and followed by 2 blank lines. but the header’s _level_
is indicated explicitly with the familiar “ ## ” markup.
specifically, an h2 header is marked with “ ## ” at its start.
an h3 header is marked with “ ### ”, h4 with “ #### ”, etc.
notice the “ ## ” marks must have a space in column 1, and
there must be at least one space before the header begins.
(and, once again, perhaps you can actually skip the spaces,
but i might “fix” that in future versions of the converter.)
to repeat: note that the “ ## ” marks are _not_ locating the
start of the section — the 5-blank-line sequence does that —
but rather merely the _level_ of the header. be clear on that.
you can put in all the “ ## ” marks you want, but that won’t
signal the beginning of a new section to the z.m.l. converter.
if your “header” is not preceded by the set of 5-blank-lines,
yes, it’ll get an .html “hx” tag, and be displayed big and bold,
but it _won’t_ be considered to be a section-header, meaning
it will not go in the auto-generated table of contents, nor will
it be assigned an .html “id” automatically, nor get any links.
but if you _do_ precede your hashmark-header properly, with
a set of 5-blank-lines, it’ll be considered a full-fledged header,
with its level explicitly set by the number of hashmarks it has,
and _not_ by the number of blank lines which it has above it.
***
and with that, we have finally finished up with headers. yay!
thank you for being patient with the awful length of this thing.
like i said, once my over-explainer comes out, even i get bored. ;+)
i promise the remaining parts of this series will be much shorter.
and even better news is that there aren’t too many of them left!
so if you’ve come this far, make sure and stay for the whole ride.
because even before the series ends, authoring-tools will emerge.
and that’s when the _real_ fun will begin!
***
here are the articles in this series:
beyond markdown — part 1 — it’s time for the next step https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-1-2300665659f7
beyond markdown — part 2 — z.m.l. was built to be easy to understand https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-2-b3527d2b9dcf
beyond markdown — part 3 — two types of chunks — paragraphs and blocks https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-3-eed9bebea0da
beyond markdown — part 4 — how to “tag” a block for formatting https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-4-9b4dc6841d7e
beyond markdown — part 5 — shining a spotlight on sections and headers
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-5-4902097723b0
beyond markdown — part 6 — notes on a few types of “special” paragraphs
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-6-8056eee5b783
beyond markdown — part 7 — text styling and typographic niceties
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-7-3158e23f22bf
beyond markdown — part 8 — alignment, horizontal rules, and breaks
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-8-1a082d7f1f6d
beyond markdown — part 9 — pulling outside resources into your document
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-9-be74bbbed369
beyond markdown — part 10 — special sections in your document
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-10-3ca0c08e5641
***
and, for reference, as an extra bonus:
markdown considered harmful — or perhaps a loved but irritating old uncle
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/markdown-considered-harmful-495ccfe24a52 |
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden appeared via video link from Moscow at the CeBIT IT trade conference in Hanover, Germany. He warned IT specialists they are the target of government surveillance.
“They are looking for the people who are in this room right now. You are their target, not because you’re a terrorist, but because you have access to systems. You have access to the private records of people’s private lives and these are the things they want,” he warned.
Since leaking documents revealing the size and scope of the NSA and US allies’ worldwide spying program, Snowden has been living in Moscow, Russia. He is a wanted man in his native America.
But the IT expert turned whistleblower, who was once contracted to the NSA, maintained that he wanted to return home to the US and face the courts.
“I want to tell the jury why I did it. I want to tell the court what these programs are. I want the jury to decide whether it was right or wrong that our rights and or Constitution were being violated in secret,” he told the audience.
But he was also pessimistic about receiving a fair trial in the US. If convicted he would face up to 30 years in jail. Former army intelligence officer turned whistleblower Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking documents about the conduct of the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"In the United States, under the current law right now, it's not even possible for me to enjoy a fair trial,” said Snowden.
Snowden is popular in Germany, which has a more negative view of government surveillance because of its history under the Nazis and the East German Stasi secret police.
READ MORE:German spy agency collects 220 million phone records a day - report
Although German citizens may be against mass surveillance, there are few signs that much has changed in the corridors of Germany’s spy agencies post Snowden.
It was reported in Zeit, a German weekly newspaper, earlier this year that the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, gathers 220 million pieces of metadata from phone calls and text messages each day. Zeit also revealed that BND agents are instructed to be as elusive as possible when being questioned by politicians from the Oversight Committee.
“The countries such as Germany that have benefitted the most from the risks that he [Snowden] took are the same ones that have most shamefully turned their backs on him,” Glenn Greenwald told the conference.
READ MORE: Snowden ‘changed nothing’ says Norway’s top spy, ‘business as usual’
Snowden remained more upbeat and told the conference that next year he hoped to attend in person, but would make sure he asked Chancellor Merkel first.
The US director of Citizen Four, the academy award winning documentary, which tells the story of Snowden’s revelations and how he went into exile has said she lives and works in Berlin because she believes her material would be taken by the US government if she moved home.
Internet security was one of the biggest issues at CeBIT 2015 with many startups developing new security systems of their own.
A study published recently by the international auditors KPMG showed that security awareness is becoming an increasingly high priority for German businesses.
It also showed a huge jump in cybercrime up from 26 percent of businesses saying they were affected in 2013 to 40 percent in 2014.
Financial services were the most common targets, but cybercriminals often target small and medium size companies as they have weaker security systems in place. |
Ethereum for web developers
Mahesh Murthy Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 2, 2017
I have been learning about Ethereum blockchain platform for some time and the more I learn, the more exciting it looks. There are lots of resources (articles, videos, platform documentation) about Ethereum, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. But, many of them are outdated understandably because the platform is still evolving at a rapid pace. It took me some time to piece together and get a complete picture of what Ethereum is and how it works. Talking to developers in meetup groups and other online communities, it feels like there are many people who would like to get their hands dirty with this new technology but have the same issue. This article is my attempt at explaining Ethereum from a web developer’s point of view.
If you are a web developer, you know how a webapp with it’s client server architecture works at a very high level.
You have your web application hosted on a hosting provider like AWS, Heroku or a VPS. All the clients interact with this one central application. Clients can be a browser, another api consuming your service etc. When a client makes a request to the server, the server does it’s magic, talks to the database and/or cache, reads/writes/updates the database and serves the client.
This architecture works very well most of the times. However, there are certain applications where it would be really helpful if that database was publicly and securely accessible by everyone and you don’t have to rely on this webapp owner for your data.
For example, let’s look at eBay. If you are a power seller who has earned hundreds of good reviews and for some reason eBay suspends your account. That would be very bad and could severely impact your business. What would be really nice is the ability for you take all your reviews and ratings and move to another platform (say eBay Competitor). eBay does provide a service by being the trusted third party between buyers and sellers. But then, they also take a commission off each sale. What if there was a way to eliminate eBay altogether from the transaction between buyer and seller so you save on commission and also you have access to all your data? This is where decentralized applications come in to picture. Ethereum makes it very easy to build Dapps (decentralized applications).
This is how an Ethereum Dapp looks at a high level:
If you notice, every client (browser) communicates with it’s own instance of the application. There is no central server to which all clients connect to. This means, every person who wants to interact with a dapp (Decentralized Application) will need a full copy of the blockchain running on their computer/phone etc. That means, before you can use an application, you have to download the entire blockchain and then start using the application. This might sound ridiculous at first but it has the advantage of not relying on a single central server which might disappear tomorrow.
In reality, you don’t need to spend lot of your hard disk and RAM downloading the entire blockchain. There are a few workarounds/optimizations to keep the application decentralized yet make the interaction quick and easy.
Now, what exactly is this blockchain? It has:
Database: Every few transactions that occur in the Ethereum network are packaged in to blocks and each block is linked to the next block. This linked series of blocks which holds all the transaction data is the blockchain. If we go back to the eBay example, every transaction between buyers and sellers, whether it is a sale, refund or dispute would all be recorded on the blockchain and is available for everyone to see. To make sure all the nodes in the network have same copy of the data and to insure no invalid data gets written to this database, Ethereum uses an algorithm called Proof of Work (http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/14/what-proof-of-work-function-does-ethereum-use) Code: The database aspect of blockchain just stores the data. But where is all the logic to buy, sell, cancel, refund etc. In Ethereum world, you write the application code (called contract) in a language called Solidity. You then use the solidity compiler to compile it to Ethereum Byte Code and then deploy that byte code to the blockchain. There are few other alternates to Solidity but Solidity is by far the most popular language for contract development.
So basically, the blockchain stores your data, stores the code and also runs the code in the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine).
To build web based dapps, Ethereum comes with a handy javascript library called web3.js which connects to your blockchain node. So you can just include this library in your famous js framework like reactjs, angularjs etc and start building.
Another big and most important feature is the financial capabilities of the platform. What if I tell you, as soon as you start using a dapp, you get an in built bank account? Actually, not one bank account, but you can create as many bank accounts as you like in a fraction of second? These bank accounts are called wallets where you store money (Ether - the currency used in the Ethereum ecosystem) and transact.
There are lot of details about the inner workings of the blockchain I left out deliberately because I wanted to concentrate on mostly comparing the blockchain based Dapp with a centalized webapp. Hope this post accomplishes that and gives a good high level idea of what Ethereum is and how it can be used to build decentralized applications.
I plan on writing more posts/tutorials on dapp development this year. If you would like to get notified, you can subscribe here!
[I have written a 3 part guided tutorial on building a full stack dapp here: Part1, Part2, Part3]
I have also created a more complex course to build a decentralized eBay on Ethereum & IPFS.
Further Reading:
For in depth details on how Ethereum works you can read the Ethereum white paper.
More about the solidity language Solidity Language
For all questions, of course you have Ethereum Stack Exchange
Super helpful community at gitter: https://gitter.im/ethereum/solidity and https://gitter.im/ethereum/web3.js
Thanks @raineorshine, @alwaysbcoding, @kinjalmurthy for feedback on the article. |
AGRA: The curse of untouchability still have deep roots in the country, a truth which can be gauged from the fact, that an entire family of a dalit was beaten with sticks and kicked just because one of the family members accidentally touched the hands of a Brahmin man.The incident was reported in the remote village of Kyuri village of Pinhat area on Friday afternoon, when a Valmiki family was engaged in a marriage ceremony.According to Vineeta, a victim of the incident said, “My younger son Sonu had gone to a sweet shop owned by a Brahmin man named Anil Sharma. While giving the payment for the sweets, Sonu accidently touched the hand of Sharma, on which he got infuriated and thrashed my son.”“When Sonu returned home with bruises, he narrated the entire event after which I along with group of women went to sweet shop to protest against the cruelty on mere touching the hand. Later, Anil along with some few more men came to our house and attacked us with wooden sticks. They didn’t spare even a pregnant women, who had come to attend marriage ceremony,” she claimed. “They kicked her womb after which our family members took her to hospital,” she alleged.As per sources, in the incident, Rekha the pregnant woman, Sonu and his father Hotilal were injured.As per block in-charge of the area, Sugreev Singh Chauhan said, “I was attending a meeting with Bah MLA Raja Mahendra Aridaman Singh, when I got a distress call of Brahmin men attacking a family of Valmiki’s. I immediately rushed to the spot and brought them to MLA.”When TOI, contacted Samajwadi Party MLA Raja Mahendra Aridaman Singh, he claimed, “I don’t know exactly what happened among the two communities, but a family of Valmiki said that they were attacked by upper caste people, after which I called local police station in-charge to arrest the culprits and take stringent action against them.” “I was later informed by police, that accused were arrested,” he added.Talking to TOI, station officer of Pinhat Satyendar Singh said, “No one has been arrested in the matter. It was simple brawl between drunk Valmiki’s who were attending a marriage party. One of the drunk allegedly misbehaved with a Brahmin man after which a scuffle took place.” |
Three of the man's victims on Tuesday said they wanted his name made public, saying they believed more victims could come forward if they knew he was behind bars. But Fairfax Media is unable to name the paedophile due to a request from the County Court. The man was a police officer between 1967 and 1979, when he resigned from the force after the mother of one of his victims reported the abuse to his colleagues. On Tuesday, County Court Judge John Carmody said the day after the woman reported the abuse, "a number of police" came to the family home and questioned the boy about what had happened. While the woman said she didn't want to take the matter any further, the officers told her that the man"wouldn't be in the police force any more and would be moved away". The court was told on Friday that after Victoria Police failed to act on the complaint, the man went on to sexually assault and rape children for at least another four years.
He formally pleaded guilty on Friday to 18 offences against nine victims. "The offending in this case is of the most serious nature," Judge Carmody said. "You were in breach of trust in relation to all the complainants." This, he said, was aggravated by the fact the man was a local policeman when he brutalised the children, who were all aged between five and 10 when he first began to abuse them. On Friday, Crown Prosecutor Nanette Rogers told the court that the police officer had asked one boy, who was between six and 10 when he was raped, whether he wanted to see the police station.
When the boy said yes, the officer took the boy to a room in the station where there was a bed, and raped him. Dr Rogers said in another episode, a girl went to the police station for help after losing her mother at a nearby festival. After telling the child, "I'll look after you", the officer took her into the back of a police divisional van and forced her to perform oral sex on him. In harrowing testimony one of the victims, now 45, told the man she hoped he rotted in hell for what he had done to her, including holding a police-issue revolver to her head as he raped her. She wept as she described how she had hoped he would pull the trigger and put her out of her misery.
Instead, he forced her to suffer through years of "hell and his sick games". Judge Carmody said that by pleading guilty to the offences, the man had "demonstrated some limited remorse" for his actions. But, Judge Carmody said, he was concerned by a pre-sentence report that described the man as being at high risk of re-offending. He was also concerned that the man had a "simplistic and under-developed" understanding of the impact of his offending on his victims; one of whom had tried to take his own life three times after suffering a lifetime of trauma from his childhood abuse. "Your prospects of rehabilitation are, in my opinion, low," Judge Carmody said.
This, he said, was aggravated by the fact that the former officer did not use any protection when he raped the children, exposing them to the risk of sexually-transmitted disease. The man was arrested in 2012, and jailed in NSW in 2014 for separate offences of a "similar" nature, committed between 2005 and 2012. For those offences he was sentenced to 17 years, with a non-parole period of 12 years. When the two sentences are combined, and taking into account time served, he will serve a total 26 years, with a non-parole period of 19 years, for all the offences. The man did not react as he was led away.
Outside court, one of his victims told Fairfax that "justice is served". "I'm glad to see that justice is served, but I'm just relieved that it's all done," she said. "It's been a long time coming." |
Four suspects terrorized a northwest Harris County family on Monday, not only burglarizing their home but also shooting and killing one of the family's dogs."If they can do that to a dog, then they can do anything to a human being," said homeowner Patricia.Patricia said the break-in happened around 1 p.m. on Monday. The family's home surveillance video shows four men breaking into the home. The video shows them hopping over the fence and then gaining access to the home through a back window.Once they were inside, the suspects filled up suitcases full of everything from video game consoles to shoes. Patricia believes their dog, 6-month-old Lady, was trying to protect their home when the intruders shot her."They have no heart. They're just horrible people," she said.The thieves kept going. They made a number of trips in and out, throwing things everywhere in every room."They threw flour all over the kitchen. I had some cake for Mother's Day, they ate that," said Patricia.The family now hopes the surveillance images that show the suspects' faces help in catching them. While they can't bring Lady back, they're hoping to at least get justice.The family is offering a $5,000 reward in the case. HCSO said Crime Stoppers is also offering a reward, bringing the total reward to $10,000. |
Judging by the comments section, Mac DeMarco’s Salad Days was the most controversial omission from our 50 Best Albums Of 2014 So Far list. An artist of the people, he is! So much so that DeMarco is asking the people — i.e. you — to submit a portrait of him that might end up on the cover of one of 7-inch club singles. Captured Tracks explains it like so:
Create a portrait of Mac and he will choose his two favorites to be on the covers of two of his 7″ Club releases.
Prize: Your art featured on a 7″ Mac jacket. PLUS a full subscription to the 7″ Club: 10 x exclusive 7″s and a bunch of goodies! Value +$100! Check out what’s been released as part of the club so far here.
Rules:
1. Must be original art and you must be sole owner of copyright.
2. Must fit 7×7? dimensions.
3. Must be an Instragram follower of @capturedtracks and submit to @capturedtracks with #sketchymac
4. Must transfer copyright to Mac for potential future reproductions
5. Must be submitted before the 27th of June 2014.
How many people do you think will just submit humongous drawings of crooked teeth? |
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to a scathing report issued last week by the Justice Department that accuses prominent Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, self-proclaimed the toughest sheriff in America, quote, of a “wide-ranging discrimination against Latinos.” On the basis of a detailed review of documents, federal investigators found that Latino drivers in Phoenix’s Maricopa County were four to nine times more likely to be stopped by Sheriff Arpaio’s deputies than similarly situated non-Latino drivers. They found that a fifth of such stops were unjustified, in violation of the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. And they found that the sheriff’s office routinely responded to intelligence from citizens who reported gatherings of dark-skinned or Spanish-speaking individuals. The findings could subject Arpaio to court-ordered reforms. The sheriff has denied the allegations.
SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO: The work we have done to fight illegal immigration, we have been responsible for finding and identifying 25 percent of the nation’s illegal alien criminal offenders in our jails. Sadly, much of that work will no longer be permitted by the Obama administration.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Following the release of the Justice Department’s report, federal authorities announced they would suspend Arpaio’s access to programs under which undocumented immigrants are handed over from his jail for deportation. On Wednesday, dozens of his jail officers lined up at a press conference and ceremoniously handed in their federal credentials. Immigration officials say federal monitors will now verify the immigration status of inmates. Here again is Sheriff Arpaio.
SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO: We’re probably the most trained law enforcement agency in the United States. Who else goes through five weeks of training by Homeland Security? And yet, they’re saying we don’t know what we are doing. What is the rush? Common sense and good management would be, “OK, Sheriff, we’re going to take away your authority, but please keep doing it ’til we can get our 50 officers to take over.” No, they kicked us out, putting public safety at risk.
AMY GOODMAN: The Department of Justice’s damning report on Sheriff Arpaio comes at a time when he has faced growing calls to resign, following mounting evidence his police department failed to properly investigate more than 400 sex crime cases.
Meanwhile, Monday, a woman arrested for using false documents to obtain work sued Arpaio for cruel and unusual punishment. The woman, who gave birth in police custody, said she was shackled to her hospital bed before and after delivering her child by Caesarean section.
And earlier this week, a Latino Army veteran found unresponsive in his Maricopa County jail cell died on Tuesday. The family of 44-year-old Ernest Atencio said he had taser marks on his body.
Despite all of this, Sheriff Arpaio has vowed not to resign and says he plans to run for re-election next year.
Well, for more, we’re joined from Phoenix by Randy Parraz, president of Citizens for a Better Arizona. The group led a successful recall effort against State Senator Russell Pearce, the leading lawmaker behind the anti-immigrant bill, SB 1070. Now they’re focusing on Sheriff Arpaio.
We’re also joined by Stephen Lemons, longtime reporter with the Phoenix New Times, who has closely followed Arpaio’s enforcement practices. He’s joining us from Raleigh, North Carolina, where he’s on holiday.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Steve Lemons, talk about the latest Justice Department report, as well as the latest lawsuit by the woman shackled as she’s giving birth and the sheriff’s deputies handing in their credentials.
STEPHEN LEMONS: Well, the Justice Department report was three years in coming. The civil investigation by the Justice Department has been ongoing since early in 2008, so it’s over three years. The findings—it was in the form of a letter of findings to the county attorney. And the findings were, as you’ve already mentioned, very damning. It accused and found that Arpaio has engaged in discriminatory police practices. They also found that Arpaio had retaliated against his enemies. And, you know, there are other misdeeds as far as mistreatment, systemic mistreatment, of Latinos in his jails.
This comes as no surprise to anyone who’s reported Arpaio for any length of time. In fact, I would say that even though the current report deals with the MCSO’s relationship to the Latino community and how they mistreat Latinos in their custody and Latinos they’re stopping, nevertheless, you know, Arpaio has been in power for almost—going on 20 years now. And he’s maintained a culture of cruelty which touches all races. The case you cite, as far as the lady who was shackled before and after her Caesarian section, is a case in point. You know, the MCSO doesn’t just shackle Latinos who are pregnant; it shackles all women who are pregnant and about to give birth. And there are other examples of this in the history of, you know, Arpaio’s reign.
So, as far as the fallout from the Justice Department’s report—I mean, it’s a very positive thing, in some regards, to those who have been critical of Arpaio. It validates a lot of what’s been said and already been reported. They use a lot of information that has already been in the press, that is familiar to people in Maricopa County, but perhaps not out of Maricopa County.
The immediate fallout from it was the Immigration and Customs Enforcement jerking Arpaio’s 287(g) agreement in the jails, which allowed some of his officers to act as, you know, junior ICE agents, and they had federal authority. The screening of inmates in the jails is supposed to continue, but with ICE agents instead of Arpaio’s men and women. He had already been restricted in the use of his 287(g) authority back in 2009. The 287(g) authority extends to 2007, and what’s interesting about that is that the federal government was using Arpaio as sort of a showcase, a model for its 287(g) program, in allowing local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws, supposedly under the aegis of the—or watch of the federal government. But it failed miserably. Arpaio used that authority to begin sweeps of Latino communities and almost instantly turned his law enforcement agency into a mini version of ICE, but with ill effect and terrorizing large segments of Maricopa County. So, they had—they took away his field authority for 287(g) in 2009. And so, now they’ve finally taken away his 287(g) authority in the jails. However, it’s interesting to note that they were complicit in many of the human rights abuses that are documented in the Civil Rights Division’s report. So, where the rubber meets the road is the taking away of that 287(g) authority. There could be further fallout if Arpaio does not cooperate with the Justice Department in some sort of consent decree monitored by a federal judge. They’ve given him 60 days to cooperate, essentially.
And Arpaio, you know, this is sort of a two-edged sword, in some ways. Arpaio loves this sort of thing. He loves going up against the Obama administration. He loves going up against the federal government. He uses these sorts of conflicts with the federal government to raise money for his campaign kitty, which at last count was about $3 million. He boasts he has over $6 million now in his campaign re-election fund. And as you’ve noted, he’s going to be running for re-election in 2012. This is also, unfortunately, very popular in Maricopa County, at least with a majority of the population who, you know, may have problems with some of what Arpaio does, his misspending of funds and so forth, but when it comes to discriminating against brown people, unfortunately, that is popular with some segments of Maricopa County.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to bring in Randy Parraz—
STEPHEN LEMONS: So, he’s going—he may use—go ahead.
JUAN GONZALEZ: —if I could, Steve. Randy, one of the—one of the parts of the Justice Department report talks about how Sheriff Arpaio targeted his political enemies to use his law enforcement powers against, and you were specifically mentioned in the report. Could you talk about what happened to you and your reaction to the Justice Department report?
RANDY PARRAZ: Yes. Well, thank you. I was part of a group in 2008 called Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability. It was a grassroots effort by citizens who wanted to come before the board of supervisors, because they’re the ones that have the budgetary control over Sheriff Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. So we were there to raise issues about, you know, uninvestigated sex crimes back then. A report had just came out from the East Valley Tribune, where they were talking about over $40 million in legal lawsuits that he was responsible for, delayed emergency response times, racial profiling. And as we were doing that, we kept going back, month after month.
And finally, in September of 2008, I was asked to leave a meeting. I was outside in front of the public—board of supervisors building, outside, and I was approached by numerous deputies. They came up on me. And after a short period of time, within a short conversation, I was ordered to be arrested by the Chief Deputy Trombi and from Sheriff Arpaio. I was arrested, booked, handcuffed. Once I got down there, they leg-shackled me, walked me to my cell, kept me in solitary confinement all day, took me to the judge, charged me with criminal trespass and in the afternoon charged me again with disorderly conduct. Eleven months later, both those charges were thrown out of court. They had so limited evidence to even make those cases—make the cases that I didn’t have to even put up a defense. So these were some of the things.
In addition to my arrest, shortly thereafter, at a subsequent meeting, other people were arrested for clapping inside. While their names were being called to come forward, the sheriff deputies arrested individuals there. Four other women were arrested on the 10th floor of the board of supervisors building when they were sitting in a chair waiting to speak to the chairman, Andrew Kunasek. The sheriff deputies intervened there and then again arrested those women. And all of these charges were dismissed. None of these charges were proved. And not only that, I think those cases of some of these arrests resulted in close to $500,000 in settlements, because people’s constitutional rights were violated.
So, this is a sheriff right now who is in denial. This is a sheriff who is out of control, who has violated the First Amendment of the Constitution, of our right to freedom of speech, our right to assemble, and our right to petition our government. It’s a sad day—it’s a very sad day here in Maricopa County, where this sheriff has been allowed to go untouched by any other power and authority. And so, we’re very grateful that, finally, the Department of Justice has come in, after a very thorough and extensive and, I would say, non-political investigation. These are professionals who have been there. These are lawyers. These are investigative authorities, who came in over a three-year period, after over 400 interviews, reached some serious conclusion about what’s taken place here in Maricopa County.
AMY GOODMAN: Randy, could you talk about the more than 400 sex crimes cases that Arpaio refused to investigate?
RANDY PARRAZ: Yeah, I just want to point out, when this was first brought out back in 2008 by a series called “Reasonable Doubt” by the East Valley Tribune reporters, Sheriff Arpaio stated that this was a bunch of trash. He referred to it as trash, this news coverage. That series is now a Pulitzer Prize-winning series. It was a series, when these things were investigated—people reported it, cases were opened, but there was no follow-up. These were victims as young as two years old, to young women and girls, were violated, were raped or molested, and those cases were not followed up. In some instances, they even had the name of the perpetrator. They just—cases were just not—were actually said to be cleared or were closed. And so, this was done.
And then this is the type of—just of lack of accountability, lack of concern Sheriff Arpaio and his deputies have to those instances. One of the reasons we believe is that most of those victims were either undocumented or were for children of undocumented parents, so it was not a priority on there, in terms of the sheriff’s office. So, again, this is about misplaced priorities. During this whole process the last three years, where the whole issue of immigration became politicized, the special victims unit was actually reduced so that he could have a—he could enlarge and expand his smuggling unit, his human smuggling unit. So, again, we believe right now that those values are not consistent with most Arizonans citizens believe, with most citizens here in Maricopa believe. And we believe this is the beginning of the end of Sheriff Arpaio, and he will not last ’til the next election. He will be forced to resign.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Randy, I wanted to ask you about that. Why, given this long history and the notoriety of this sheriff, why has he continued to remain in office?
RANDY PARRAZ: Well, he’s had—we call it a triangle of corruption. Prior to us getting involved in 2008, he had the board of supervisors—he had four of the five votes in his pocket. They were all—they would blanket check, give him whatever he wanted. His budget ballooned over $300 million, the largest budget in Maricopa County. In addition to that, the county attorney at the time, Andrew Thomas, was also complicit and worked in cooperation with Sheriff Arpaio, and he’s soon to be disbarred this year based on his practices. So there’s no checks and balances on the system, in terms of those who prosecute the crimes and those who enforce the law and those who hold him accountable when it comes to budgetary authority, which is the board of supervisors.
Even now, we’re having difficulty at the board of supervisors to get this issue, which is the Department of Justice report, and the uninvestigated sex crimes on the formal agenda. They’re even trying to stop us from doing that, because they don’t want to have this type of public airing of these types of opinions and views, because they were part of the problem. They sat there and stayed quiet while this was all going on. They sat there and stayed quiet when the most egregious cases of racial profiling taking place in recent memory and throughout the country was taking place on Latinos, because they were—because of either their language or how they looked, and that took place under their watch, and they continued to fund those practices.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Randy, also there were—several of his top deputies were implicated in wrongdoing and forced to resign recently. Could you talk about that, as well?
RANDY PARRAZ: Absolutely. Chief Deputy David Hendershott, this was his choice. This was his person to enforce and carry out all of Sheriff Arpaio’s policies. He was the one that helped set up the culture of intimidation, the culture of corruption, the abuse of power. For Sheriff Arpaio to be able to just fire him and stay in place, there’s no way these types of recommendations can go anywhere. This man needs to be removed. There is a wall of distrust. He has helped create that culture. He’s been there 20 years. So, for us to have serious traction and serious movement to really see serious change take place, he needs to leave. He needs to move on, for the sake and betterment of the Maricopa County. You have a situation now where the top elected law enforcement officer has violated the law, in terms—and has done so knowingly and intentionally. He needs to move on.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to Steve Lemons to talk about, well, a couple things. One is the past behavior of how Arpaio held prisoners, the pink underwear, serving them green meat, instead of putting immigrants in buses that he detained, marching them in striped uniforms down the streets of Phoenix. Can you talk about this, the tent cities?
STEPHEN LEMONS: Well, yeah. I mean, Arpaio is not known for his love of civil liberties. And the culture of cruelty that he’s maintained over—you know, now going on two decades has been part and parcel why he’s been re-elected so many times. Unfortunately, that kind of sadism that you’re describing has been popular. He’s bragged about feeding his inmates for pennies on the dollar. You know, there have been notorious deaths in the jail, such as Scott Norberg, who was killed there. And the settlement payouts for that particular case was over $8 million. Overall, I think that payouts—you know, payouts, civil payouts, are up to $50 million on wrongful death cases. Lawyers make a bank off of Joe Arpaio’s mistreatment of his prisoners. But, you know, that is—
AMY GOODMAN: And then you have the connections to the federal government. I mean, Janet Napolitano not making a major deal of Arpaio, wanting his support when she ran for governor of Arizona, now, significantly, she’s head of Homeland Security, has been working with Arpaio back in her home state of Arizona.
STEPHEN LEMONS: It’s a very good point. They were always allies, to some degree, even though they’re in different parties. Napolitano is a conservative Democrat and, you know, partnered with Arpaio to some to degree. Arpaio endorsed her run for governor the first time around. And they’ve been, you know, tacit allies. The Republican Party even accused Arpaio of getting Napolitano elected to governor, because he did a campaign commercial on her behalf, first time around. She helped him get the 287(g) agreement. She was instrumental in that. As far as the—you know, in finally removing the 287(g) from the jails, I believe that ICE was—I don’t know that they were necessarily in the loop as far as what the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division was going to do. They—
AMY GOODMAN: We only have 20 seconds. Juan?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, no, I just would like to ask Randy Parraz about this latest death of the former soldier who was—who died in jail after being tasered.
AMY GOODMAN: And we just have 10 seconds.
RANDY PARRAZ: Yeah, I think it’s shameful. I think it shows, again, people are literally dying because of the culture of intimidation, harassment and discrimination taking place in those jails. We need a change it now. I think what’s even more shameful is this culture of silence by Republican leaders, from the governor on down, who refuse to take a stand, and basically saying Latinos do not matter in the state of Arizona.
AMY GOODMAN: Randy Parraz, we want to thank you for being with us, president of Citizens for a Better Arizona. Steve Lemons with the Phoenix New Times, thanks so much. |
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - In a glow of bonhomie, U.S. President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled plans to unlock billions of dollars in nuclear trade and to deepen defence ties, steps they hope will establish an enduring strategic partnership.
The two countries reached an understanding on two issues that, despite a groundbreaking 2006 agreement, had stopped U.S. companies from setting up reactors in India and had become one of the major irritants in bilateral relations.
“We are committed to moving towards full implementation,” Obama told a joint news conference with Modi. “This is an important step that shows how we can work together to elevate our relationship.”
The new deal resolved differences over the liability of suppliers to India in the event of a nuclear accident and U.S. demands on tracking the whereabouts of material supplied to the country, U.S. ambassador to India Richard Verma told reporters.
“Ultimately it’s up to the companies to go forward, but the two governments came to an understanding,” he added.
Signalling warmth and determination to take ties to a higher level, Modi broke with protocol to meet and bear-hug Obama as he landed in New Delhi, then referred to him as Barack. It was a remarkable spectacle, given that a year ago Modi was persona non grata in Washington and was denied a visa to the United States.
Between a working lunch that included kebabs made with lotus stem, figs and spices and an evening banquet where Obama spoke a smattering of Hindi, the two leaders got down to talks.
They emerged with a 10-year framework for defence ties and deals on cooperation that included the joint production of drone aircraft and equipment for Lockheed Martin Corp’s C-130 military transport plane.
Other deals ranged from an Obama-Modi hotline — India’s first at a leadership level — to financing initiatives aimed at helping India use renewable energy to lower carbon intensity.
But Modi cautioned that work was still needed to create a solid partnership between the world’s two largest democracies.
“We have to convert a good start into lasting progress. This requires translating our vision into sustained action and concrete achievements,” he said, standing next to Obama.
On Monday, Obama will be the first U.S. president to attend India’s Republic Day parade, an annual show of military might long associated with the anti-Americanism of the Cold War. He will also host a radio show with Modi.
His presence at the parade at Modi’s personal invitation marks the latest upturn in a roller-coaster bilateral relationship that just a year ago was in tatters.
Up to 40,000 security personnel have been deployed for the visit and 15,000 new closed-circuit surveillance cameras have been installed in the capital, according to media reports.
NEW VITALITY
The United States views India as a vast market and potential counterweight in Asia to a more assertive China, but has frequently been frustrated with the slow pace of New Delhi’s economic reforms and unwillingness to side with Washington in international affairs.
Elected last May, Modi has injected a new vitality into the economy and foreign relations and, to Washington’s delight, has begun pushing back against China across Asia.
In a veiled reference to China, the leaders reiterated the “importance of safeguarding maritime security and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea”. They also called for the peaceful resolution of territorial conflicts.
Obama will depart slightly early from India to travel to Saudi Arabia following the death of King Abdullah, skipping a planned visit to the Taj Mahal.
Like Obama, Modi rose from modest origins to break into a political elite dominated by powerful families. Aides say the two men bonded in Washington in September when Obama took Modi to the memorial of Martin Luther King, whose rights struggle was inspired by India’s Mahatma Gandhi.
On Sunday, the two leaders talked outside over tea in an elegant garden. Modi, who sold tea on a railway platform as a child, poured a cup for Obama.
The “chemistry” they describe is striking because Modi’s politics is considerably to the right of Obama’s and because he was banned from visiting the United States for nearly a decade after deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in a state he governed.
U.S. President Barack Obama hugs India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he arrives at Air Force Station Palam in New Delhi January 25, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Bourg
Obama, the first sitting U.S. president to visit India twice, also enjoyed a close friendship with Modi’s predecessor Manmohan Singh, who staked his premiership on the controversial nuclear deal that made India the sixth “legitimate” atomic power and marked a high point in Indo-U.S. relations.
The deal failed to deliver on a promise of business for U.S. companies because of India’s reluctance to shield suppliers from liability, a deviation from international norms that reflects the memory of the Bhopal industrial disaster. |
As expected, Microsoft’s follow-up to the Surface Pro 4 tablet is just called… the Surface Pro.
The new model looks nearly identical to its predecessor, but instead of 6th-gen Intel Core Skylake processors, the new model is powered by 7th-gen Intel Core Kaby Lake chips.
Microsoft unveiled the new Surface Pro at an event in Shanghai today.
The new model also supports an updated Surface Pen with 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity, tilt detection, and reduced latency… but the new pen is sold separately, rather than bundled with the tablet.
The new Surface Pro also has an improved kickstand, which supports wider angles, including a “studio mode” which has the tablet lying at a slight angle designed to make writing or drawing more comfortable.
It’s basically a smaller version of the kickstand used in the Surface Studio, Microsoft’s premium all-in-one desktop aimed at artists, and designers and Microsoft showed off the Surface Pro working with Surface Studio accessories including the Surface Dial.
Microsoft says the new Surface Pro supports up to 13.5 hours of battery life. Oh, and the model with a Core i5 processor is fanless: previously you had to opt for a Core M3 chip if you wanted a fanless Surface Pro.
If you’re wondering why models with a Core i7 chip aren’t fanless, it’s not just the CPU that gets an upgrade: that model also has Intel Iris Plus graphics.
The company says the 12.3 inch tablet features and “enhanced color” PixelSense display, but it has the same 2736 x 1824 resolution as the Surface Pro 4.
Another thing that hasn’t changed? The ports: there’s a USB Type-A port, a mini DisplayPort, and a 3.5mm headphone jack, but no USB Type-C port.
The company also introduced new Surface Pro Type Cover accessories which will work with the 5th-gen Surface Pro tablet, but also with the Surface Pro 3 or Surface Pro 4. The key difference between this year the company’s Alcantara fabric-covered Type Cover is available in 4 colors (grey, teal, gold, and burgandy).
The new 5th-gen Surface Pro will be available with a choice of Core M3-7Y30, Core i5-7300U, and Core i7-7660U processors, 128GB to 1TB of solid state storage, and 4GB to 16GB of LPDDR3-1866 RAM. There’s also optional support for 4G LTE.
Microsoft’s new tablet measures 11.5″ x 7.9″ x 0.33″ and weighs about 1.7 pounds.
The Surface Pro is launching on June 15th in 26 countries including the US, Canada, the UK, and China. Pre-orders open today for $799 and up.
And when I say up, I mean way up for the higher-end models: you’ll have to shell out $2699 to get a new Surface Pro with a Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. And don’t forget, the keyboard is sold separately. At least the pen is included.
At today’s launch event, Microsoft also announced that the Surface Studio is coming to China, as is the recently announced Surface Laptop. And the HoloLens Development Edition is also now available in China. |
Marshall Lytle's '40s Epiphone B-5
there's one thing we have in abundance around here, it's reverence for the tools of rock 'n' roll. Guitars, drums, basses; we think all that stuff is great. Every once in a while, though, we come across an instrument that's so historic, so iconic, and so badass, that it truly blows us away. This is one of those pieces. It's a late '40s Epiphone B-5 upright bass that belonged to Marshall Lytle. Marshall was the bass player for Bill Haley and His Comets during their 1950s heyday, and he used this bass to record such classics as "Rock Around the Clock", "Shake", "Rattle and Roll", and "Rock the Joint". Think about that for a second. Those three songs were the beginning of a cultural earthquake whose aftershocks are still rumbling in the 21st century. The lexicon of early rock bass playing was written by Marshall on this very instrument. It's currently on display at the Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando, Florida. |
HOLY WELLS, bridges, milestones, vernacular buildings, lime kilns and other industrial sites that post-date 1700 will be “left without any protection” following moves to “delist” them, the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland has claimed.
In what it described as a “very worrying proposal”, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is seeking to exclude all post-1700 archaeological and historical structures and sites from the national Record of Monuments and Places (RMP).
Finola O’Carroll, the institute’s chairwoman, said this arose from “a perverse Civil Service sense of fair play” because of discrepancies between counties, with Cork having a “very comprehensive record” of monuments and others having little or none at all.
“Instead of seeking to apply the Cork standard across the board, they are instead opposing to level out the playing field by delisting the lot,” she said. “We are very concerned because this would not be regarded as best practice [in archaeology].”
The department said its review aimed for “a standard approach nationally that will ensure that all elements of the built heritage continue to be adequately protected” and there was “no question of any change to current arrangements” before it was completed.
However, the institute’s board believes that any delisting post-1700 would be “to the detriment of the country’s archaeological resource” and is now seeking the views of members with a view to putting “creative solutions” to Minister for Heritage Jimmy Deenihan.
The Archaeological Survey of Ireland (ASI) has been recording archaeological monuments for several decades, and “significant numbers of post-1700 monuments have been included in the RMPs for Cork, Galway and Dublin”, according to the institute.
It says the ASI is obliged under a 2005 policy document to ensure consistency. “Primarily due to limited resources as well as a backlog in processing the previously collected datasets, the ASI is proposing that any post-1700 monuments . . . should be delisted.” But it maintains that this cut-off date “has no basis in legislation” and points to a 1999 statement by Dóchas, the heritage service, that “any material remains which can contribute to understanding past societies may be considered to have an element of archaeological significance.”
By contrast to the ASI’s proposed delisting of post-1700 monuments, the institute notes that the Northern Ireland Environment Agency already lists more than 16,000 features and a second survey of historic buildings there is currently under way. “Projects such as the Industrial Heritage Survey of Fingalled by Mary McMahon are systematically examining the documentary and cartographic sources and have uncovered hundreds of new sites . . . It is ridiculous to believe these sites would have no legal protection.” |
The Chicago Blackhawks have a 3-0 series lead on the Minnesota Wild in the Western Conference semifinals, thanks in large part to right wing Patrick Kane. Kane has dominated the Wild, scoring five goals in just three games, including the lone tally in Chicago's 1-0 victory in Game 3.
Figuratively, one might say Kane currently "owns" the Wild. But an intrepid Wikipedia editor decided to formalize Kane's ownership of the Wild franchise.
To be clear, Patrick Kane does not actually own the Wild. A man named Craig Leipold owns the Wild. But Leipold has not scored five goals in this series, or ever.
Looks like Patrick Kane is the owner of the Wild according to Wikipedia! @WaddleandSilvy @TWaddle87 pic.twitter.com/uOTjjHzShL — Danny Turano (@Turano007) May 7, 2015
• 2015 NHL playoffs: Complete schedule and results
The only question is whether Kane would be the only current NHL owner to rock a mullet.
- Stanley Kay |
When New York University freshmen start class Tuesday, among their course selections will be, “Guitar Heroes (and Heroines): Music, Video Games and the Nature of Human Cognition.” It’s a freshman honors seminar about how video games help us learn.
Dr. Gary Marcus, renowned expert on childhood learning and the instructor of the course, told the New York Post, “Video games are an understudied area. People dismiss them unfairly, but Guitar Hero is a good tool for teaching and I’m interested in the nature of learning.” No word on what it is that Guitar Hero teaches.
Regardless of any merits the course may have, some parents are scandalized. “I just wrote a big check here,” Glen Jackson, father of an incoming freshman, grumbled to the Post. “I’m not paying for him to study video games.” Well, there’s always a one-in-a-million shot that Guitar Hero expertise could lead to gainful employment: a North Carolina 16 year-old dropped out of school last year to play the game professionally.
Among the questions the course will consider is, “why are human beings so passionate about music and so easily sucked in by video games?” The goals of the Freshman Honors Seminars Program are “to introduce [students] to important subjects [and] to challenge them intellectually through rigorous standards of analysis and oral and written argumentation.”
For the more traditional honors freshman, there are also seminars on Galileo, Hobbes and de Tocqueville. Other NYU course choices this fall include “The Poetics of Television” and an undergraduate science class, “Can Exercise Change Your Brain?” which begins each class session with an hour-long aerobic workout. |
Bananas have been part of our diet for thousands of years, and written references date back to around 500BC. Today, they are the most popular fruit in the world: in fact, over 100 billion bananas are eaten around the world every year, and around 51% of these are eaten at breakfast time.
Some horticulturists believe that bananas were the first fruit on earth. Their origin is placed in Southeast Asia, in the jungles of Malaysis. Indonesia or the Philippines. where many varieties of wild bananas still grow today. Africans are credited to have given the present name, since the word banana would be derived from the Arab for 'finger'. They started to be traded internationally by the end of the fourteenth century. The development of railroads and technological advances in refrigerated maritime transport subsequently enable bananas to become the most traded fruit in the world.
Bananas are grown in more than 150 countries, and 105 million tonnes of fruit are produced each year. Bananas which are grown for local consumption are generally grown in traditional, extensive systems. The Dessert banana, like the Cavendish variety, are of huge economic importance to many countries in the Global South, and thye account for 43 million tonnes. and the Plantain account for 45 million tonnes. Locally consumed bananas are a staple food in many tropical countries and play a major role in terms of food security.
People often assume that the banana fruit grows on trees, however, the banana is a high herb which can grow up to 15 metres. There are over 1000 different varieties of bananas growing around the world, subdivided into 50 groups. Some are sweet, like the Cavendish variety, which is the most common and most widely exported. It is named after Musa Cavendishii and was first grown at Chatsworth House in the UK in 1830. This variety of banana is currently under threat from a disease called Sigatoka, which has reduced banana yields by 40% every year.
Banana facts
On average each person in the UK eats 10kg bananas a year – about 100 bananas!
In Britain, we eat over five billion bananas every year
The scientific name for banana is 'musa sapientum' which translates as 'fruit of the wise man'
The word banana comes from the Arabic word "banan", meaning finger
The banana plant is not a tree, it is the world's largest herb
The "trunk" of a banana plant is not made of wood, it is made of tightly overlapping leaves
Bananas could help you to feel happier, as they contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to promote relaxation and improve mood
The inside of a banana skin can be used to calm an itchy mosquito bite - many people find that rubbing the bite with the skin helps to reduce irritation
A medium-sized banana contains only 95 calories, and provides a quick-but-sustained energy boost in a natural, nutritious and easily digestible form with no fat, cholesterol or sodium
British Banana supplier, Fyffes, received its first consignment of bananas 124 years ago, in September 1888
A stem of bananas consists of “hands”, which consist of 10 to 20 bananas. When a hand is split, the bananas become “clusters”, which generally consist of between three to eight bananas
The inside of a banana skin can be used to polish shoes!
Recent news:
There are only a few places where organic bananas can be grown
Banana Link featured in the fight to save the Cavendish banana |
Well, one of the new wrinkles was some variations on the bubble screen concept which has been one of the staples of Chip Kelly's offense. He showed a couple of new wrinkles on this.
Fresh off a bye week, I am sure I was not the only one thinking Chip might use the extra week to break out some new wrinkles on offense. Despite that, what we saw yesterday was much of the same on offense with some interesting personnel changes as highlighted on the last post where we used Desean Jackson on a wheel route .
Check out this odd-looking trip-like formation. I am sure there is a name for it, and I am sure one of my commenters will let me know. On this formation, the receivers will run a bubble screen with Riley the intended reciever with 2 big TEs in Celek and Ertz leading the way:
Not surprisingly, this bubble screen has a read-option component to it. Here Foles is reading the DE:
McCoy gets a nice hole and runs for a nice gain. We actually ran this same play and formation 2 times in a row in the 1st quarter.
We went back to it in the 2nd quarter. Celek and Ertz blocking, but this time Desean Jackson instead of Cooper:
based on the numbers we get, there is no read and Foles quickly gets it to Desean. Might to Chip's delight, you can already see the sidewalk forming for Desean between the numbers and the hash:
Good blocking and an explosive play for Desean Jackson.
***
Here's another look, that Moose Johnston pointed out. We've seen Lane Johnson lined up really wide in our double stack formation. This time, we line him up in the slot. This is a creative playcall on 4th and 2. The Eagles spread 4 players to the top of the screen, helping to lighten the box:
Again, the read-option is built-in...and check out the 2 defenders in red focused on Foles:
The result is a light box, good blocking and a 4th down conversion for McCoy:
Here it is again on the bottom of the screen. Desean motioning down, Johnson in the slot.
The read-option and it appears Nick is reading Daryl Washington who drifts out of the box. Since he is defending the bubble, Lesean has a light box and Nick hands off:
One more time, we see it here with Cooper at the bottom of the screen. This time the DB very aggressively sprints to cut off the bubble option.
Without that option, the only other play Nick has is to keep and run. Unfortunately, Nick doesn't get much room to run (queue the Mike Vick chants and hwo Chip Kelly needs a mobile QB). |
NEW DELHI — As expected, Russia and India, longtime allies, signed a raft of agreements at their leaders’ annual summit meeting on Thursday, expanding their usual set of projects to an ambitious agenda that includes the joint manufacture of military helicopters and production of nuclear reactors.
But the most intriguing event of the day occurred across town in a private dining room at a luxury hotel, where Sergei Aksyonov — the barrel-chested prime minister of Crimea, the Ukrainian territory annexed by Russia — signed a memorandum of understanding with a group of Indian businessmen who call themselves the Indo-Crimean Partnership.
The symbolic show of support put India in the middle of one of the most bitter disputes between Moscow and the West.
Mr. Aksyonov organized a paramilitary force on the Crimean Peninsula early this year as pro-Western protests rose in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, and he was one of the first people to be singled out by the United States for sanctions. He traveled to India on a plane with Russian officials attending the meeting, and was flanked by Russian diplomats, whom he credited with arranging the event. Interfax, the Russian news agency, said it was Mr. Aksyonov’s “first international visit.” |
Anyone in England and Wales with a dog out of control can now be jailed for six months. If the dog causes injury, the maximum term is to be two years. I have no sympathy for such people. Keeping these beasts is weird, and those who do it probably need treatment. But the Defra minister, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, complained in May that fewer than 20 people were in jail for dangerous dog offences. The sentencing council has duly told courts to raise the threshold to two years, "to send a message".
The same sentiment a year ago motivated magistrates to play to the gallery by jailing 1,292 people for stealing bottles of water or trainers or sending idiot incitements during the dispersed rampage dubbed "urban riots". Hysterical ministers raced home from holiday to tell judges to send messages. Judges duly ruined the lives of hundreds of young people, at great public expense and to no advantage to their victims. I have no sympathy for these people either, but again the politicised response to crime was disproportionate.
A month before, a London court jailed a stoned Charlie Gilmour after he swung on a union flag from the Cenotaph and tossed a bin at a police car, thus causing widespread outrage in the offices of the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. The judge sent him down for 18 months to send a message carefully designed to wreck his university career. Yet again we need have no sympathy for Gilmour. But there is no such thing as a rap over the knuckles in jail. Judges know that any term in prison is a sentence for life.
How can British politicians, whose statements clearly seek to influence pliable judges, criticise other sovereign states for doing likewise? Last week the Foreign Office professed itself "deeply concerned" at the fate of Russia's Pussy Riot three, jailed for two years for "hooliganism" in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral. They had staged what, by all accounts, was an obscene publicity stunt, videoing an anti-Putin song defamatory of the Virgin Mary in front of pious worshippers.
Good for free speech, we might all say. That the act outraged public decency is an understatement. In a Levada poll of Russian public opinion, just 5% thought the girls should go unpunished and 65% wanted them in prison, 29% with hard labour. Artists round the globe may plead free speech, but to treat the Pussy Riot gesture as a glorious stand for artistic liberty is like praising Johnny Rotten, who did similar things, as the Voltaire of our day. There can be disproportionate apologias as well as disproportionate sentences.
Artists can look after their own. For the British and US governments to get on high horses about Russian sentencing is hypocrisy. America and Britain damned the "disproportionate" Pussy Riot terms. In America's case this was from a nation that jails drug offenders for 20, 30 or 40 years, holds terrorism "suspects" incommunicado indefinitely and imprisons for life even trivial "three strikes" offenders. Last week alone a US military court declared that reporting the Guantánamo Bay trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be censored. Any mention of his torture in prison was banned as "reasonably expected to damage national security". This has no apparent connection to proportionate punishment or freedom of speech.
The British security establishment during the Tony Blair-Gordon Brown regime tried to censor history books for possible "terrorist" incitement. It introduced control orders, restricted courts and long-period detention without trial. It made unlicensed demonstrating an offence and has since sought prosecution of Twitter and Facebook abuse. British ministers and courts are craven to what passes for public opinion. The idea that, whenever a crime or antisocial action hits the headlines, "the courts must send a message" is politicised justice. At times, especially in tragic cases involving children, it gets near to a lynch mob. Again the only message sent is to the media. If Britain's draconian sentencing were effective, British jails would not be bursting at the seams.
There is of course a difference between the liberties enjoyed in most western democracies and the cruder jurisprudence of modern Russia, China and much of the Muslim world. It would be silly to pretend otherwise. But the difference is not so great as to merit the barrage of megaphone comment from west to east. Pussy Riot may have attacked no one physically, but no society, certainly not Britain, legislates on the basis that "words can never hurt". If a rock group invaded Westminster Abbey and gravely insulted a religious or ethnic minority before the high altar, we all know that ministers would howl for "exemplary punishment" and judges would oblige.
Commenting on the social mores of other countries may offer an offshore outlet for the righteous indignation of politicians and editorialists. It has no noticeable effect. Western comments on the treatment of women in Muslim states, dissidents in China or drug offenders in south-east Asia are dismissed as imperial interference. But then how would we feel if Moscow or Singapore or Tehran condemned the treatment of Cenotaph protesters?
British courts jail at the drop of a headline. One of the few cabinet ministers in recent years to show a sincere desire to relate punishment to crime and imprisonment to consequence is the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke. He is now being bad-mouthed out of his job by Downing Street's dark arts, frightened not of Clarke but of the rightwing press. Clarke is, with Iain Duncan Smith, a rare minister intellectually engaged with his job and eager courageously to see it through. Why are the Lib Dems not defending him? For David Cameron to sack Clarke would indeed send a message. Of the worst sort. |
The clock is ticking for a controversial surveillance provision, which is is set to expire at midnight at the end of the year.
But the Trump administration has signaled that it will support its clean reauthorization. Passing a clean version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, is "necessary to protect the security of the nation," according to a White House official speaking to Reuters.
Already, bipartisan lawmakers in Congress are gearing up for a fight -- ready to oppose the law's reauthorization of the provision without some level of significant reform.
FISA, initially signed in 1978 and amended in 2008 following a vast expansion of domestic surveillance under the Bush administration, was back in the spotlight in 2013 after details of National Security Agency surveillance programs it authorized were leaked by Edward Snowden.
One particular element of the law, dubbed Section 702, has faced intense criticism from privacy advocates and lawmakers alike.
The provision permitted surveillance operations such as the PRISM program, which collected private data from customers of Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others. The provision also permitted "upstream" collection from the backbone fiber connections of the internet.
And though FISA is designed to target foreign nationals, an unknown amount of Americans' data is also collected in the process.
That's one of the main reasons why numerous Democratic and Republican legislators have argued reforms to Section 702 are necessary to ensure that Americans' constitutionally-guaranteed privacy rights are not violated.
But a key question remains unanswered: exactly how many Americans were caught up in the NSA's surveillance dragnet as a result of surveillance authorized under Section 702?
Since the Snowden disclosures during Obama's second term, nobody has been willing to put a number on it.
This week, Dan Coats, the administration's pick for director of national intelligence, who called the provision the "crown jewels" of the intelligence agency's surveillance programs, said that the program is "designed to go after foreign bad guys."
But the nominee fell short of promising to disclose how many Americans were caught up in the domestic surveillance dragnet.
That isn't exactly sitting well with a number of privacy-minded lawmakers, who largely stand in a minority in Congress.
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), who said Monday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing that the idea of "using this authority to collect large amounts of information about US citizens without a warrant or individualized suspicious... is, in a word, wrong."
Other lawmakers have too called for changes to surveillance laws.
Reps. Thomas Massie and Ted Lieu have both called for reforms. Intelligence committee member Sen. Ron Wyden has been a strong advocate of reforms to Section 702. And, Zoe Lofgren, a lawmaker with a constituency in the heart of Silicon Valley, has previously warned of the dangers to domestic surveillance under Section 702, and co-sponsored a bill to change the law.
House lawmakers made it clear Monday that knowing the number of Americans caught up in Section 702 searches is paramount, and they likely aren't going to waver any time soon.
And whatever that number is -- whether it's a handful or a few million -- will play a central role in determining if the surveillance statute gets reauthorized.
In any case, there will be a small army of lawmakers ready to challenge it. |
This article is Day #5 in a series called the 31 Days of Mango.
Today, we are going to talk about a new sensor available to us, the Gyroscope. This sensor is only available in phones that were released after the Mango launch, and even then, not all phones will have a Gyroscope. However, it’s a powerful tool that we should take advantage of when its available, and this article will show you how.
If you have a device that contains a gyroscope sensor, you can download the application from this article from the Windows Phone Marketplace.
What is a Gyroscope?
According to Wikipedia, “a gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation.” Many of you probably have seen an example of a gyroscope before, but here’s an illustration of a physical gyroscope (courtesy of Wikipedia):
As you can see, it has the ability to spin on three axes, the X, Y, and Z axis (much like the Accelerometer, which we covered in Day #11 of the 31 Days of Windows Phone). While the Accelerometer measures acceleration, the Gyroscope measures rotational velocity.
Having said that, however, there is not a device in your phone that looks like the one pictured above. Instead, mobile phones use a MEMS gyroscope, which often use vibrations or resonance to determine their data.
Using the Gyroscope In Your App
The Gyroscope sensor is as easy to use as the Accelerometer, but we don’t yet have the benefit of the additional tools in the emulator. The data you receive measures the rotational velocity of the device in radians per second.
This means that you can more accurately and smoothly measure the current orientation of the device. This will become especially handy when you build applications that perform augmented reality. In most cases, however, you’re probably not going to be accessing the Gyroscope by itself. There are a couple of reasons for this:
Not all Windows Phones will have a Gyroscope. In fact, only phones that come out after the Mango release will be capable of having a Gyroscope, and it is still an optional piece of hardware.
Microsoft has created a Motion class that combines the data from the Accelerometer, the Compass, and the Gyroscope into one class that we can use more effectively (we will cover this in tomorrow’s article). If you’re interested in the attitude of the device (pitch, yaw, roll), you’re going to want to focus on the Motion class.
However, in the case that you do need to use the gyroscope independent of the Motion class, it should always be wrapped by a check to determine that the user’s device supports the gyroscope sensor. To do this, we need two specific pieces of code. This first is a using statement for the Microsoft.Phone.Sensors namespace. The second is an IF statement that checks the Gyroscope.IsSupported value. In this simple state, your code-behind file would look like this:
using System;
using Microsoft.Phone.Controls;
using Microsoft.Devices.Sensors;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; System;Microsoft.Phone.Controls;Microsoft.Devices.Sensors;Microsoft.Xna.Framework; namespace Day5_Gyroscope
{
public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage
{
public MainPage()
{
InitializeComponent(); if (Gyroscope.IsSupported)
{
// DO SOMETHING
}
}
}
}
Now we just need to fill in that “DO SOMETHING” comment. In order to do this, let’s start with a user interface that will shows our Gyroscope data.
In the UI above, we have three TextBoxes to show the raw data, and three lines to reflect the degree of each value. To recreate this interface, use the following XAML as your page:
< Grid x : Name ="LayoutRoot" Background ="Transparent">
< Grid.RowDefinitions >
< RowDefinition Height ="Auto"/>
< RowDefinition Height ="*"/>
</ Grid.RowDefinitions > <!–TitlePanel contains the name of the application and page title–>
<StackPanel x:Name="TitlePanel" Grid.Row="0" Margin="12,17,0,28">
<TextBlock x:Name="ApplicationTitle" Text="31 DAYS OF MANGO" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextNormalStyle}"/>
<TextBlock x:Name="PageTitle" Text="gyroscope" Margin="9,-7,0,0" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle1Style}"/>
</StackPanel> <!–ContentPanel – place additional content here–>
<Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">
<TextBlock Height="30" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="20,100,0,0" Name="xTextBlock" Text="X: 1.0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Foreground="Red" FontSize="28" FontWeight="Bold"/>
<TextBlock Height="30" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Margin="0,100,0,0" Name="yTextBlock" Text="Y: 1.0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Foreground="Yellow" FontSize="28" FontWeight="Bold"/>
<TextBlock Height="30" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,100,20,0" Name="zTextBlock" Text="Z: 1.0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Foreground="Blue" FontSize="28" FontWeight="Bold"/>
<Line x:Name="xLine" X1="240" Y1="350" X2="340" Y2="350" Stroke="Red" StrokeThickness="4"></Line>
<Line x:Name="yLine" X1="240" Y1="350" X2="240" Y2="270" Stroke="Yellow" StrokeThickness="4"></Line>
<Line x:Name="zLine" X1="240" Y1="350" X2="190" Y2="400" Stroke="Blue" StrokeThickness="4"></Line>
<TextBlock Height="30" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Margin="6,571,6,0" Name="statusTextBlock" Text="" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="444" />
</Grid>
</Grid>
In the code example below, we create a new Gyroscope object, and after checking to make sure that the Gyroscope is supported with the Gyroscope.IsSupported boolean value, we create an event handler for CurrentValueChanged.
using System;
using Microsoft.Phone.Controls;
using Microsoft.Devices.Sensors;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; System;Microsoft.Phone.Controls;Microsoft.Devices.Sensors;Microsoft.Xna.Framework; namespace Day5_Gyroscope
{
public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage
{
Gyroscope g;
public MainPage()
{
InitializeComponent(); if (Gyroscope.IsSupported)
{
g = new Gyroscope();
g.TimeBetweenUpdates = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(20);
g.CurrentValueChanged += new EventHandler<SensorReadingEventArgs<GyroscopeReading>>(g_CurrentValueChanged);
g.Start();
}
else statusTextBlock.Text = "gyroscope not supported";
} void g_CurrentValueChanged(object sender, SensorReadingEventArgs<GyroscopeReading> e)
{
Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => UpdateUI(e.SensorReading));
} private void UpdateUI(GyroscopeReading gyroscopeReading)
{
statusTextBlock.Text = "getting data";
Vector3 rotationReading = gyroscopeReading.RotationRate; xTextBlock.Text = "X " + rotationReading.X.ToString("0.00");
yTextBlock.Text = "Y " + rotationReading.Y.ToString("0.00");
zTextBlock.Text = "Z " + rotationReading.Z.ToString("0.00"); xLine.X2 = xLine.X1 + rotationReading.X * 200;
yLine.Y2 = yLine.Y1 – rotationReading.Y * 200;
zLine.X2 = zLine.X1 – rotationReading.Z * 100;
zLine.Y2 = zLine.Y1 + rotationReading.Z * 100;
}
}
}
The Gyroscope, like the Compass, allows our event handler method to fire every time the Gyroscope detects a new value after waiting the duration that the TimeBetweenUpdates property specifies. In our example, we will get updates no faster than every 20 milliseconds.
You should notice a possibly unfamiliar bit of code in our g_CurrentValueChanged method:
Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => UpdateUI(e.SensorReading));
The reason we use this is because we want to move the reading of our sensor to a separate processing thread. Without it, we would be trying to use the UI thread to access the Gyroscope, which will always throw an error. In Windows Phone, we are not allowed to lock up the UI thread, and so for many examples like this one, we will want to pitch our process to a separate thread.
We still pass the entire GyroscopeReading object to our new thread-safe method, UpdateUI, which allows us to gather each of the X, Y, and Z values from the Vector3 value RotationRate. We are displaying the data values in TextBlocks, but the cool data visualization is in those Line elements we created in our XAML.
If you imagine each line segment to represent a different data point (the red horizontal line is X, the yellow vertical line is Y, and the blue diagonal line is the Z axis. You could then manipulate the lengths of these lines to represent the rotational velocity of the device. Each of these calculations will extend the length of their respective lines, giving you a very illustrative example of what types of rotation your device is experiencing.
Remember, the code sample covered in this article will only work on devices that have a Gyroscope available. The emulator, as well as all original Windows Phone 7 devices do not have this sensor. Here’s a quick video of what this application looks like running on a device with a gyroscope:
Summary
The Gyroscope is a handy little sensor. It lets us get a very accurate picture of the device’s movement in space, which is especially useful when creating applications that use augmented reality. To download the sample application that this article discussed, click the Download Code button below:
Microsoft also created a new class in Windows Phone 7.5 called Motion, which combines the data from the Gyroscope, Accelerometer, and Compass to give us an amazing amount of accuracy. This Motion class is the topic of tomorrow’s article, and we will cover it in detail, including how to determine the “attitude” of a device, which includes pitch, yaw, and roll. See you then! |
Brazil's Amazon rainforests — the largest in the world, get smaller each year. A report based on satellite data from July 2014 to August 2015, showed deforestation of over 5,831 sq km. Taken aback by the 16% increase in deforestation in just one year, Brazil's Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira has called a meeting of governors of the states affected the most to discuss the situation. "Pressure for more logging is again strong and coming from agriculture and livestock activities," Teixeira said.
The report released by Brazil's environment ministry comes at a sensitive time — days before the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris where representatives from across the globe will work on hammering out a new global climate agreement.
The Amazon is a treasure trove of biodiversity, representing over half of the planet's rainforests, with the largest collection of varied species of plants and animals. With demand for land constantly mounting, vast stretches of the forest have been razed, destroying numerous ecosystems and displacing animals. A study published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in October estimated that over half the species of trees in the Amazon are on the verge of extinction.
"Forests in the Amazon have been declining since the 1950s, but (until now) there was a poor understanding of how this has affected populations of individual species," said Carlos Peres at the University of East Anglia, one of the 158 scientists from 21 countries who worked on the study.
The research predicted that "At least 36% and up to 57% of all Amazonian tree species are likely to qualify as globally threatened under International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List criteria. If confirmed, these results would increase the number of threatened plant species on Earth by 22%."
Even though deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has increased, it still remains lower than what it was a decade ago after the government introduced tougher measures. In 2004, almost 30,000 sq km was lost to deforestation.
Brazil has 60% of the rainforest area, but Amazonia extends into other countries like Peru with 13% and Colombia with 10% along with minor stretches in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana which have witnessed relentless deforestation.
While reporting on the projected forest loss, the AAAS study said: "The business-as-usual (BAU) scenario model estimates that, by 2050, 40% of the original Amazon forest will be destroyed if proper regulations are not put in place to preserve it." |
— A federal judge handed down a six-year prison sentence Thursday to a man who portrayed himself as a member of a wealthy Pakistani family while running a multimillion-dollar investment scam involving three former Miami Heat players and the team itself.
Judge Edmund Sargus also ordered Haider Zafar to pay $15.7 million in restitution to his victims and three years supervision after his release. Zafar, 36, a legal U.S. resident, could face deportation to his native Pakistan after leaving prison.
Zafar defrauded players Mike Miller, James Jones and Rashard Lewis in 2013 by promising to invest millions of dollars in various business opportunities, according to the government. He also received a $1 million, three-season Heat ticket package he never paid for, the government said.
Zafar pleaded guilty last year in federal court in Columbus to five wire fraud charges that each carry maximum 20-year prison sentences. That case was consolidated with another against Zafar, in which the defendant previously pleaded guilty to swindling a Washington, D.C., businessman out of $10 million between 2008 and 2010.
Zafar apologized for his actions and attempted to defend some of what happened involving the Washington businessman.
Andrew Fine, a lawyer representing the businessman and the former Heat players, argued for a longer sentence in a Tuesday letter sent to Sargus.
Zafar was an "inveterate" criminal who thumbed his nose at the government even when he was under investigation, Fine wrote.
"Despite knowledge that his fraud had been discovered in one jurisdiction, he continued to perpetuate a similar fraud in another jurisdiction," the letter said.
Zafar's attorney Sam Shamansky argued for a sentence closer to four years, saying Zafar had overcome tremendous personal obstacles - including being left penniless by family members - when he emigrated to the U.S. as a young man. He also said Zafar had struggled with addictions to painkillers after an accident.
Nevertheless, Zafar overcame such struggles and has "done well for himself, but for these two unfortunate incidents," Shamansky said.
Zafar got his hand caught in the till after preying on wealthy people, Tracey Warren, special agent in charge for the IRS criminal division in Cincinnati, said after the hearing.
Testimony by an FBI agent portrayed Zafar as a man who talked big as he persuaded the Heat players to give him millions of dollars for investments that never materialized.
Zafar boasted of $35 million in a Swiss bank account and luxury residences in New York City and Miami and was often seen being chauffeured in a yellow Ferrari, a white Bentley and a black Escalade, FBI agent David Fine testified last year.
Zafar persuaded the Miami Heat's vice president of sales to sell him a premium three-season ticket package for $1 million after explaining about his "family history and influence," including ownership of hotels, companies and other business ventures, Fine said.
Zafar convinced Miller to give him $2.6 million, Lewis to give him $4 million and Jones to give him $1.5 million, all for an investment opportunity that Zafar said would "quickly obtain a significant return." But rather than reimburse the Miami Heat or three individuals, Zafar used the money "for his personal use and benefit," Fine said. |
There is one encouraging element from the Steelers’ AFC Wild Card win over the Cincinnati Bengals Saturday night that did not involve the impulse control problems of Vontaze Burfict or Adam Jones, the health of Ben Roethlisberger’s shoulder or the fuzziness inside Antonio Brown’s head.
It’s an element that helped them throughout the game, long before that chaotic, epic period between when Burfict sacked Roethlisberger — causing him to leave the game with an injured shoulder — and when A.J. McCarron’s final desperation heave fell to the turf at Paul Brown Stadium.
It’s the same element that might give the Steelers a fighting chance next Sunday in Denver against the Broncos. And it’s the same element they lacked last season when they lost a home playoff game to the Baltimore Ravens.
Hold on, let me rephrase. Technically, they are two elements that when combined prove to be pretty explosive: running backs Fitzgerald Touissant and Jordan Todman, a.k.a. “TNT.”
Say what you want about Mike Tomlin’s decision-making throughout this season. Despite having three different quarterbacks drop back to pass, four kickers teeing up, four kick returners fielding balls in the end zone and five different running backs taking carries, at least with the latter of those ongoing changes he learned not to make the same mistake twice.
He could’ve done the same thing he did after Le’Veon Bell went down during the regular season finale last year against those same Bengals. He could’ve went for another free agent re-tread off the street and given him just a week to learn the playbook, memorize the protections and hope for the best like he did with Ben Tate.
But instead he put his faith in two backs who have combined for only 22 carries this season, but have at least been with the team all season. Todman was signed as a free agent to provide depth should this very situation arise. Toussaint was a practice squad player who eventually rose to the active roster and unseated Isaiah Pead.
There are a few reasons why Mike Tomlin’s players love playing for him. He goes out of his way to avoid blasting them publicly (even though sometimes it is the necessary thing to do). He keeps the details of his personal conversations with individual players regarding discipline issues confidential, completely eschewing public criticism from media and fans alike.
And when the time comes for a reserve to step into a starting role, he publicly puts his trust in that newly-made starter and works to build their confidence, whether they need it or not.
This time he put that faith in two men pressed into that position, and it paid off with 32 combined touches for 183 yards and one play of 20-plus yards apiece from each back for good measure.
Touissant’s ability to gain tough yards between the tackles, assist in pass protection and catch passes out of the backfield blended with Todman’s speed, shiftiness and patience. If one weren’t too careful, they might’ve looked into the backfield and seen 26 or 34 on those jerseys instead of 33 and 30.
Believe it or not, turning the reps over to an inexperienced running back during a playoff run isn’t a totally unfamiliar concept. The Green Bay Packers turned to rookie James Starks, only 29 carries young in his professional career, as their feature back during their playoff run as the no. 6 seed in the NFC in 2010.
Starks answered the call with 315 yards on 88 carries and a touchdown in the four games the Packers played on the way to a Super Bowl XLV victory over… *cough* …the Pittsburgh Steelers. He wasn’t great, but he was good enough to help Green Bay win three of those four games by a touchdown or less.
The Steelers’ running backs don’t have to be great to stay on the road to Levi’s Stadium for Super Bowl 50. But last Saturday night they were good enough to win. And next Sunday night in Denver, they’ll get another chance to do it again.
And in this particular case, maybe two backs are better than one. |
Jonah, I agree with you on the general tin-ear of Romney. He’s extremely un-nimble on the stump, which means that Republicans will be gambling that he can be sufficiently insulated and managed across the finish line without offering up any campaign-detonating hostage to fortune.
But, beyond that, I’m less sanguine about the underlying worldview that “I’m not concerned about the very poor” betrays. Romney:
We will hear from the Democrat party, “the plight of the poor,” and there’s no question, it’s not good being poor. . . . We have a very ample safety net and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it, but we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor.
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The Pundette responds:
I know Romney gives generously to charity but what a cold fish he is… A conservative candidate would talk about increasing opportunity for the very poor, about lessening the need for food stamps and housing vouchers by reducing government and invigorating the economy, rather than touting the awesomeness of our massive, dependency-inducing welfare state and suggesting it might need some beefing up.
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Romney’s is a benevolent patrician’s view of society: The poor are incorrigible, but let’s add a couple more groats to their food stamps and housing vouchers, and they’ll stay quiet. Aside from the fact that that kind of thinking has led the western world to near terminal insolvency, for a candidate whose platitudinous balderdash of a stump speech purports to believe in the most Americanly American America that any American has ever Americanized over, it’s as dismal a vision of permanent trans-generational poverty as any Marxist community organizer with a cozy sinecure on the Acorn board would come up with.
After half-a-century of evidence, what sort of “conservative” offers the poor the Even Greater Society? I don’t know how “electable” Mitt is, but, even if he is, the greater danger, given the emptiness of his campaign to date, is that he’ll be elected with no real mandate for the course correction the Brokest Nation in History urgently needs. In last Monday’s debate, Newt said he wasn’t interested in going to Washington to “manage the decline”. Mitt’s just told us that he’s happy to “manage the decline” for the poor – but who knows who else? |
It had been a difficult summer for Darian (not his real name). The 14-year-old had recently lost his father to a homicide. He had grown sullen and prone to angry outbursts and had recently texted to a friend, "You say that to me again and I'm going to kill you," in response to a taunt.
Darian had no history of violent behavior, but the family had grown concerned about his emotional health, according to his grandmother Eunice Haigler. In a phone conversation, she tells me they hoped once Darian started school again in the fall, he would have access to a school counselor who would be able to help him with his emotions.
But on the first day of the new school year, what Darian encountered instead of a counselor was a cop. Municipal police took Darian into custody, charged him with making threats via an electronic device and saddled him with a criminal record. The involvement of police in school-related incidents like Darian's alarms Haigler. Not only are city police more involved, she observes, but uniformed police in schools, typically called school resource officers or SROs, are an ever-present chance of students getting entangled with law enforcement.*
"Since SROs got involved in schools," Haigler says, "our kids are getting arrested for issues that used to be taken care of with a trip to the principal's office." Having police in schools, she maintains, "takes issues out of the school. [The SROs] treat kids as little criminals."
Another student, Denise (also not her real name) displayed behavior problems and impulsivity in elementary school and eventually was diagnosed ADHD with depression and provided an Individual Education Plan (IEP) to ensure her teachers were aware of and responsive to her needs.
Her mother, Tyran Green, tells me in a phone conversation that the system was working well for Denise until her school district changed to a zero tolerance discipline policy, and suddenly every small act of impulsivity Denise committed was resulting in an out-of-school suspension. After her last suspension, during her sophomore year of high school, Denise grew completely despondent and attempted suicide.
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Green, a single mother of five children, has had to deal with out-of-school suspensions with four of her children.
"Zero tolerance policies make things worse," says Green. "Many parents complain about these policies but have a hard time voicing those complaints because they have to work two jobs and are too busy or they think it’s a lost cause."
These personal accounts bring to mind disturbing videos that recently went viral, showing an SRO at a South Carolina high school flipping a student out of her chair and a school cop in Texas body-slamming a 12-year-old girl to the ground.
The presence of SROs in schools and the frequent use of out-of-school suspensions both tend to correlate with higher numbers of children and teens being pushed into the criminal justice system. For this reason, these approaches to disciple are often associated with what has become known as the school-to-prison pipeline.
Recent declarations from civil rights groups and policy statements from government officials have called for changes in discipline codes, new guidelines for SROs, and an end to the school-to-prison pipeline. But nothing will likely change for students like Darian and Denise until parents, educators and education justice advocates mobilize on the ground to demand positive changes.
A National Problem
Studies showing the high correlation of out-of-school suspensions to eventual involvement in the criminal justice system are well known among policy circles. A 2011 study by the Council of State Governments Justice Center found that being suspended or expelled from school made a student nearly three times more likely to come into contact with the juvenile justice system within the next year.
A 2015 report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project found that out-of school suspensions are disproportionally used on students of color and students with disabilities. In the most recent year with available data, 16 percent of black students and 7 percent of Latino students were suspended, while the rate for white students was 5 percent. Students with disabilities had suspension rates that were two to three times their peers.
The presence of SROs in school often makes matters worse. A recent study by the American Bar Association found, "A police officer’s regular presence at a school significantly increases the odds that school officials will refer students to law enforcement for various offenses, including these lower-level offenses that should be addressed using more pedagogically-sound methods."
As law enforcement officers in school proliferate, counselors and other support staff have become scarcer. According to a recent study from the Center for American Progress, nearly 35 million children in the U.S. live with emotional and psychological trauma, yet "only a fraction of these students—approximately 8 million of them—have access to a school psychologist. Even fewer students have access to a social worker. Across the nation, only 63 percent of public schools even offer all students a counselor."
Darian and Denise attend schools in Virginia—Spotsylvania and Portsmouth, respectively—where problems associated with overly harsh school discipline policies are worse than in virtually any other state.
Virginia, Nation's Worst
According to data obtained from the U.S. Department of Education in 2015, "Virginia schools in a single year referred students to law enforcement agencies at a rate nearly three times the national rate," according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity.
CPI found that referrals "turned into thousands of complaints filed in courts, many of them against preteens. The most frequent complaints are for disorderly behavior."
Among the individual cases CPI examined was a 12-year-old girl who was charged with four misdemeanors, including obstruction of justice for “clenching her fist” at a school cop. In another case, an 11-year-old boy, diagnosed as autistic, kicked a trashcan during a tantrum and was charged with disorderly conduct by the SRO who witnessed the event.
Haigler knows of similar incidents at the schools her grandchildren attend, including a young boy charged with damaging property for knocking over a potted plant and an elementary student who was suspended for wanting to go to the bathroom.
Out-of-school suspensions and encounters with law enforcement during teen and preteen years can have lifelong consequences for students. As the authors of the UCLA study cited above write, "The damage wrought by this 'pipeline' does not end with prison; it goes on to cause voter disenfranchisement, degradation of health and culture, and a shorter life expectancy."
The alarming data related to school suspensions, SROs, and their impacts have started to influence policy makers and the advocacy work of national organizations.
Getting Attention At The Top
Faced with the scathing revelations of Virginia's top rank in the school to prison pipeline, Governor Terry McAuliffe announced in 2015 "a new initiative aimed at decreasing student suspensions, expulsions and referrals to law enforcement," according to local news sources.
The initiative was spearheaded by Anne Holton, who was Virginia's Secretary of Education at the time. (Holton is the wife of Tim Kaine, the vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.) The initiative called for "joint training for school administrators and school police officers so both groups are aware of the dangers of criminalizing kids," according to a report by CPI.
The Obama administration has taken similar action. Recently, "the Department of Education and Department of Justice," according to U.S. News & World Report, "sent letters to states and school districts emphasizing the importance of well-designed training programs for school resource officers."
National civil rights groups urge stronger action. As Education Week reports, Dignity in Schools, a coalition of over 100 organizations promoting alternatives to zero-tolerance discipline policies, recently called for the removal of law enforcement from schools and for new forms of discipline and student supports.
Pronouncements from government officials and national advocacy groups are helpful. But local advocacy is as important, if not more so.
Action Needed on the Ground
In Virginia, despite the initiative being put into place by the governor and his education chief, incidents of overly harsh discipline and problems related to the presence of SROs persist.
As the Washington Post reports, a 15-year-old student recently went on trial in a Prince William County courthouse for stealing a 65-cent carton of milk in the school cafeteria. In Richmond, high suspension rates have prompted black students to file a civil rights complaint against their school district, alleging that discipline practices in their schools are unfair.
In Spotsylvania, Portsmouth and other communities, the grassroots advocacy group Virginia Organizing is mobilizing parents and education justice advocates to demand alternatives to suspensions and more restrictions on SROs. VO is an affiliate of People's Action, a nationwide network of 29 advocacy groups and some 600 organizers.
In Spotsylvania, VO activists have attended school board meetings to call for alternatives to out-of-school suspensions, according to the organization's website. They've also demanded the school district follow guidelines issued by Governor McAuliffe governing the placement and duties of SROs.
Haigler, whose grandson Darian's criminal charges took nearly two years to resolve, is part of the effort to insist the district review the memorandum of understanding governing SROs and ensure that officers' duties are confined to safety and restricted from getting involved in student behavior matters.
"I've worked very well with educators," she says, "but SROs haven’t been trained in cultural competency … and make the mistake of treating kids like little adults."
In Portsmouth, where schools issued more than 2,200 suspensions in the 2014-2015 school year, VO has helped organize a group of parents, educators, and local activists, called Community Advocates for Portsmouth Students (CAPS), to "raise awareness of the problem, create solutions, and work with the school board to reduce the numbers."
According to the article, Green, a CAPS member, is helping to get parents more involved in the advocacy effort. In my interview with her, she tells me the first duty of all parents is to get informed and get involved.
"Teachers aren't the problem," she says. More often than not, they are overworked and under-supported by the school administration. So parents have to be their children's best advocates.
To prove her point: her four older children graduated high school, despite three of them having to deal with school suspensions, and eventually became college graduates as well. She is anticipating that Denise, now a senior in high school, will eventually be a college graduate too. She is a straight-A student. The school suspension that drove her to attempt suicide almost robbed her of that bright future.
*Correction: This article was amended to clarify the type of officer who arrested Darian. He was arrested by a municipal police officer, not an SRO, as previously stated. |
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