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Excluding the revenant elite specialization, the release of Shiro Tagachi marks the end of the core legend reveals. With the previous three fulfilling distinct roles of defence, support and conditions it was inevitable that a damage orientated legend was needed. As will be revealed in an official blog post later today, Shiro will be a dark and sinister legend who focuses on slashing attacks and mobility. Best of all, revenant’s will be able to dual-wield swords to match Shiro’s iconic blades.
In his blog post, Roy Cronacher details that the principal behind Shiro is pure destruction with the sword skills providing a mixture of rapid attacks that match the assassin theme of this famous Guild Wars legend. There are three skills detailed by Roy:
1. Unrelenting Assault unleashes a fierce attack on nearby foes, allowing the revenant to shadowstep to enemies in the vicinity to deliver strikes. The revenant will also gain might each time they strike a foe. If you’re wondering, this is the skill that Rytlock uses in the infamous trailer for Heart of Thorns.
2. Precision Strike attacks nearby foes, sending out blades that damage and chill them.
3. Rift Slash attacks foes and creats a rift on them that explodes for additional damage after a short period of time. Any foes struck by Rift Slash are affected and this skill in particular is the third in the auto attack chain.
As well as the above weapon skills, there are a couple that have been teased. As seen in the image below, Enchanted Daggers is your heal skill and strikes your target as you attack, siphoning health from damaged foes. The jagged daggers float and follow the revenant and will attack as you do.
Alongside Enchanted Daggers, Jade Wind allows the revenant - similarly to Shiro in Guild Wars - to turn foes into jade for a short period of time. When downed, you’ll also be able to select a trait that triggers the release the Jade Wind. There’s no word on how long players are turned into jade for or if it will break when they receive damage (similarly to Moa) but it certainly sounds a great skill.
Finally, Phase Traversal allows the revenant to travel through the Mists to a target and make several unblockable attacks.
Shiro Stance
Although we don’t know exactly how powerful Shiro will be in comparison to the other legends, I think it’s fair to say that the profession is likely to receive a significant jump in their damage output. Dual-wielding swords always looks incredible and it sounds as though the design team have put significant thought into making Shiro a mobile and deadly legend that’s capable of dealing significant damage but also getting out alive.
If you want to see the new revenant legend in action, you can watch it this Friday when Roy Cronacher joins host Rubi Bayer on Points of Interest at 12 p.m. PDT on the official Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel (http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2). In addition, if you want to play the revenant and all the core legends during one of the upcoming beta events you can pre-purchase Heart of Thorns over on the official website. |
Party: Powerhouse
Vice president: Vidha Dixit
Describes campaign as: Experience. Dedication. Service.
Why are you running for president? It is one of the best ways for us to give back to the University that has provided us with such an incredible college experience.
Why are you qualified for the position? We have the most experience in SGA and truly understand how to effectively complete all of our campaign objectives. Through running the legislative branch as Speaker of the Senate, serving on university committees and in leadership in several student organizations, we have the leadership experience both inside SGA and outside to have what it takes to tackle the challenges ahead of us and to best serve the UH student body.
If elected, what is your end goal? Our goal is service. When we are elected, we are chosen to advocate for the student body, serve others, and make progress, not to just be warm bodies. We want to look back and know that we sacrificed all we could to make service to our fellow students our first priority. |
Share. Will be introduced sometime after July 1, 2015. Will be introduced sometime after July 1, 2015.
The Australian Federal Government confirmed today that it will introduce the “Netflix Tax,” meaning Australian consumers will have to shell out an extra 10 percent for goods purchased from digital services like Netflix, Google, Steam and Amazon.
Treasurer Joe Hockey revealed during a press conference today that the 10 percent Goods and Services Tax (GST) will be charged to all digital products and services bought online, such as games, movies and books. Australians currently don’t pay GST on physical online purchases under AU$1,000, and Hockey said that won't change after the adjustment.
"What we’re doing is going to digital providers overseas and saying ‘can you apply the GST to the products you provide into Australia?’," Hockey said according to IT News. "They are agreeable to it. It’s not their profits [being taxed]. It’s a tax collected and they remit it back to the country where that occurs."
Exit Theatre Mode
The extra tax charged by the online companies will be given back to the Government. Hockey believes once the GST expands to encompass digital services sometime after July 1, it will raise $350 million over four years. Full details will be revealed when the Federal Budget hits 7:30 p.m. AEST Tuesday, May 12.
Netflix US has previously stated that it will add the GST to its service when the federal government passes it. The redrafting of the Tax Act won’t change the price of iTunes downloads as Australian consumers already pay GST on purchases from Apple's online store.
Jenna Pitcher is a freelance journalist writing for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter. |
It may still stink, but ingest a couple of these 24K capsules, and your shit will look as handsome as a pile of gold. Tobias Wong and J.A.R.K. (Ju$t Another Rich Kid) created the Gold Pills as part of their INDULGENCE line, and as a bit of swallowable commentary on society's obsession with wealth and consumption. Just down one of the gold leaf-filled tubes (preferably with a shot of espresso and a couple prunes) and transform your insides into a rich and luminous palace of major systems and organs, all churning in perfect synchronicity towards a singular goal: making your shit sparkle.
If you're wondering what to do with the golden shit post-defecation, unfortunately the answer is still, "Flush it." I guess you could try to use it to buy things--for example, Beanie Babies and Facebook stock, which some have suggested are currently worth shit--but Wong and J.A.R.K. make no mention of whether or not that will work. Rather I think the message here is that anyone who can afford to spend $425 on a few pills filled with 24K shards of gold, and goes ahead and does it, isn't just the type of person who pisses away money, but the type who shits it away too.
Muchas danke to Incredible Things. |
Recently I had a chance to catch up with Robert Grzesek, one of the founders of Carbide and also of the easy to use MeshCam CAM software. I wanted to get an update on the Nomad as well as some idea of what he’d learned from the whole Kickstarter process and manufacturing the Nomad. For those who haven’t seen it, Nomad is a very cool vision for a CNC Mill that was a very successful Kickstarter campaign recently. Be sure to check out our article on Nomad (that link just before this line) for more detail. They raised a total of $513,665 against a goal of $30,000, so this campaign definitely knocked the ball right out of the park.
Here’s what I learned from my interview of Robert:
Carbide had a phenomenally successfully Kickstarter campaign for your Nomad CNC Mill. What advice do you have for would be Kickstarters about how to maximize their success?
I think you can distill it down into a few categories: product, preparation, and follow through.
Product:
First, we picked a product who’s time had come. I knew from my work on MeshCAM, and my partners knew from our product development work, that there was a need for a ready-to-run CNC machine that doesn’t have the massive learning curve of traditional machines.
We spent something like 10 months working on the Nomad before launching our campaign. It was not an idea or a concept, it was an almost-ready-to-make product. I think a lot of people go wrong by showing a product too early so it requires the potential backers to make a greater leap to understand what the product will end up being.
By putting the work in up-front, we were also able to commit to a much earlier shipping time than “normal” Kickstarter campaigns that might ask you to wait a year before you’ll see your product. This was very important given the amount of money we were asking people to spend.
One of the other huge benefits though was my partner Apollo, who is an industrial designer. He was able to take the work that the engineers did and make it look like something that people wanted to buy. We knew design would be significant but, based on customer feedback, it turned out to be way more important than we expected.
Preparation:
There are lots of writeups out there for what you need to know to launch a Kickstarter campaign and Jorge, my other partner, read every one and made sure we did everything right.
1) If you meet something like 30% of your goal in the first 24 hours then you have an 80% chance of getting funded. (Don’t quote me on the numbers but it’s something like that) We presold 10 machines to local people before we ever went live (those 10 were for people who wanted machines- not our friends or moms). The pitch was, give us your phone number and we’ll call when we push the “launch” button. You’ll have limited time to jump on and get a machine incredibly cheap. In the end, every one bought even though a couple missed the window to get the cheap machine. Every Kickstarter campaign should be doing this.
2) Have a press list ready to go with all of the “need to haves” and all of your “want to haves” listed out with names, emails, and examples of things they’ve written about before. We approached a couple of them the day before launch to try and a story or post on day one. This was WAY harder than we thought. Traditional PR, where you write a release and then blast it out, is a complete waste of time from what we can tell. The only stories we got were from Jorge or I emailing people on a more personal level. The good news is that if you get a few stories or posts, then others will pickup and write their own. We got Engadget with no contact from us after a story on another site.
3) Watch the videos from a other projects like yours and copy the good ones. It’s amazing how many people have videos with no call to action, they just end. What are viewers supposed to do next? Others have horrible production value or look like they’re trying to make the video “all about them”, not the product or the potential backer. Finally, style the video to fit in to the Kickstarter ecosystem. Our video would be very different if we made what we wanted, but we decided to copy the types of shots and music that others use. People reacted very well to it so I think there’s a lot of merit to this.
Follow-through:
We spent the next 30 days answering every email, message, or comment. When we weren’t doing that, we were reaching out to new press contacts to try to get links. Managing a campaign if a full-time job for at least one person if you’re doing well. There were days with all three of us working on it.
What did you learn during the course of the Kickstarter campaign that helped you refine your product vision and what would you do differently for your next Kickstarter?
Kickstarter is amazing. There is a huge group of people out there monitoring Kickstarter looking for cool projects and I have no doubt that those additional backers more than covered all of the Kickstarter fees. Also, just being on Kickstarter seemed to make the project more legitimate in the eyes of the people we talked to. I do not think backers would have been as enthusiastic to preorder from our webpage instead of Kickstarter.
We also got great support from our Kickstarter contact, who did his best to get us featured because he really believed in the product. We have nothing but positive things to say about them.
What would we do differently next time? I’d be more open in the leadup to the campaign and make more of an attempt to build an email list. We did well without that but I think having more potential customers to contact at launch would be better.
I’d also make more of an attempt to reach out to press before launch. Knowing how hard it is to get coverage from even a tiny blog, I’d start earlier and have a bigger list.
In terms of how it changed the vision, our Kickstarter campaign was more successful than we ever anticipated and we attracted an even more diverse set of users than we expected. Because a lot of our backers had no CNC experience, we saw that they had really high expectations. We did not want to let them down under any circumstances after the trust they were putting into us. We ended up upgrading the machine a lot (at no additional cost). We built a good machine from the start but the one we’re shipping blows it away; I think it’s safe to say that no machine is our price range has anywhere near the capabilities or quality.
How do you best describe the vision for Nomad and Carbide today?
Everyone we talked to has an idea in their head for something they’d like to make. We’d like to provide to software and hardware to get it from their heads, into 3D.
How are things going as you move towards shipping the first Nomad units to your Kickstarter supporters?
The machine upgrades where a huge delay because we ended up having to redo almost every part of the machine in some way. We’re just getting all of the parts from our machine shop and starting to put the first couple of machines together now. They’re looking really nice so far.
Here’s Jorge putting the first production frame together:
Jorge assembling the first production Nomad frame at Carbide LLC’s shop…
What have you learned about manufacturing that you’d pass along to others who want to make and sell products like Nomad? Any shortcuts? Things to avoid? Things that will help make the process a lot easier?
-If I could go back, I’d look for ways to make parts on a waterjet or a laser. The idea of dropping a sheet of stock on a machine and having enough for a batch of machines in an hour is really appealing.
-When your parts are running in a mill, watch them run at least one time. We kept getting delays until I had the shop foreman let me watch our parts run. The operator had slowed the machine down because “the drill bit was dull” and the owner was out of town. He turned a couple of minute job into a 20 minute job. There were lots of delays like this because the owner was stretched too thin and the operators would do random things. We’ve got that under control now.
-When it comes to milling, modern 5 axis machines are great. We did a bunch of simplifications where we combined three 3-axis parts into a single 5-axis part and the results are great. For us, the total cost is about equal but we get a much better finished product and less labor.
-Don’t send a PDF if the shop can take a Solidworks file. Way less goes wrong when they work from a solid.
-After a few months, I turned over the whole CAD file to them because they wanted to understand how the parts went together. This was a big turning point for us- they felt more ownership of the project and they even found a couple of errors in the design. If you can get to this point quicker than we did, you will benefit.
Robert, last time we talked you were planning to get a brand new Haas VMC and bring it in-house. Did you get the VMC? Any thoughts for new buyers of a machine like that?
I have that Haas quote on my desk right now- a VF2-SS with a 4th axis. We can’t wait. We’re trying to find new shop space with enough power but the areas we’d like to work in have really limited inventory. It looks like we’ll make an offer on a new place this week, and if they accept the lease terms, the Haas will be ordered.
It’s worth noting that the Haas will be a second production line and for R&D. We’d like to keep the current machine shop running so that we’re not dependent on any single location.
Robert, what do people do who want a Nomad but missed out on the Kickstarter? Are you thinking about transitioning to taking new orders yet?
We just put our heads down and worked for about a week after Kickstarter and then we started getting requests from people who wanted to preorder a machine but missed the Kickstarter deadline. Coincidentally, we happened to be approached by a company called Celery that does nothing but handle preorders post-Kickstarter. It turned out to be a good system so we put a preorder link on our website and it’s been active since. We received a significant number of orders through that system so it’s something that I’d recommend to anyone after a Kickstarter campaign.
Nomad for yourself, go to Of course, if you’d like to get afor yourself, go to http://carbide3d.com to preorder.
Here’s Apollo running a Nomad at their offices from the pre-Kickstarter days…
Thanks Robert for the great interview!
Postscript
I continue to think the Nomad is a great idea because it brings Apple’s Vertical Integration ideas to the entry level CNC space by combining hardware, software, and key accessories like tool probe in one well-designed packages. I’m hoping to get to play with one myself at some point. Robert has also given some great advice for folks who are dreaming of their own Kickstarter projects. It’s rare that you can benefit from the insights of someone who has been as successful on Kickstarter. |
Winnipeg police have released photos of a person they want to talk to after two men were "brutally killed" in the city's downtown area, likely at the hands of the same person.
Winnipeg police say the man in this photo is a person of interest after two homeless people were 'brutally killed' in downtown Winnipeg Saturday. (Winnipeg Police Service) The man was wearing an over-the-shoulder bag with green detailing. (Winnipeg Police Service) The body of a man in his 60s was found in the alley behind 329 Hargrave St. early Saturday at 12:45 a.m.
The body of another man in his 40s was found close by at 6:30 p.m. in the alley behind 333 Portage Ave.
One of the victims was homeless, while police said the other spent a lot of time on the streets. Both had mental health and/or addiction issues, police said. Investigators believe both deaths are related and that one suspect is responsible.
Winnipeg police released the photos early Sunday afternoon.
"This male is in the area during the times of the homicides and he may have had contact with the victims and he could have very valuable information for us," said Sgt. John O'Donovan.
"There are a number of vulnerable persons on the streets of Winnipeg. When you're out and about, please pay particular attention to these people. They're often invisible, but make sure that they're safe and they're not being harassed by anybody."
O'Donovan added police are also looking for two other people, a man and a woman, who were in the Hargrave Street area between 9:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. Friday night. None of the persons of interest are considered suspects at this time.
Killings a wake-up call
Sel Burrows, a community organizer and head of a citizen watch group in the North Point Douglas area, said the killings should be considered a wake-up call for Winnipeggers.
"Absolutely horrible," said Burrows, adding that the killings are "un-Canadian."
"This is not what happens to vulnerable people in Canada."
Burrows said many vulnerable people don't have cellphones or internet access, so he'll be doing everything he can to notify people in his community to be safe.
Police are asking everyone who is homeless or spends time on the street to be careful, stay away from secluded areas and stick with others if possible.
"Please, people of Winnipeg, if you're out and about and you see something that doesn't sit right with you, call the police. Use your cell phone. If it's safe to do so ... take photos and get them to us. We will follow up on every lead," said O'Donovan.
"These vulnerable people are part of our community and it's all our responsibility to keep them safe."
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Dan Maxson, director of operations at Siloam Mission, said he was saddened to hear someone is targeting street people, who rely on the shelter's services.
"My immediate thoughts went back to the fact that there are going to be families that are going to be devastated by this," said Maxson. "That dismay, that this, again happened in our community: that was kind of my first thought."
It's happened in other cities, but I didn't think Winnipeg would have this. - Dan Maxson, Siloam Mission
But Maxson also said he wasn't overly surprised by the killings either.
"This community is targeted for lots of reason," said Maxson. "This is the extreme end of the spectrum and it's really sad that it's come to this. It's happened in other cities, but I didn't think Winnipeg would have this."
He praised the police service's response to the incidents, adding he hopes investigators catch the suspect before anyone else gets hurt.
"Hats off to the police service for quickly jumping on that. They came by last night and gave a heads up to our shelter staff and we were able to pass that along to the shelter," said Maxsen."They've come by a couple times a day just to kind of check on things. The police service here has really stepped up their game and their interaction and they're working with the shelters."
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A group of about 50 Winnipeggers gathered on Donald Street near Hargrave to hold a vigil for the two men Sunday night.
Anyone who may know about these deaths is asked to call Winnipeg's homicide unit at (204) 986-6508 or Crime Stoppers at (204) 786-TIPS (8477). |
WASHINGTON -- Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is joining American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, an influential Republican Super PAC and an affiliated non-profit group, to help them reach their newly doubled fundraising goal of $240 million to spend on the 2012 presidential election.
The two groups were founded in 2010 by Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie after the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision opened the door to unlimited corporate, union, and individual spending in elections. The decision also allowed certain nonprofits, which are not required to disclose their funding sources, to run direct electoral advertisements calling for the election or defeat of candidates. Both groups can receive unlimited contributions, but Crossroads GPS, which is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, does not have to disclose its donors.
"Both Governor Barbour and Karl Rove are prodigious fundraisers and brilliant strategists, and we are honored to have them both engaged with us," Steven Law, president of both groups, said in a statement. "We are reaching high in our fundraising goals because we believe this is going to be a destiny-shaping election for our country."
Barbour, who passed on running for the Republican presidential nomination in April, is a well-known fundraiser from his time as chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) from 1993 to 1997 and the Republican Governors Association (RGA) from 2009 through 2010. Barbour pulled in a record-setting $115 million for the RGA during the 2010 cycle after he took over in mid-2009 from Mark Sanford, then the Governor of South Carolina, who resigned as chair amid a sex scandal.
American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS spent a combined $38 million in 2010, which amounted to the fourth largest total spent by an outside group, ahead of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and behind only the other three congressional party committees. |
Writing in these pages in early 2008, we put the total cost to the United States of the Iraq war at $3 trillion. This price tag dwarfed previous estimates, including the Bush administration's 2003 projections of a $50 billion to $60 billion war.
But today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low. For example, the cost of diagnosing, treating and compensating disabled veterans has proved higher than we expected.
Moreover, two years on, it has become clear to us that our estimate did not capture what may have been the conflict's most sobering expenses: those in the category of "might have beens," or what economists call opportunity costs. For instance, many have wondered aloud whether, absent the Iraq invasion, we would still be stuck in Afghanistan. And this is not the only "what if" worth contemplating. We might also ask: If not for the war in Iraq, would oil prices have risen so rapidly? Would the federal debt be so high? Would the economic crisis have been so severe?
The answer to all four of these questions is probably no. The central lesson of economics is that resources -- including both money and attention -- are scarce. What was devoted to one theater, Iraq, was not available elsewhere.
Afghanistan
The Iraq invasion diverted our attention from the Afghan war, now entering its 10th year. While "success" in Afghanistan might always have been elusive, we would probably have been able to assert more control over the Taliban, and suffered fewer casualties, if we had not been sidetracked. In 2003 -- the year we invaded Iraq -- the United States cut spending in Afghanistan to $14.7 billion (down from more than $20 billion in 2002), while we poured $53 billion into Iraq. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, we spent at least four times as much money in Iraq as in Afghanistan.
It is hard to believe that we would be embroiled in a bloody conflict in Afghanistan today if we had devoted the resources there that we instead deployed in Iraq. A troop surge in 2003 -- before the warlords and the Taliban reestablished control -- would have been much more effective than a surge in 2010.
Oil
When the United States went to war in Iraq, the price of oil was less than $25 a barrel, and futures markets expected it to remain around that level. With the war, prices started to soar, reaching $140 a barrel by 2008. We believe that the war and its impact on the Middle East, the largest supplier of oil in the world, were major factors. Not only was Iraqi production interrupted, but the instability the war brought to the Middle East dampened investment in the region.
In calculating our $3 trillion estimate two years ago, we blamed the war for a $5-per-barrel oil price increase. We now believe that a more realistic (if still conservative) estimate of the war's impact on prices works out to at least $10 per barrel. That would add at least $250 billion in direct costs to our original assessment of the war's price tag. But the cost of this increase doesn't stop there: Higher oil prices had a devastating effect on the economy.
Federal debt
There is no question that the Iraq war added substantially to the federal debt. This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to $10 trillion in 2008 (before the financial crisis); at least a quarter of that increase is directly attributable to the war. And that doesn't include future health care and disability payments for veterans, which will add another half-trillion dollars to the debt.
As a result of two costly wars funded by debt, our fiscal house was in dismal shape even before the financial crisis -- and those fiscal woes compounded the downturn.
The financial crisis
The global financial crisis was due, at least in part, to the war. Higher oil prices meant that money spent buying oil abroad was money not being spent at home. Meanwhile, war spending provided less of an economic boost than other forms of spending would have. Paying foreign contractors working in Iraq was neither an effective short-term stimulus (not compared with spending on education, infrastructure or technology) nor a basis for long-term growth.
Instead, loose monetary policy and lax regulations kept the economy going -- right up until the housing bubble burst, bringing on the economic freefall.
Saying what might have been is always difficult, especially with something as complex as the global financial crisis, which had many contributing factors. Perhaps the crisis would have happened in any case. But almost surely, with more spending at home, and without the need for such low interest rates and such soft regulation to keep the economy going in its absence, the bubble would have been smaller, and the consequences of its breaking therefore less severe. To put it more bluntly: The war contributed indirectly to disastrous monetary policy and regulations.
The Iraq war didn't just contribute to the severity of the financial crisis, though; it also kept us from responding to it effectively. Increased indebtedness meant that the government had far less room to maneuver than it otherwise would have had. More specifically, worries about the (war-inflated) debt and deficit constrained the size of the stimulus, and they continue to hamper our ability to respond to the recession. With the unemployment rate remaining stubbornly high, the country needs a second stimulus. But mounting government debt means support for this is low. The result is that the recession will be longer, output lower, unemployment higher and deficits larger than they would have been absent the war.
* * *
Reimagining history is a perilous exercise. Nonetheless, it seems clear that without this war, not only would America's standing in the world be higher, our economy would be stronger. The question today is: Can we learn from this costly mistake?
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University, was chairman of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001. Linda J. Bilmes is the Daniel Patrick Moynihan senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard University. They are co-authors of "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict." |
Lecture Outline Bacterial Growth
1. Cell division (an asexual process):
binary fission: diagram (see Fig. 6.1). Process has two functional pathways: DNA replication and segregation and cell septation. Cells have a way of regulating that septation does not occur until ~ 20 minutes are DNA replication has been completed. Cytokinesis, a term used to describe formation of two eukaryotic daughter cells, is now being used to describe cell division in prokaryotes.
What are divisomes and what is the role of Fts proteins in cell divsion?
What is known about how cells locate center of cell where septation will occur?
generation time or doubling time: time it takes a cell to divide or for the culture to double its numbers. Each bacterial species, under optimal growth conditions, can divide only so fast (have a minimum generation time). The generation time is effected by the growth medium, and the physical/chemical environment of the cell (see below).
Growth is exponential/logarithmic: can attain large numbers in a short interval of time (starting with a single cell, mass 1-2 X 10-12 grams, with a generation time of 30 min, if could keep growth exponential for 43 hrs would result in a mass of cells equal to the weight of the earth, 6 X 1027 grams!)
2. Methods to monitor growth. See sections 6.9-6.11
3. Ways to grow prokaryotes in laboratory:
Batch culture (also known as a closed system)- a finite amount of nutrients is provide and culture is grown under a set of physical/chemical conditions (pH, aeration, etc.). As cells grow their environment changes (nutrients depleted, by-products of metabolism release to environment). Cells are dividing asynchronously. phases of growth- lag, log(exponential), stationary, death (Fig.6.10). How would the phases of growth differ between E . coli and B . megaterium ? During which phase would the generation time of the culture be determined?
Continuous culture- chemostat (Fig. 6.11). How does a chemostat differ from a batch culture, and what does growing in a chemostat allow you to do that is difficult, if not impossible, to do in a batch culture?
4. Classifying organisms by their carbon, energy, and source of protons/electrons allows identification of 4 major nutritional groups using this information. See Table 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3
5. Types of Media.
Minimal or a chemically defined: contains the bare essentials needed for growth (types and amount of chemicals known). A minimal medium for one species may not satisfy the minimal requirements for another species.
complex or undefined: contains substances that bacterium could make for it self, but instead substances are transported in and used (exact composition of medium less certain).
enrichment: contains a substance that enhances the growth of a prokaryote (Example, a medium containing oil which is not a suitable carbon source for most bacteria or serum or blood used to grow S . pyogenes or N . gonorrhoeae ).
. or . ). selective: contains a substance that inhibits the growth of certain bacteria in a mixed culture, but not the bacterium of interest (Example, the addition of 7.5% NaCl to medium inhibits the growth of most bacteria, but not a salt tolerant bacterium like Stap. aureus ).
). differential media: contains a substance that is noticeably changed if a specific bacterial species is present (blood agar medium, get zone of red blood cell lysis, b - hemolysis, if Streph . pyogenes is present.
hemolysis, if . is present. selective and a differential medium (EMB medium). EMB (Eosin-methylene blue agar) used to select for gram-negative enteric bacteria. The methylene blue inhibits gram-positive bacteria (mechanism unclear), eosin is a dye that responds to changes in pH, going from colorless to black under acidic conditions. Medium contains lactose and sucrose, but not glucose, as energy sources. Enteric bacteria like E. coli, Klebsiella, and Enterobacter acidify the medium and the colonies appear black with a greenish sheen. Colonies of lactose nonfermenters, such as Salmonella, Shigella, and Pseudomonas are translucent or pink.
6. Factors that effect growth.
nutritional environment (medium): a prokaryote growing in a complex medium will have a shorter generation time than if it were growing in a minimal medium. Why?
Temperature: Every bacterial species has an upper and a lower temperature over which growth can occur. Optimal temperature for growth is closer to upper temperature limit that bacterium can tolerate (Fig. 6.18). Groups- psychrophiles, psychrotolerant, mesophiles, thermophiles, and extreme thermophiles (Fig. 6.19). What factors account for thermostability?
Oxygen (requirement for/sensitivity to): Groups- obligate aerobes, facultative aerobes (some text refer to this group as the faculative anarobes), microaerophiles, aerotolerant, and obligate anaerobes (Fig 6.27 and table 6.4). How can one explain the requirement for oxygen and sensitivity to toxic forms of oxygen? What are the various forms of toxic oxygen generated and how are they dealt with by organisms? See Fig. 6.29 and 6.30
Water availability- Water may be present in the cells' environment, but not available to them. How is this possible? How do extreme halophiles (high salt loving bacteria), osmophiles (grow in high osmolarity, i.e., high sugar, environments), and xerophiles (live in dry environments) cope with this problem in their environments?
(high salt loving bacteria), (grow in high osmolarity, i.e., high sugar, environments), and (live in dry environments) cope with this problem in their environments? Acidity/alkalinity (pH) of medium:
revised 9/24/09
Binary fission:
Source of Carbon, Energy, and Protons/Electrons Carbon Source Autotrophs CO2 sole or principal biosynthetic carbon source. Heterotrophs Reduced, preformed, organic molecules. Energy Source Phototrophs Light Chemotrophs Oxidation of organic or inorganic compounds Proton and/or Electron source Lithotrophs Reduced inorganic molecules Organotrophs Organic molecules
Major Nutritional Groups of Microorganisms Major Nutritional Type Source of Energy, Protons/Electrons and Carbon Representative Organisms Photolithotrophic autotrophy light energy Algae, cyanobacteria, and inorganic H+/e- donor purple and green bacteria CO 2 carbon source Photoorganotrophic heterotrophy light energy source Purple and green and non sulfur bacteria Organic H+/e- organic carbon source (CO 2 may also be used) Chemolithotrophic autotrophy Chemical energy (inorganic) Sulfur-oxidizing, hydrogen, Inorganic H+/e- donor nitrifying, iron bacteria, etc. CO 2 carbon source Chemoorganotrophic heterotrophs Chemical energy (organic) Protozoa, fungi, and the Organic H+/e- donor non photosynthetic bacteria Organic carbon source
Methods to Determine Bacterial Growth:
A. Determination of cell number:
1. Total cell count methods: a. Direct microscopic count- See fig. 6.14 Advantages- quick and easy disadvantages- can not distinguish between live and dead cells, and can not detect less than 106 bacteria/ml. b. Coulter count (electronic count): Advantages- very quick and easy Disadvantages- same as above plus can end up counting dust and debris. Apparatus very expensive. 2. Viable cell count method: See fig. 6.15 and 6.16 Rationale, a single cell will give rise to a colony of cells that is visible to eye. By determining the number of colonies on a plate and the volume of liquid they were in (amount plated), can determine number of cells/ml. However, when have more than 300 colonies on plate they become to numerous to count. This is addressed by making a series of dilutions (will be held for 1:10 and 1:100 dilutions. For example 0.1ml in 0.9ml of a sterile diluent is a 1:10 dilution or a 10-1 dilution). The amount plated can be 1ml or 0.1ml. To determine the number of bacteria in a sample, count the number of colonies (want between 30-300), multiply times one over the total dilution, times one over the amount plated: equation to use is: # of bacteria/ml = number of colonies counted X 1/dilution X 1/sample plated advantages- can count as few as 1 bacterium/ml, and only count live cells. disadvantages- requires time for growth, may need to make dilutions of preparation and make dilution calculations (examples). Also,cells that clump or remain in groups that do not seperate, i.e., chains, will give a number that underestimates the number of viable cells present.
B. Determination of cell mass-
1. dry weight determination: advantages- only way to determine growth of filamentous bacteria. disadvantages- cumbersome and not very accurate. If cell numbers important must relate weight to cell numbers if possible. 2. Turbidity (measured by photometer or a spectrophotometer): What is the basis of this method to monitor cell growth? See fig. 6.17 advantages- rapid and easy disadvantages- does not give you cell numbers or increase in mass (must correlate turbidity, cloudiness, to cell numbers by the direct or viable cell count method), can not distinguish between live and dead cells, and must work within certain turbidity's (more than 107 and less than 108 bacteria/ml).
C. Determination of cell constituents- measure increase in a specific cell material, i.e., DNA, RNA, Protein, or etc.
Dilution Problems:
Equation to use: no. of bacteria/ml in original sample = no. of colonies on plate X 1/total dilution X 1/ volume sample plated.
1. You are interested in determining the number of bacteria in saliva. You spit into a tube, and then do four 1:10 dilution's. From the last dilution tube you plate 1.0 ml onto an appropriate medium, and observe 100 colonies on the agar surface after overnight growth. How many bacteria are present in the original sample?
2. A friend of yours tells you that there should be no bacteria in hamburger meat, and having had micro you say not true. To show him/her you do the following: You take 1 gram of meat and blend it in 100 ml of sterile water. You then do the following dilution: 1:10, 1:100, 1:10, and a 1:100. You then take 0.1ml from the last dilution, and plate onto an appropriate medium, and find that after 18 hours of growth that there are 125 colonies on the plate. How many bacteria were present in the original sample, per ml of blended material and per gram of hamburger meat?
Toxic forms of oxygen:
Toxic Forms of oxygen (in order of decreasing toxicity Name Formula Generated by Destroyed Ozone O 3 irradiation of O 2 by UV or high voltage discharge fluorocarbons hydroxyl radical OH . H 2 O 2 + O 2 - (x-rays, gamma rays) ** Spontaneously, very unstable Superoxide O 2 - enzymatically (flavins and quinones) superoxide dismutase (SOD) Hydrogen peroxide H 2 O 2 enzymatically (flavoproteins) catalase or peroxidase singlet oxygen 1O 2 enzymatically or chemically (smog, light) ** reaction with carotenoid pigments
**
Requirement/sensitive to toxic forms of oxygen and presence of SOD and/or catalase/peroxidase: |
1. The "Anti-Commandeering" Rule: In 1997, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court, created an "anti-commandeering" rule, which bans Congress from ordering state officials to carry out federal duties. The case was brought by two county sheriffs, who did not want to do background checks for firearm sales as ordered by the Brady Act. The new rule led to holes in the database that would allow persons prone to violence, like the killer in the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting, to get firearms. Stevens notes that the "anti-commandeering" rule could also cripple other Congressional acts, from routine administration of federal programs to emergency responses to national catastrophes or acts of terror. His fix adds four words (in bold below) to the Constitution's Supremacy Clause:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges and other public officials in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
2. Political Gerrymandering: Given that he has not heard one word in favor of political gerrymandering from any federal judge, Stevens believes that his amendment addressing it should sail through into law. He points out that, in addition to making legislative districts less representative and less competitive, political gerrymandering tends to give us candidates with more extreme positions. In 1986 the Supreme Court made it practically impossible to challenge gerrymanders by setting a lofty and cloudy standard: "[A] finding of unconstitutionality must [show] continued frustration of the will of a majority of the voters or effective denial to a minority of the voters of a fair chance to influence the political process." Stevens takes a simpler view: "Just as a controlling political party may not use public funds to pay its campaign expenses, it is also quite wrong to use public power for the sole purpose of enhancing the political strength of the majority party." He would ban that abuse of power with this new amendment:
Districts represented by members of Congress, or by members of any state legislative body, shall be compact and composed of contiguous territory. The state shall have the burden of justifying any departures from this requirement by reference to neutral criteria such as natural, political, or historic boundaries or demographic changes. The interest in enhancing or preserving the political power of the party in control of the state government is not such a neutral criterion.
3. Campaign Finance: We have gone far down the road to corruption since 1907, when Congress passed a law banning all corporate contributions to political candidates, and many states enacted, outside of narrow lobbying rules, a total ban of corporate activity to influence public policy. In 2010, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, produced the infamous Citizens United ruling giving corporations the unlimited right to finance campaign speech. And last year, by the same 5-4 vote, the Roberts Court struck down any limit on total donations a person could make to candidates, giving rich persons the right to spend millions in a single election. The strongest proposed amendment addressing this problem states that corporations are not persons and money is not speech. Stevens' amendment states neither, but he believes it would eliminate "the most serious consequences" of Citizens United:
Neither the First Amendment nor any other provision of this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit the Congress or any state from imposing reasonable limits on the amount of money that candidates for public office, or their supporters, may spend in election campaigns.
4. Sovereign Immunity: The Eleventh Amendment, banning a citizen of one state from suing another state in federal court, was prompted by states that wanted to dodge their war debts. Their reasoning leaned on "sovereign immunity," a principle that holds the "sovereign," any of the individual states in this case, above the law, shielding it from court action. Stevens says that this doctrine "should never have been adopted in a democracy." He notes an argument against it from the famous Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: "It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that it was so laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past." Since the arrival of Rehnquist, the Supreme Court has made a series of rulings that stretched sovereign immunity and weakened state compliance with national law. For example, in 1974 a Rehnquist opinion let Illinois skate on paying damages for past non-compliance with a federal law for aiding aged, blind and disabled persons. And in 1999 the Rehnquist Court, citing an unwritten state sovereignty rule imagined to be in the "plan of the [Constitutional] Convention," forbade Congress to authorize suing a state for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. To Stevens, striking down the sovereign immunity doctrine is a matter of simple justice. A state-owned hospital, school, or police force should not have a defense to federal claims that a private one does not. To right this wrong Stevens adds an amendment:
Neither the Tenth Amendment, the Eleventh Amendment, nor any other provision of this Constitution, shall be construed to provide any state, state agency, or state officer with an immunity from liability for violating any act of Congress, or any provision of this Constitution.
5. The Death Penalty: Stevens points out the main arguments for the death penalty: that it keeps the murderer from murdering again; that it deters murder; and that it gives revenge for society's outrage. But there are good counter-arguments: that a sentence of life without parole also keeps the murderer from murdering again; that it would as well deter murder; and that society has evolved away from vengeance, as shown by its concern that death sentence execution be painless. Another strong argument is that the death penalty is final, yet fallible. Especially with the rise of DNA testing technology, many cases of false convictions have come to light. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, two Supreme Court rulings, including one upholding a judge's instruction to a jury to choose death when the evidence for and against it is balanced, have made the death penalty a bit more likely. To Stevens, the "final, yet fallible" argument is reason enough to abolish the death penalty, which he would do by adding five words to the Eighth Amendment:
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments such as the death penalty inflicted.
6. Gun Control: For more than two hundred years, federal judges have, according to Stevens, uniformly understood the Second Amendment to be limited in two ways. One, that it applies only for military purposes, and two, that, while it limited the power of the federal government, it did not limit the power of state or local governments to regulate ownership or use of firearms. Thus, in 1939 the Court ruled unanimously that Congress could ban possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to "a well regulated Militia." But the Roberts Court has twice ruled against governments trying to tamp down gun violence. In 2008, a 5-4 majority, citing the Second Amendment, threw out a Washington, D.C., law and created a new Constitutional right for a civilian in D.C. to keep an enabled handgun at home for self-defense. And in 2010, the same 5-4 Court, citing the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, threw out a Chicago handgun ban, and extended the Court's newly-created Constitutional right to the states. To restore the Second Amendment to its original meaning, and to return the power of regulating firearms to state and local governments, Stevens adds five words to the Second Amendment:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia, shall not be infringed.
As time passes, I am confident that the soundness of each of my proposals will become more and more evident, and that ultimately each will be adopted. The purpose of this book is to expedite that process and to avoid future crises before they occur.
List of Supreme Court Cases Referenced
Putting Stevens' amendments through looks like a long row to hoe. But, as Bertrand Russell once said of his own proposal for political change, "[T]he difficulty ... does not diminish the desirability of such a change." And Stevens is undaunted:
(From The Paragraph.) [Sources & Notes]
* * *
By Quinn Hungeski, TheParagraph.com, Copyright (CC BY-ND) 2015 |
A few years ago I made a pact with my motorcycle-riding friend that within three years we would go on a motorcycle camping trip. Since I had just gotten my Motorcycle endorsement through the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, this meant I would need to find a bike and hone my skills enough to navigate through some rural terrain with camping gear, and make it back alive.
My friend had been lucky enough to have been riding since childhood, starting out on dirt bikes on country roads. As a kid I begged my mom to let me ride dirt bikes with my best friend, but was never allowed and wasn’t quite yet witty or sneaky enough to go ahead and do it anyway.
(Yes, my wheel is turned a precarious direction. It’s that sweet, humbling learning curve. My companion was so kind as to take a majority of our gear on the F800GS, as I was unsure about my own balance with the added weight and how it might affect me as a new rider on my first big trip. Well, that was a nice first free pass. I’m on my own now!)
I had just gotten my motorcycle endorsement at the time of the pact, but didn’t yet have the funds to buy a bike, gear, and insurance. I worried the career track I was on (fresh out of college and still waiting tables and working seasonal retail jobs) wouldn’t allow me to get the money within the time frame, but decided I could, and would, find a way to save up and make this happen. Two years later, it did. Will, way, you know the deal. Plan for it, people. Make it a priority, even if it means cutting back on nights out with friends, or more beans and rice.
Opportunity arose when a buddy was selling his problem-child ’84 CB700SC Nighthawk S for a steal, and I jumped. I had admired the vintage style of this particular bike, and was developing quite the crush on the CB series. And she (my baby, er, bike. Fuck it–baby) was so good to me from the get go. Of course all new riders need to meet their mandatory quota of new-rider humiliation, so first I needed to drop her in the DMV parking lot right after registering the bike and making our relationship official. And then I had to crash into some bushes in an attempted U-turn. You know, for learning’s sake, we all need those not-so-gentle reminders that just because we ride a motorcycle doesn’t mean we’re cool. It will happen to you. Feel the feels, and then move on. Wear it like a badge of honor and share your stories with new riders to ease their pain.
After riding my new-to-me motorcycle with glee any chance I got, including commuting to work, and reading up on sport riding technique, I was on my way to booking a camp site and fulfilling my promise.
I will never forget the feeling after leaning through the exit ramp off of a crowded six-lane stretch of Interstate 5 on fourth of July weekend and rolling onto that two-lane country scenic route, past farms of alpacas, Christmas trees, and orchards, looking at the meadows of rolling hills on either side of me, and feeling the temperature rise and fall as we rode over the hills, smelling and feeling the mountain run-off rivers before seeing them, and watching a Swallowtail butterfly float across the road before zipping past it. My eyes welled up a little, being immersed in so much natural beauty, and in the middle of this dream-turned-reality.
350 miles of back roads took us through Mt. Hood National Forest, the Willamette National forest, and the Deschutes Nation Forest past the Three Sisters, Mt Washington, and the Three Fingered Jack. Micro-climates changed from the temperate valley to alpine to high desert. We wound through roads edged by cliff drop offs on one side and the threat of falling rocks on the other, through sharp blind curves, and around boulders.
I can still hear and feel the sound and scrape of my first ever foot peg against asphalt on a cliff side twisty. It sent my stomach downward somewhere near my nether regions like a lead ball. Yet in this adrenaline filled “I WANT TO LIVE!” moment, I managed to look where I wanted to go and accelerate out of that curve with a newfound alertness and awareness that I could low side right off a cliff if I wasn’t careful. But this didn’t make me want to quit. It made me respect the machine I ride, take responsibility for my actions and accept that this is a sport I will need to keep learning for the rest of my life. And I realized that the payoff, of being totally alive in this moment, immersed in the world, and present, all senses attuned to the world around me, was worth the risk of death.
Growing up in South Chicagoland, everything was and is very developed, so I am still amazed by how much untouched beauty and “rugged” land remains in the United States. I don’t just mean state and national parks, either, but the number of cliff side mountain roads without so much as a guardrail still amazes me, and it’s a great wake up call to enjoy the view, but stay awake.
We rode along rocky snow melt rivers, and in the 100 plus degree heat and relentless sun, it was a welcome relief to soak our bandanas and t-shirts, letting each fiber absorb the icy relief before changing back into them. Beneath our baked black leather jackets, we enjoyed a moment of this DIY air conditioning before drying out and heating back up in minutes on the afternoon pavement atop metal machines being propelled by a series of gasoline explosions.
(Water! River! Shade! Yusssssssss!)
I received my first mid-ride bee sting up the sleeve of my jacket and into the soft underside of my upper arm. It took me by surprise, the quick surge of stinging pain, and it had been decades since I’d been stung at all. I pulled over to find out for sure what happened, and to gauge my reaction, honking and waving to my riding companion that I needed to pull over (In retrospect, we should have worked out some better hand signals ahead of time.)
I opened my jacket to find the stinger dangling from the puffy red ink blot on my arm, and pulled it out, taking a minute to make sure I wasn’t allergic. Luckily, it’s hard to be mad on a summer day on your first motorcycle headed to a beautiful lake to camp and follow up on a big life goal you set three years ago. It becomes a little funny when you get stung again, a hundred miles later, inches apart from the first sting.
Rolling up to the campgrounds, the Honda CB700SC took well to the gravel roads around Suttle Lake, albeit while abiding to the 10mph speed limit. I was a little nervous having wiped out from hitting patch of gravel on a little 50cc Kawasaki over a country creek bridge a couple years earlier, which ended with me landing in a ditch, but I remembered to ease off the death grip on the handles, and ride out the grooves and squiggles attentively, obeying the speed limit so as to take a precaution for all the pedestrians, children, and potentially imbibed adults buzzing from every pocket of the campground on a busy Fourth of July weekend.
We had been looking forward to peace and quiet in a rural setting, and were a bit taken aback at the size and sound of the crowds. We knew the campground was full, and had wound up with a corner site by cancellation luck, and were delighted to find a private spot totally not visible from any other camping spots (could even do a nudie dance back there without worrying about someone sneaking up from the thicket… if you wanted to.) Plus there was about a quarter acre of spacious woods surrounding three sides of our site. A view of the lake was accessible a few steps down the hill, and sitting propped up against a large Ponderosa pine would be the site for meditating, drinking, writing, reading, sunset viewing and relaxing in the days to come. We were thrilled to have this little private patch on the beautiful Suttle lake.
Waking up to the sound of jet skis in the morning, and the sound of jet skis in the afternoon was jarring at first, having expected a rural retreat, but ultimately we were just a little jealous we couldn’t give them a test ride. Plus, we ought to know about expectations by now. Fuck ’em, toss ’em in the wind!
Day one was spent walking around the Lake, viewing Mt Adams, and heading to Sisters for goods to make bratwurst over the campfire and grab some cold beer. The town was small, quaint, a bit touristy, but was warm and friendly all the same. It definitely had an old-west feel, which I learned later is part of the homeowners association guidelines and regulations. A few charm points lost in that, but a lovely town and experience all around.
Day two was spent hiking around the lake again, and taking our inflatable inner-tubes—no sorry, River Rats, purchased from the town grocery store, and floating the length of the lake, and letting the wind lead the way. It was incredibly relaxing to watch the water glisten, and float almost the entire length of Suttle Lake (sometimes at a good pace with the wind kicking in) and feeling the rays of sun offer their sweet kisses to our skin before the burn that would keep us warm that night. It was also great to rinse off after sweating on bike the day before, collecting all that high desert dust.
We swam to shore before hitting the creek running from the Lake and through the grounds at the Lodge (which is beautiful, traditional, and has very kind staff that recommended a local biker bar in town and let us borrow some wifi. There are even little individual cabins you can rent on the property, with varying degrees of luxury and many with views of the lake.)
We walked back, the river rats subjected to the dense shrubs and wild roses lining the narrow path back to the campgrounds, and up the big hill to our site. Somewhere in the water I lost my sarong, but my friend found a Deschutes Brewing hat, so the universe felt balanced. The ride home was quieter, with less traffic, and another bee sting nearly an inch away from the first. (I have since been stung twice again, once more on the same arm—and one on the other arm. I’m more amused than irritated at this point.)
Bee stings aside, I returned home in a dream state of true vacation. Getting to your destination by motorcycle makes for an instant adventure. You are so immersed in the spirit of the land you ride through, and it helps launch you in that state of presence and recharge mode that tends to dwell with you after the fact, like an after glow. If there’s anything this trip taught me, it’s the benefit and growth that comes from doing what scares you, and from following through on your dreams. The reward is worth the pain of the learning curve (like dropping your new-to-you bike in the parking lot of the DMV right after getting it registered, or learning to not bruise your shins on the foot pegs.)
This trip showed me that motorcycling is one of the best ways to see nature, and to make the journey of getting there as good as the destination itself, if not better. It instilled in me a desire to travel the world atop a motorcycle. Maybe most importantly, though, this trip taught me that goals which seem insurmountable are really just a series of little steps you take with a little help from your friends.
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Republicans are battling behind the scenes over an amendment that would ban the Pentagon from funding the gender reassignment surgeries and other transgender-related healthcare of service members.
Members of the House Armed Services Committee rejected the proposal, which was put forward by Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) as an amendment to a Pentagon spending bill.
But supporters of the provision are now working to attach it to another piece of appropriations legislation that is headed to the House floor in the coming days.
The revival of the amendment comes over the objections of some House Republicans — particularly in the moderate GOP’s Tuesday Group — and Defense Secretary James Mattis.
Hartzler put forward the provision on care for transgender troops as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA); it failed by a 214-209 vote.
Two-dozen Republicans came together with 190 Democrats to vote against the package, but things could shift if it comes up again: six GOP members abstained or didn’t vote on the NDAA amendments.
Many Republicans were shocked that the package failed, an aide said, and lobbyists who had worked on the issue also told The Hill that the outcome was far from certain — even in the moments before the vote.
“We had been working this issue for weeks. At each point, we just had hurdles we had to get over,” said one lobbyist advocating against the Hartzler amendment, who asked for anonymity in order to speak about the process. “Going into that vote that morning that day, my anxiety level was so high because we were so close and it was going to be so tight.”
Mattis called Hartzler at least once, including the day of the NDAA vote, to urge her to withdraw the amendment. Two sources told The Hill that the Defense secretary also spoke with Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.) last week.
And now the lobbying process is beginning all over again, as the House prepares to vote on the legislation to fund the Defense Department.
The Hill spoke with seven Capitol Hill staffers and lobbyists about the issue, all of whom asked to remain off the record to protect their clients, employers or associates.
Some Republican lawmakers are angry with leaders for allowing the initial amendment to go to a vote last week, and are now fighting to keep it off the table again.
“There are many members who voted in favor of the amendment the first time but are advocating that the amendment not be made in order the second time,” said a Republican aide, mentioning an effort to push leaders. Conservative members are also reportedly pushing hard in favor of the measure.
The House Rules Committee, which is tightly controlled by GOP leadership, will meet Monday and Tuesday to decide which amendments make it into the Defense Department’s appropriations bill, including discussion on the Hartzler amendment.
The Family Research Council, Heritage Action and Alliance Defending Freedom have been among those urging members to support the amendment.
Hartzler and the amendment’s supporters ague that paying for transgender-related healthcare is too high a cost for the government — putting the projected figure above $1 billion over the next decade.
“The job of Congress is to ensure that our military is the most effective, efficient and well-funded fighting force in the world. With the challenges we are facing across the globe, we are asking the American people to invest their hard-earned money in national defense," Hartzler said in a statement. "Each dollar needs to be spent to address threats facing us."
Critics say Hartzler's figure is "fake," pointing two studies from the New England Journal of Medicine and the RAND Corporation that show projected costs of between roughly $2.4 million and $8.4 million.
Last year, the Obama administration ended the prohibition on transgender people serving openly in the military, but set a transition to occur in stages.
The Defense Department is currently reviewing whether to accept new soldiers who identify as transgender.
Opponents of the amendment are pushing back on a number of fronts, including on the basis of LGBT rights and the belief that the Pentagon should be setting military priorities.
“The job of our Armed Forces is to defend our country, and the DoD should be given more leeway than other parts of the executive branch with respect to personnel decisions,” wrote Rep. Justin Amash Justin AmashHouse to push back at Trump on border Ex-GOP lawmakers urge Republicans to block Trump's emergency declaration This week: Congress, Trump set for showdown on emergency declaration MORE (R-Mich.) in a Facebook post explaining his “no” vote on the Hartzler amendment.
“Those who serve in our Armed Forces deserve the best medical care. …. With respect to transgender persons, we should focus on the best science, not the political or philosophical opinions of partisans,” he said.
The Paul Singer-funded Republican LGBT advocacy group American Unity Fund — joined by the Palm Center and OutServe, two organizations that focus on LGBT individuals serving in the military, and Human Rights Campaign — led the charge on marshaling forces on Capitol Hill and the Pentagon against the amendment.
"The politics of these issues should have evolved to a point where leadership isn’t putting members in this position unnecessarily. You have a lot of prominent Republicans who have come a long way on this," said a Republican lobbyist who advocated against the amendment.
While public views on LGBT issues like same-sex marriage have shifted in recent years, transgender advocates say winning support from some Republicans would be an important milestone.
“To have a couple dozen house Republicans and a unified Democratic caucus take that vote to protect the transgender community, I think that’s a watershed moment” for transgender issues, said another Republican lobbyist who worked the issue.
“People are sick of toxic social issues. They’re sick of people playing political games and bully them to use must-pass legislation — in the NDAA or spending bills — to get these victories they otherwise wouldn’t have,” the lobbyist added.
It harkens back to an amendment last year, sponsored by Republican Rep. Steve Russell from Oklahoma, which would have provided a “religious liberty” exemption to an Obama executive order prohibiting government contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.
Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a leader of the Tuesday Group, was among a group of bipartisan lawmakers who launched a failed attempt to override it. The Russell amendment was ultimately removed from the NDAA in the Senate.
“After the Russell amendment, there is a heightened awareness regarding issues affecting the LGBT community,” said the Republican staffer. “People are paying much greater attention to those issues and amendments that affect those issues.”
— Updated on July 25 |
Joe Utichi contributes to Deadline’s UK coverage.
The current series of BBC Three hit Being Human, about a trio of supernatural roommates, will be its last. The characters will face the Devil himself in the program’s “apocalyptic end”, the BBC said. The show, which started airing its fifth series February 3, was created by Toby Whithouse and began life as a stand-alone pilot starring Andrea Riseborough, Russell Tovey and Guy Flanagan. Only Tovey carried over to the series, which has featured revolving main players like Lenora Crichlow, Aidan Turner and Sinead Keenan. Season 5’s cast of Michael Socha, Damien Molony, Kate Bracken and Steven Robertson will see the show out. A U.S. adaptation is currently airing an all-new third season on Syfy; the original has been a hit on BBC America since debuting in 2009. |
Images are important. We often use images to think about others, to understand them and to interact with them. But images can be wrong.
Some Christians, when imagining themselves to be generous, have an image of Atheists as “searchers”. They envision us as fumbling in the dark until we discover their brand of Truth. Or perhaps they use the image of the proverbial blind men who can only barely perceive the elephant [God]. Thus they see their role as being there to gently fill in our lack of vision. These Christians get their “seeker” image from one of their favorite Bible verses where Jesus says:
‘So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; Search, and you will find; Knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
— Luke 11: 9-10 (NRSV)
You see, using this image of us as searching for the truth, Christians can then feel they are part of God’s mission to help us — they are there to offer our blind eyes a glimpse of Jesus. To them, it is much more generous to see us as blind seekers rather than to just envision us as doomed blasphemous unbelievers. For if we are “seekers” or “searchers”, we are not yet full blown dangerous hell-fated heretics. To rid themselves of that image, they are compelled to sanitize us with the “Seeker Image”. For if they didn’t, they would have to contend with this haunting Bible verse that commands them to shun us:
Everyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, but goes beyond it, does not have God; whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. Do not receive into the house or welcome anyone who comes to you and does not bring this teaching; for to welcome is to participate in the evil deeds of such a person.
— 2 John 1:9-11 (NRSV)
Thus if they are truly Bible-loving Christians and they want to keep relating with us unbelievers, they must first sanitize us. They sanitize us by imaging us poor atheists as still “searching”. They then think of themselves as being in relationship to us so as to gently guide us toward the light — toward truth. Or perhaps to just be kind to us while God works with us. Either way, once they have sanitized us as being a “searcher” instead of just a pure outright blasphemer, they feel safe to continue relating to us. These images help ease their cognitive dissonance.
This sanitization is further needed because of another conscience-haunting Bible verse:
Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness?
— 2 Corinthians 6:14 (NRSV)
So, 2 John tells them to shun guests or strangers who don’t believe, while 2 Corinthians tells them to not even partner up with deniers of Christ.
So, how can a Bible-loving Christian deal with us hell-bound unbelievers? They must do something to cure their cognitive dissonance. Well, one method is to use the imagery in the Luke verse above (also in Matthew 7:7). They can use Luke and Matthew to help see us as seekers who may someday find Jesus. Doing this, they sanitize us and then can sweep those other nasty verses under their spiritual carpet and alleviate their mental distress.
But don’t let them sanitize you ! Get the image of a “searcher” out of their heads. Tell them you are an explorer !
Images are important. Don’t indulge them by letting them envision you as a blind seeker. This blind seeker image is fed by this story of Jesus healing a blind man just like you.
He [the former blind man] answered, ‘The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, “Go to Siloam and wash.” Then I went and washed and received my sight.’
— John 9:11 (NRSV)
I am an Explorer !
Instead of letting Christians sanitize you and thus letting them easing their consciences, keep that cognitive dissonance burning in their minds. Tell them you are not a seeker. Tell them you don’t need Jesus to rub mud in your eyes. Tell them you are not searching for either Jesus or God. Tell them you are not searching for the final truth of the universe so as to comfort your soul.
Let Christians know you are not burdened with spiritual confusion nor seeking the one answer. You are not a seeker. Instead, tell them you are an EXPLORER ! Instead of buying into their view that there is some final goal in life, tell them that “The path IS the goal”. You may appear as a seeker to them because you keep looking into all the various religious thoughts out there. But let them know you do it more as an anthropologist, a sociologist, ra psychologist, a scientist, an artist or a musician — not as a seeker. Give them the image of yourself as an excited explorer. |
Lowest-graded player at every position in NFL Week 6
By Bryson Vesnaver • Oct 18, 2016
Stick a fork in Week 6 of the NFL season, it’s done and over with. Quite a bit happened this past week, and as always, we saw some not-so-stellar play amidst the standout performances. While many like to push particularly poor games under the rug, here we bring those bad days into the light. What follows are the worst players at every position from the past week of football:
Quarterback: Derek Carr, Oakland Raiders, 35.8
After a hot start to the season, Derek Carr had his first poor game of the year against the Chiefs. While his stat-line doesn’t look horrible (22-for-34 for 225, a touchdown, and an interception) it doesn’t quite tell the whole story. His pick was a really bad throw, and he had another dangerous pass attempt that should have been intercepted. Carr also dropped a snap and had another fumble in the game.
Running back: Matt Forte, New York Jets, 42.7
Matt Forte was less than stellar in his Monday Night Football appearance, as he gained just 19 yards on nine carries and failed to force a single missed tackle. In the passing game, he caught one of three targets for 3 yards; he dropped the other two.
Wide receiver: Demaryius Thomas, Denver Broncos, 38.5
Demaryius Thomas had a Thursday night game to forget, as he caught just five passes on 10 targets. He gained just 37 yards—a mere 13 of those coming after the catch. Thomas also had a dropped pass and a key fumble as Denver was driving down the field late in the game.
Wide receiver: Marquise Goodwin, Buffalo Bills, 38.8
It wasn’t a great afternoon for Marquise Goodwin, as he caught just two passes on four targets for 22 yards. Goodwin also had an offensive pass-interference penalty, and made a mistake that cost him a catch on another target.
Slot receiver: Seth Roberts, Oakland Raiders, 47.6
Seth Roberts wasn’t horrible in his game for the Raiders, but much like the entire Oakland offense, he wasn’t good, either. Roberts caught just three passes on six targets for 29 yards against the Chiefs; all of those yards came after the catch. He also recorded a dropped pass.
Tight end: Ryan Griffin, Houston Texans, 37.6
Ryan Griffin wasn’t much help when it came to run blocking against the Colts, and he struggled in the passing game, too. Griffin caught three passes for just 31 yards and dropped the other two targets he saw.
Left tackle: Ryan Clady, New York Jets, 34.2
Ryan Clady actually graded positively in run blocking, which goes to show how poorly he played when pass blocking last night. He didn’t allow a sack, but did allow two QB hits and six hurries, as well as two other passing plays where he was beaten cleanly. Clady also took a holding penalty.
Left guard: Zane Beadles, San Francisco 49ers, 39.1
Beadles allowed two hits and two hurries when pass blocking, but struggled even more in the run game. He allowed three run stops and had multiple other plays in which he lost his block and let it affect the rusher.
Center: Cameron Erving, Cleveland Browns, 36.7
Cameron Erving was equally poor at both pass and run blocking on Sunday. He allowed a hit and three hurries, as well as a few other plays in which he was beaten. In the run game, he was unable to open pretty much any holes for Clevelands’ RBs, a group that gained just 37 yards on 14 carries.
Right guard: Germain Ifedi, Seattle Seahawks, 37.3
Another guard to struggle in the run game, rookie Germain Ifedi surrendered three tackles and another in which the tackle was missed by his man. He had a handful of other lost blocks, and in the passing game, allowed a QB hit and two hurries.
Right tackle: Donald Stephenson, Denver Broncos, 33.4
It was a stat-line to forget for Donald Stephenson on Thursday night, with two tackles surrendered in the run game, two quarterback hits, six hurries, twice beaten on pass plays with no pressure recorded, and two false start penalties. Not exactly a game for the ages.
Week 6 defense
Edge defender: Emmanuel Ogbah, Cleveland Browns, 38.1
While rookie Emmanuel Ogbah did record a sack in this game, it was a late-pursuit sack. In fact, it was his only pressure in the passing game, and in the run game he fared no better. Ogbah failed to make a single run stop, and only had one other tackle.
Interior defender: Vince Wilfork, Houston Texans, 36.2
The up-and-down season of Vince Wilfork continues with his worst game so far. Despite playing 47 snaps against the Colts, he failed to make any kind of impact. His stat-line looks like a baker’s dozen of donuts, as he had zeros across the board in pressures, stops, and tackles.
Interior defender: Corey Liuget, San Diego Chargers, 36.3
Corey Liuget was almost as invisible as Wilfork, were it not for the Charger’s batted pass against the Broncos. That was literally the only difference, as Liuget made no other major contributions for San Diego.
Edge defender: Erik Walden, Indianapolis Colts, 39.0
Walden had just two late hurries in the pass-rushing game, and made just one run stop all evening for the Colts. He was also the man in coverage on Texans RB Lamar Miller’s touchdown catch-and-run.
Linebacker: Karlos Dansby, Cincinnati Bengals, 30.1
Dansby’s low grade comes from his poor coverage game, where he graded at 24.2 thanks to surrendering all five targets he saw for 95 yards and two touchdowns. He missed two tackles on those receptions, as 52 of those yards came after the catch.
Linebacker: Michael Wilhoite, San Francisco 49ers, 32.1
This grade was solely because of Wilhoite’s unfortunate struggles in the run game. He posted a 22.3 run-defense grade, which is extremely low. He missed two tackles and was otherwise sealed off at the second level at an alarming rate, offering almost no fight in getting off blocks.
Cornerback: Ladarius Gunter, Green Bay Packers, 24.8
Ladarius Gunter won’t look back fondly on this game. He allowed six receptions on eight targets for 119 yards and two touchdowns, as he was torched by the Cowboys’ offense. Gunter didn’t offer much in the run game, either, losing the edge a handful of times.
Cornerback: Buster Skrine, New York Jets, 26.8
Buster Skrine was picked on often by the Cardinals, and responded by breaking the rules. He had three defensive-holding penalties and a pass-interference penalty, and still surrendered seven receptions for 69 yards on 10 targets.
Slot cornerback: Tavon Young, Baltimore Ravens, 45.9
It was a good week for slot corners not named Tavon Young; how unfortunate for the Raven. Young was targeted 11 times and allowed seven of those to be caught for 123 yards and two touchdowns. He did have a nice interception, though.
Safety: Eric Reid, San Francisco 49ers, 36.6
Eric Reid found most of his struggles stemming from the run game, where he missed two tackles. He was frequently sealed out of plays when trying to help out, and also surrendered two catches for 50 yards and a touchdown when in coverage.
Safety: Kemal Ishmael, Atlanta Falcons, 37.3
Kemal Ishmael saw most of his low grade result from his poor coverage. He was the lone coverage man on seven targets, and allowed five of those throws to be caught for 69 yards. Ishmael also recorded a missed tackle.
Week 6 special teams
Punter: Riley Dixon, Denver Broncos
Dixon had five punts on the day and averaged just 38.6 net yards per attempt. Four of the five were returned, and only two of them landed inside the 20-yard line.
Kicker: Cairo Santos, Kansas City Chiefs
Cairo Santos missed both an extra point and a 38-yard field goal on Sunday.
Kick returners: Kenny Wiggins and Travis Benjamin, San Diego Chargers
This is Worst Team of the Week history, as two players from the same team make it for the same position. Wiggins and Benjamin each had just one return, and they both muffed their opportunity. |
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*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
Investments in research and technologies in electrical generation and storage are highlighted in the plan to begin the movement toward carbon reductions. These are critical in two respects: appropriate technology varies depending on regional differences, and consequent economic benefits are substantial. This highlights a clear Canadian energy policy involving investments in clean energy, support for emerging clean-technology companies and a Canada Green Investment Bond to support both large and community-scale renewable-energy projects. Federal agencies could provide their facilities as test beds for prototype testing.
Climate change is correctly addressed as a technical problem on a world scale that can be corrected with appropriate technology. Climate scientists' calculations indicate the atmosphere currently holds about 400 parts per million (ppm): the ratio of carbon dioxide molecules compared to all other atmospheric molecules. Reducing this ratio to 350 ppm is the agreed-upon goal to neutralize human impacts.
There is much to commend, particularly the reliance on facts and research driving the plan. What a breath of fresh air after a decade of these being ignored. The plan weaves several major issues into a cohesive whole, including climate change, economic productivity, protection of special ecological systems and a revamp of Canada's decimated environmental-assessment capacity. Clearly, this vision derives from a team of experts, thinking long-term and focused on Canada's future economic and environmental viability.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 4/7/2015 (1333 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 4/7/2015 (1333 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has released the Liberal party's policy statement outlining a comprehensible forward-looking plan for "Canada's Environment and Economy".
There is much to commend, particularly the reliance on facts and research driving the plan. What a breath of fresh air after a decade of these being ignored. The plan weaves several major issues into a cohesive whole, including climate change, economic productivity, protection of special ecological systems and a revamp of Canada's decimated environmental-assessment capacity. Clearly, this vision derives from a team of experts, thinking long-term and focused on Canada's future economic and environmental viability.
Climate change is correctly addressed as a technical problem on a world scale that can be corrected with appropriate technology. Climate scientists' calculations indicate the atmosphere currently holds about 400 parts per million (ppm): the ratio of carbon dioxide molecules compared to all other atmospheric molecules. Reducing this ratio to 350 ppm is the agreed-upon goal to neutralize human impacts.
Investments in research and technologies in electrical generation and storage are highlighted in the plan to begin the movement toward carbon reductions. These are critical in two respects: appropriate technology varies depending on regional differences, and consequent economic benefits are substantial. This highlights a clear Canadian energy policy involving investments in clean energy, support for emerging clean-technology companies and a Canada Green Investment Bond to support both large and community-scale renewable-energy projects. Federal agencies could provide their facilities as test beds for prototype testing.
The plan shows how science can be used to understand environmental problems and the consequences of options to solve them. These are linked with economic theory and analysis and explain how environmental solutions also solve economic dilemmas. Investments in green technologies will improve productivity, instead of the current policy of spending public funds on petroleum-development subsidies, a cost that exacerbates climate change.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper argues the economy takes priority, implying addressing climate change cannot be an economic generator, but a luxury to be considered — when? This assumes climate change does not seriously impact Canada's economic foundations, now or in the future. Harper recently accepted an international political agreement to eliminate greenhouse gases by 2100. This is simply ridiculous. Before 2050, greenhouse gases must be significantly reduced to prevent global warming becoming self-generating.
While Harper is busy collecting data from the provinces to add them up for political advantage, the comprehensive Liberal plan involves working with provincial and territorial governments to address the actual fundamentals of climate change.
Trudeau's plan recognizes each province and territory has different resources, different energy sources and, therefore, different effects from climate change. It acknowledges effective solutions must account for these. One size does not fit all. Given the disrespect climate change impacts have for provincial boundaries, intergovernmental co-operation is essential. The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Agency, a former federal agency for addressing Prairie drought, is cited as an example of an integrating model. The Liberal proposal recognizes at times a federal emergency agency may need to pick up some of the overload, perhaps by equipping Canada's military to be world-class leaders in responding to weather-related emergencies.
Hopefully, new funding for the Experimental Lakes Area will evolve over time to the establishment of "ecological research stations" in all 15 major ecological systems in Canada. These would provide significant data and research to improve knowledge of the complexities within each ecological system and better insights into local climate change and how they might be mitigated.
A specific mechanism isn't spelled out to achieve all this. However, within a national framework, federal agreements will be needed with each province and territory to facilitate working together to identify, for each jurisdiction, specific circumstances, objectives and programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate impacts. Where necessary, adjacent provincial governments should be included in such co-operative arrangements. This approach is not without precedent.
The Liberal plan is a beginning and basis to build a way forward to improve productivity while dealing with Canada's responsibilities for climate change and long-term ecological vitality.
Jim Collinson consults on the complexities among energy, environment and economy, and was assistant deputy minister for the Department of Regional Economic Expansion (Western and Northern Canada) and Parks Canada. |
Websites that detect ad-blockers to stop their users from reading webpages could be illegal under European law.
Alexander Hanff, a privacy campaigner and programmer, says he has received a letter from the European Commission confirming that browser-side web scripts that pick out advert blockers access people's personal data (ie: the plugin stored on their computer). Thus, just like you need to give permission to EU websites to access and store your cookies, ad-blocker detectors must ask for permission before probing your browser.
Since so many people are bugging me for them here are photos of the relevant pages of letter. pic.twitter.com/vcTG0qdhIC — Alexander Hanff (@alexanderhanff) April 20, 2016
Therefore, under EU law in force since May 2011, people must give their consent before an anti-ad-blocker script can run and hide content on a page. Of course, while waiting for that consent from a visitor, the site could refuse to show anything, but then the publisher will scare off all readers, even the ones who turn out to be not running anti-ad plugins. If the page is viewable while waiting for the consent, then blocking ad-blockers is pointless.
Hanff has now said he will be using the commission's letter as the basis for a series of legal challenges against firms that use anti-ad-blocking software. Next week he'll also be setting up a website for people to identify websites that use the code, so that a list of potential defendants can been identified.
That's bad news for outlets that have decided to block anti-ad plugins. ® |
Aberdeen has come second on a list of least affordable cities in Scotland to buy a house in a new report.
The average house price in cities has risen by almost 3% from £181,061 in 2016 to £186,002 in 2017, compared to 1% across the whole of Scotland.
As a result, average home affordability has worsened for the fourth year in a row, from 5.2 to 5.3 times gross average earnings.
Edinburgh topped the list with Aberdeen, Perth, Dundee and Inverness making up the top five.
Graham Blair, mortgage director at Bank of Scotland, which conducted the report, said: “Homebuyers in Scotland’s cities have seen affordability levels worsen for the fourth consecutive year as average city house prices have continued to rise more steeply than average wage growth.
“However, the average price-to-earnings ratio in Scotland’s cities is 5.3 – lower than the UK cities average of 6.9.
“It’s little surprise that Edinburgh retains its title as Scotland’s least affordable city, with Aberdeen close behind.” |
A little bit of abstraction, a little bit of concrete advice. Usually when reading articles of that type (this type), I think it’s wise to discard the abstraction and see if you can walk away carrying only the practical advice, and form your own abstractions later as needed. No hard feelings. I find the abstract stuff fun to write and fun to think about, hopefully it’s a fun read too.
(Three Degrees of) Freedom in Deck Selection
On the topic of deck selection, friend of the website Adam Barnello recently advised, “I’m a subscriber to the idea that there is very rarely a de facto ‘best deck’ in any environment, but rather a spectrum of decks that are highly competitive; and the individual who is piloting the deck has a significant contribution to the value of the deck itself. In other words, pick the deck that’s best for you out of the group of decks that comprise the best in the field.”
Adam is not the first to express the idea, and many of my readers I suspect independently developed an understanding of this concept if they hadn’t already encountered it.
He’s right that the idea that there is a single best deck (i.e. there are 75 cards that you can say everyone who did not play made a mistake) is probably wrong and even if it’s true in some abstract sense, it is very probably wrong in practice.
Three variables interact when a Pro goes to select their deck:
Metagame evaluation (similar to a Keynesian Beauty Contest but a little different since your strategy doesn’t terminate with playing the most popular decks, but rather goes one step further to play the deck that’s best against the most popular decks), which interacts with The Power level of decks, which interacts with Your ability with the decks (inclusive of the experience you have with the decks and your ability at actually tuning the construction of the decks, as well as and the time you have available to improve).
Between metagame evaluation, power level, and your ability, there are three degrees of freedom. No one or two variables alone gives a Pro enough information to select their deck.
But there is a caveat for the non-top-Pro player: Your ability is also a threshold/gating variable that screens you off from playing decks you aren’t good enough to use. This makes it possible to know only one fact like “The only deck I know how to play is Goblins” and conclude that you should play Goblins. This works, but it doesn’t work well. It helps you select your deck in the same way a “what cards do I own?” algorithm helps you. It might be the best you can do, but if you’re reading these articles I hope you can do better.
The real danger of saying, “play the deck that’s best for you” is that this mindset encourages the aspiring Pro to not learn how to incorporate metagame evaluation and raw power level evaluation into their model for which deck to play. “Do the best exercise for you.” Sure, but don’t do only that. Don’t forget there are other things you could be doing. Don’t skip leg day.
(By the way, if you’re not an aspiring Pro, that’s fine of course, but then serious strategic advice about deck selection is not for you. I know part of Adam’s reasoning is that he wants to have fun, not just win. But for some of us, winning is first on our minds as we prepare, and fun always seems to show up to the same tournaments that winning does. If you’ve noticed that close kinship in your own Magic experience between winning and having fun, keep reading).
Dyson (Power in a Vacuum)
Is there truly an “in-a-vacuum” power level, raw power level, for a deck? Maybe (theoretically, with an alien supercomputer and/or a long timeline, you could build every possible 60-card deck [apologies to JWay] and simulate a round robin-tournament and emerge with a best deck). But probably not in the real world with no equilibrium for deck choices that resembles the arbitrary “every possible 60-card deck” field. In those real-life scenarios, you have to know something about the metagame to know a deck’s power level.
But still, “some decks are more powerful than others” is a better heuristic than “we don’t know which decks are powerful.” The reason is, at the tournament, there will be a metagame that emerged from ordered and predictable processes, even if you don’t know it. The map is not the territory. More specifically, your lack of a map does not mean the terrain is featureless. Some decks have a goal of dealing 20 damage quickly, and are usually (in typical metagames we should expect to face) better at it than other decks with similar goals. Some decks play control, but use cards like Cryptic Command that just tend to be very powerful in the Magic games we usually end up playing. Other decks have less “raw power” because they play a card like Soldier of the Pantheon that is neutralized fairly easily, is often a bad topdeck, is outclassed by something like Wild Nacatl if we’re talking about Modern, and rarely leads to a synergistic deck that can make up for these shortcomings. Does it mean playing these “weaker” decks is wrong? As I’ve already said, no it does not. There are other variables.
In sum, no there is not really a “raw power level,” but as soon as you assume some contours of the likely metagame, those assumptions have implications such that we can reasonably talk about Deck A being more powerful than Deck B (if we agree on the assumptions) in Format Y. If the format has existed for months or years, finding those broad background assumptions about the metagame and agreeing on them is pretty easy—it happens without even knowing it. Thus, we can say that in Modern, Tribal Zoo is a more powerful deck than White Weenie.
The Trade-offs
The more you know about which decks your opponents will likely show up with (metagame evaluation—a skill but also a property of the circumstances like new format vs. old format, recent reliable large events are available or they aren’t), the more you can trade off raw power for rogue choices, well-positioned tier 2 decks, or a deck you just love to play.
The better you are with a deck, the less you have to know about the metagame to select it (remember also that we bundled practice and tuning into “your ability” with the deck).
The more raw power the deck has, the less you have to know about the metagame to select it. Our raw power calculus basically assumes this to be true—it’s how you concluded the deck had raw power. Sounds somewhat circular, but in practice this means that when you are down to two decks, one you regard as “more powerful” and another you think is “better specifically against Decks A, B, and C” you better be pretty sure people are showing up in large numbers with Decks A, B, and C before you pick that latter option.
The True Master Has No Preferences, Only Abilities
If a roman gladiator is more deadly with a spear than a sword, what should he do with his preference for the sword? He should ignore it. Reaching his opponent’s vital organs with the weapon he doesn’t prefer is always preferable to failing to reach the opponent’s vital organs with his favorite weapon. Being optimistic and comfortable before a fight but dead after is a tempting trap.
So too with Goblin Guides and Mana Leaks instead of swords and spears.
Now, if you don’t know whether your gladiator is best with a spear or a sword, you might ask him which he prefers, since the belief and reality correlate positively to some degree. But if you do already know which he is best with, that knowledge removes the need to ask for his preferences before arming him. Your goal as a Magic player is to know your strengths, and listen to your preferences only while you are trying to learn your strengths, but no further.
This part is important but counter-intuitive: what matters is not how close to the deck’s ceiling you are, but how close to the format’s ceiling you are with the deck. Avoid latching on to local maxima when the global maximum is somewhere else.
The problem is, your preferences will naturally tend to track against one or more local maxima, the deck’s ceiling, not the global maximum, the format’s ceiling. This is how people end up playing with Mana Leak when Goblin Guide is best. They’ll understand this intuitively but discard that dissonant intuition with stuff like, “well, if other people make the same choice (mistake) I did, I feel like I’ll have an edge in the mirror.” Maybe, maybe not, but you’ve already failed.
“But,” said the careful reader and Pro Tour history addict, “Guillame Wafo-Tapa is in the Hall of Fame!”
Even if Wafo could play Burn, and Burn was the best deck for the field, he would still be wise to play control given that he is Guillame Wafo-Tapa… Wait a second. Did you catch that? We’re granting allowances to Wafo that I don’t think we’d be willing to grant ourselves if everything written above is true. For all we knew, Wafo was skipping leg day his whole life, but he found enough tournaments where only upper-body strength mattered that he made the Magic Pro Tour Hall of Fame.
I will strongly encourage you, again, to not skip leg day. If you’ve only got time to learn one deck at a time, switch decks every so often to get that core skill set with multiple archetypes.
Maybe Wafo’s run of good fortune where the local control maximum was close to the global format maximum will or has come to an end and Wafo won’t quite win as much at Magic. No big deal, he’s having fun. But remember, I’m writing this for the gladiators. When your opponents figure out how to defend the sword, or Weapons of the Coast stops selling awesome swords, you will be killed.
Maybe the Wafo that follows this article ends up Matt Sperling, a grinder who isn’t the best at any one thing and doesn’t have a HoF resume. But more likely he ends up Wrapter (Josh Utter-Leyton), a versatile HoF-level Pro who you really don’t want to face even on the weeks control isn’t that good. I suspect it’s the latter because all the Magic decks are hard. They’re all hard, trust me. He’s demonstrated skill with some, he’s capable of being good with the others. Wafo in our alternate universe (and maybe in our actual universe, there’s no way for me to know for sure) could still play control when it’s good but he could also play Wild Nacatl when Wild Nacatl is good, or Tempered Steel if Tempered Steel is good (Wrapter has done both).
The Beauty of the Beauty Contest
What you think is the best deck ultimately depends on what you think others will think is the best deck, based on what they think you and others will think is the best deck. The last step of determining how to attack the metagame once you’ve estimated it does involve taking stock of your abilities, but in my experience you will be better served in the medium and long term by reducing the weight you place on the abilities aspect of the decision, which will, by happy accident, get you the exposure to other deck types that you need to develop a well-rounded game.
You don’t just want to win the PPTQ that’s in front of you, you want to win the PTQ or Top 8 the GP. And you don’t just want to qualify for the Pro Tour, you want to Top 25 that Pro Tour. And eventually, years later, you want (who are we kidding, I WANT) to become one of the best ever. If you don’t, I’m sure there’s a nice Commander article somewhere on this website you can check out.
-Matt Sperling
Mtg_law_etc on Twitter. |
Gary He/Associated Press
Rush Limbaugh, the pre-eminent conservative talk-radio host, will remain at a Honolulu hospital Thursday, the guest host of his show said.
Mr. Limbaugh was rushed to the hospital Wednesday afternoon after complaining of chest pains.
“Those pains were the kind of pains that makes one feel like he as a heart attack coming on, but it has not been confirmed that it is a heart attack,” Mr. Limbaugh’s guest host, Walter E. Williams, told listeners Thursday afternoon. “Today, Thursday, he’ll have a complete examination and we’ll know more. We’ll keep everyone informed when there’s information to share.”
Mr. Williams said “Rush continues to rest very comfortably in the hospital in Honolulu,” adding, “He had a comfortable night. He’s getting good medical attention.”
“The Rush Limbaugh Show” is being led by substitute hosts this week while Mr. Limbaugh is on vacation; he was scheduled to return on Monday, Jan. 4.
Rush Limbaugh’s Web site this morning confirmed that the talk show host had been taken to a hospital, saying in a posting:
Rush was admitted to a Honolulu hospital today and is resting comfortably after suffering chest pains. Rush appreciates your prayers and well wishes. He will keep you updated via RushLimbaugh.com and on Thursday’s radio program.
His syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, had no further comment.
The statement was issued after a Honolulu television station, KITV, reported on Mr. Limbaugh’s hospitalization Wednesday.
The station said that paramedics responded to a call at 2:41 p.m. from the Kahala Hotel and Resort, and then took Mr. Limbaugh to the Queen’s Medical Center, where he was listed in serious condition.
A hospital spokesman, N. Makana Shook, would not not comment on the report when called by The New York Times Wednesday night, and Mr. Limbaugh’s associates could not be reached for comment.
The KITV report said that Mr. Limbaugh has been in the islands during the holidays, and had been seen golfing at a local country club next to the Kahala resort.
Mr. Limbaugh is the country’s leading purveyor of political talk radio, reaching millions of listeners on about 600 stations. “Limbaugh is a master of the airwaves,” Michael Harrison, the editor of the radio industry publication Talkers Magazine, said last year. “He is the best talent on the air in modern broadcasting.” |
OH MY GOSH. My yarn exchange match REALLY outdid themselves. I am so, so happy! I opened the box and and was first greeted by a BIG bag of M&M's (YUM) and a box of tea. Serious sleuthing must have happened to figure out that I am a tea lover, so way to go, SS! I can't wait to try the chai (perhaps while casting on...?).
Then I removed the top-secret bubble wrap to reveal...holy crap!! SO MUCH YARN! And SO PRETTY! I am not exaggerating or being facetious when I say I squealed with delight. AND they sent me patterns for suggestions for what to make with the yarn! I cannot wait to make my first pair of socks with the gorgeous rainbow yarn...and to make Henry's rabbit (which I have been wanting to make forever, but I don't even think it's in my Ravelry queue, so my SS must be psychic) with Brava. I have always wanted to try Brava, so I'm super excited! And the shawl pattern is gorgeous and will go perfectly with the autumn-y colored yarn. I have never seen (let alone used) such gorgeous yarn before.
Ok, seriously, SS. I don't know how you did it, but you read my mind on everything. You are amazing. I just wish I knew your reddit username! Please reveal yourself!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! You are amazing! |
1 of 58 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × A look at President Trump’s first six months in office View Photos Scenes from the Republican’s beginning months in the White House. Caption Scenes from the Republican’s beginning months in the White House. Jan. 25, 2017 Trump signs an executive order for border security and immigration enforcement improvements at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington. Chip Somodevilla/Pool photo via Bloomberg News Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
The Trump campaign website got an upgrade this week. According to a news release from the president's reelection campaign (yes, already), it's now a one-stop shop for “fact-based information” that the mainstream media doesn't want you to know about.
On donaldjtrump.com, you can check out never-before-seen rally photos, buy merchandise and get the real, unfiltered scoop on what your president is up to.
Sounds pretty handy. One problem: The website revamp also appears to have vanished every single news release and public statement issued during President Trump's first campaign.
Gone is Trump's call in 2015 for a ban on Muslim visitors, which The Washington Post's Fred Barbash wrote about in detail.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals examined a ruling that blocks the administration from temporarily barring new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. (C-SPAN)
But gone also is his famous statement on “COMPELLING MEXICO TO PAY FOR THE WALL”; and the less-famous one comparing refugees to car payments; and the write-up of “TRUMP'S 'VERY GOOD' ECONOMIC SPEECH.”
You'll notice we're still linking to these items.
Whatever the reasons for their disappearance from the website, the statements are all preserved in the Internet's unofficial archives. So naturally, people are now sifting through them, assembling highlight reels of the campaign's greatest literature — even if it no longer officially exists.
Here's our attempt.
Disclaimer: This can't possibly be a complete or even representative sampling of Trump's many, many deleted campaign statements, of which nearly a dozen were once issued in a single day.
Here's what appears to be the very first of them: a March 18, 2015, announcement of Trump's presidential exploratory committee.
It quotes his senior political adviser, Corey Lewandowski: “Mr. Trump has the vision and leadership skills to bring our country back to greatness.”
Lewandowski, you may recall, went on to become Trump's campaign manager — then abruptly resigned after a string of accusations that he roughed up reporters and made inappropriate comments to women.
The early Trump campaign communicated with a bombast that alternately repelled and captivated the electorate.
“The American Dream is dead — but if I win, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before.” — Trump, announcing his candidacy in June 2015.
Even something as perfunctory as filing a financial disclosure statement became, in the campaign's wording, a feat of paperwork “not designed for a man of Mr. Trump's massive wealth.”
“First people said I would never run, and I did,” Trump said in that statement. “Then, they said I would never file my statement of candidacy with the FEC, and I did. Next, they said I would never file my personal financial disclosure forms. I filed them early.”
The next logical step in that sequence, however, continues to vex Trump as president: He never released his tax returns.
President Trump on April 16 issued two tweets in which he criticized protesters who marched the day before to demand that he release his tax returns. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
“I've studied this issue in greater detail than almost anybody.” — Trump, condemning the Iran nuclear deal in a campaign statement March 21, 2016
By the end of 2015, despite experts discounting his chances, Trump was making policy promises in his statements.
“Bring China to the bargaining table by immediately declaring it a currency manipulator,” for example.
Trump didn't actually follow through on that declaration. He didn't need to, he told a reporter last month: “As soon as I got elected, they stopped.”
“To be endorsed by a Gold Star mother is such a wonderful honor.” — Trump, quoted in a February 2016 statement “His wife, if you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say.” — Trump, quoted in a July 2016 release, after two Gold Star parents condemned his attacks on Muslims
While his ultimate rival was Hillary Clinton, Trump campaigned nearly as often against the current White House.
“What President Obama gets wrong about deal making is that he constantly applies pressure to our friends and rewards our enemies,” he said in a March 2016 speech, the transcript of which was released in full as a campaign statement, now deleted.
After he assumed the Oval Office from Barack Obama nearly a year later, transcripts leaked from phone calls in which Trump reportedly berated some of the United States's closest allies.
President Trump has extended an invitation to the White House to Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, despite the bloody drug war Duterte is carrying out in his country. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
Trump has since been accused of cozying up to strongmen and U.S. rivals around the world, including Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who was invited to the White House last month after prosecuting a murderous drug war.
“Trump's New Deal for Black America” — title of a campaign statement released a week before Election Day
As Trump kept winning primary elections, the political establishment he loved to denigrate began to take his rhetoric more seriously.
Last May, Trump's campaign released a list of 11 candidates he might name to the Supreme Court should he win. Months later, he added 10 more — “an unprecedented move for American presidential candidates,” the Atlantic wrote.
They hadn't seen anything yet. Once in office, according to the New York Times, Trump orchestrated “an 'Apprentice'-style finale” in which his top two choices headed toward the White House on the same night, only for the president to reveal Judge Neil M. Gorsuch as the next Supreme Court justice.
In the waning days of his campaign, the typical Trump statement had evolved from occasionally typo-strewn bombast into multi-pointed plans for what he'd do in office.
Many of these promises came true. Like withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership — foretold in an August campaign statement, and accomplished in his first week as president.
Another bullet point in that same statement proved thornier: “Repeal and replace Obamacare (will be outlined in-depth in a future speech).”
But by March, when the White House finally released what Trump called a “beautiful” health care plan, many analysts found it vague. And Congress failed to even vote on it.
Trump got a redo this month. A partial repeal of Obamacare passed through the House, though many Republicans openly acknowledged that they hadn’t read the bill.
Which recalls another Trump quote you can no longer find on his campaign website: a November statement in which he complains about the passage of the Affordable Care Act and that “no one even read the 2,700-page bill.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to questions about why statements released before January appear to have been removed from its website.
You can read them all on the Internet Archive. There's also a faster-loading cut-and-paste archive at the American Presidency Project.
This article has been updated.
More reading:
The violent rally Trump can’t move past
Meet the activist who calls Trump an anti-Semite using Anne Frank’s name
A complete guide to every reference in Melissa McCarthy’s epic Sean Spicer sketch on ‘SNL’ |
Sign us up for this reboot.
Black Panther costars Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira recently took their friendship to the next level by throwing a joint Coming to America-themed birthday party.
The friends, who are starring in director Ryan Coogler’s upcoming Marvel film, joined forces to celebrate their respective birthdays in style — Zamunda style.
In honor of the classic Eddie Murphy film about an African prince who gives up everything to move to America, Nyong’o dressed up as the Lady-in-Waiting, while the Walking Dead star was the Queen-to-Be.
Many members of the Black Panther cast attended, including T’Challa himself Chadwick Boseman, Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), and Winston Duke (Person of Interest). Singer and Hidden Figures star Janelle Monáe also made an appearance.
This isn’t the first time Nyong’o, an Oscar winner for 12 Years a Slave, and Gurira have worked together. Last year, Nyong’o starred in Eclipsed, a Broadway play written by Gurira.
See the birthday festivities below. |
Share. Burdened by the ghosts of its past. Burdened by the ghosts of its past.
There's a lot of negativity stacked against Ghostbusters, a remake/reboot of the beloved franchise starring four women -- Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones -- instead of the four men that fans have become accustomed to. Like it's hard to walk into the film unbiased by the previous films it takes its name from, it's hard to walk into Ghostbusters unaffected by the fact so many people decided to hate this movie on premise alone.
I wanted to love this new Ghostbusters, but unfortunately it is just fine, though not for the reasons many would expect. The Ghostbusters themselves are great; Wiig and McCarthy ground the film with a great friendship and the chemistry they established during their previous work with Feig together, each taking on a different sort of role than what they've become known for in their other comedy work. Jones is also fantastic, being the layman who blends so well with the other three scientists on her team and nailing her jokes every time.
Exit Theatre Mode
Even McKinnon, who wasn't as much of a scene-stealer as was expected after becoming immediately memeable from Ghostbusters' trailers, brings something different to a movie that hews in many ways back to the 1984 original. You can't help but root for these four, who are just trying to use hard science to prove the paranormal exists and make New York City a safer place. They're the heart of Ghostbusters, and in many ways they're the thing that keeps it chugging along.
Ghostbusters, written by Feig and Katie Dippold, largely follows the structure of Ivan Reitman's first film. Wiig's Abby Yates and McCarthy's Erin Gilbert are former friends and paranormal investigators who are brought back together after a rift in their friendship when, with Erin's new nuclear engineer pal Jillian Holtzman (McKinnon), they encounter their first ghost. As more and more malevolent entities start popping up in New York, they perfect their equipment and gain a new ally (Jones's Patty Tolan) and discover someone is trying to summon the ghosts to bring about a paranormal apocalypse.
Exit Theatre Mode
The plot is nothing new, but also largely works. It's the friendship between the four Ghostbusters that keeps the film moving along, and though there are rifts that pull them apart, you always feel like they're on the same team. The story offers a new mythology for the ghost girls and it's fun seeing them work together. When they finally do come in to save the day, their journey to that point feels earned.
Unfortunately, it's the pacing and editing that is the biggest problem with the movie. Ghostbusters is a comedy first, and for all that haters blasted the movie for starring four women, it's actually director Paul Feig who doesn't seem like he's the right fit for the series. In terms of Feig's brand of comedy, Ghostbusters is more Spy than Bridesmaids, but his humor never quite jibes appropriately with the tone of the film. It doesn't help that the pacing undercuts what could have otherwise been strong moments. Reveals meant to be impactful, like Abby's explanation of why she was called "ghost girl," aren't given the set up they need and are later relied on too heavily. It's clear this script and final cut went through multiple revisions, but could have still used another pass to create a more cohesive product.
Exit Theatre Mode
McKinnon's character Holtzmann is the biggest example of this. It's clear from the immediate reactions online to her nutso take on the nuclear engineer that people were excited for the comedy she was performing. But almost all of her scenes don't land properly, both because the movie doesn't make time for McKinnon to do her thing and also because this gimmick feels like it's meant for a different movie.
There was a cohesion lacking across the board with the pacing, with long lulls without big comedy moments and a movie that felt long in its 116-minute running time. It's a shame, too, because much of the movie works on paper. The ongoing gag that repeatedly worked was Chris Hemsworth's character Kevin, their secretary who is sweet but dumb as bricks. Hemsworth commits to Kevin's idiocy and knows how to play perfectly off of the four leads, but even that joke doesn't work as well by the end of the movie.
Exit Theatre Mode
Ghostbusters can't decide whether it wants to be a completely new take on the property or a loving homage to the original, and because of that it's trapped between the two. As much as Feig and Dippold remix the formula, there are too many callbacks to the original, from the cameos (only one or two of which actually work) to the catchphrases to the iconic songs to even the new film's version of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. But when Ghostbusters is doing its own riffs on these elements anyway, the film becomes burdened by the ghosts of its past.
It's frankly disappointing that the new Ghostbusters movie doesn't work as well as it had the potential to. The film is conscious of the criticisms and vitriol that has already been leveled against it and that is steeped into its DNA, all the way to the mid-credits ending. I wanted this to be a movie as worthy as a cult following as the film on which it's based, but for all that does work about Ghostbusters -- and, again, it's the leads that carry it as much as they can -- there's plenty that holds it back from being great.
Exit Theatre Mode |
On Thursday, the United States activated its missile defense system in Romania. The $800 million dollar system is the first of its kind in Europe, and aims to defend the US and Europe from, "rogue states," namely, Iran.
Russia, however, insists that the US aim is to neutralize Moscow's nuclear arsenal long enough for the US to strike Russia.
According to Putin, "This is not a defense system. This is part of U.S. nuclear strategic potential brought onto a periphery. In this case, Eastern Europe is such periphery." He also said that the missile shield was, "yet another step to rock international security and start a new arms race."
Apparently, the Kemlin has viewed this project all along as a threat to its own national security, and says that steps are being taken to ensure Russia's safety, no matter what. Though Russia refuses to be drawn into another arms race, it is rearming and rebuilding its army and navy in a way that will, "uphold the current strategic balance of forces."
The new missile shield system is capable of shooting down rockets meant to reach major European cities. This missile shiled is meant to stretch from Greenland to the Azores. It is expected to be ready by the end of 2018.
Similar to Israel's Iron Dome, Romania's new missile shield relies on radars to detect the launch of a ballistic missile into space. Sensors then measure the rocket's trajectory and fire an interceptor missile, destroying the offending missile while it is in space, and before it re-enters the earth's atmosphere. The interceptor missiles can be fired from the ground or from ships.
Chairman of the State Duma's defense committee, Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, claimed that the missile defense site is a threat to Russia.
“They are moving to the firing line. This is not just 100; it’s 200, 300, 1,000% aimed against us," Komoyedov said.
It is not clear what Russia's response will be. It is speculated that Russia will place missiles capable of carrying missiles in Kaliningrad.
The United States and NATO insist that this shield is not meant for use against Russia, but against countries in the Middle East. |
In October 2014, Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate students Sydney Do and Andrew Owens released an independent research report on Mars One — a not-for-profit organization that wants to create a long-lasting human colony on Mars. The findings were bleak, casting into doubt the credibility of the project. Initially Do and Owens were dismissed by the organization as "undergraduates." But Mars One continued to be buffeted by criticism; the group belatedly scheduled a debate with Do and Owens on August 13th at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. It has been nearly a year since Do and Owens released their report, and it was the first time Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp has responded to them directly.
For space enthusiasts, the showdown promised to be as epic as Ripley battling the queen xenomorph.
Mars One captured space geeks’ attention by promising to send them to Mars in the mid-2020s. The organization’s stated goals are to send a lander with communications capabilities to Mars in 2020 as a "demonstration mission." Then, in 2022, to send an "intelligent" rover to the planet, which will drive around the Martian surface to find the best location for the Mars One settlement. A cargo mission will launch in 2024, carrying a second rover and the bulk of the supplies needed for the habitat; the rovers will then assemble the outpost before the first humans land in 2027. That first settlement mission will be followed by additional crews of four landing every two years.
It was the first time Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp has responded to them directly
Do and Owens used the Mars One plans — at least, the ones they could find — to run feasibility tests on the mission. They presented their results last year at the 65th International Astronautical Congress in Toronto, Canada. The MIT researchers analyzed the living conditions on Mars, including food production, cabin pressure, and habitat construction. Mars One’s current plans would probably kill its astronauts within the first few months of the mission, they concluded.
In response, Mars One attacked the MIT team’s credibility. "It’s not an MIT report, it’s a report by a couple of MIT students — bachelor students who don’t have their PhD degree yet," Lansdorp said in February during a radio interview. Mars One spokesperson Suzanne Flinkenflӧgel employed the same tactic during an interview with TechNewsWorld in late March. The study was written by a "couple of undergraduate students," she said. And the organization’s chief medical officer, Norbert Kraft, repeated the same message to a Verge reporter in early April. "You’re talking about the undergraduate study? It’s not PhD, they are undergraduates, I’m sorry. They’re undergraduate students who wrote a paper to go to a conference, and that’s what it is."
"First of all, it’s really sad they’re mocking the work of students, because that just hurts our community and industry," Do told The Verge earlier this year. "But second of all, we’re not undergrads."
Lying about the qualifications of your critics isn’t a good look, and Mars One eventually figured that out. Which is why Lansdorp decided to address Do and Owens personally in DC. The three of them came for the 18th Annual International Mars Society Convention to discuss the feasibility of Mars One in public debate.
From left to right, Sydney Do, Barry Finger, the Mars Society moderator, Andrew Owens, and Bas Lansdorp pose for a photo after the debate.
Do and Owens stepped up to the podium and began their presentation clad in black, single-breasted business suits. Do was clean-shaven, while Owens sported a manicured beard. The two spent 20 minutes clearly and carefully outlining their findings, using language a layperson can understand.
First, they said, Mars One will have to significantly improve on current space landing systems. That’s contrary to the organization’s claims that the mission will be "built entirely upon existing technology." At the moment, engineers can drop something that weighs a metric ton (more than 2,200 pounds) on Mars without destroying it, but anything heavier is much more difficult. That’s because of Mars’ atmosphere: it’s thinner than Earth’s, so engineers can’t rely on wind resistance to slow things headed for the surface. Mars One’s plans require them to land at least 2.5 metric tons (5,500 pounds) of food for their 2024 cargo mission; this means the organization will need an entirely new method of landing.
The main argument revolved around the sheer cost of sustaining a space colony indefinitely
This was just a warm-up, though. Do and Owens’ main argument revolved around the sheer cost of sustaining a space colony indefinitely. Mars One has said that sending its first crew to Mars would cost about $6 billion. Each additional one-way trip to Mars — trips that would send more "settlers" to the Red Planet — would cost $4 billion. Those estimates include equipment costs and operational costs, the company says. Planning a one-way mission might seem drastic, but it’s "the only way we can get people on Mars within the next 20 years," according to the project’s website. Sending people back home after a few months, or years, would be too costly — and technology that would allow someone to return from Mars doesn’t exist yet.
But the cost advantage of a one-way mission is questionable, as spare parts become a crucial issue, Do and Owens said. For instance, to keep the International Space Station operational, NASA must launch a steady stream of cargo missions to replenish the station's supplies. Hardware breaks frequently on the ISS; astronauts spend a lot of time doing repairs. A settlement on Mars — surrounded by lots of fine dust that can clog complex air filtration systems — will likely need a lot of spare parts, Do and Owens argued. But unlike the ISS, which is resupplied every few months, the Mars One settlement will receive supply shipments only once every 26 months.
The MIT team argued the amount of spare parts needed for a growing colony will cost hundreds of billions of dollars — and those costs will only increase. The mission gets more expensive over time, "in an unsustainable manner," Do said in a March interview. "You have to resupply the colony indefinitely." Which means Mars One’s $6 billion estimate is probably low. Even NASA estimates that its human mission to Mars, which is planned for the 2030s, will cost between $80 to $100 billion.
Mars (ESA/MPS for OSIRIS Team)
There is technology that could help alleviate the resupply problem: 3D printing. But material for the printers will still need to be shipped from Earth. And while it’s possible that Martian soil could be used as stock in the printers, the technology required to use dirt as a source of "ink" for 3D printing tools probably won't be ready by the time Mars One plans to launch.
Essentially, the conclusion of Do and Owens’ work is that the cost of the Mars One mission grows exponentially over time. Even if the astronauts somehow make it to Mars, the settlers will need a monumental amount of supplies or else they will die horribly. "Our belief based on the data is that, no they cannot do this," said Owens, rounding out their presentation.
Bas Lansdorp decided the best counterargument was nostalgia
Lansdorp then stepped up to rebut their argument. Tall and thin, with very little hair, the Mars One CEO was dressed casually, wearing a blue button-down, a beige blazer, and jeans. He spoke softly and slowly, with a thick Dutch accent, beginning his 20-minute presentation with an anecdote about the time he watched the Apollo 11 astronauts walk on the Moon. He asked if anyone in the room remembered what it felt like to see those men take their first steps on another body in space. "It was one of the few moments in history where the whole world came to a stand still for a positive reason," he said. The trip down memory lane lasted at least five minutes.
Eventually, Lansdorp addressed the MIT study, which was, in theory, the reason he was there. He admitted that Mars One should have embraced the study’s findings instead of attacking them, as they were essentially free feedback from engineers with expertise. He then proceeded to backtrack on the mission's timeline, without giving specifics on what was being delayed, or until when. "Our plan is not etched in stone, and we’ve already announced delays," he said. "Reality catches up with your plan." If Mars One does delay again, it won’t be the first time. The organization had originally planned to land humans on Mars in 2023. They changed that date to 2025, before settling recently on 2027.
Lansdorp presented only one slide for the evening: an infographic of all the vehicles used for the Apollo missions. It seemed as though, faced with the logistical problems the MIT duo has identified, he decided the best counterargument was nostalgia: Mars One is possible because of how NASA stepped up to President John F. Kennedy's challenge of sending humans to the Moon in the 1960s. If they can do it, so can we, he implied. It's a sentiment he repeated at least four times throughout the evening.
The Martian surface and Mars One's vision for a Mars habitat. (NASA/Mars One)
At no point did Lansdorp directly address the claims made by MIT. He provided no concrete details regarding the mission's rockets, landers, interplanetary vehicles, or habitats. He barely touched on any science. He left that to his partner Barry Finger, an engineer and director for Paragon Space Development Corporation.
Paragon, a company that builds life support systems for extreme environments, conducted its own feasibility study of Mars One, released in July. Paragon’s report came to some similar conclusions as the MIT study: technology development and adaptation are still needed for the mission to work. But despite the evening’s premise, Finger didn’t address Do and Owens' claims. Instead, his presentation was a complicated history lesson of how Paragon has solved engineering problems in the past — essentially a technology-focused continuance of Lansdorp’s pep talk. It was not exactly a convincing rebuttal, filled with lots of technical jargon and presented so poorly that it was hard to follow along. And of course, past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results, as the finance world is so fond of reminding us.
At no point did Lansdorp directly address the claims made by the MIT students
Then it was time for the question-and-answer session. In response to one question, Lansdorp admitted that the $6 billion cost estimate may be unrealistic. He didn’t offer up an alternative cost estimate or suggest that Mars One would be seeking additional funding, though. He also repeated the claim that Mars One would require less funding because there would be no return mission — an argument the MIT students reminded him wasn’t correct.
It turns out Mars One is currently hurting for cash. Lansdorp said the organization has only $700,000, garnered from its candidates' application fees and early investors. That isn’t enough money to pay Lockheed Martin to do a concept study — part of the organization’s initial plans. Mars One is currently asking for $15 million from investors to make that happen. Lansdorp, however, is confident that he "might actually get a phone call from a billionaire who says, 'I want to make this happen,'" he said. That seems to be the crux of the mission's financial plan: make a big splash in the media to attract big investors. Then, private space companies will offer up their services and figure out all the technical details for them.
So Lansdorp has proposed a reality show. Mars One plans to launch a 24/7 TV show that will follow the final colonist candidates as they train and prepare for the mission ahead. Lansdorp said the broadcast rights and sponsorships for that show will greatly exceed those of the Olympic Games, which he claimed averaged around $8 billion for the 2010 and 2012 cycles. (The source link for this number is broken on the Mars One website.)
Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp addressed criticisms of the organization in a YouTube video.
The evening devolved from there. "The rockets aren’t the problem; the transit is not the problem," said Lansdorp about the biggest challenges they have to face, as Do and Owens just stared at him with their brows furrowed. "Landing on Mars… I’ve talked with several engineers from NASA who say they can do that with the current method." Maybe so. But the space agency has stated publicly that NASA can’t land more than one metric ton with current landing technology.
"Bashing NASA does not prove the feasibility of Mars One."
At one point, Owens confronted Lansdorp about a claim that the CEO made on television, saying that the organization had conducted its own feasibility study and found that Mars One is possible with current technology. "There’s science conferences and then there’s TV," says Lansdorp sheepishly. "As the CEO of the company, I always have to balance between how I phrase things." That feasibility study never happened; Lansdorp went on TV and lied.
Lansdorp was repeatedly asked for concrete details about the Mars One mission plan, but avoided answering with specifics. Instead he parroted the same talking point over and over again: NASA stepped up to Kennedy’s challenge, so Mars One can step up to this challenge. After Lansdorp said this for the fourth time, the MIT team just sat there shaking their heads.
Then, Lansdorp grasped at another argument, stating that NASA has been promising us a mission to Mars for the past 45 years and it has yet to happen. The argument was met by applause from the audience. Owens grabbed the microphone from Lansdorp: "Bashing NASA does not prove the feasibility of Mars One." The statement was met by even greater applause. In fact, nothing Lansdorp said during the debate proved the feasibility of Mars One. In the end, Mars One was in about the same shape as the queen xenomorph, flailing uncontrollably after it got blown out of the air lock.
Sean O'Kane and Arielle Duhaime-Ross contributed to this report. |
LAKE COUNTY, Fla. - Red Tomlin and Lyge Perry live on the same street in their Leesburg community, but the two friends are riding out Hurricane Irma in a concrete parking garage instead of their mobile homes or in a shelter.
Leesburg is Florida’s most hurricane-safe city, according to HomeInsurance.com, due to its low flood score and its low amount of storm-related deaths and damage. The city occupies about 24 square miles of central Florida’s Lake County and is home to more than 21,000 residents.
Two of those residents, Tomlin, 70, and Perry, 69, are waiting out the storm together from a Leesburg City Parking garage near the city's library.
They've been friends for 55 years but this is the first time they're waiting out a storm together. They brought snacks and hope to go home Monday after the storm passes.
Instead of heading to one of the area shelters the duo decided on an area with a little more open space.
"Concrete structure, yeah, it’s not going anywhere and I don’t want to be around a bunch of people laying 3-inches from someone else,” Tomlin said.
Perry said he thought the idea to hole up in the garage was a big secret, but others started filling the garage too.
"Those shelters are going to smell Avon and armpits, honestly, and I have COPD I can’t tolerate it I need fresh air," Perry said.
The friends plan to stay in the garage through the worst of Hurricane Irma Sunday and Monday.
"I hope it’s not more than a day. I don’t have a lot longer to live," Perry joked.
Copyright 2017 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved. |
(Photo: via Shutterstock )
A world without democracy, ruled by a technocratic elite serving the interests of US and global capital – protecting “investor rights” against national laws and regulations – is now being created in secret negotiations over free-trade treaties, one of which, the TransPacific Parnership (TPP), may be sewn up this fall. Can popular will stop it?
For four decades now, we have seen corporate-led neoliberal globalization transforming nation-states into globalized states that serve the interests of transnational capital above the interests of national populations. This tendency has been strong in states both of the global North and of the global South. Everywhere sovereignty is being compromised. The ideal political system most suitable for such globalized states is polyarchy, since it legitimates relatively autonomous elite rule. However, even in such a managed “democracy,” there are moments when elites can be made accountable to national populations through the struggles of social movements. Occupy Wall Street was the beginning of such a social movement.
As philosopher Milton Fisk has argued in The State and Justice: An Essay in Political Theory, in the class-divided societies of capitalist countries, the function of the state is to maintain the social order. This means the political elite promotes the interests of the economically dominant class. This is due to what István Mészáros calls “the metabolic reproductive process” of capitalist society. However, to maintain governability, it is sometimes necessary to limit the benefits going to capital and to increase the benefits going to the popular classes. How far the elite moves in the direction of social justice depends on the level of the subject classes’ political activity. The elite’s default position is to favor the interests of capital, if only because the interests of the dominated classes depend on them.
A state is a democratic nation-state insofar as it represents the interests of the peoples it governs. That nation includes both the dominant class of capitalists and the dependent popular classes. The constellation of class forces within the nation at any given time directs the nation-state. The state mediates class relations, as, for instance, in constructing the class compromise of the capital-labor accord represented in the Fordist regime of production, a model of economic expansion named after Henry Ford.
Popular Sovereignty Gone with Globalization
However, with globalization, transnational corporate capital has leaped over the territorial and legal boundaries of the nation, and the state is following it. In so doing, the nation-state is morphing into a globalized state that serves the interests of transnational capital rather than any “own” national population. Contrary to what some have claimed, globalization has not weakened the state. In some respects, it has even strengthened it, particularly the executive branch. But globalization has weakened the state’s connection with its own citizens as the state follows capital into a new global economic system.
Following William I. Robinson’s seminal critique of US “democracy promotion” programs, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention and Hegemony, we argue that polyarchy is the ideal political form for globalized states. Contested elections are an effective way to periodically renew the perceived legitimacy of elite rule. That is the genius of the US political system that has made it so stable. However, in times of extreme systemic crisis, as in the Great Depression of the 1930s, electoral politics was supplemented by the more genuine democracy of social movements. It was this popular pressure from outside the formal established political process that saved capitalism from itself by forcing the elite to accept changes otherwise resisted by capital. It was democracy that saved capitalism.
Normally, the state is able to function as a kind of Central Committee for the capitalist class, attending to the systemic needs of the capitalist system as a whole. This at least was the case during the era of national capitalism. The unrestrained individual interests of capitalists could destroy the system. States regulate and moderate in the interests of capital as a whole. Popular pressures often pushed states in this direction. Each capitalist, for example, seeks to pay low wages so as to increase profits and wishes his competitors will pay high wages so there will be consumers to buy his commodities. Popular pressure and state action are needed to sustain capitalism.
Karl Polanyi pointed out in his classic 1944 work, The Great Transformation, that “capitalism would be an unsustainable and chaotic social order if the state played the minimalist role specified in the libertarian fantasy.” According to Eric Olin Wright in, Envisioning Real Utopias (p.124), it is just such a minimalist role that neoliberalism demands. Neoliberalism is the default position of capitalism in the absence of countervailing pressure on capital from popular forces pressing for greater social justice. That pressure usually acts through the instrumentality of the state as the rule-making body for society. As we have said, the function of the state is to maintain the social order, which means the capitalist relations, but it must sometimes modify these in the face of popular pressure to maintain governability. In those circumstances, a liberal sector of the political elite may modify neoliberalism in the direction of a social liberalism of the sort seen in the New Deal. Absent that, the state reverts to neoliberal policies that support the supremacy of capital.
The contradictions of unbridled neoliberalism are the contradictions of unrestrained capitalism. It is a system that tends toward self-destruction. Capitalism IS crisis, says David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital: and the Crises of Capitalism. To survive, it needs the restraining hand of the state, frequently brought into play by demands of the popular classes.
Capital Escapes Regulatory Reach of Nation-States
With the globalization of capital in its corporate form, capital is escaping the regulatory reach of nation-states. Transnational capital is constructing its own governance structure (World Trade Organization and multilateral free trade agreements) with the assistance of globalized states. Just as neoliberal structural adjustment programs required what the World Bank called “macroeconomic management by an insulated technocratic elite” for their implementation (World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World, p. 152.), now a global governance structure is being built on the same political principle, a corporate elite insulated from popular pressures, beholden to transnational corporations only. What is emerging is an unbridled neoliberal regime in which states are only the administrative agents that protect capital against the popular classes. As Renato Ruggiero, director-general of the WTO put it in 1995, “We are no longer writing the rules of interaction among separate national economies. We are writing the constitution of a single global economy.”
This is what has been institutionalized in trade dispute adjudication panels established under the WTO and through free-trade treaties like NAFTA and the pending TransPacific Partnership (TPP). These are secret panels that protect “investor rights” against national laws and regulations that adversely affect corporate profits, no matter how democratically those laws and regulations may have been established. The rationale for investor rights is protection of capital against nationalization. This rationale has been extended to so-called “regulatory takings” as well, which are considered as tantamount to out and out expropriation even though what is usually “taken” is a hypothetical opportunity. Consequently, state actions that protect public health and the environment, such as the Quebec moratorium on fracking in the St. Lawrence River valley, are seen as a “taking” of profits due to the US-chartered corporation that holds a permit for this mining activity that has undetermined adverse effects on the environment. So the corporation is now suing the state for compensation. A NAFTA panel is now considering whether to award the corporation $250 million of taxpayer money to keep them from endangering the health of the people of Quebec.
Closed Courts Determine When “Rights” to Profit Violated
Such “investor-to-state” cases are litigated in special arbitration bodies of the World Bank and the United Nations, which are closed to public participation, observation and input. They have the power to award unlimited amounts of taxpayer dollars to corporations whose rights to make a profit they judge have been violated. By latest count, some 450 investor-to-state cases have been filed against 89 governments by transnational corporations, which have been awarded $700 million to date.
The protection of profits over people has become a standard feature of so-called free trade agreements. Actually, they are more about ensuring corporate profits than trade in any normal sense of the word. It is the protection of free movement of capital across borders more than the free movement of goods that is at stake. It was the Nixon administration that included investor rights in its trade negotiations under the fast track authorization it initiated. It has since become a standard feature of all trade agreements. The 11 countries in TPP already have free-trade agreements. So why this new one? It has the enhanced investor rights transnational corporations have long dreamed of. It is likely that this will also be the case with the new initiative with the European Union proposed by the Obama administration. At least that agreement is being advertised with a more honest name: Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). It is likely to privilege transnational corporations in the same way as TPP.
Since rejection of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas at the hemispheric summit in 2005 by the countries of Latin America and the collapse of the Doha round of WTO negotiations in 2008, transnational capital has sought to embed protection of Trade Related Intellectual Property (TRIP) and other investor rights in new free trade agreements. TPP is the latest such power grab by transnational corporations. TPP has been described as “NAFTA on steroids” by those who have seen some of its leaked provisions. Negotiations began under the Bush administration and the Obama administration is continuing them in secret in hope of completing the agreement by this October. The discussions include trade representatives of the United States and Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. Japan has just joined. But the public, members of Congress, journalists, and civil society are excluded. Not even Congressional committees have been able to see the draft text, but 600 corporate advisors have. They are writing the rules for trade in their own interests without any democratic input from the people whose lives will be profoundly affected. If adopted, TPP will deny citizens their democratic rights to shape public policies on a host of domestic issues, conceding those decisions to the large corporations.
Some sections have been leaked. And what they reveal is “an agreement that actually formalizes the priority of corporate power over government,” according to Lori Wallach of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. Only 5 of the 29 chapters have to do with trade. Wallach says the rest of the draft:
“include[s] new rights for the big pharmaceutical companies to expand, to raise medical prices, expand monopoly patents; [there are] limits on Internet freedom, penalties for inadvertent noncommercial copying, [like] sending something to a friend. There are the same rules that promote off-shoring of jobs that were in NAFTA that are more robust [and] that literally give privileges and protections if you leave. There is a ban on “buy American” and “buy local” or “green” or sweat-free procurement. There are limits on domestic financial stability regulations. There are limits on imported food safety standards and product standards. There are limits on how we can regulate energy towards a more green future – all of these things are what they call “Behind the Borders” agenda. And the operating clause of TPP is: “Each country shall ensure the conformity of its domestic laws, regulations and administrative procedures with these agreements.” That’s to say, that we’re told to conform all of our domestics laws – including all the important public interest laws fought for so hard by people around the country – for these corporate dictates, and it’s strongly enforceable. If we do not conform our laws, another country can challenge us and impose trade sanctions until we do, but this one is even privately enforceable by the corporations themselves.
What is being constructed secretly, bit by bit, is a global governance structure in which corporations are the citizens and globalized states are the local administrative structures that enforce corporate dictates and maintain order. This is a world without popular sovereignty and without democracy. It is a world ruled by an insulated technocratic elite serving the interests of global capital.
What are progressives to do in the face of all of this? Those with a cosmopolitan consciousness may dream of a future democratic global governance structure. But that is a long-term project, and we are faced with a more immediate prospect of the consolidation of a very undemocratic global governance structure serving the interests of transnational corporations under a neoliberal regime that will roll back all of the hard-won progressive gains of the last century. Our immediate task is then to block this corporate end-run around domestic policy making processes.
Who can do this? In the United States, working class consciousness is very low, and unions are weak. The left is also weak. Nevertheless, there is a growing anticapitalist, or at least anticorporate, sentiment in the popular classes. Rather expansively, Occupy Wall Street called this the 99%. The challenge Occupy presented to itself was to mobilize a broad multiclass popular movement against the plutocracy. I view this as a call for a social movement based on shared national interests that have been betrayed by transnational capital and the political elite beholden to it.
In the final chapter of Recreating Democracy in a Globalized State, I argue that in a polyarchic political system like the United States’, it takes social movements to bend the political elite away from its corporate-friendly agenda. With sufficient street heat, to maintain governability, it will need to adopt in some measure the form of justice demanded by the popular classes. This is our democratic moment.
We can defeat TPP. Polls show an overwhelming opposition to free trade.* In fact, across the political spectrum, from the left, to the Tea Party, and the John Birch Society on the Right and everywhere in between, the one thing there is agreement on in the current highly polarized political climate is opposition to free-trade treaties. That, combined with the partisan gridlock in Washington, tells me we can win this one.
This may be our last best chance to stop the consolidation of the corporate global governance structure. It makes crystal clear the contradiction between the national interest, i.e. the interest of the people of the nation, and the interest of global capital. There is no longer the convergence between the interests of capital and those of the popular classes that there was in the era of national capital. The divergence of interests that globalization has brought us enables us to build a broad social movement based on shared national interests, drawing on a national identity that can be a powerful motivator of collective action. We should follow Mao Zedong’s strategic principle: Unite the many to defeat the few.
As I said at the beginning, capitalism has needed a guiding hand from the state to protect it from its own self-destructive tendencies. And it has been popular struggles that have often compelled the state in that direction. But now that capitalism has become a global system, there is no state able to do that. In fact, the global governance structure being constructed by transnational capital is dedicated to the very neoliberal ideology that now threatens to be its nemesis. If we can stop that, not only can we save ourselves and the possibility for democratic politics, as ironic as it may be, we might even save capitalism from itself.
* A major NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll from September of 2010 revealed that “the impact of trade and outsourcing is one of the only issues on which Americans of different classes, occupations and political persuasions agree, with 86 percent saying that outsourcing jobs by US companies to poor countries was “a top cause of our economic woes,” and 69 percent thinking that “free-trade agreements between the United States and other countries cost the United States jobs.” Only 17 percent of Americans in 2010 felt that “free-trade agreements” benefit the United States – compared to 28 percent in 2007. |
Photo via Ty Russell / SoonerSports.com
It’s never too early to think about the winners of the Power Five conferences in College Football. In addition, the American Athletic Conference is turning some heads as a potentially powerful conference for next season. This year will prove to be an exciting year, as several of the potential winners aren’t last year’s champions.
As such, it should prove to be an exciting year, as several of the last season’s winners are not expected to repeat.
ACC: Florida State
Usually, the ACC is one of the toughest conferences to predict, but it often ends with the Clemson Tigers or Florida State Seminoles representing the Atlantic Division.
This year, however, Clemson will downgrade significantly at the quarterback position. With no clear replacement for quarterback Deshaun Watson, they won’t pose any threat offensive threat to the Seminoles.
Quarterback Deondre Francois has developed significantly since starting on the team, and with the top-rated running back recruit in the nation Cam Akers and a crop of new receivers, the FSU offense will have the strength to take down any ACC team.
SEC: Alabama
The Crimson Tide return this year stronger than ever. With an outstanding recruiting class and developing quarterback Jalen Hurts, the Tide have already proved they’re national championship material.
Alabama returns most of its defensive prowess as well, and the only teams in the SEC that even stand a chance against them are LSU, Georgia, and Florida.
Big Ten: Ohio State
The Big Ten, maybe the most competitive conference in the country, will end with Ohio State taking the crown narrowly with Penn State, Wisconsin, and Michigan all close behind.
That being said, the Buckeyes will be one of the best teams in all of college football. They put together one of the best defenses in the country and return Heisman-hopeful quarterback J.T. Barrett.
PAC-12: USC
USC, a college football playoff favorite, is the heavy favorite in the PAC-12.
Quarterback Sam Darnold is one of the biggest reasons for the team’s success after throwing for 3,086 yards and 31 touchdowns last season while not starting until the team’s fourth game.
In addition to Heisman-contender Darnold, USC has the extremely talented five-star running back Stephen Carr to add a new dimension to the Trojan offense.
USC’s main competition, Washington, will have a tough time catching the Trojans as the Huskies have a much tougher schedule and has to play Colorado, Washington State, Oregon, Stanford, and Utah.
BIG-12: Oklahoma
Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield will once again have an outstanding season with their new and skilled recruiting class. As such, they’ll take the BIG-12 throne once again.
One thing to cause them worry—and one thing that will probably be a barrier between them and anything beyond the conference title—is the fact that Bob Stoops retired last week.
Oklahoma’s only real threat is offense-heavy Oklahoma State, and at the end of the day, the Sooners should have an easy time getting past their contender in the conference championship game.
American: University of South Florida
The AAC has been one of the most exciting conferences to follow for the last few seasons. With breakout teams such as Houston, Navy, and Temple, the AAC is a surprisingly stacked conference.
Temple will lose 16 of its starters and is projected to fall behind in USF’s division, leaving the Bulls an open trip to the conference championship.
Houston, Navy, and Tulsa will all battle for the AAC West title, with no clear favorite.
Quarterback Quinton Flowers has been gaining national attention for the last year or so as one of the best dual-threat quarterbacks in the country. Flowers chalked up 2,812 passing yards and 1,530 rushing yards during his junior season.
Under head coach Charlie Strong, the Bulls will continue to improve. Their roster remains strong from last year and they should find no serious conflict in their schedule besides games against Houston and Tulsa.
Nicholai Babis is a sophomore International Studies major at Vassar College. He specializes in College Football. He is a lifelong Seminoles fan, as well as a Rays fan and a Tampa Bay Bucs fan. He grew up in Tampa, Florida. He is a co-owner of the JR report and works for Athletics at Vassar College. He is the college football contributor at the JR Report. Follow Nicholai on twitter @nibabis . Hit him up if you want to discuss CFB, NFL, golf, tennis, and more.
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Apple loves to hide little surprises, or “easter eggs,” within its software — such as the memorable quotes inside its OS X icons, or the temporary date (Jan 24, 1984 — when the first Macintosh was unveiled) given to apps downloaded from the Mac App Store. A new one has been discovered that’s sure to please Lord of the Rings fans.
Typing a simple comment into Terminal reveals a Lord of the Rings timeline that Apple has hidden in OS X. Here’s how to access it.
Open up the Terminal app on your mac, and enter:
cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr
There’s nothing funny about this command — it won’t change anything, and your Mac won’t explode on your desk. It’s just a bit of fun. Once you have hit return, you’ll be presented with a Lord of the Rings timeline.
We hate to provide spoilers for those who want to try this out themselves, but for those on Windows, we’ve pasted the timeline below:
#ifndef _calendar_lotr_
#define _calendar_lotr_ 01/05 Fellowship enters Moria
01/09 Fellowship reaches Lorien
01/17 Passing of Gandalf
02/07 Fellowship leaves Lorien
02/17 Death of Boromir
02/20 Meriadoc & Pippin meet Treebeard
02/22 Passing of King Ellesar
02/24 Ents destroy Isengard
02/26 Aragorn takes the Paths of the Dead
03/05 Frodo & Samwise encounter Shelob
03/08 Deaths of Denethor & Theoden
03/18 Destruction of the Ring
03/29 Flowering of the Mallorn
04/04 Gandalf visits Bilbo
04/17 An unexpected party
04/23 Crowning of King Ellesar
05/19 Arwen leaves Lorian to wed King Ellesar
06/11 Sauron attacks Osgiliath
06/13 Bilbo returns to Bag End
06/23 Wedding of Ellesar & Arwen
07/04 Gandalf imprisoned by Saruman
07/24 The ring comes to Bilbo
07/26 Bilbo rescued from Wargs by Eagles
08/03 Funeral of King Theoden
08/29 Saruman enters the Shire
09/10 Gandalf escapes from Orthanc
09/14 Frodo & Bilbo’s birthday
09/15 Black riders enter the Shire
09/18 Frodo and company rescued by Bombadil
09/28 Frodo wounded at Weathertop
10/05 Frodo crosses bridge of Mitheithel
10/16 Boromir reaches Rivendell
10/17 Council of Elrond
10/25 End of War of the Ring
11/16 Bilbo reaches the Lonely Mountain
12/05 Death of Smaug
12/16 Fellowship begins Quest #endif /* !_calendar_lotr_ */
Awesome, isn’t it?
Via: The Mac Observer |
The FBI continues to investigate.
Two Tom Brady jerseys swiped from the New England Patriots locker room following past Super Bowl victories have been recovered, the NFL announced Monday morning.
The FBI, league security and other authorities had initially been investigating the theft of Brady's jersey from this year's Super Bowl, in which the Patriots beat the Atlanta Falcons. Through their efforts, another one of Brady's stolen jerseys from an additional Super Bowl victory was located.
Both items were allegedly in the possession of an international media member, the NFL said in a statement.
"Through the cooperation of the NFL and New England Patriots' security teams, the FBI and other law enforcement authorities, the Super Bowl LI jersey worn last month by MVP Tom Brady has been recovered," the NFL said in its statement. "Also retrieved during the ongoing investigation was the jersey Brady wore in the Patriots' victory in Super Bowl XLIX against the Seattle Seahawks in 2015."
According to ESPN, the jerseys were found in Mexico and easily valued in the six-figure range.
"Due to the ongoing investigation, we would refer any additional questions to the FBI," according to the NFL. |
The community of New Ground in Summerfield, Clarendon erupted into laughter and shock recently when buckets of faeces were thrown on a man from the district.
A resident told THE WEEKEND STAR the man was attending a nine-night in the community when he was ambushed by his estranged wife.
The resident said the wife, who has been separated from the man for over a year, hid in the dark as he approached the wake.
After emerging, it is reported that she then threw the content from a bucket on the surprised man. The contents of the bucket were faeces and urine.
Another resident said the man who walks with a limp, was trying to hop away but another bucket of filth was thrown on him before the woman fled.
The drama did not end there, however, as it is reported that she ran straight to the man's house and threw away his water that was outside, rendering him unable to wash himself off.
woman's house
Residents said the wife was angered after seeing her estranged husband in his underpants at another female's house. According to a resident, the other woman had been a source of conflict before they separated.
The woman reportedly told community members that she started "saving" the buckets with faeces and urine shortly after seeing her husband at the woman's house.
Police were reportedly called to the scene shortly after the incident because the man had threatened to burn his wife's house down.
Laughter rang out when the police refused to allow the man to drive in their car to show them his wife's house. They asked him to direct him to the house by walking in front of the police vehicle.
The Chapelton police has confirmed the incident but did not reveal if the woman has been charged. |
Google RAISR Keeps Your Image Sharp And Saves Your Bandwidth
Close
We typically look at a high-resolution image and associate that with a high bandwidth which we then worry because we already know that it will inevitably suffer from a sluggish loading speed. Let's not forget the data costs that you have to pay.
Google has looked into that particular consumer concern and churned out a new method of image processing. In November 2016, the tech giant showcased what is known as RAISR which is short for Rapid and Accurate Image Super Resolution. This smart tech can predict how a low-resolution photo can be magnified by filling in the gaps between pixels. The result is a photo in high definition that essentially used up a tiny portion of data usage.
RAISR works by using machine learning and train on pairs of low res and hi res images to look for filters that can recreate details that are close in quality to the original. The filters are trained for about an hour according to small patches of images. Previous known methods like Upsampling produce a large image with more pixels and higher image quality from a low-quality image. The methods are fast but is thought to be ineffective in bringing out vivid details.
So far, the new tech has been tested and improved on Google+. According to a blog post from John Nack, the Product Manager for Google+, RAISR is now processing more than a billion photos a week, even with its limited release. Apparently, Google was able to use up to 75 per cent less bandwidth per large image displayed on Google's native social media platform. It should be in no time when RAISR will be found in most Google services and devices.
"In the coming weeks we plan to roll this technology out more broadly," said Nack. "-and we're excited to see what further time and data savings we can offer."
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There’s no denying that we live in a golden age of personal vaporizers and mechanical mods. The market is full of devices of every kind of size, shape and function. We’ve come a long way from the simple e-cigarette just a few short years ago.
In no small part, we can thank the incredibly creative small businesses and individuals who have raised the bar with innovative designs. However, the massive availability and affordable prices can be traced to overseas manufacturers shamelessly copying these devices and selling them at a fraction of the price of the genuine article.
Along with this choice on the market comes one of the great schisms in the vaping community. There seems to be camps who believe that the so-called clones are harming the innovators in the industry. The other camp tends to believe that makers of the high-end devices charge too much for their products. The most commonly duplicated devices are mechanical mods. All mechanical mods essentially are a method to connect a battery as directly to an RBA as possible. So why should a dead simple device cost so much?
To be perfectly honest, I can see both sides of the argument. I also think many people on one side of the fence or the other tend to over simplify the situation. There’s a lot of moving parts there that are often overlooked in some of the heated arguments.
Obviously, I have, in the past reviewed clone devices. Many of which are flat-out copies of originals all the way down to logos and certificates of authenticity. I’m personally bugged by versions that ape the logo and include a fake serial number. That’s quite honestly uncalled for.
I do, however, think that there is a place in the community for a discussion, and I don’t believe simply refusing to review them would solve anything. It’s a personal choice. I get why some folks choose to not give press to these devices. I’ve honestly struggled with the question personally myself.
Some folks have even gone so far to tell me that they would stop paying visits to this site if I continued to cover these devices. I completely respect that. I’ve made my choices, they’ve made theirs. I of course regret I couldn’t do something that would make everyone happy, but you rarely can. I don’t think any less of anyone who makes a stand for his or her beliefs.
[Tweet “There’s a lot of moving parts there that are often overlooked in some of the heated arguments.”]
I’ve stated my views on the clones several times in some of the reviews I’ve done previously, so I don’t intend to make this post a rehash of such things.
No, what I’m interested in hearing is what you think about this whole topic. Specifically, you as readers of this site. I’ve seen all the arguments and fights in the forums, so I’m not interested in starting any of those. I want to know what you as readers think on the topic.
The comment system below is awaiting your response. Pick your favorite platform and let your feelings be known! |
I once had a long and involved argument with a friend about whether there was any difference between sorbet and sherbet. We couldn't even agree on whether there was a difference in the pronunciation of the words let alone whether they were used to reference two different desserts or the same one. I would like to say that I was the one who knew that there was a difference between sorbet and sherbet and that I won the argument, but when we delved into personal research to come up with our answer, we discovered that she was right. There was a difference between sorbet and sherbet. At least we had a lot of fun going around buying different sorbet / sherbet combinations trying to come up with the answer!
Of course, it makes sense that she would know the subtle difference between the two. She's far more health-conscious than I am now and definitely more health-conscious than I was at the time. So she knew that although both sorbet and sherbet are considered an ice-cream-like treat, they are not as similar as some of us might think. The main difference is that sorbet is a fruit-based dessert and sherbet is more dairy-based, which is a significant difference for people who are leaning towards fruit sugars or leaning away from dairy.
People who prefer sorbet are those people who want the fruit-based dessert. Sorbet uses fruit juice as its main liquid base. It doesn't have any sort of dairy in it, so it's preferred by people who are either allergic to dairy or opting not to eat dairy for health or other reasons. However, since sorbet doesn't have dairy products in it, it also doesn't have the texture of ice cream that people may be looking for when they go to buy this type of dessert. Those people who prefer sorbet because of the taste tend to like fruitier, tarter flavors and a texture that is more icy than creamy.
In contrast, those people who really want ice cream but who are opting for something else because they want to cut back on the "bad for you" foods will probably be people who lean towards sherbet. Sherbet has a milk base (and it may also contain eggs) which gives it the creamy consistency of ice cream. People who like less intense fruit flavors may prefer fruity sherbet to fruit sorbet. And those who like the texture of their ice cream will definitely want to go with a sherbet.
Whether you opt to go for a sherbet or a sorbet depends a lot on why you aren't just eating plain old ice cream. Maybe ice cream is too rich for your taste so you want something less creamy. Either will do but the sorbet will be the one you'll probably prefer. That's also the one you're probably going to want if you're looking to cut down on the fats on your diet. However, if it's sugars that you're trying to cut out, you might want sherbet. The best thing to do is probably to do what my friend and I did - eat as many different sorbet and sherbet types and flavors that you can and find the one that's right for you! |
An original play, adapted from pieces in the book and with original music by Forest Park's History Singers will take place at the Park District of Forest Park's building on Saturday, Oct. 26. Performances will take place at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at Centuries and Sleuths Bookstore or by calling the store at (708) 771-7243, through the Historical Society of Forest Park at (708) 232-3747 or on Eventbrite.com. Tickets are $8 for Historical Society Members and $10 for non-members in advance and $15 at the door. Copies of the book will be available at the event and at Centuries and Sleuths.
The event may be a fundraiser, but in the eyes of Aleksy, it's so much more. "This event is meant to raise money for the historical society, but there's no reason you can't have fun while doing so."
Participating writers include Jay Bonansinga, a New York Times best-selling author, Chicago-area novelists Michael Black, Frances McNamara and Stephanie Keuhmert and local historians Robert Loerzel and Richard Lindberg. Emily Victorson edited the book for Allium Press, and Amy Binns-Calvey, founding member of The Noble Fool Theater Company, pulled together the dramatic performance.
Aleksy used his extensive contact list from the book store to reach out to local writers and was bowled over by the response. "I'm just so impressed with the people who agreed to work on this. It is a regional, literary work of art. I organized it, but everyone else brought it to life. It's a perfect combination of history and literature."
Aleksy found local authors to contribute soliloquies based on the lives of those interred in Forest Park's cemeteries, and gathered the soliloquies into a book. The roughly thirty tales are told in the first person, but are meant to be historical in nature. From the parents of Ernest Hemingway to Elizabeth Taylor's husband Mike Todd to victims of the Eastland disaster and Iroquois Theater fire, the tales range from funny to poignant. According to Aleksy, "it's a good cross cut of society in the Midwest."
"During the Forest Park centennial, I volunteered to man the Historical Society booth, and while I was there, I was advised about all the cemeteries in Forest Park: how many there are, the differences and the people buried there. It was an enlightenment. I thought of the Spoon River Anthology, and thought it would be great to do with factual people."
When it comes to local historical society fundraisers, there are small-scale events and large-scale events. Forest Park Historical Society President Augie Aleksy thinks big. The owner of Forest Park's Centuries and Sleuths Bookstore, Aleksy has long been captivated by Edgar Lee Master's 1915 Spoon River Anthology. Inspired by the work and the wealth of stories from local cemeteries, he undertook an effort to create both an anthology and a performance work based on actual stories of people buried in Forest Park.
By Lacey Sikora
For most of us, Halloween is time for the living. Holiday parades, trick-or-treating and kids in costumes dot the western suburbs in October.
This year, Forest Park is capitalizing on its claim to fame: celebrating the non-living residents within its village boundaries. With five major graveyards in the village, Forest Park has long recognized that dead inhabitants outnumber the living thirty to one. In the spirit of paying homage to this statistic, the Forest Park Chamber of Commerce and Development and the historical societies of both Oak Park and River Forest and Forest Park have planned three October events which aim to let the living celebrate the dead in ways that are both fun and educational.
Tales of the Tombstones cemetery walk
On Oct. 20, the Oak Park River Forest Historical Society will present its 22nd annual Tale of the Tombstones Cemetery Walk. The walk will give visitors a chance to take guided tours of the Forest Home and German Waldheim Cemeteries in Forest Park. As in years past, costumed presenters bring to life former area inhabitants. This year, the tour's theme is "Survivor!" Instead of focusing on interesting deaths, as has been done in past years, the focus is on those who lived to tell the tale of harrowing experiences.
Past-president of the Historical Society and tour coordinator Laurel McMahon thinks the twist will offer a different perspective to participants. "This year is a much different take on the stories we usually tell. We often focus on famous residents and how they died. This year, we will cover people who have survived peril. From watery and fiery deaths, to someone sentenced to death who won an eleventh hour reprieve, to someone who was presumed dead but actually alive, we have some interesting stories to share."
This year's tour will include 6 ½ stops for presentations. McMahon notes that the half-stop is really two visitors to the tour that will honor local anniversaries. "This year is the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in Illinois, and many Oak Park women were instrumental in getting women the vote. It's also the 100th anniversary of what is now the Oak Park Day Nursery, so we will hear about these historical moments as well."
The award-winning event is a major fundraiser for the Historical Society, and McMahon notes that it gets better every year. "Our presenters are Historical Society volunteers. Some are professional actors and some are just very passionate about our history. They give high quality performances. This is the 22nd year we've been doing this tour, and as time goes on, people have become more professional in their roles."
McMahon says this is more than just a cemetery walk. "It's a fun tour. Not only are the presentations interesting, but our tour guides take you all around the cemetery and give you all kind of information. We want to move you to tears and laughter, but we hope you'll take away more than just the presentations. We hope you'll take away an understanding of just what a treasure the Forest Home Cemetery is."
Tickets are $15 or $10 for Historical Society Members and can be purchased at the Historical Society's website: www.oprfhistory.org . The walk takes place on Sunday Oct. 20, with a rain date of October 27th. The tour begins at 1 p.m and runs until 4 p.m.
Forest Park's 2nd Annual Casket Race
The Forest Park Chamber of Commerce and Development is not just a bunch of business people who get excited talking about taxes and revenues. In fact, executive director Laurie Kokenes thinks this group is as far from fuddy-duddy as you can get, and she's come up with the perfect Halloween activity to prove it. Inspired by an Emma Crawford coffin race she saw in Colorado years ago, Kokenes brought the idea of coffin racing to the western suburbs.
"When I saw it in Colorado, I thought: 'this is so Forest Park.' People like to different things and fun things here. People have good senses of humor, and with our history of having more dead people than alive in the village, I thought it'd be a great event."
The first Casket Race took place last year on the Chamber's 100th anniversary, and the success made doing it again a no-brainer. Locals, as well as local businesses, clamored to form groups of four, plus a steer-person, who would not only create their own artful casket but also race at breakneck speed down Beloit Avenue, competing for highly sought-after prizes.
Kokenes notes that last year's trophies, created by American Family Insurance's Liz Axtell, caused quite a frenzy among competitors. "Last year, we had prizes for the creepiest, coolest, funniest and fastest caskets. We had to have a coolest winner for Rick Schauer and Nadeau's Ice Sculpture who created their team's casket from ice. One team, Teachers of the Titanic, knew they weren't in the running for fastest, so they went as slow as possible to get their hands on a trophy."
The plan is to differ the trophies every year, and Kokenes hopes this year's tombstone trophies will inspire the sixteen teams registered. For safety reasons, team members must be at least 18 years old, and just in case, the end of the course is lined in hay bales to slow down any casket that picks up a little too much speed. Residents of Beloit get into the action, decorating their houses, and music and food after the event will keep the spirit alive.
The event will take place on Saturday, Oct. 26th at 9 a.m., starting at the intersection of Beloit and Madison. |
Success is a difficult thing to grab hold of. It’s often ill-defined. In my short career I’ve attempted to define success for myself. Though I speak from the point of view of a product manager, I find that this journey to define success is applicable across a wide range of experiences.
Success means building my product
As a product manager, it’s my job to lead a team to build great product. I have my vision of what needs to be built, with some input from my company’s leadership and other stakeholders, and I will win if I can execute that vision.
When I first started, I imagined that my value was derived by the degree to which I could make my mark on a product. Unfortunately, the right product is often not the one I set out to build. I’m fascinated by the degree to which my initial hunch is proven incorrect. It’s come to make more sense to me though, what are the odds that the one idea I picked out of the ether would just happen to be the perfect solution?
I slowly realized that this definition was flawed due to its foundation in ego. Such a definition of success can easily come about in big, bureaucratic organization that funds projects, rather than solutions to problems. Organizations where politics means not admitting failure is unforgivable, where pivots and “scope creep” constitute failure in the form of having to admit that your initial set of product requirements was not perfect.
It was in these settings that I found myself evidence that my product was not going to be successful in its imagined final form, but was unable to change course due to a misinformed dedication towards executing on a stated vision. I realized I needed a new definition that was not inherently tied to a single product vision. or ego.
Success means solving problems
My loyalty is to solutions. I will find a problem that needs solving and build what needs to be built to most efficiently and effectively solve that problem. I’m going to help my team understand that we have a common goal, and encourage them to suggest ways that we can build product to achieve that goal. By doing this, I can put my team in a place where we are iteratively creating a vision for a product that best solves said problem.
Important to success is measurability. Numbers can lie, but not as easily as people can. By defining your success in terms of data, you more closely bind the reality of success or failure to the degree to which you’re actually solving a given problem. Of course the truth can really suck sometimes, so you need to be flexible enough to realize that your product vision needs to be fluid — responsive to an evolving notion of the needs of users.
Of course, the truth only reveals itself to those who seek it out. In order to properly solve a problem, you need to be willing to learn more about it. Reaching out to the people I’m building for — talking to users, is a wonderful way to understand more about how my solution might fill a need, provided that I’m willing to change my opinions based on the feedback that I get. I sometimes find myself feeling scared that such discussions will lead to a realization that my current vision is misguided, but that internal tension is what ultimately fuels great product.
Success means changing the world for the better
As a product manager, it’s my job to change the world, even if only for some small cohort of people out there. Success, therefore, is tightly tied to my ability to accomplish that core goal. Not only that, but I want to selectively solve problems that are real. I want to build solutions that actually make the world a better place. By tying my efforts to motives of altruism, I’ll be able to work harder and build a better product than I could if I were just attempting to make someone money, or if I were building something solely out of my motivation to build something.
This poses an issue for me. There are a lot of companies out there that don’t necessarily focus on their affect on the outside world. Most teams extend their goals only as far as the way that their users use their product, instead of painting a picture of how their vision translates to improved outcomes for real people with real problems. And product success does not necessarily mean that you’re solving a problem worth solving — people were not looking for a new way to waste time and money before Clash of Clans came around and started earning $1B+/year siphoning both away.
There are a lot of people out there who are dedicated to building products and companies that solve problems, but not all of those are changing the world for the better. As things stand, this constitutes my current definition of success.
What’s yours? |
Those voices in your head may be real.
Researchers have developed technology that can project a beam of sound so narrow that only one person can hear it. "Directed" audio sounds like it's coming from right in front of you even when transmitted from a few hundred meters away.
Inventors of the new "ventriloquist" technology say it could provide an added dimension to entertainment. The military, however, is investigating using it to confuse opponents or even inflict pain.
The Audio Spotlight is one of two competing audio transmission systems that emit a one-foot square column of sound that can only be heard by people in its direct path. Joseph Pompei, a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab, decided to develop it while working at audio company Bose, which he joined at 16 as its youngest-ever engineer.
Pompei, who used to play jazz trumpet in nightclubs in Chicago, became interested in how sound systems reproduce and distribute music. He thought it would be cool to "choreograph sound just like you would dancers on stage."
Pompei imagined that instead of loudspeakers blaring the same cacophony of instruments to all parts of the room, it would be more interesting to selectively spotlight the soloist to the left side of the audience, while featuring the percussion up front, and then switching them around.
"Sound in real life is occurring all around you. Regular speakers only go so far in reproducing an accurate environment," Pompei said.
Pompei developed the first demonstration systems of the technology for installations at Sega's Joyopolis theme park in Tokyo and the Boston Museum of Science, and he's planning to start selling it commercially soon. He said museums like the system because visitors who stand in front of an exhibit can hear the appropriate audio track without being distracted by sound from other displays.
The Audio Spotlight transmitters range from several inches in diameter to about 20 inches and generate a column of sound between one to three degrees wider than the transmitter.
The technology could also be used to prevent fights over the car's radio tuner, Pompei said. He put several Audio Spotlights in a concept truck from Chrysler, which enabled passengers to hear their own radio stations – the kids in the back seat enjoyed heavy metal while the parents relaxed to elevator music. "It could make for much happier trips," he said.
The Audio Spotlight converts ordinary audio into high-frequency ultrasonic signals that are outside the range of normal hearing. As these sound waves push out from the source, they interact with air pressure to create audible sounds.
Pompei said the "non-linear" effect of air pressure modifies sound waves in a consistent fashion. He wrote algorithms that "reverse-engineered" the desired sound waves to determine the appropriate ultrasonic source signals.
According to University of Texas professor David Blackstock, high-frequency signals are easier to focus, and control like a flashlight, than sounds that are within the human range of hearing, which disperse in all directions. Blackstock said ultrasonic signals "decay more slowly than lower-frequency waves" so they are easier to send farther.
The Audio Spotlight emits sounds in the 60-kilohertz range, which, according to Blackstock, is well above the 20-KHz limit of human hearing.
Blackstock said the first experiments to use ultrasonic sounds were conducted underwater in the 1960s, and Japanese researchers made advances in the 1980s but were unable to create a commercial application for the technology.
Pompei said Audio Spotlights are currently being installed in Australia for the upcoming Fringe Festival. Pompei started Holosonic Research Labs to sell Audio Spotlights to corporations such as Kraft and Kodak, which are in the process of integrating them into information kiosks and retail displays.
An alternative to Pompei's invention, which also may be commercially available soon, is American Technology's Hypersonic Sound System. The HSS system similarly converts audio into ultrasonic sound waves, and Blackstock was impressed by a demonstration.
Blackstock said he heard a clear signal at about 100 meters, but then heard nothing by moving two steps out of the audio's path. "It's remarkable, a spectacular effect."
American Technology president Terry Conrad said the company is going into its first mass production of chips that convert the audible sounds into ultrasonic waves in February.
American Technology recently signed an agreement with the U.S. Army to develop the technology for a decidedly non-commercial use: psychological warfare.
According to American Technology CTO Jim Croft, the technology could be used to confuse opponents by making them think there was someone nearby. Small transmitters could be kept out of sight, and ghost sounds could be bounced off "rocks or any reflective surface" to fool people into believing they were not alone.
American Technology is also working on a stronger version of the technology called Directed Stick Radiator, Croft said. This "acoustic assault rifle" is shaped like a gun, but instead of bullets, it dispenses high-decibel sounds that would cause discomfort or even pain.
Croft said the company is developing prototypes of the debilitating weapon that could be mounted on a jeep and used for crowd control. "It could be a very effective first-level deterrent," he said.
Pompei, conversely, is happy to make music, not war, with his system. He said U2's Bono is a fan of the Audio Spotlight and recently flew him to Los Angeles to measure the acoustics during a Staples Center performance.
He would prefer that others adopt his invention to returning to the stage himself. "I make a much better scientist than musician." |
When men’s rights activists (or MRAs, as they are known online) held their first conference in Detroit last summer, it was an opportunity for the mainstream media to examine why a group of disenfranchised men are blaming their problems on feminism and not, as writer Jeff Sharlet puts it, “late-stage American capitalism.” Sharlet wrote about the conference in a March 2015 GQ article titled, “Are You Man Enough For the Men’s Rights Movement?” It’s the latest in a series of articles coming out of the event, from Mariah Blake’s Mother Jones profile of Warren Farrell to BuzzFeed’s look at Paul Elam, the leader of the movement’s most popular website.
If Sharlet — an associate professor of English at Dartmouth, the author and editor of six books (Sweet Heaven When I Die, Radiant Truths), and a frequent contributor to Harper’s, Rolling Stone, and GQ with a must-follow Instagram feed — has a beat, it’s approaching outsiders and outliers with empathy and fairness, never resorting to the easy answer and always finding the human thread. I spoke to him over the phone about covering the men’s rights movement.
Flavorwire: Why did you want to write about MRAs?
Jeff Sharlet: I like conservative groups, partially because they’re always so much more complicated than liberal mainstream media renderings of them. That’s why I like writing about Christian fundamentalist groups. They’re people with complicated ideas. MRAs are the first group I’ve ever covered who are less complicated than the liberal representation of them. You go and you spend time with them and they don’t talk about these issues. There was less there than met the eye. Five thousand words was about right. The temptation is this over-earnest voice, ignoring the wild violence of their rhetoric, or snark — what a bunch of jerks — it’s kind of a hard line to walk.
What’s at the root of their grievances?
Late-stage American capitalism. What’s powerful is that their diagnosis is sort of 90 percent correct, their diagnosis of the sickness that they feel. These guys are right, they are being sidelined, but they’re not being sidelined by women. They fail to see the way late-stage capitalism is reducing everybody.
What do men’s rights activists embrace in pop culture? The sidebar to your piece mentioned Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and American Beauty.
You can gather that they’re certainly pop-culture obsessed, looking for what they perceive as slights to men in pop culture, often embracing that which gets slighted, like “Blurred Lines.”
I don’t like sidebars, but this one ended up becoming, for a while, one of the best exchanges. I was going back and forth with them about what [they] love. They said To Kill a Mockingbird was their favorite book. The connection is too small to explain in the sidebar: their idea is that “we are all Tom Robinson now,” the falsely accused man. To them, the people misunderstood that To Kill a Mockingbird is about race, when it’s about gender.
That way of talking about “Blurred Lines,” books, and movies, and do you remember that movie Falling Down with Michael Douglas? Online there’s this great enthusiasm for it, one guy calls it “an MRA anthem,” but their leadership is savvy enough to know that “this would make us look bad.”
Then they wanted to mention American Beauty, but American Beauty is no To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s the reactionary grievance of white men who feel their privilege under assault, in this mainstream art house movie — in reality, it’s an interesting thing, because Falling Down is a much better movie. It’s sympathetic to Michael Douglas and it’s not insisting on some transcendent truth to his violence. |
Victor Grossman in his library, with some of the books he published in East Germany. Photo by Uli Kohls. Photos courtesy of Victor Grossman.
Between World War II and the fall of Communism, many fled Soviet-controlled East Germany and headed westward. The stories of these dissidents, defectors and hardworking citizens who were simply looking for a better life have been exhaustively documented. But much less is known about the histories of the few who headed against the tide, from west to east, repulsed by capitalism. Victor Grossman was one such person.
Born Steve Wechsler in New York City in 1928, Victor’s political ideology was shaped by his experiences living in America during the Great Depression and the events of the Spanish Civil War. After earning an economics degree from Harvard, his communist ideals led him to earn a simple living as a factory worker. In 1950, in the beginning stages of the Korean War, Victor was drafted and while stationed in Germany, his left-wing past was uncovered by the military. Fearing a court-martial for his beliefs, he sought refuge in the Soviet bloc, changing his name to Victor Grossman and settling among like-minded comrades in the German Democratic Republic.
For 30 years, Victor thrived in the GDR as a journalist and author. He published numerous books on US history and culture, lectured frequently and hosted a popular radio show that introduced East Germans to the antiestablishment folk songs of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan. Despite his criticisms of the GDR establishment, Victor still felt that he was seeing his ideal – “an antifascist state with economic security for everybody” – transformed into utopian reality. By the late 80s, however, it became apparent that the Soviet system could no longer sustain itself and would soon collapse under its own weight. Victor came to the bleak realisation that he would have to “start over from zero”.
In 1994, he returned to the USA for the first time, where he was officially discharged from the army, 44 years after being enlisted. He remains today in Berlin and continues to write prolifically in German. In 2003 he published an English-language autobiography, Crossing the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany. Regardless of what you think about his political convictions, Victor’s ideological steadfastness is impressive. In a way he seems to be a man out of time, which made me think that speaking with him could provide not just a window to the past, but a different context for viewing the present.
Victor near his apartment on Karl-Marx-Allee.
VICE: When did you first become disillusioned with capitalism? Was it a gradual progression or was it one event?
Victor Grossman: The 1930s were a left-wing period. My first recollection from a newsreel was the big sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, which broke General Motors. I remember that and [what was happening in] Spain, the soup lines and college graduates selling apples on the corner to make a living. My father was an art dealer. Who buys art in depression times? It was often tight, but we never went hungry. We were never really down and out, especially because we had a bungalow in New Jersey in an experimental single-tax community called Free Acres. It was very simple; it had running cold water and no electricity. And it was wonderful, just wonderful. We ran around barefoot all day. It was like Huckleberry Finn. A lot of people living there were bohemians from New York and left-wingers. Some of the nicest people in that place were left-wingers who really determined my thinking.
You went to Harvard, but after graduation you started working in a factory. Why?
When I graduated Harvard, the Communist party secretary from Boston came to us and said, “You’ve got a Harvard diploma, but our party is supposed to be a workers’ party, and we don’t have enough workers. Have any of you considered becoming workers?” I was one of three people who said yes. I was provided with an address in Buffalo. I hitchhiked there and walked to this black neighbourhood. I came to this rundown wooden house, and on the porch was a middle-aged black lady in a rocking chair. I said, “I’m looking for Hattie Lumpkin, do you know where I can find her?” She said, “That’s me.” She was the head of Buffalo’s Communist Party.
Hattie’s place was Buffalo’s left-wing hub. The family her daughter had worked for had been leftists; they had asked her to sit at the table with them to eat. This was absolutely unheard of. She became a Communist. At first, Hattie had told her to get the hell out with her atheist ideas, but they argued and Hattie was convinced. Hattie’s place became my home away from home when I worked the awful graveyard shift at the factory.
Victor’s Harvard yearbook photo, 1949.
Did anyone at the factory find out that you were Ivy League-educated?
I didn’t tell anybody. One of my co-workers, who was known as “the intellectual”, asked me if I’d ever thought of going to college. I had to be careful. Of course, people noticed I was a little different. Also, being Jewish was rare in the factory. Most of the workers were Polish, Italian or German – and almost all were Catholic.
Then you were drafted into the army, which was a much more dangerous place for a Communist to be than a factory in upstate New York.
The draft began again in 1948 with the Korean War. At the same time, the Internal Security Act was passed, a law that said that members of the Communist party or its front organisations had to register with the police as foreign agents. For every day that you didn’t register, it was up to five years in prison. I got my draft notice in October of 1950. I quit my job and went back to New York. When you got drafted, you had to sign a statement: “I am not and have never been a member of the above organisations.” There were over 100 organisations listed – a couple of fascist and Nazi organisations, but 80 to 90 percent of them were left-wing organisations, some dating back to the 20s and 30s. I was in about a dozen of them. I thought, Should I sign this damn thing?
Would you have been excluded from the draft if you had admitted you were in those organisations?
Yeah, possibly, but I would have been liable. The whole atmosphere was extremely tense. Anybody with a left-wing view was considered an agent and a traitor. Many years later, I talked to this guy I had been with at Harvard who said, “You should have refused to sign.” He refused and said that it was against his constitutional rights. Years later, of course, the Supreme Court ruled the whole thing unconstitutional. But I was scared. I figured it was two years, and maybe if I kept my mouth shut, I would make it through. I was sent to Bavaria and given a job as a company clerk. It was an easy job, but then I made a mistake. When you go into the army, they give you tests to see what you’re good at. They had one for Morse code, and I did well on it. So I was given an offer to leave Bad Tölz and go to Munich to do radio work. I knew they might check me over, but of course it was hard to say no.
When I got to Munich, they didn’t put me on the radio work. I knew something was up, but I just had five or six months left and wanted to get through it. Then one day I got a letter telling me to report to a military judge because I was a member of six organisations. That’s when I panicked. I didn’t want to go to jail.
Victor interpreting for Jane Fonda at the International Documentary Film Week. Leipzig, Germany, 1974. Photo by Elke Thionke.
How did you cross over to East Germany?
I took the train to Austria, crossed over the border, and got in to Linz in the late evening and headed for the Danube. I didn’t dare ask anyone how to get to the river. I just kept walking in the direction that seemed right. Finally, I saw the river – it was about a quarter mile across. I threw my jacket and shoes into the water, because I thought I wouldn’t make it otherwise. I put my important papers in a pouch and started swimming. The tide pulled me in the right direction.
I expected Soviet soldiers to be waiting on the other side of the Iron Curtain, but it was totally empty. There was a road along the river. I waited until I was sure there was no one coming and started walking. I had no shoes and had torn my sleeves off to hide my military affiliation. In the afternoon, I was picked up by an Austrian cop. He took me to the police station. I said I wanted to speak to someone from Soviet command. They looked confused but called them anyway. A guy picked me up in a jeep. He asked me my name, where I came from, where I had been stationed, and delivered me to the Soviets. The first thing they said was, “What did you tell that guy that brought you here?” I told them. It turns out the guy who had brought me to the station reported me to the American side.
The officers drove me to the headquarters of the Soviet army. When I arrived, they locked me in a cell for two weeks. When they let me out, they took me to Potsdam and put me up in a very fine room – a really elegant place with a bed, a big desk, sofa and opaque glass windows you couldn’t see out of. I was kept there for two months. A Russian cook would bring me meals, and a uniformed guard would walk me to the bathroom. There were other people there, too, but I wasn’t allowed to talk to any of them. One day a guy passed my room whistling, “Yankee Doodle Dandy”. It was almost certainly an American, I thought.
After two months, I was taken to Bautzen – a town where the Soviets sent Western deserters. That’s where I spent my first two years. I got a job hauling lumber. After six months, the Soviets came to me and asked if I would be the cultural director for their clubhouse. I said yes. I ran chess, ping-pong and pool tournaments. I organised English classes, dances and movies. The Americans and the others looked at me as being on the side of the German Democratic Republic. It was very difficult. Eventually I applied to Leipzig to go to the university. I was interviewed and got in.
You earned a journalism degree from Karl Marx University. What was it like to be a journalist in the GDR? Was there a lot of censorship and repression?
I approved of the GDR but not blindly. There were dogmatic people and careerists and idiots at all levels. In the whole GDR period, you had two elements: the progressive and the stupid. I got used to it.
In 1956, after Khrushchev gave his speech about Stalin, there was lots of discussion and disagreement. At the journalism school, we had a student newspaper full of critical articles. Then came the Hungarian events. The Soviets got very scared and started tightening the screws. The next issue was very tame. There were periods when everything was more open, but never 100 percent. In 1964, you had a whole series of very good and very critical novels. Then at the end of ’65, Khrushchev was gone, and Brezhnev tightened the screws against all kinds of people. They stopped 11 films, kept them out of circulation. Later things eased up again, but then came the Czechoslovakian events in 1968, and they were tightened again.
The people I was most close to generally approved of socialism and the GDR as an antifascist state, with economic security for everybody. I saw all of the things you didn’t see in the States: medical care, free education, childcare, job security. At the same time, I could see that they were unable to sell the Soviet system to their own people properly. The leaders were a mixture of careerists and dogmatists who were ready to turn anyone who criticised them into an enemy. They alienated people unnecessarily.
In the West, they were more clever. They learned to sell not just toothpaste but politics, too. They never learned how to do this in the GDR, where they were still back in the 1930s, with the old dogmatic stuff. There were some people who tried really hard to break out of this. They often became foreign correspondents.
Victor with Hattie Lumpkin (far left) protesting nuclear weapons on a street in Buffalo, 1950.
In the years since, you were granted access to your Stasi [the GDR’s state security service] and FBI files? Who kept better tabs?
Yes, I’ve seen both, and I’m considering writing a book comparing them. In America, during the Second World War, if you heard something about the Nazis, you’d report it to the FBI. In the years that followed, if people heard about Communists, they reported them. The FBI had reports of things I said at a picnic. Now, it’s the Muslims.
The Stasi also watched me, obviously. In my lectures I used to be very openly critical of things I didn’t like, which was not so common. So they kept track of that. After a while, I wised up to the fact that they were keeping their eye on me. This sort of thing was very widespread, more widespread in East Germany than in the States, but it happened in the States too, and certainly in West Germany. It basically happens in every country, especially if that country feels threatened.
Having experienced McCarthyism, Stalinism, glasnost and now post-Soviet-era capitalism, how do they all compare? Is socialism still a viable ideological possibility for the future?
I still believe there has to be a socialist answer. Capitalism just doesn’t work. The gap between the very wealthy and everyone else is increasing all the time. But when it comes to a really big crisis, there is no party leading the charge like the old Communist parties tried to do. At the same time, the danger is that when it comes to a crisis point, if there’s not a strong left, then it will just turn to the extreme right, as it did here in ’33.
There is a growing neofascist movement in Germany right now. Does that worry you?
I think that’s by design. A lot of our political leaders may not like these Nazis, but I think they’re keeping them in reserve, because of the view that it’s better to have them than the left. Like in Spain: better Franco than the Popular Front. In the former East Germany, they’re much stronger. There are whole areas where a foreigner or a person with dark skin can’t go, including parts of Berlin. I think the big danger is that it could turn to the right again.
I know I won’t live to see any more major changes. But I get a kick every time I see something like what happened in Tahrir Square, or the Indignados in Spain or the Occupy movement. I hope we’ll see something like that in Germany.
Want to learn more about Communism?
Life in Communist Romania Was Rough
Nathan Farb Made Communism Look Groovy
Explaining China's National People's Congress |
Kansas City is getting super high-speed Internet thanks to Google, but the state with the fastest connection speeds may surprise you.
It's not California, home to Silicon Valley, or New York, with all of its research institutions. It's tiny Delaware.
Delaware had an average connection speed of 10.2 megabits per second in the first three months of 2012, according to Internet provider Akamai's quarterly State of the Internet study, released on Thursday.
Delaware has "historically been a very strong performer in the years we've been covering," said David Belson, director of market intelligence at Akamai. "One key reason is that it's fairly small state, which likely makes it easier to bring higher speed connectivity to a larger percentage of the population."
Delaware clocked in nearly 9% faster than the average speeds in New Hampshire, the state with the second-fastest Internet connections.
Vermont, Utah and Rhode Island round out the top five U.S. states.
At 3.6 Mbps, Arkansas is the state with the lowest average connection speed, Akamai (AKAM) found.
If it's any consolation to the Natural State, it's still moving faster than Libya, which averages a sluggish 0.5 Mbps. Other laggards include Montenegro (2.8 Mbps) and Australia (3.5 Mbps).
At an average speed of 6.7 Mbps, the United States ranks 12th in the world. Here's the good news: Connections are getting much faster. Each state's average speed increased by at least 9% compared with the fourth quarter of 2011.
"There's continued investment being made by both the telecoms as well as by the government," Belson said.
South Korea boasts the fastest Internet in the world, averaging a whopping 15.7 Mbps. That's actually down 1.5% from the last quarter of 2011.
Runner-up Japan and Hong Kong, in the number-three spot, trail far behind South Korea, with speeds of 10.9 and 9.3 Mbps, respectively.
Globally, the average Internet speed hit 2.6 Mbps, increasing 14% from last quarter. |
Earlier this year, Riksbank Deputy Governor Per Jansson expressed his displeasure with comments made in April of last year by everyone’s favorite Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. The dispute revolves around Sweden’s decision in 2010 to raise rates, a move Krugman says turned the country into a Japan-style deflationary deathtrap. To wit, from Krugman’s blog:
"In 2010 Sweden’s economy was doing much better than those of most other advanced countries. But unemployment was still high, and inflation was low. Nonetheless, the Riksbank — Sweden’s equivalent of the Federal Reserve — decided to start raising interest rates." "There was some dissent within the Riksbank over this decision. Lars Svensson, a deputy governor at the time — and a former Princeton colleague of mine — vociferously opposed the rate hikes. Mr. Svensson, one of the world’s leading experts on Japanese-style deflationary traps, warned that raising interest rates in a still-depressed economy put Sweden at risk of a similar outcome. But he found himself isolated, and left the Riksbank in 2013." "Sure enough, Swedish unemployment stopped falling soon after the rate hikes began. Deflation took a little longer, but it eventually arrived. The rock star of the recovery has turned itself into Japan."
Krugman went on to accuse the Riksbank of being a bunch of job-hating heretics who don’t believe that printing mountains of fiat currency solves economic problems and who are motivated by an overwhelming desire to perpetuate global inequality by enriching creditors at the expense of impoverished debtors. They are, Krugman said, sadomonetarists.
For his part, Per Jansson wasn’t particularly pleased with Krugman’s assessment, suggesting that he “write fewer articles and have more of a look at the data and then come back again.”
“I don’t know why he does that; it’s a mystery and it doesn’t make him come across as a guy who is very well informed,” Jansson added.
Why did Sweden start raising rates in 2010? Well, as we noted in March, “the bank’s actions were not indicative of an institution suffering from some psychotic desire to drive up unemployment and inflict pain upon the masses, they were in fact based on ‘normal things’ like inflation and a housing bubble and the fact that the rate of household credit expansion was running some 50% ahead of overall economic growth.”
In any event, Krugman needn’t have been concerned, because as you can see from the following, and as discussed here on Sunday evening, Sweden not only stopped hiking, but in fact plunged headlong into NIRPdom.
So one would think, if Krugman is correct, that cutting rates by 235 bps since 2011 all the way down to -0.35% would have things humming along nicely in terms of “healthy” inflation. Only, that’s not what’s happened. This is:
Meanwhile, the housing bubble and household credit expansion issues the Riksbank was so concerned about have predictably gotten far worse thanks to record low rates. To wit, from Bloomberg:
The worsening housing shortage -- exacerbated by record immigration -- and surging house prices reveal that deeper financial instability risks lie ahead. The combination of already too-high household debt and negative rates "may ultimately be very costly for the economy,'" the central bank said last week in its monetary policy report.
And as we saw earlier this month when the Riksbank remained on hold ahead of Mario Draghi, keeping a lid on krona strength (i.e. fighting to ensure that inflation doesn't crater) may turn out to be increasingly difficult going forward with the ECB widely expected to expand PSPP, meaning that ironically, once everyone goes full Keynes, it makes it ever more difficult for anyone to realize the benefits because one country's easing simply negates another's, necessitating still more easing by the first country, and around we go. Case in point, from Riksbank Governor Stefan Ingves: "...any rapid strengthening of krona would pose risk to inflation rise [so] Riksbank won’t be passive if ECB makes big changes in its policy."
Worse still, not only is Sweden bumping up against diminishing returns in its easing efforts, but as we discussed at length in July, for a time things had actually begun to move in the wrong direction, as investors fretted about the lack of market depth created by the Riksbank's QE program. “The financial conditions -- the currency and the bond yields -- are moving in the wrong direction,” Roger Josefsson, chief economist at Danske Bank A/S told Bloomberg. So in other words, even as risks associated with NIRP (e.g. excessive debt buildup and a worsening housing bubble) have materalized, some of expected benefits (e.g. rising inflation) have not, which certainly begs the question if the risk/reward profile associated with NIRP and expanded QE is still attractive.
Of course it's not all bad. Unemployment has fallen dramatically and GDP data from previous quarters was revised up in what Goldman called a "non-neglible way" on Friday.
But the question one has to ask here is this: what, ultimately, has ZIRP and then NIRP and QE actually done for Sweden? The effect on inflation has clearly been muted (the Riksbank's protestations aside) and the effect on the housing market has been to inflate what looks like a rather formidable bubble. Meanwhile, the global currency wars mean the upward pressure on the krona is likely to persist no matter what the Riksbank does. If we assume that GDP and unemployment would have, at least to some extent, improved on their own, one could quite plausibly make the argument that all Sweden has done with monetary policy since 2010 is embed an enormous amount of risk into the economy without getting much back.
Of course when that rather inconvenient suggestion is made, central bankers in the new normal almost always blame lawmakers or regulators or someone other than themselves and Sweden is apparently no different. Here, for instance, is what the bank had to say earlier this month:
"Low interest rates contribute to the trends of rising house prices and increasing indebtedness in the Swedish household sector continuing. Current debt levels already pose a substantial risk to the Swedish economy. It is thus essential that the Riksdag (the Swedish parliament), the Government and other authorities implement measures to reduce this risk. If no measures are taken, this, in combination with the low level of interest rates, will further increase the risks, which may ultimately be very costly for the economy."
As for Ingves, well, he's not optimistic (via FT):
Sweden’s central bank governor has warned that new crisis-busting tools policymakers are embracing around the world to counter asset bubbles and other financial dangers are susceptible to political inaction and turf wars. Stefan Ingves, governor of the Riksbank, said so-called macroprudential policies — such as capital requirements and leverage limits — had so far failed in Sweden where house prices and personal debt levels have soared to record levels. “Macroprudential, particularly if markets are going up, up, up is about saying ‘no’. Apparently that’s hard to do,” Mr Ingves said.
One could easily say the same thing about the Riksbank although, to be fair, the central bank would also be in control of macroprudential policy making if it had its way, but that doesn't exonerate NIRP. That is, we might replace one word from the quote above and get this: "sound money, particularly if markets are going up, up, up is about saying 'no' but apparently that's hard for central bankers to do." At least one banker in Stockholm agrees:
“To have such a low interest rate at the same time as Sweden has rather good economic growth and rapid increases in house prices — it seems crazy,” said one senior banker.
But Ingves has his story and he's sticking to it: “We deal with inflation, we keep an eye on the exchange rate, we do our best to reach our inflation target. But that means that somebody else has to deal with the problem we have in our housing market."
On that note, we'll close with the following from Lars Jonung, professor emeritus at Lund University, who told newspaper Dagens Nyheter the following:
“[The Riksbank] have lowered rates too much, absolutely. It creates meaningful financial risks and increases household debt. The danger is that it bursts just as it did in the US and Iceland.”
* * *
Bonus: As Krugman said last week in the Japanese context, countries "need to reach a point where everyone believes that they have pulled out of deflation. And then if that can be believed, then they may be able to stay out of trouble thereafter".
Do you "believe" in "hockeynesian" success stories? The Riksbank apparently does... |
FITNESS fanatics and nature lovers rejoice – the long-awaited Green Arrow walking track in Whitfield is finally open.
Today, Cairns Regional Council will officially open the path, created from a former network of “goat tracks” on previously privately owned land.
It will connect with the existing Blue Arrow, and traverse Mt Whitfield ridge to join with Whitfield’s Bel-air and East Parkridge drives.
media_camera Cairns councillor Linda Cooper has been instrumental in the creation of the Green Arrow walking track, due to open today. PICTURE: SUPPLIED
Some sections of the track reportedly offer walkers 360-degree views.
Touted as a way for locals and visitors to experience the tranquillity of the rainforest without leaving Cairns City, the 3.5km track has been more than four years in the making.
The total cost to the council, which also includes the upgrade of the existing Red and Blue Arrow walking tracks, is about $267,000.
Division 6 Councillor Linda Cooper, who was instrumental in the Green Arrow’s creation, said the bushland surrounding the path was very nearly sold for housing development.
“That piece of land ... up to four years ago was privately owned and I was made aware the owners had a development application with the council to build residences,” she said.
“The property came up for sale and ... myself and the CEO went through a process of acquisition and it became council land, rezoned from residential to open space.
“The scenic rim of our city is really important to protect those environmental values and to protect that green space.”
Bickering among State Government politicians over funding for the track after the last election marred the project slightly.
media_camera The view over Whitfield and Edge hill to Cairns CBD and Trinity Inlet from the Green Arrow track. PICTURE: STEWART McLEAN
The previous LNP Government had promised a “fully funded and costed allocation of $500,000” to create the path, but only if it was re-elected.
The new Labor Government, meanwhile, has said the funding was never there, and was dependent on the LNP raising revenue through selling state assets.
Cr Cooper said in July the council had progressed with work because the state funding was based on an election promise, rather than any contractual arrangement with the previous or current government.
She said the track would give locals and visitors another way to experience the “great outdoors”.
“It’s there to make the most of what’s already a commonly used exercise circuit,” she said.
“When tourists ask ‘where can I walk near the city?’, I know of a lot of hotels that point them to that area.
“A lot of airline staff also use that as their exercise route when they come to town.”
“It’s part of the ongoing preservation of that open- space area that the community can enjoy without impeding on private property.” |
We’re fast approaching that time of year again which means it’s time to whip out the credit cards and start your Christmas shopping. But what do you buy the football fan in your life? The chances are that a football related gift would go down a treat, but apart from the obvious club merchandise what else is there available? No matter whether you’re buying for your mum, dad, brother, sister, partner, best friend or any other football fan you know, here are some gift ideas that would be perfect to wrap up and put under the Christmas tree.
1) Football Manager 2015
Forget FIFA and Pro Evo, Football Manager is the best football gaming series available on the market. Fact! Every football fan claims that they can do better than the manager of their club, well now is there chance to prove it. Like in the previous Football Manager titles, Football Manager 2015 is the closest you can get to being a real life football manager, giving the player control over team selections, tactics, team-talks, transfers, training regimes, the list is endless. I guarantee that every football fan would be entertained for hours on end when they wake up with this game in their stocking come Christmas morning.
2) Football shirt styled kit bag
These football kit bags are the perfect present for the football fan who likes to stand out from the crowd. Made from recycled football shirts means that they are both stylish and environmentally friendly and are perfect for going to football training, a trip to the gym or a weekend away. A whole host of different designs are available to suit all tastes. As well as kit bags, there are also messenger style bags, shopping bags and lady’s handbags so there really is a bag for everybody.
3) Desktop mini football table
Everyone likes a game of table football no matter how young or old you are. Bring your living room to life this Christmas with this mini football game and even add that competitive edge with tournaments between family and friends.
4) The Nowhere Men
An obvious choice for a football book would be the current bestselling autobiography, however I think The Nowhere Men would be a more unique gift and an equally gripping read. Offering a fantastic insight into the world of the UK scouting network and winner of The Times British Sports Book Award 2014, it will be bound to please anybody who likes to read. A teenage boy plays football in a suburban park. His name is Raheem Sterling. The call is made: “Get down here quick. This is something special”. The Nowhere Men gives credit to the faceless and nameless football scouts who often make key decisions worth millions of pounds.
5) Gillette Soccer Saturday DVD
The boys at Soccer Saturday are what make Saturday afternoons so special for those who can’t make it to a match. This DVD compiles all the golden and hilariously funny moments from the past twenty years with unseen footage from Jeff Stelling, Chris ‘Unbelievable’ Kamara and the rest of the gang. The ultimate gift and stocking filler that will make all football fans laugh out loud.
6) Personalised Calendar-Football Star
If you’re thinking of buying that special someone a calendar this Christmas then look no further. Every football fan dreams of making it as a player and this calendar makes that dream come true. Fully customisable with first and last names and shirt number and colour, your loved one will see their name appear on the scoreboard, in the cup final line up and on the back pages of the newspaper.
7) Retro football shirt
Go back in time to the good old days with a retro styled football shirt. Grab a piece of history with Bobby Moore’s No6 England shirt just like the one he wore when he lifted the World Cup for England in 1966. Or maybe go for a shirt iconic in a club’s history. They’re really is a vast selection to choose from with domestic clubs, European and international clubs and even national teams available to choose from. Whatever you go the recipient will not be disappointed as each shirt is made to the highest quality. They’re not just football shirts, they’re pieces of history.
8) Subbuteo bottle opener
When watching football on the TV there’s only one thing that could make it better: watching the game with an ice cold bottle of beer. The problem is how to open that bottle beer, well here’s your answer, the Subbuteo bottle opener. Inspired by the original 1960’s Subbuteo figure this novelty yet practical piece of barware is the perfect gift for all football mad fans.
Please note I am not being endorsed by any company to promote their products, these are just items that I think would make good gifts for football fans. Also note that prices are correct at the time of publishing and may vary. |
The Swedish Embassy in Israel has softened its position regarding the recognition of Palestinian statehood, saying it favors peace negotiation to unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, after an initial announcement by Sweden's new prime minister led to a diplomatic crisis with Israel.
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In a new, more softly worded statement, the embassy said that, Sweden will recognize a Palestinian state at the end of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Related stories:
"As part of a statement on government policy, (Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said) that Sweden will recognize the State of Palestine.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven (Photo: Reuters)
"The conflict between Israel and Palestine can only be resolved through a two-state solution… negotiated in accordance with the principles
The refined statement seems to indicate a solid support for Palestinian statehood, but only as part of negotiations with Israel which also take into account Israel concerns and positions.
The comments by Lofven, made during his first day in office, sparked a crisis between the two countires, and even the US weighed in, saying that the move was "premature".
Sweden's ambassador to Israel has been summoned for a reprimand meeting on Monday at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, after Lofven made the announcement.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Saturday night that Lofven's announcement was unfortunate as he "likely has yet to have enough time to delve into matters and understand that the side which has been a spoiler for the past 20 years to advancing an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians – is the Palestinians."
Lieberman said that the "Swedish Prime Minister Lofven needs to understand that no declaration and no step by an outside player can replace the direct negotiations between the sides and a solution that will be part of a comprehensive agreement between Israel and the entire Arab world."
He added: "If the Swedish prime minister's inauguration speech is concerned with the situation in the Middle East, he would be better off focusing on the urgent problems in the area, like the daily mass killings in Syria, Iraq, and other places in the region."
Officials in Jerusalem are concerned by the Swedish declaration for a number of reasons – Sweden is the first major European country, party to the European Union, which has chosen to recognize Palestine as a state. |
Suggestion credit:
Graham - Atlanta, GA Robert Plant wrote the words to this acoustic song after reading a book on Scottish history. The lyrics are about the everlasting battle between night and day, which can also be interpreted as the battle between good and evil. >>
This is the only song Zeppelin ever recorded with a guest vocalist. Robert Plant felt he needed another voice to tell the story that plays out in the song, so Sandy Denny from Fairport Convention was brought in. Her vocals represent the people as the town crier, while Plant's voice is the narrator. Fairport Convention was a British folk group Zeppelin shared a bill with in 1970.
This collaboration with Sandy Denny marked the first time Robert Plant did a duet with a woman. In later years, he had tremendous success singing with Alison Krauss; their 2007 album Raising Sand won a Grammy award for Album of the Year.
Sandy Denny was given a symbol on the album sleeve - three pyramids - to thank her. The four members of Led Zeppelin each designed their own symbols for the album. Denny died in 1978 from a brain hemorrhage resulting from a fall down the stairs.
Jimmy Page wrote the music on a mandolin he borrowed from John Paul Jones. He explained to Guitar Player magazine in 1977: "On 'The Battle of Evermore,' a mandolin was lying around. It wasn't mine, it was Jonesey's. I just picked it up, got the chords, and it sort of started happening. I did it more or less straight off. But, you see, that's fingerpicking again, going back to the studio days and developing a certain amount of technique – at least enough to be adapted and used. My fingerpicking is a sort of cross between Pete Seeger, Earl Scruggs, and total incompetence."
Led Zeppelin rarely played this live, but when they did, John Paul Jones sang Sandy Denny's part.
Return Of The King, where the lyrics could describe the Battle of Pelennor ("The drums will shake the castle wall, The ring wraiths ride in black"). Plant is a huge Tolkien fan, and referred to his books in "Ramble On" and "Misty Mountain Hop." Suggestion credit:
Ollie C - Hampshire, England Many J.R.R. Tolkien fans see the lyrics as a reference to his book, where the lyrics could describe the Battle of Pelennor ("The drums will shake the castle wall, The ring wraiths ride in black"). Plant is a huge Tolkien fan, and referred to his books in "Ramble On" and "Misty Mountain Hop." >>
Lord Of The Rings things like Ringwraiths and most of the song can be interpreted to be about it if you choose. Suggestion credit:
Caleb - Christchurch, New Zealand A lot of this fits the battle of the Pelennor fields: "At last the sun is shining, The clouds of blue roll by" - as Sauron's army and influence advanced the sky darkened and when he lost this battle it became light again. But a lot doesn't fit to that particular battle/book, including the part about the angels of Avalon, as Avalon was not from Tolkien's world but the legends of Merlin and King Arthur. The song is not completely about that battle but there are references tothings like Ringwraiths and most of the song can be interpreted to be about it if you choose. >>
Suggestion credit:
Geno - North Riverside, IL The word "Avalon" is Latin for "place with apples," and here is the part of the song Avalon is mentioned - "I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon, waiting for the eastern glow. The apples of the valley hold the seeds of happiness," so it may just mean "I'm waiting for the angels of place with apples." >> |
A Reuters/Ipsos online poll asked Americans to rate how much of a threat a list of countries, organisations and individuals posed to the United States
Republicans see Obama as bigger threat than Putin and Assad, says poll
A third of Republicans believe President Barack Obama poses an imminent threat to the United States, outranking concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
A Reuters/Ipsos online poll this month asked 2,809 Americans to rate how much of a threat a list of countries, organisations and individuals posed to the United States on a scale of 1 to 5, with one being no threat and 5 being an imminent threat.
The poll showed 34% of Republicans ranked Obama as an imminent threat, ahead of Putin (25%), who has been accused of aggression in the Ukraine, and Assad (23%). Western governments have alleged that Assad used chlorine gas and barrel bombs on his own citizens.
Given the level of polarisation in American politics the results are not that surprising, said Barry Glassner, a sociologist and author of “The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things.“
“There tends to be a lot of demonising of the person who is in the office,” Glassner said, adding that “fear mongering” by the Republican and Democratic parties would be a mainstay of the US 2016 presidential campaign.
“The TV media here, and American politics, very much trade on fears,” he said.
The Ipsos survey, done between March 16 and March 24, included 1,083 Democrats and 1,059 Republicans.
Twenty-seven percent of Republicans saw the Democratic Party as an imminent threat to the United States, and 22% of Democrats deemed Republicans to be an imminent threat.
People who were polled were most concerned about threats related to potential terror attacks. Islamic State militants were rated an imminent threat by 58% of respondents, and al Qaeda by 43%. North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un was viewed as a threat by 34%, and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by 27%.
Cyber attacks were viewed as an imminent threat by 39%, and drug trafficking was seen as an imminent threat by a third of the respondents.
Democrats were more concerned about climate change than Republicans, with 33% of Democrats rating global warming an imminent threat. Among Republicans, 27 percent said climate change was not a threat at all.
The data was weighted to reflect the U.S. population and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points for all adults (3.4 points for Democrats and 3.4 points for Republicans.) |
Students at the University of Maryland will have the chance to “engage fatness” next term as part of a “Fat Studies” course offered by the school's American Studies department.
“Introduction to Fat Studies” will not engage “fatness” as a social or medical problem, according to a syllabus for the course posted online. Instead, the course will approach fatness as “an aspect of human diversity, experience, and identity.”
The syllabus goes on to say that the course “will function as an introduction to the recent (and growing) field known as Fat Studies.” The field of Fat Studies, the syllabus claims, is “a field that is not concerned with the eradication of fatness, but with offering a sustained critique of anti-fat sentiment, discrimination, and policy.”
One assignment for the course requires students to read three articles with the tag “Fatshion” from xoJane.com, a website “where women go to be their unabashed selves.”
Another assignment requires students to “explore the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance site.” The NAAFA, according to its website, aims to “provide fat people with the tools for self-empowerment through public education, advocacy, and support.”
Other reading material for the course includes an article titled “My wedding was perfect – and I was fat as hell the whole time,” and the “Fat Liberation Manifesto,” which labels diet books, diet foods, and diet doctors as “special enemies.”
The syllabus also includes a quote from self-described “fat activist” Marilyn Wann, claiming that Fat Studies “requires skepticism about weight-related beliefs that are popular, powerful, and prejudicial.”
The instructor for the course is fourth-year Ph.D. student Cassy Griff, who claims to focus her work “on discourses of excess as they apply to fat and Latina/o bodies.”
The course will be offered during the university’s Winter Term from January 4-22. According to the university website, students will receive a full three credits for taking the course.
Griff did not respond to Campus Reform’s request for comment.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @peterjhasson |
Huntsville skate park shooting
Huntsville police investigate a shooting Sunday, June 8, 2014, at the Huntsville Skate Park on Cleveland Avenue. (Contributed by WHNT News 19)
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- A man was shot at the Huntsville Skate Park on Cleveland Avenue Sunday night after he "threatened to shoot everyone" during an argument and fight that escalated to a shootout.
Witnesses told police on the scene said a photographer was using the skatepark bowl as a backdrop for photos, but got in an argument with the father of two children, described as ages 8 and 10, who wanted to use the area to skate.
The argument escalated into a physical fight, then one of the people involved in the fight went to a car and got a gun and "threatened to shoot everyone," according to a police report; the father then got his own gun and the two exchanged shots, according to witnesses on the scene.
A police report released Monday morning states that the father involved in the argument shot the man who was making threats. The shooter was not listed as having been charged in the police report, and the name of the man who was shot and is listed as the offender for "menacing" with a gun in the police report was not released.
Police Sgt. Marc Moon said the man who was shot was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. The other man was taken to the police station for questioning. Another person who was alert and did not appear in distress waited in the back of an ambulance for about 30 minutes before being taken to the hospital around 9 p.m.
There were several teens held at the scene for questioning.
Police sent an alert about a confirmed shooting at the site at the intersection of Cleveland and Church streets, 7:52 p.m. The city-owned skate park is open from dawn to dusk.
Police were still investigating at 9:25 p.m.
Updated at 7:50 a.m. with details from police report.
Updated at 8:54 p.m. and 9:25 p.m. with details from the scene. |
Join us on a guided walking tour through some of the most beautiful homes in Dayton. The Grafton Hill Historic District is rich with history, gorgeous architecture, and wonderful neighbors. Enjoy beautiful holiday decor and refreshments as you travel through some of our City’s most notable homes! The tour will take approximately 3 hours with refresments and warm beverages served at one of our homes featuring 3 decorated floors and 20 Christmas trees! Tickets available here or the day of the event as space allows.
Please select one fo the following tour times: 12:00 PM, 12:40 PM, 4:00 PM & 4:40 PM*
*Please arrive 15 minutes before your tour time, as tours will leave promptly at their start time.
PARKING: Available throughout the neighborhood and at The Greater Love Fellowship parking lot located at 235 Superior Avenue, Dayton, Ohio 45406.
TOUR STARTING POINT: Please arrive 15 minutes before your tour time. All tours will leave on time. Please meet at the Tour Starting Point: 221 Belmonte Park E., Dayton, Ohio 45405
Special thanks to our community sponsors: Grandview Medical Center, Square One Salon and Spa, Mikesell's Snack Food Co., Houser Asphalt & Concrete, Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Furst Florist, Reichard Buick GMC, Agnes and Orson Gifts & Goods, Dayton Art Institute, Ed Smith Flowers, St. Anne's Hill Historical Society & Vintage Scout Interiors/Debbie Basnett.
FAQs
What are my transport/parking options getting to the event?
Parking is available throughout the neighborhood and at The Greater Love Fellowship parking lot located at 235 Superior Avenue, Dayton, Ohio 45406 (Just one block from Tour Starting Point)
Where can I contact the organizer with any questions?
For more information or tickets offline, you can call 937-222-2000. |
Marienkapelle, outside of which the burnings are believed to have taken place. The, outside of which the burnings are believed to have taken place.
The Würzburg witch trial, which took place in Germany in 1626–1631, is one of the biggest mass-trials and mass-executions seen in Europe during the Thirty Years War; 157 men, women and children in the city of Würzburg are confirmed to have been burned at the stake, mostly after first being beheaded; 219 are estimated to have been executed in the city proper, and an estimated 900 were killed in the entire Prince-Bishopric.
The Würzburg witch trial is among the largest Witch trials in the Early Modern period: it was one of the four largest witch trials in Germany alongside the Trier witch trials, the Fulda witch trials, and the Bamberg witch trials.[1]
History [ edit ]
Background and context [ edit ]
The first persecutions in Würzburg started with the consent of Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, Prince bishop of Würzburg, and reached its climax during the reign of his nephew and successor Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg. They started in the territory around the city in 1626 and evapourated in 1630. As so often with the mass trials of sorcery, the victims soon counted people from all society; also nobles, councilmen and mayors. This was during a witch hysteria that caused a series of witch trials in South Germany, such as in Bamberg, Eichstätt, Mainz and Ellwangen.
In the 1620s, with the destruction of Protestantism in Bohemia and the Electorate of the Palatinate, the Catholic reconquest of Germany was resumed. In 1629, with the Edict of Restitution, its basis seemed complete. Those same years saw, in central Europe at least, the worst of all witch-persecutions, the climax of the European craze.
Many of the witch-trials of the 1620s multiplied with the Catholic reconquest. In some areas the lord or bishop was the instigator, in others the Jesuits. Sometimes local witch-committees were set up to further the work. Among prince-bishops, Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg of Würzburg was particularly active: in his reign of eight years (1623–31) he burnt 900 persons, including his own nephew, nineteen Catholic priests, and children of seven who were said to have had intercourse with demons. The years 1627–29 were dreadful years in Baden, recently reconquered for Catholicism by Tilly: there were 70 victims in Ortenau, 79 in Offenburg. In Eichstätt, a Bavarian prince-bishopric, a judge claimed the death of 274 witches in 1629. At Reichertshofen, in the district of Neuburg an der Donau, 50 were executed between November 1628 and August 1630. In the three prince-archbishoprics of the Rhineland the fires were also relit. At Coblenz, the seat of the Prince-Archbishop of Trier, 24 witches were burnt in 1629; at Sélestat at least 30—the beginning of a five-year persecution. In Mainz, too, the burnings were renewed. At Cologne the City Fathers had always been merciful, much to the annoyance of the prince-archbishop, but in 1627 he was able to put pressure on the city and it gave in. Naturally enough, the persecution raged most violently in Bonn, his own capital. There the chancellor and his wife and the archbishop's secretary's wife were executed, children of three and four years were accused of having devils for their paramours, and students and small boys of noble birth were sent to the bonfire.
The craze of the 1620s was not confined to Germany: it raged also across the Rhine in Alsace, Lorraine and Franche-Comté. In the lands ruled by the abbey of Luxueil, in Franche-Comté, the years 1628–30 have been described as an "épidémie démoniaque." "Le mal va croissant chaque jour," declared the magistrates of Dôle, "et cette malheureuse engeance va pullulant de toutes parts." The witches, they said, "in the hour of death accuse an infinity of others in fifteen or sixteen other villages."
The trials [ edit ]
Already in 1616-1617, there had been a first wave of witch trials in the city, and an isolated witch trial in 1625, which gave way to the great hysteria in 1626. The great witch hysteria of Würzburg started in 1626, and stopped in 1631, though the documents of the executed are from the period 1627-29.
In August, 1629, the Chancellor of the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg thus wrote (in German) to a friend:
As to the affair of the witches, which Your Grace thinks brought to an end before this, it has started up afresh, and no words can do justice to it. Ah, the woe and the misery of it--there are still four hundred in the city, high and low, of every rank and sex, nay, even clerics, so strongly accused that they may be arrested at any hour. It is true that, of the people of my Gracious Prince here, some out of all offices and faculties must be executed: clerics, electoral councilors and doctors, city officials, court assessors, several of whom Your Grace knows. There are law students to be arrested. The Prince-Bishop has over forty students who are soon to be pastors; among them thirteen or fourteen are said to be witches. A few days ago a Dean was arrested; two others who were summoned have fled. The notary of our Church consistory, a very learned man, was yesterday arrested and put to the torture. In a word, a third part of the city is surely involved. The richest, most attractive, most prominent, of the clergy are already executed. A week ago a maiden of nineteen was executed, of whom it is everywhere said that she was the fairest in the whole city, and was held by everybody a girl of singular modesty and purity. She will be followed by seven or eight others of the best and most attractive persons ... And thus many are put to death for renouncing God and being at the witch-dances, against whom nobody has ever else spoken a word. To conclude this wretched matter, there are children of three and four years, to the number of three hundred, who are said to have had intercourse with the Devil. I have seen put to death children of seven, promising students of ten, twelve, fourteen, and fifteen. Of the nobles--but I cannot and must not write more of this misery. There are persons of yet higher rank, whom you know, and would marvel to hear of, nay, would scarcely believe it; let justice be done . . . P. S.--Though there are many wonderful and terrible things happening, it is beyond doubt that, at a place called the Fraw-Rengberg, the Devil in person, with eight thousand of his followers, held an assembly and celebrated mass before them all, administering to his audience (that is, the witches) turnip-rinds and parings in place of the Holy Eucharist. There took place not only foul but most horrible and hideous blasphemies, whereof I shudder to write. It is also true that they all vowed not to be enrolled in the Book of Life, but all agreed to be inscribed by a notary who is well known to me and my colleagues. We hope, too, that the book in which they are enrolled will yet be found, and there is no little search being made for it.
These witch trials seem to have been a phenomenon resulting from a great mass hysteria; people from all walks of life were arrested and charged, regardless of age, profession or sex, for reasons ranging from murder and satanism to humming a song with the Devil, or simply for being vagrants and unable to give a satisfactory explanation of why they were passing through town. Thirty-two of them appear to have been vagrants, and many others themselves believed they were witches and worshipped Satan.[citation needed]
At least 157 people were executed in the city. The actual number was in fact larger, as Hauber, who preserved the list in Acta et Scripta Magica, adds that the list is far from complete and that there were a great many other burnings too many to specify. In the territory outside the city, several hundreds of people were burned also, and the total number is estimated to have been about 900.
The End [ edit ]
On 16 July 1631, Philip Adolf died, and when the city was taken by king Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden the same year, the witch trial was put to an end. The executed are listed to have been 157 people until February 1629; after this, the executions are not documented. They are estimated to have been 219 in the city itself, but 900 total in the areas under the authority of the Prince Bishop. It has been called the greatest witch trial ever to have occurred in Franconia, though the famous Bamberg witch trials of 1626-1630 was a close second with 300 executions.
Aftermath [ edit ]
A Jesuit, Friedrich Spee, was more radically converted by his experience as a confessor of witches in the great persecution at Würzburg. That experience, which turned his hair prematurely white, convinced him that all confessions were worthless, being based solely on torture, and that not a single person whom he had led to the stake had been guilty. Since he could not utter his thoughts otherwise—for, as he wrote, he dreaded the fate of Tanner—he wrote a book which he intended to circulate in manuscript, anonymously. But a friend secretly conveyed it to the Protestant city of Hameln and it was there printed in 1631 under the title Cautio Criminalis.
The executed [ edit ]
Many of the executed are not mentioned by name. Below follows some names to give an example of the variety of people being burned:
"Three play-actors".
"Four innkeepers".
"Three common councilmen of Wurszburg".
"Fourteen vicars of the Cathedral".
"The burgomasters lady" (The wife of the mayor).
"The apothecarys wife and daughter".
"Two choristers of the cathedral".
Gobel Babelin, aged nineteen, "The prettiest girl in town".
"The wife, the two little sons and the daughter of councillor Stolzenberg."
Baunach, "The fattest burgher [merchant] in Wurzburg".
Steinacher, "The richest burgher in Wurzburg".
The seventh burning
"A wandering boy, twelve years of age".
"Four strange men and women, found sleeping in the market-place".
The thirteenth/fourteenth burning
" A little maiden nine years of age".
" A maiden still less [than nine]".
" Her [the girl's] sister, their mother and their aunt".
" A pretty young woman of twenty-four".
The eighteenth burning
"Two boys of twelve".
"A girl of fifteen".
The nineteenth burning
" The young heir of the house of Rotenhahn", aged nine.
A boy of ten.
A boy, twelve years old.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
Wednesday’s big news on Wall Street wasn’t that for yet another year its average wage and bonuses put finance employees in the top 1 percent. It was that the Federal Reserve’s third interest rate hike in a decade was fueling a stock rally — meaning there was more money for the already wealthy to grab.
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The Wall Street Journal’s website was filled with reports on the Fed’s action. Nowhere in its fixation on the changing investment landscape did it note that its frontline readers, the traders and brokers working in New York’s financial industry, were once again the poster boys for economic inequality in America.
But this overwhelmingly white and male cadre are the most visible concentration of America’s economic elite, according to 2016 employment, wage and annual bonus data released on March 15 by the New York State Comptroller’s office. When analyzed by progressive economists, it showed how last year’s average bonuses alone—forget about the six-figure base salaries — could more than offset the demands by millions of low-wage workers nationwide to earn $15 an hour, which would translate into $31,200 in annual pay.
“For Wall Street employees, annual bonuses come as an extra reward on top of their base salaries, which averaged $388,000 in 2015, the most recent year for which data are available,” the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a progressive Washington think tank, noted in a report Wednesday. “The average Wall Street bonus increased by 1 percent last year to $138,210. Since 1985, the nominal value of the average Wall Street bonus has increased 890 percent, whereas the minimum wage has risen only 116 percent.”
Taken together, that average salary and bonus equates to $526,000 in income. That stunning figure is just above the $518,000 threshold to be in the top 1 percent of New York State’s earners, according to a study released last June by the Economic Policy Institute, another progressive Washington think tank.
As the Institute for Policy Studies noted, the $24 billion paid in bonuses to 172,400 Wall Street employees could have more than paid for raising wages to $15 a hour for 3.1 million restaurant servers and bartenders (a $17 billion cost), or 1.7 million home health and personal care aides (a $13 billion cost) or 3.2 million fast food prep and serving workers (a $23 billion cost).
But that’s not how the exploitive American economy works, is it? These wage disparities are also followed by gender and racial disparities, IPS said, as women and people of color dominate the bottom rungs of the economic ladder while Wall Street’s mostly male white ranks fill the ever-prospering top.
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“The much faster increase in Wall Street bonuses [than minimum wages] has contributed to racial and gender inequality, since workers at the bottom of the wage scale are predominantly people of color and female, whereas those in the financial industry’s upper echelons are overwhelmingly white and male,” IPS noted. “The average Wall Street bonus increased by just 1 percent last year. But the nominal value of the average bonus has grown by 890 percent since 1985, from $13,970 to $138,210. Meanwhile, the [federal] minimum wage has risen only 116 percent, from $3.35 per hour to $7.25. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage was nearly 3 percent lower in 2016 than in 1985, whereas the average bonus was about 343 percent higher.”
The big questions raised by these trends remain what should or could be done about this vast disparity. Progressive politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have assailed elected officials who are determined to keep bending laws to reward their wealthiest constituents. One of Sanders’ latest examples came after President Donald Trump’s recent address to Congress, where he replied, “I did not hear President Trump tonight mention — mention the words ‘income and wealth inequality’ or the fact that we now have the widest gap between the very rich and everyone else since the 1920s . . . How could you give a speech to the nation and not talk about that enormously important issue?”
How? The answer is simple. The defenders of the wealthiest Americans — such as the Wall Street Journal and The Economist—keep perpetuating the myth that successful capitalists are the best exemplars of human ingenuity and evolution. Thus, because they’re superior to more ordinary individuals, or have figured out how the financial world works, they deserve their outsized rewards. (That same logic, by the way, is why most incumbents in Congress will never reform the campaign finance system: they figured it out and won. What’s the problem?)
In many respects this tension over redistributing wealth — upward, downward or more equally—is the unspoken backdrop to the Obamacare repeal effort now in Congress. Obamacare’s taxes, which the Republicans uniformly despise, is the law’s way of getting the richest Americans and health industry segments to help pay for insurance premium subsidies for lower wage households. The House GOP doesn’t want Americans who can afford it to contribute more toward the nation’s health; they want to let them keep more money for themselves.
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What’s missing in the GOP-led Obamacare debate, and also absent in many economic policy debates, is the basic idea that giving middle- and lower-income households more spending money, via higher wages, contributes more to overall economic growth than making the already rich richer. That point doesn’t get overlooked in IPS’s report on the latest Wall Street bonus data.
“Shifting resources into the pockets of low-wage workers would give the American economy a much bigger bang for the buck than increases in Wall Street bonuses,” the report said. “To meet basic needs, the low-wage workers who prepare our food and take care of the elderly tend to spend nearly every dollar they earn, creating beneficial economic ripple effects. The wealthy, by contrast, can afford to squirrel away more of their earnings.”
This observation keeps emerging every time new statistics surface confirming the growing gaps between America’s rich and everyone else. If the question is what to do about deepening inequality, to progressives the answer is clear: share the wealth.
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“Forty-four percent of U.S. workers still earn less than $15 per hour. This is the wage level needed to cover basic living costs in most areas of the country,” the IPS report said. Wall Street’s $23.9 billion in bonuses last year “amounts to 1.6 times the combined earnings of all 1,075,000 Americans who work full-time at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.”
Those bonuses are in addition to a $388,000 average base annual salary. |
A powerful new video from LGBTQ television network Logo provides a portrait of queer people navigating life in what has previously been called the most homophobic place on Earth: Jamaica.
“This Is Who I Am: Stories of LGBTQ Survival from Jamaica” is a part of Logo’s “Global Ally” campaign, a large-scale, multi-platform initiative that seeks to share the stories of people across the spectrum of queer identity on a global level. Logo previously told HuffPost that “Global Ally” is not meant to exist merely as a story-telling project, but also as a nexus of connection and solidarity for queer and trans-identifying people living in less-LGBTQ friendly corners of the world.
In partnership with Global Ally, “Where Love Is Illegal,” a photo-based storytelling campaign that elevates queer stories on a global level, went to Jamaica to capture the stories.
“This Is Who I Am: Stories of LGBTQ Survival from Jamaica” premiered at Global Ally’s panel “Sharing the Way to Global LGBTI Equality” at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas last week.
“Logo’s Global Ally campaign is committed to being a megaphone for LGBTIQ people whose stories oftentimes go untold,” Pamela Post, SVP of Original Programming at Logo, told HuffPost. “Through the campaign, our audience can learn more about issues affecting the community not only here in the United States, but around the world, and can be a part of the global shift towards acceptance. We were proud to partner with Where Love is Illegal to shed light on the resilience of the LGBTIQ community in Jamaica.” |
Authorities say a northeast Florida woman who didn't like her neighbors had their mobile home demolished.
According to an arrest report, Ana Maria Moreta Folch of St. Augustine told a heavy equipment operator that she owned the trailer and wanted it and its septic tank destroyed.
The Florida Times-Union reports that St. Johns County Sheriff's deputies were called when the trailer's real owner arrived Monday and found the demolition underway.
The arrest report says Moreta Folch wanted the trailer bulldozed because she thought its occupants were "unsavory" and she suspected that they had broken into her car.
Weird News Photos: Man Shoves Snake in Pants
Moreta Folch was charged with criminal mischief, a third-degree felony. She was released Wednesday on $10,000 bail. Jail records did not show whether she had an attorney.
Copyright Associated Press |
Injured Diva Lana gives exclusive pre- and post-surgery comments to the WWE Universe. Will she return?
FAIRFAX, Va. — After suffering a wrist injury while working out in the ring before a WWE Live Event in Fairfax, Virginia, this past weekend, WWE.com has learned that WWE Diva Lana has completed a successful surgery.
Update 9/11/15 - 1:56 p.m.
Today, Dr. Chris Amann reported on Lana’s successful surgery, which took place on Thursday in Nashville, Tenn.
“Lana underwent open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) of a left distal radius fracture with a volar plate,” he explained. “The fracture was stabilized and returned to its normal anatomic position during the surgery using the volar plate and screws. Lana did very well without any complications and is expected to make a full recovery.”
Story, as first reported on 9/7/15
“During a training session [Sunday] afternoon, Lana had sustained an injury in the ring. We attended to her and noticed that she had a deformity of her wrist," said WWE's senior ringside physician Dr. Chris Amann.
"Miz TV" welcomes Summer Rae, Dolph Ziggler and Lana
Dr. Amann continued, “We obtained X-rays which showed a Colles’ fracture and [we put her] in a splint. Most of these Colles’ fractures do better surgically than non-surgically, especially in younger patients. Most likely this will require an operation, which will take her out of active competition.”
How will Lana’s wrist injury impact her ongoing drama with Dolph Ziggler, Rusev and Summer Rae? Find out as WWE speeds toward Night of Champions, live Sept. 20 at 8 ET/5 PT on the award-winning WWE Network. |
There's been tons of speculation about what everyone will dress up as for Halloween. Will it be the kids from Stranger Things? A rainbow-haired unicorn? Or will you keep it classic as a witch or a hippie? Polyvore revealed data on the top searches for Halloween costumes this season, and it seems as though the general public has another idea in mind. As it turns out, the top spot goes to Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad.
The choice totally makes sense: it incorporates the best parts of all of the costumes we love: It’s a little daring, with fishnets and hot pants, a little sporty with a bomber you’re sure to wear long after Halloween is over, and — to finish it off — you can die your hair a rainbow of colors (at least for one night!).
Harley was followed by the below list of top ten contenders. So now the only question is: Who will you be?
Courtesy of Polyvore
Related: How to Dress Like the Kids of Stranger Things for Halloween |
Can somebody please reblog this and tag samsungnote7pussy? I need her and the people like her to read this.
There have been almost 200 dead people for daring to stand in the streets and say “we don’t want this. 19 people died in election day, none older than 22. For daring to say that we want to be a democratic republic. Of those 200 only 4 were older than 30
My mother is facing unemployment, just because she didn’t vote. That means that I, a informal worker will have to maintain a three person house. But the fact that we’re brown is more important than the fact that we can’t eat anything but yucca and that two of us have anemia because of that.
Oh yeah, and all that free healthcare that we can’t use because its fucking worthless and the doctors are not being paid! And of course the medicines that can’t be found anywhere.
You know what is the real number of voters in the election? 200,000. That’s how many voters they had the last Time. But imbeciles like you will believe that 8 million number, because identity politics.
Because the poor are well known for the knowledge of politics.
El hijo de la maria, a literal thug and one of those representatives, proposed to “abolish the dollar” to be able to import stuff with bolivars. The representatives for education? Proposed to stop grading kids because it is “classicist and stressful”. Every single proposition is worse than the last. They’re going to ruin our country. Because they’re ignorant, retarded idiots without education that believe that the system has the fault for all their problems.
With this new constitution I can be given 40 years in prison with forced labor, because I’m telling you this. A murderer gets 8 and no labor.
And if you’re planning to tell me to check my sources, have in mind that all I need to do to confirm my sources is to go out my door.
You’re defending a true fascist government. But the fact that there are women in a unconstitutional group to violate the constitution is more important that our lives.
PD: ALSO, this is one of the most homophobic govs we’ve ever had. They have used us and promised to legalize marriage and help us. Instead they raid reunion places and rape the people they capture before sending them to die in jail.
So you, your people and anyone who thinks like you. Please, shut up and go fuck yourself |
“There’s a metaphor to it,” CEO Pieter Gorsira explains, addressing his startup Lawnmower, and its, by bitcoin industry standards, unconventional name.
If the name Lawnmower at first keeps users at a distance, however, the explanation does much to illuminate the novel concept the Boost VC startup is hoping will help it become a low-risk bitcoin investment solution.
“Working backwards, it’s like we’re running the lawnmower over the grass and we’re clipping off a little bit of change. So, as you go along, we slice all these little blades of grass and collect change from these transactions,” Gorsira continued.
Put more directly, Lawnmower uses an API developed by Spark Capital-backed Plaid to connect to users’ online banking accounts at Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank and US Bank.
From there, Lawnmower watches its users’ accounts for transactions, rounding up the purchase of say a $3.50 latte to $4 and saving that 50 cents for later. Once users have accumulated at least $4 in total savings through small debit or credit purchases, Lawnmower purchases bitcoin on behalf of the user.
The effect, according to Gorsira, is a solution to bitcoin’s volatility that also allows investors a chance to get exposed to its potential benefits.
Gorsira told CoinDesk:
“We’re trying to raise consumer awareness about bitcoin and give them an easy way to get in without huge commitment, so you can buy $3–$4 every couple days instead of buying bitcoin at $300 and worrying about where it’s going to go.”
As for whether the name is the best way to communicate these goals, the three-person team (complemented by CTO Patrick Archambeau and CFO Alex Sunnarborg) behind the project is confident it will resonate with consumers, or at least, differentiate it from the competition.
“Having ‘bit’ or ‘chain’ is like an Internet company having the letter E, like E-school.com,” Gorsira added.
Competitive edge
The idea that spare change can be converted into investments is not exactly a new one, with the concept already in use by startups like Acorns, an app that has raised $9m in funding to allow users to make small-scale investments.
Gorsira acknowledges that he was worried that Lawnmower wouldn’t be first to market with the concept in the bitcoin space, expressing a fear that a company the size of Coinbase could develop a similar app “in a week”.
Still, the team reports that Coinbase isn’t interested in a similar idea for its own, and that to some extent, the company supports the Lawnmower project. “All of the bitcoin is housed on Coinbase, so when you sign up you have to have a Coinbase account that you log in with,” Archambeau clarified.
As for a long-term competitive advantage, Lawnmower’s team sees its product evolving similarly to Acorn’s in terms of the variety of investment options it offers.
“We have a lot of different ideas like putting 20% of the savings into a different currency like litecoin, dogecoin or maybe having a slider that lets you invest 200% of your change into bitcoin,” Gorsira said.
Beta launch
Lawnmower officially opened a beta on 25th March, allowing a small group of users into the program for an initial glimpse. Sign-ups, Archambeau said, are still available.
In part, the team wants to get some fresh air into the room in terms of the ideas that they’re able to generate for the project, so that they can best align the final launch product with informed feedback.
“We need to see what people like or don’t like so we can start adding features. The point is to have users use it, break it and tell us if they like it. [It goes] beyond three people who live in the same room everyday. We get kind of hive-minded,” Gorsira quipped.
As for signing up for the service, beta users will need to have iOS 8 to run the TestFlight application, though Lawnmower is built for iOS 6 and 7 compatibility.
The installation process is simple provided users meet these qualifications, as the app quickly moves through a series of windows that encourage users to connect to their bank and answer security questions necessary to access the accounts.
Fiat-to-bitcoin bridge
Over time, Lawnmower sees value in creating a platform that it believes will have a unique set of users among bitcoin companies, especially given that it will in effect monitor the traditional financial behaviors of bitcoin users.
“There’s no company in the bitcoin space that has those ties with fiat,” Gorsira said. “By linking your spending and saving if you will, having information on both the bitcoin and fiat side is a lot more powerful.”
Gorsira described Lawnmower as a bridge between products like Mint and Coinbase, in that it appeals to both sets of distinct users, though he believes the company will likely seek to move beyond bitcoin.
“People are starting to get used to conscious saving. So, [we want to] target those people who are less technical and encourage them to diversify some of their assets,” Gorsira continued, concluding:
“We have a lot longer plans once we acquire a user base.”
Images via Lawnmower |
So the responsible thing for a U.S. president to do, in these circumstances, is to have the backbone to stand up against Russian interference in U.S. democracy — not to question, as Trump did on Thursday, the competence of our own intelligence community and to publicly doubt, once again, the conclusion that Russia was behind the hacking. Trump talks big on Twitter, but when he came face to face with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, we heard him say what an honor it was to meet him. It has been reported that Trump asked Putin about the election hacking, giving Putin the chance to issue an obligatory denial, despite all the evidence gathered by the U.S. intelligence community. One can only hope that Trump made clear to Putin that the United States won't tolerate continued Russian interference in elections, as we've seen in the United States, France and now in Germany and across Europe. (This is one conversation that it would be nice to have a tape of.) |
EUREKA, Calif. – Police arrested a suspect who allegedly shot a man using a shotgun shell packed with breakfast cereal.
Officers in the Northern California city of Eureka responded to reports of “shots fired” and at least one person with a gunshot wound around 3:25 p.m. Wednesday afternoon.
The victim, who had suffered a non-life threatening injury to the hand, was treated at a nearby hospital, police said.
Detectives caught up with the suspected shooter, 29-year-old Timothy Glass Jr., after he fled to Palco Marsh, site of a large homeless encampment, according to KRCR-TV. Police say one detective suffered a minor injury during the arrest.
An investigation later determined that Glass used a flare gun to fire the shell, which had been stuffed with Rice Krispies.
Glass was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility for resisting arrest and probation violation.
The victim positively identified Glass but declined to press any charges. |
Recently by Ron Paul: It Is Time To Leave Afghanistan
Before the House of Representatives: Statement Opposing the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, December 15, 2009
I rise in strongest opposition to this new round of sanctions on Iran, which is another significant step toward a US war on that country. I find it shocking that legislation this serious and consequential is brought up in such a cavalier manner. Suspending the normal rules of the House to pass legislation is a process generally reserved for non-controversial business such as the naming of post offices. Are we to believe that this House takes matters of war and peace as lightly as naming post offices?
This legislation seeks to bar from doing business in the United States any foreign entity that sells refined petroleum to Iran or otherwise enhances Iran’s ability to import refined petroleum such as financing, brokering, underwriting, or providing ships for such. Such sanctions also apply to any entity that provides goods or services that enhance Iran’s ability to maintain or expand its domestic production of refined petroleum. This casts the sanctions net worldwide, with enormous international economic implications.
End the Fed Ron Paul Best Price: $1.99 Buy New $8.00 (as of 07:50 EST - Details)
Recently, the Financial Times reported that, [i]n recent months, Chinese companies have greatly expanded their presence in Iran’s oil sector. In the coming months, Sinopec, the state-owned Chinese oil company, is scheduled to complete the expansion of the Tabriz and Shazand refineries — adding 3.3 million gallons of gasoline per day.
Are we to conclude, with this in mind, that China or its major state-owned corporations will be forbidden by this legislation from doing business with the United States? What of our other trading partners who currently do business in Iran’s petroleum sector or insure those who do so? Has anyone seen an estimate of how this sanctions act will affect the US economy if it is actually enforced?
The Revolution: A Mani... Ron Paul Best Price: $1.27 Buy New $5.00 (as of 07:50 EST - Details)
As we have learned with US sanctions on Iraq, and indeed with US sanctions on Cuba and elsewhere, it is citizens rather than governments who suffer most. The purpose of these sanctions is to change the regime in Iran, but past practice has demonstrated time and again that sanctions only strengthen regimes they target and marginalize any opposition. As would be the case were we in the US targeted for regime change by a foreign government, people in Iran will tend to put aside political and other differences to oppose that threatening external force. Thus this legislation will likely serve to strengthen the popularity of the current Iranian government. Any opposition continuing to function in Iran would be seen as operating in concert with the foreign entity seeking to overthrow the regime.
This legislation seeks to bring Iran in line with international demands regarding its nuclear materials enrichment programs, but what is ironic is that Section 2 of HR 2194 itself violates the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which both the United States and Iran are signatories. This section states that [i]t shall be the policy of the United States to prevent Iran from achieving the capability to make nuclear weapons, including by supporting international diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment program. Article V of the NPT states clearly that, [n]othing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty. As Iran has never been found in violation of the NPT — has never been found to have diverted nuclear materials for non-peaceful purposes — this legislation seeking to deny Iran the right to enrichment even for peaceful purposes itself violates the NPT.
Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that many of my colleagues opposing war on Iran will vote in favor of this legislation, seeing it as a step short of war to bring Iran into line with US demands. I would remind them that sanctions and the blockades that are required to enforce them are themselves acts of war according to international law. I urge my colleagues to reject this saber-rattling but ultimately counterproductive legislation.
See the Ron Paul File
December 17, 2009
The Best of Ron Paul |
Are you curious about the natural life cycle of the cannabis plant? Do you want to try your hand at producing your own marijuana harvest, but are unsure about how, exactly, to go about it? Well have we got a treat for you!
In this article, the experts at Honest Marijuana will examine the seven key stages of the marijuana plant life cycle. Along the way, we’ll discuss:
The importance of labeling the sex of your seeds
How to encourage germination
How to recognize embryonic leaves on a marijuana plant seedling
The importance of light during the vegetative stage
The difference between the male and female plants
Why you need to isolate the female plants if you want to produce the most bud
The best ways to harvest and preserve your marijuana plant
Planning for the next growing season
After that, we’ll guide you through the entire growth process of the marijuana plant—from germination to seedling; through vegetation, pre-flowering, and flowering; to harvesting and the next seed life-cycle stages of your pot plant.
So strap yourself in for a wild ride through the basic biology of your favorite weed. It’s sure to be an enjoyable trip. We’ll start our journey where all good journeys begin: at the origin, the source, the seed.
Stage #1: The Marijuana Plant Seed
Source: Pinterest.com
Pick up any seed and examine it closely. Turn it over and around. Feel the weight. Notice the shape and the color. Now tell me if that seed is going to produce a male marijuana plant or a female marijuana plant. Can’t do it, can you? Don’t feel bad. No one can.
But that introduces a major problem into the world of do-it-yourself ganja growing: how can you be sure the seeds you plant will produce the marijuana you want? This is an important question because only the female plant produces the trichome-rich cola buds that you can harvest to smoke, vape, dab and ingest.
The male plant produces none of that. In fact, the male marijuana plant can actually be a detriment to your cannabis harvest if grown together with female plants. This is because the male plant’s sole purpose is to pollinate the female plants. And while that doesn’t sound like a bad thing, it actually is.
When female marijuana plants are pollinated, they start using their energy to produce seeds and stop using their energy to feed the buds that we all know and love. Allowing a male plant to grow alongside a female plant is a recipe for reduced bud harvest and can ruin the euphoric properties of the female cannabis plant’s high-inducing “fruit.” Be sure you separate all male and female plants right away.
So as you can see, it’s good to know if your ganja seeds will produce female plants or male plants before you begin growing them. But that brings us back to the earlier question: how can you be sure the seeds you plant will produce the marijuana you want?
Many marijuana seeds can look alike so, really, the only way to know for sure if the seed you’re holding is male or female is to label it immediately after removing it from the plant. Now, obviously, you can’t label the seed itself, but you can put the seeds in a container with other seeds of the same sex.
In the example photo below, you can see the tiny seed in what looks to be a shot glass or small candleholder. The paper label on the front shows the strain (Skunk Special) and the sex (F for female) of this particular seed.
Source: Weedsthatplease.com
And just to be clear for those of you who are already high as a kite, you don’t need to store each individual seed in its own container. You can fill the container with seeds as long as they are all the same strain and all the same sex. Just thought we should state that outright before you blow all your hard-earned funds on a gazillion small containers.
For those of you on a budget, the simplest container is a paper bag or envelope, but other types will work as well. Just make sure that you don’t store your seeds in a plastic bag or some other airtight container. The moisture that gets trapped inside will cause the seed to mold and become useless.
Whatever container you choose, be sure to mark it with the strain name and the sex of the plant so you can keep your strains separated.
When you’re finished sorting your seeds, it’s time to move on to the next stage in the marijuana plant life cycle.
Stage #2: Germination
Germination is the development of a plant from a seed or spore after a period of dormancy. Once you remove the seed from the marijuana plant, it will go dormant until it’s exposed to moisture. That means that if you keep the seeds dry, you can store them for up to a year without affecting viability.
But should you germinate both the male and female seeds in order to produce quality buds for recreational or medicinal use? We’ll answer that question in the next two sections.
Source: 420magazine.com
Separate The Males
At this point, you should have a pile of male seeds on your left and a pile of female seeds on your right. The side each sex is on doesn’t really matter as long as they’re separated. If you want male seeds on the right and female seeds on the left, more power to ya.
Now gather up the male seeds and store them in a dark, dry closet or cupboard. In fact, take a moment and put them in an entirely different room just to be safe. You’re not going to need them, and you don’t want to take any chance that they’ll somehow affect your female plants.
Gotcha! There really is no risk of cross-contamination unless you plant the male seeds and allow them to grow and mature. We were just waxing hyperbolic in the previous paragraph to underscore just how unimportant the male seeds are.
Germinate The Females
Now take the female seeds and soak them in a cup of water or fold them up in a damp paper towel. Chances are, you’ve either done the damp paper towel experiment in science class or you know someone who did. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that you can start the growing process with nothing more than a bit of moisture.
If you choose the cup of water option, you may notice that some seeds will float at first. Don’t worry. They will eventually sink to the bottom as they absorb water, become saturated, and sprout.
Keep in mind that a single marijuana plant can grow to five feet tall with a wingspan (distance left to right) of two to three feet. That can fill up a room rather quickly. The key point when planning your grow is to give each plant plenty of space. Don’t germinate 20 seeds unless you’ve got the square footage to accommodate that much biological matter.
Leave the wet seed covered in a warm dark place for 24 hours until the seed sprouts its taproot. When the taproot emerges, remove the seed from the cup of water or the damp paper towel and plant it in some good, healthy dirt.
Source: Autoflowering-cannabis.com
The taproot will then attach itself to the soil and start soaking up the nutrients it needs to continue in the growth cycle. Eventually, the seed will push a new stem up past the surface of the soil. Thus begins the seedling stage of the marijuana plant life cycle.
Stage #3: Seedling
During the seedling stage, two embryonic leaves will open outward from the stem to receive the sunlight that the baby plant needs to break out of its underground seed casing. The embryonic leaves will look nothing like the marijuana leaves that you’re used to.
The next pair of leaves to grow from the baby plant will be the first to have the classic rounded points that make the marijuana leaf stand out from all the rest. The marijuana leaf is so recognizable that many people in the cannabis community use it as a symbol to represent their lifestyle. The image below shows the contrast between the two sets of leaves.
Source:Growyourownstone.com
The pair at the top and bottom of the image (top left and bottom right to be more specific) are the embryonic leaves. See how they’re smooth and fairly indistinct? The pair at the left and right of the image are the marijuana leaves that you’ve come to know so well and love so much. See the serrations along the edges? These are a classic feature of the marijuana leaf.
All in all, the seedling will grow between four and eight leaves during this stage of its development. The seedling phase can last anywhere from one to three weeks depending on:
Soil type
Strain of marijuana grown
Amount of water the seed receives
Airflow
Humidity
Duration of light
Quality of light
If this is your first or second grow (or even your third, fourth, or fiftieth), you should focus on growing a healthy plant rather than the exact amount of time it takes to get through each stage. We just supply these general numbers to give you an idea of what to watch for as your plant grows.
So don’t freak out if the seedling phase is a day or two shy of a week or stretches slightly more than three weeks. It’s just a plant, man. Yes, the end result is your very own homegrown ganja, but it’s not worth getting worked up about. You can always go buy a baggie of your favorite strain from your local dispensary.
That brings us to the next step in the life of the marijuana plant: the vegetative (or vegetation) phase.
Stage #4: Vegetative
Source: Growweedeasy.com
During the vegetation phase, the stem will grow thicker and taller and will begin to develop new nodes. These nodes will produce yet more leaves and even new branches.
Because it’s growing and producing leaves and branches, your plant will need plenty of fresh warm water along with:
Flowing, dry air
Lots of nitrogen-rich organic nutrients (e.g., liquid fish or seaweed)
As much soil space as possible
All of this together allows your marijuana plant to grow from an eight-inch baby plant into a two- to three-foot tall tree within the span of three to six weeks.
The plant’s growth largely depends on the rate at which its leaves can gather sunlight and transform it into chemical energy (photosynthesis). This fact explains why the vegetative plant will need long hours of summer sunlight (12 to 15 or more in the wild) or 18 hours of fluorescent light per day.
Source: Howtogrowmarijuana.com
The THC tree will halt its upward growth once it starts receiving less natural outdoor daylight or when the indoor grower reduces the plant from 18 to 12 hours of fluorescent light per day. It’s at this point that the plant enters the pre-flowering phase.
Stage #5: Pre-Flowering
It can take anywhere from one to five months for the growing marijuana plant to enter the pre-flowering stage. When it finally does, you’ll be able to verify that you did indeed plant all females.
Source: Cannabisgrowersworldwide.blogspot.com
If the plant is a male, you’ll see little green banana-like sack structures on the node regions of the plant where the leaves meet the main stem. These sack structures hold pollen and will only appear on male plants. You can see the difference between the male and the female plant in the picture above.
Male plants must be separated from female plants before the little green sacs burst open and release their pollen. If you don’t find the male plants in time, and the sacs do burst, the pollen can fertilize the cola of the nearby female plants. This pollination ruins the psychoactive potential of the trichomes the female plant may grow.
Source: Growweedeasy.com
When you keep your female marijuana plant from being pollinated by a male plant, you produce what is called a sinsemilla. Sinsemilla (Spanish for ‘without seed’) refers to a female marijuana plant that does not have any seeds because it has not been fertilized by pollen.
Sinsemilla plants produce large amounts of resin as well as fake seedpods, both of which contain high percentages of THC. And really, that’s the goal of every grower, isn’t it?
You can identify sinsemilla plants by the white hairs that emerge from the pear-shaped bracts at their plant nodes. Keep in mind that sometimes, a plant can be hermaphroditic. This means that it has both sets of reproductive organs (glands and leaves).
Source: 420magazine.com
Hermaphroditic cannabis plants can actually pollinate themselves and ruin your THC or CBD harvest. For this reason, it’s important to remain vigilant and to separate and destroy any hermaphroditic plants with female glands and male leaves that carry the potential to pollinate and ruin your psychoactive sinsemilla.
Once the light duration begins to decrease (whether naturally or artificially), the cannabis plant moves into the flowering stage. That’s where we’ll go next.
Stage #6: Flowering
Source: Growweedeasy.com
Your plant will continue to grow into sticks and leaves without producing any of the flower’s medicinal qualities unless its light exposure is gradually reduced. This may mean less time spent in the daylight or by artificially decreasing indoor fluorescent light time from 18 to 12 hours.
During the flowering stage, your pot plant will also require potassium and phosphorus-based nutrients, such as bat guano, in order to set flowers properly. When it does, though, you’ll begin to see and smell dank trichome-saturated cola buds growing from your plant.
These buds will also produce long, thin, milky-white hairs, or pistils, that will begin to emerge over the next eight to 10 weeks. All of this flowering activity is triggered by a simple reduction in light. Amazing!
Source: Bigbudsmag.com
Stage #7: Harvesting
Source: Pinterest.com
You’ll know your cannabis plant is ripe for harvest when the hues of the pistils on the cola buds transform from milky white to reddish orange. You’ll also want to use a microscope to check the color of the heads of the trichomes oozing out from the ripe cola buds.
You’ll know that your buds are ready for harvest when the trichome heads turn from clear to milky and opaque to amber. The presence of more amber trichome heads will likely indicate a higher CBD to THC cannabinoid profile ratio in its trichome resin.
Source: Buymarijuanaseeds.com
If you want to harvest your marijuana plant for its full THC or CBD effects, you DON’T want the trichomes to fall off. If that happens, that means that you let the plant grow too long. The majority of the cannabinoids are now gone, you won’t enjoy the psychoactive or medicinal effects, and you’ll have to start growing a new batch of marijuana.
Instead, many growers suggest harvesting the crop when half the trichomes on the plant are opaque. In theory, this produces the highest level of THC with the lowest level of CBD (which counteracts the euphoric effects of the former).
The little hairs that grow from inside the calyxes or the pistils are another clue that helps you determine when to harvest your cannabis for the specific kind of chemical properties you want it to contain. The color of the pistils changes from bright white to rusty orange or brown at the end of the plant’s flowering phase.
On one end of the spectrum, if you notice a higher ratio of white to red pistols, that means your pot will produce more of a euphoric THC high. On the other end of the spectrum, if you notice a higher ratio of red to white pistols, that means your pot will produce more of a sober, calm CBD stoned feeling.
Squarely in between those two extremes, cannabis crops harvested in the middle of the flowering cycle, when roughly half the trichome heads are opaque and the pistils aren’t yet brown, should produce a more balanced THC-to-CBD blend of cannabinoids.
When you’ve determined that it is indeed time to harvest your bud, you’ll need a good pair of scissors or a sharp pruning tool to cut the trunk from the roots so it can be dried.
Source: a1b2c3.com
Make the cut as close to the base of the plant as possible. Then proceed to cut the tree into smaller branches. Doing so will make it easier to dry the plant.
Source: Thcfinder.com
Once you’ve cut your plant into small sections, string up the pieces and hang them upside down from lines of twine in a dark, cool room with a humidity level of 40 to 50 percent. The plant matter should remain hanging in this way and in these conditions for four to six days.
While you’re cutting your pot plant into sections for drying, trim the leaves and stems and set them aside. This material can be trimmed away, saved, and eventually processed to make cannabutter and cannabis concentrate after your buds have dried.
Source: Growweedeasy.com
Once your buds are done drying, place them in a wide-mouthed glass mason jar with a screw-top lid. Fill the jars to just below the top but don’t pack the buds in. Doing so will decrease airflow and cause problems later on. Store the mason jars in a closet or cabinet where the temperature stays between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
Your jars should remain here for one to three weeks in order to cure the buds and finish the harvesting process. That said, once a day you need to crack open the jars. This allows fresh air to get in and any gases produced by the curing process to get out.
Breeding And Cloning To Continue The Cannabis Life-Cycle
Source: 420magazine.com
As we touched on above, new, viable pot seeds (able to be planted and produce a new plant) will grow in the colas of the female plants in the two to 16 weeks after they have been pollinated from by a nearby male plant. The pistils on the seedpods may change colors before the pods burst and the new seeds are scattered to the soil below. But this isn’t the only way to get ahold of pot seeds in order to continue the strain.
You can avoid having to germinate new unidentified male seeds and continue the cannabis life cycle of your most successful plants through a process known as sensimilla cloning. You can grow new, genetically identical versions of your favorite strains year after year by cutting a branch of four or more inches from your best plant and planting it in rooting solution.
Source: 420magazine.com
Summing Up The Lifecycle Of The Cannabis Plant
Soak your pot seeds in water or a paper towel to sprout the taproot that will fasten into your soil and germinate into seedlings. Keep checking the plant’s nodes during the vegetative phase to ensure that you don’t have any unwanted male plants among your crop.
If you do find male plants, be sure to separate them from the female plants. The cannabis plant will continue to vegetate until it begins to receive less light from natural or artificial sources. This will trigger its flowering phase.
Pay attention to the colors of the thin hairs or pistols and the color of the heads of the trichomes in order to determine the right moment to cut and harvest your plant. Hang the wet weed buds up in a cool, dark, dry space with low humidity for approximately a week.
Before you can enjoy your glorious new buds, you’ll need to cure them in glass mason jars for 1 to 3 weeks while ensuring to open them once per day.
If you’re interested in growing a future set of buds, you can continue the marijuana growth cycle by allowing a male plant to pollinate a female into growing seeds with which you can experiment with, or you can cut a branch from your favorite plant and place it in rooting solution to clone it season after season!
That’s Biology. What About Technology?
In this article, we’ve focused on the biology of the growing marijuana plant from seed to harvest. But there’s more involved in producing your own cannabis crop than just knowing how to identify the various stages of plant growth.
A successful grow also requires a bit of technology…even if you’re growing your weed outside. To get the inside scoop on that side of the undertaking, check out How To Grow Weed: The Organic Way. Then get started growing!
And for more information on all things cannabis and to check out our 100-percent all-natural marijuana products, visit HonestMarijuana.com today. |
Quality of life (QOL) is an overarching term for the quality of the various domains in life. It is a standard level that consists of the expectations of an individual or society for a good life. These expectations are guided by the values, goals and socio-cultural context in which an individual lives. It is a subjective, multidimensional concept that defines a standard level for emotional, physical, material and social well-being. It serves as a reference against which an individual or society can measure the different domains of one’s own life. The extent to which one's own life coincides with this desired standard level, put differently, the degree to which these domains give satisfaction and as such contribute to one's subjective well-being, is called life satisfaction.
Overview [ edit ]
Quality of life is the general well-being of individuals and societies, outlining negative and positive features of life. It observes life satisfaction, including everything from physical health, family, education, employment, wealth, safety, security to freedom, religious beliefs, and the environment.[1] QOL has a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, politics and employment. It is important not to mix up the concept of QOL with a more recent growing area of health related QOL (HRQOL[2]). An assessment of HRQOL is effectively an evaluation of QOL and its relationship with health.
Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of living, which is based primarily on income.
Standard indicators of the quality of life include not only wealth and employment but also the built environment, physical and mental health, education, recreation and leisure time, and social belonging.[3][4] According to the World Health Organization (WHO), quality of life is defined as “the individual’s perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals.” In comparison to WHO's definitions, the Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale defines quality of life as “life quality (in this case, physical pain) at a precise moment in time.”[5]
According to ecological economist Robert Costanza:
While Quality of Life (QOL) has long been an explicit or implicit policy goal, adequate definition and measurement have been elusive. Diverse "objective" and "subjective" indicators across a range of disciplines and scales, and recent work on subjective well-being (SWB) surveys and the psychology of happiness have spurred renewed interest.[6]
One approach, called engaged theory, outlined in the journal of Applied Research in the Quality of Life, posits four domains in assessing quality of life: ecology, economics, politics and culture.[7] In the domain of culture, for example, it includes the following subdomains of quality of life:
Belief and ideas
Creativity and recreation
Enquiry and learning
Gender and generations
Identity and engagement
Memory and projection
Well-being and health
Also frequently related are concepts such as freedom, human rights, and happiness. However, since happiness is subjective and difficult to measure, other measures are generally given priority. It has also been shown that happiness, as much as it can be measured, does not necessarily increase correspondingly with the comfort that results from increasing income. As a result, standard of living should not be taken to be a measure of happiness.[3][8] Also sometimes considered related is the concept of human security, though the latter may be considered at a more basic level and for all people.
Quantitative measurement [ edit ]
Unlike per capita GDP or standard of living, both of which can be measured in financial terms, it is harder to make objective or long-term measurements of the quality of life experienced by nations or other groups of people. Researchers have begun in recent times to distinguish two aspects of personal well-being: Emotional well-being, in which respondents are asked about the quality of their everyday emotional experiences—the frequency and intensity of their experiences of, for example, joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection— and life evaluation, in which respondents are asked to think about their life in general and evaluate it against a scale.[9] Such and other systems and scales of measurement have been in use for some time. Research has attempted to examine the relationship between quality of life and productivity.[10] There are many different methods of measuring quality of life in terms of health care, wealth and materialistic goods. However, it is much more difficult to measure meaningful expression of one's desires. One way to do so is to evaluate the scope of how individuals have fulfilled their own ideals. Quality of life can simply mean happiness, the subjective state of mind. By using that mentality, citizens of a developing country appreciate more since they are content with the basic necessities of health care, education and child protection.[11]
Human Development Index [ edit ]
Perhaps the most commonly used international measure of development is the Human Development Index (HDI), which combines measures of life expectancy, education, and standard of living, in an attempt to quantify the options available to individuals within a given society. The HDI is used by the United Nations Development Programme in their Human Development Report.
World Happiness Report [ edit ]
The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey on the state of global happiness. It ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, reflecting growing global interest in using happiness and substantial well-being as an indicator of the quality of human development. Its growing purpose has allowed governments, communities and organizations to use appropriate data to record happiness in order to enable policies to provide better lives. The reports review the state of happiness in the world today and show how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.[12] Also developed by the United Nations and published recently along with the HDI, this report combines both objective and subjective measures to rank countries by happiness, which is deemed as the ultimate outcome of a high quality of life. It uses surveys from Gallup, real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived freedom to make life choices, freedom from corruption, and generosity to derive the final score. Happiness is already recognised as an important concept in global public policy. The World Happiness Report indicates that some regions have in recent years been experiencing progressive inequality of happiness. Without life, there is no happiness to be realised.[13]
Other measures [ edit ]
The Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) is a measure developed by sociologist Morris David Morris in the 1970s, based on basic literacy, infant mortality, and life expectancy. Although not as complex as other measures, and now essentially replaced by the Human Development Index, the PQLI is notable for Morris's attempt to show a "less fatalistic pessimistic picture" by focusing on three areas where global quality of life was generally improving at the time and ignoring gross national product and other possible indicators that were not improving.[14]
The Happy Planet Index, introduced in 2006, is unique among quality of life measures in that, in addition to standard determinants of well-being, it uses each country's ecological footprint as an indicator. As a result, European and North American nations do not dominate this measure. The 2012 list is instead topped by Costa Rica, Vietnam and Colombia.[15]
Gallup researchers trying to find the world's happiest countries found Denmark to be at the top of the list.[16] uSwitch publishes an annual quality of life index for European countries. France has topped the list for the last three years.[17]
A 2010 study by two Princeton University professors looked at 1,000 randomly selected U.S. residents over an extended period. It concludes that their life evaluations – that is, their considered evaluations of their life against a stated scale of one to ten – rise steadily with income. On the other hand, their reported quality of emotional daily experiences (their reported experiences of joy, affection, stress, sadness, or anger) levels off after a certain income level (approximately $75,000 per year); income above $75,000 does not lead to more experiences of happiness nor to further relief of unhappiness or stress. Below this income level, respondents reported decreasing happiness and increasing sadness and stress, implying the pain of life's misfortunes, including disease, divorce, and being alone, is exacerbated by poverty.[18]
Gross national happiness and other subjective measures of happiness are being used by the governments of Bhutan and the United Kingdom.[19] The World Happiness report, issued by Columbia University[20] is a meta-analysis of happiness globally and provides an overview of countries and grassroots activists using GNH. The OECD issued a guide for the use of subjective well-being metrics in 2013.[21] In the U.S., cities and communities are using a GNH metric at a grassroots level.[22]
The Social Progress Index measures the extent to which countries provide for the social and environmental needs of their citizens. Fifty-two indicators in the areas of basic human needs, foundations of wellbeing, and opportunity show the relative performance of nations. The index uses outcome measures when there is sufficient data available or the closest possible proxies.
Day-Reconstruction Method was another way of measuring happiness, in which researchers asked their subjects to recall various things they did on the previous day and describe their mood during each activity. Being simple and approachable, this method required memory and the experiments have confirmed that the answers that people give are similar to those who repeatedly recalled each subject. The method eventually declined as it called for more effort and thoughtful responses, which often included interpretations and outcomes that do not occur to people who are asked to record every action in their daily lives.[23]
Livability [ edit ]
The term quality of life is also used by politicians and economists to measure the livability of a given city or nation. Two widely known measures of livability are the Economist Intelligence Unit's Where-to-be-born Index and Mercer's Quality of Living Reports. These two measures calculate the livability of countries and cities around the world, respectively, through a combination of subjective life-satisfaction surveys and objective determinants of quality of life such as divorce rates, safety, and infrastructure. Such measures relate more broadly to the population of a city, state, or country, not to individual quality of life. Livability has a long history and tradition in urban design, and neighborhoods design standards such as LEED-ND are often used in an attempt to influence livability.[24]
Crimes [ edit ]
Some crimes against property (e.g., graffiti and vandalism) and some "victimless crimes" have been referred to as "quality-of-life crimes." American sociologist James Q. Wilson encapsulated this argument as the broken windows theory, which asserts that relatively minor problems left unattended (such as litter, graffiti, or public urination by homeless individuals) send a subliminal message that disorder in general is being tolerated, and as a result, more serious crimes will end up being committed (the analogy being that a broken window left broken shows an image of general dilapidation).
Wilson's theories have been used to justify the implementation of zero tolerance policies by many prominent American mayors, most notably Oscar Goodman in Las Vegas, Richard Riordan in Los Angeles, Rudolph Giuliani in New York City and Gavin Newsom in San Francisco. Such policies refuse to tolerate even minor crimes; proponents argue that this will improve the quality of life of local residents. However, critics of zero tolerance policies believe that such policies neglect investigation on a case-by-case basis and may lead to unreasonably harsh penalties for crimes.
Popsicle index [ edit ]
The popsicle index is a quality-of-life measurement coined by Catherine Austin Fitts as the percentage of people in a community who believe that a child in their community can leave their home alone, go to the nearest possible location to buy a popsicle or other snack, and return home safely.[25][26][27]
In healthcare [ edit ]
Within the field of healthcare, quality of life is often regarded in terms of how a certain ailment affects a patient on an individual level. This may be a debilitating weakness that is not life-threatening; life-threatening illness that is not terminal; terminal illness; the predictable, natural decline in the health of an elder; an unforeseen mental/physical decline of a loved one; or chronic, end-stage disease processes. Researchers at the University of Toronto's Quality of Life Research Unit define quality of life as "The degree to which a person enjoys the important possibilities of his or her life" (UofT). Their Quality of Life Model is based on the categories "being", "belonging", and "becoming"; respectively who one is, how one is not connected to one's environment, and whether one achieves one's personal goals, hopes, and aspirations.[28][29]
Experience sampling studies show substantial between-person variability in within-person associations between somatic symptoms and quality of life.[30] Hecht and Shiel measure quality of life as “the patient’s ability to enjoy normal life activities” since life quality is strongly related to wellbeing without suffering from sickness and treatment.[5] There are multiple assessments available that measure Health-Related Quality of Life, e.g., AQoL-8D, EQ5D - Euroqol, 15D, SF-36, SF-6D, HUI.
In international development [ edit ]
Quality of life is an important concept in the field of international development since it allows development to be analyzed on a measure broader than standard of living. Within development theory, however, there are varying ideas concerning what constitutes desirable change for a particular society, and the different ways that quality of life is defined by institutions therefore shapes how these organizations work for its improvement as a whole.
Organisations such as the World Bank, for example, declare a goal of "working for a world free of poverty",[31] with poverty defined as a lack of basic human needs, such as food, water, shelter, freedom, access to education, healthcare, or employment.[32] In other words, poverty is defined as a low quality of life. Using this definition, the World Bank works towards improving quality of life through the stated goal of lowering poverty and helping people afford a better quality of life.
Other organizations, however, may also work towards improved global quality of life using a slightly different definition and substantially different methods. Many NGOs do not focus at all on reducing poverty on a national or international scale, but rather attempt to improve quality of life for individuals or communities. One example would be sponsorship programs that provide material aid for specific individuals. Although many organizations of this type may still talk about fighting poverty, the methods are significantly different.
Improving quality of life involves action not only by NGOs but also by governments. Global health has the potential to achieve greater political presence if governments were to incorporate aspects of human security into foreign policy. Stressing individuals’ basic rights to health, food, shelter, and freedom addresses prominent inter-sectoral problems negatively impacting today's society and may lead to greater action and resources. Integration of global health concerns into foreign policy may be hampered by approaches that are shaped by the overarching roles of defense and diplomacy.[33]
See also [ edit ]
Indices [ edit ]
Journals [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ] |
Guided By Voices have famously made a career of achieving classic-rock glory on a beer-guzzling, home-recording Midwestern indie band’s budget. Their drummer, Kevin Fennell, must be hoping for a diehard GBV fan out there with a somewhat fatter wallet. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, Fennell has put up his drum kit on eBay. Starting bid: $55,000.
The drums have some priceless history associated with them, as they appeared on such landmark GBV albums as Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, as well as more recent LPs English Little League, The Bears for Lunch, and the Essential Let’s Go Eat the Factory. The set of two toms, a bass drum, multiple cymbals, and a foot pedal also served on three U.S. and three European tours, plus gigs at Central Park SummerStage and The Daily Show. Fenning will deliver the kit himself anywhere in the continental United States. The listing adds, “And if you’re nice he might just jam with you.”
There are no bids yet at the time of this post, but it could be everyone is waiting to rush in their bids right before the offer closes on October 24. Calling all lo-fi high rollers…. |
If you thought the 215TB of satellite imagery Bing Maps added last year was hefty, think again. In what is the largest installment of Bird's Eye shots yet, the mapping folks in Redmond piled on a whopping 270TB of high-res flyover images to their database yesterday. Some of the more notable (read: gorgeous) additions include overviews of Rome and Milan in Italy, Stavanger in Norway and Kaanapali in Hawaii. Aside from the new visuals, Bing also added a couple of improvements to its Venue Maps with an expanded points of interest list and a new "Report a problem" system so users can inform Bing if a location is marked incorrectly. So go on, head over to the source, select any of the amazing locales and take a little free trip to the other side of the world. |
John Boyega Is Awakening 'Star Wars' Fans In Nigeria
Enlarge this image toggle caption Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Disney Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Disney
Nigeria is falling in love with Star Wars.
There are two reasons. There's a growing nerd culture in the country — young people who love science fiction and see it as a way to imagine our own futures as something better than our present. We also have an annual Comic Con in Lagos. And last year a friend and I started an online "speculative fiction" magazine, Omenana.com, which has helped promote a new generation of sci-fi writers and artists.
The other reason: John Boyega.
Boyega is the son of Nigerians who settled in Britain. He plays Finn, a disillusioned Stormtrooper in the new movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And he's proud of his heritage.
"I'm grounded in who I am and I am a confident black man, a confident, Nigerian, black, chocolate man," he has posted on Instagram.
Nigerians are already familiar with Boyega. He was in the U.K. sci-fi flick Attack the Block and played Ugwu the houseboy in the film adaptation of Chimamanda Adichie's novel Half of a Yellow Sun.
YouTube
But seeing him in Star Wars has been another kind of experience.
Kemi Williams has been a Star Wars fan since she saw the first film when she was 12. Now she's 50 — and gratified that there were more relatable characters in the franchise for her children than there were for her.
"It's significant to me because my son was sitting next to me, and it was a big deal for him to see a character who looks like him," she said. "When I was little I never had that."
Growing up in the '60s and '70s, Williams felt the only place where she found stories she could relate to were in sci-fi shows like Star Trek and Blake's 7. The effect was limited, however, because it was "always white people putting these things out."
Williams was happy that the new Star Wars film has a more diverse cast. She was especially impressed by Boyega's reaction to racist remarks about his casting.
"What's important is that he's out and proud about being a black man," Williams said. "The fact that he's Yoruba has a resonance within Nigeria. He's one of us, and it's something we can relate to."
Williams was one of several moviegoers I interviewed in Abuja, Nigeria's capital.
Boyega's heritage is of less interest to younger Nigerian fans. Chiagoziem Okoronkwo, 30 and a personal trainer, notes that a number of actors of Nigerian heritage, such as Chiwetel Ejiofor, Carmen Ejogo, David Oyelowo and Megalyn Echikunwoke, have risen to prominence in the past few years.
But he's still excited about the character Boyega plays, which doesn't fall into familiar Hollywood stereotypes of black people.
"Most black guys get typecast," he said. "If they're not the supersmart magical negro, they don't get cast. [Boyega's] role was a bit different."
Ultimately, most moviegoers I spoke to agreed that Boyega's turn in the movie was most effective as a way to win new fans to the franchise in Nigeria — even if they didn't realize at first that he was of Nigerian heritage.
"I even thought he was Ghanaian," admits Pelu Awufeso, a 41-year-old travel journalist and blogger. "Boyega is not an original Yoruba name."
Awufeso, who had never been interested in the Star Wars franchise before the premiere of the film, went to see the movie only after previous plans fell through. He was won over by the film — and Boyega's performance.
"I liked the creativity behind it. The sheer creativity in those characters alone deserves kudos," he said. "I was happy that a Nigerian was considered for the role. To see a young Nigerian lead made me feel that, yes, we are doing well."
For an older fan like Kemi Williams, the true benefit of Boyega's casting is that it will bring in a wider audience in Nigeria and show them how science fiction can change the way people think.
"The fact that [Boyega] is a Stormtrooper — who are assumed to be white males underneath their masks — opens up a lot of possibilities," she said. "It opens up people's minds." |
SHIMLA: A massive landslide at Dhalli in Shimla buried half a dozen vehicles under the debris besides damaging a temple and several houses on Saturday afternoon.No loss of life was reported as administration had already stopped the traffic flow on both sides of slide point anticipating the landslide.Shimla has been witnessing heavy rainfall since Friday morning which triggered the landslide at Dhalli.Sources said that around 15-20 minutes before the main slide, boulders had started hurtling down from the hillock. An alert administration stopped vehicular traffic on the road after the state has witnessed several landslides of late.A mound of debris gathered on the road following which traffic was diverted from Shimla and nearby destinations via Sanjauli.A local resident Bhawani Singh said that it was around 2 pm when huge mound from the hillock hit the road and blocked the Malyana-Dhalli road. He said that while some vehicles were swept away, some were buried under the debris that also spilled inside a temple and nearby houses.After receiving the information about the landslide, officials from district administration, police and fire department reached at the spot and started clearing the debris from the road. |
The Chicago Police Department (CPD) is the law enforcement agency of the U.S. city of Chicago, Illinois, under the jurisdiction of the City Council. It is the second largest municipal police department in the United States, behind only the New York City Police Department and larger than the Los Angeles Police Department.[3] It has approximately 13,500 officers and over 1,925 other employees.[4] Tracing its roots back to the year 1835,[5] the Chicago Police Department is one of the oldest modern police forces in the world. The United States Department of Justice has criticized the department for its poor training, lack of oversight and routine use of excessive force.[6]
Structure [ edit ]
Chicago police officer
The Superintendent of Police leads the Chicago Police Department. With the assistance of the First Deputy Superintendent, the Superintendent manages four bureaus, each commanded by a bureau chief.
The mayor appointed former Bureau of Patrol Chief Eddie T. Johnson as Superintendent on March 28, 2016. He was preceded by Garry F. McCarthy, former director of the Newark, New Jersey, Police Department, as superintendent; this was approved by the city council on June 8, 2011.[7] McCarthy was the highest paid city employee with an annual salary of $260,004.[8] McCarthy resigned at the request of Mayor Emanuel on December 1, 2015 over the city's high murder rate and his department's handling of the shooting of Laquan McDonald.
Prior to McCarthy's appointment, Jody P. Weis had served as superintendent of police since February 2008. At the time, Weis was the second Chicago police superintendent hired from outside of the city. He replaced Philip J. Cline, who officially retired on August 3, 2007. Weis' contract expired on March 1, 2011. Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed Cline's predecessor, Terry Hillard, on an interim basis.
The current First Deputy Superintendent is Kevin Navarro,[9] appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
As of December 2014, the four bureaus of the department are:
Bureau of Patrol (BOP): Bureau Chief Fred Waller
Bureau of Detectives: Bureau Chief Eugene Roy
Bureau of Organized Crime (BOC): Bureau Chief Anthony Riccio
Bureau of Support Services (BSS): Bureau Chief Barbara West The department is currently undergoing a major reorganization which eliminates the Bureau of Organizational Development, and places its duties primarily under the Bureau of Support Services. The Bureau of Internal Affairs is commanded by Chief Eddie L Welch III, and falls under the Office of the Superintendent.
There are 22 police districts, consolidated from 25 in 2012, each led by a commander who oversees his or her district. Commanders report to the three area deputy chiefs, who report to the Bureau of Patrol Chief.
In 1960, the municipal government created a five-member police board charged with nominating a superintendent to be the chief authority over police officers, drafting and adopting rules and regulations governing the police system, submitting budget requests to the city council, and hearing and deciding disciplinary cases involving police officers.[10] Criminologist O.W. Wilson was brought on as Superintendent of Police, and served until 1967 when he retired.[11]
Bureau of Detectives [ edit ]
Investigative functions are under the Bureau of Detectives. The Bureau of Detectives is Headed by the Chief of Detectives. The Detective Division includes the three Area Detective Divisions. The Deputy Chief of the Special Investigations Unit oversees the Central Investigations Division, the Forensic Services Division which includes the Mobile Crime Lab of Forensic Investigators, ET-North and ET-South—which are the two Evidence Technician Units, and the Youth Investigations Division.
The Counterterrorism and Intelligence Division includes the Deployment Operations Center Section, the Intelligence Section, the Airport Law Enforcement Section, the Public Transportation Section, and the Bomb and Arson Section. The Organized Crime Division includes the Narcotics Section, Gang Investigations Section, Gang Enforcement Section, Vice Control Section, and the Asset Forfeiture Unit.
The Chief of Detectives heads the Detective Division; the Chief of Organized Crime heads that division—both reporting to the First Deputy Superintendent. Two Deputy Chiefs assist the Chief of Detectives while one Deputy Chief assists the Chief of OCD.
The city is covered by three Detective Division Areas (North, Central, and South), each led by a Commander.
Bureau of Patrol [ edit ]
The Bureau of Patrol includes the twenty-two districts. Also included in the Bureau of Patrol are the Special Functions Group, the Marine & Helicopter Units, Mounted Units, SWAT, the Traffic Section, and Canine Units.
Following the disbanding of the Special Operations Section in 2007 after much negative publicity and controversies, the Special Functions Group was formed to absorb the specialized units that were not associated with the controversial plain-clothes unit known informally as SOS. A full-time SWAT team, organized in 2005, includes 70 members. The dignitary protection unit, based at O'Hare International Airport, is the only unit that uses two-wheeled motorcycles. The Mounted Unit maintains 32 gelded horses at the South Shore Cultural Center.[12] The marine unit maintains nine boats; these bear an angled rendering of the Chicago City Flag at the bow, patterned after the United States Coast Guard "racing stripe".
Ranks [ edit ]
Title Insignia Notes Superintendent Appointed by the Mayor of Chicago. Highest rank in the Chicago Police Department. First Deputy superintendent Chief Rank since September 8, 2011. Chiefs are typically in charge of a Bureau. Deputy chief Rank since September 8, 2011. Commander Commanders are typically in charge of a district. Captain Captains are typically Executive Officers of Districts. Lieutenant Sergeant Field training officer Field training officers wear one chevron over one rocker, with "FTO" in the center of the insignia, but are not considered ranking officers. Police officer/assigned as: detective/youth officer/gang specialist/police agent/major accident investigator/ Chicago detectives are not considered ranking officers, but rather officers assigned to specialized units, e.g. violent crimes, robbery, gang and narcotics (NAGIS), Internal Affairs Division (IAD), Major Accident Investigation Section (MAIS), etc. (Unless they hold the rank of sergeant or above.) Police officer Police officers are the first ranking officers. They are dispatched radio assignments, conduct patrol, and respond to other emergencies as needed.
Insignia [ edit ]
Chicago's five-pointed star-shaped badge (referred to as a "star" instead of a "badge" in the vernacular of the department) also changes to reflect the different ranks of officers. The stars of most Chicago Police officers (patrol officers through to captain) are of silver-colored metal, with broad points. Command ranks have gold-colored stars with sharp points. A ring surrounding the full-color city seal in the star's center changes color for each rank within these two classifications. Like most American police forces, the officer's rank is written in an arc above the center element.
The Chicago Police Department's shoulder sleeve insignia, worn on the top of the left sleeve, is unusual in two regards.
Its shape is octagonal instead of one of the more typical shapes used by most other American police forces.
The embroidery colors vary depending upon the wearer's rank. In all cases, the patch is a white octagon with a full-color rendering of the city seal, ringed in gold, with "Chicago" written in an arc above the seal, and "Police" written in an arc below the seal. For patrol officers and detectives (detectives are occasionally uniformed for ceremonies and details), the octagon's outer edge is finished in dark blue thread, and the text is embroidered in dark blue thread. For sergeants, lieutenants and captains, the octagon's outer edge is finished in gold-colored thread, and the text is embroidered in dark blue thread. For "command ranks" (commander through superintendent), the octagon's outer edge is finished in gold-colored thread, and the text is embroidered in gold-colored thread.
Service longevity is reflected just above the left cuff on most outer garments. Five years of service are indicated by a horizontal bar, embroidered in gold-colored thread; ten years by two bars; fifteen by three bars; twenty by a five-pointed star, embroidered in gold colored thread; twenty-five by one star and one bar and so-forth.
An embroidered rendering of the flag of Chicago, its borders finished in gold-colored thread, is worn on the right shoulder sleeve.
A two-part nameplate in gold-colored metal is worn above the right pocket. The upper portion bears the officer's name; the lower portion indicates the district or command to which the officer is assigned.
The Chicago Police Department is one of only a handful of police agencies in the United States to use the checkered bands on its headgear, known as the Sillitoe Tartan after its originator, Percy Sillitoe, Chief Constable of Glasgow, Scotland in the 1930s. Where British, Australian and New Zealand Sillitoe tartans feature three rows of smaller squares, Chicago's has two rows of larger squares. The checkerboard colors for patrol officers, detectives, dogs and horses are blue and white; the colors for sergeants and higher ranks are blue and gold. Service caps, the campaign hats of the mounted unit, bicycle helmets, knit caps, dog collars, and horse browbands all bear the Sillitoe tartan; the edge of the ball caps' bills show a narrow, flattened Silitoe tartan. The department also uses the pattern on some signage, graphics, and architectural detail on newer police stations.
Salary [ edit ]
Starting salary for Chicago police officers in 2016 is $48,078 increased to $72,510 after 18 months. Promotions to specialized or command positions also increases an officer's base pay. Salaries were supplemented with a $2,920 annual duty availability and an $1,800 annual uniform allowance.[13]
Demographics [ edit ]
In 2010, the composition of the department's total personnel was:
Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (C.A.P.S.) [ edit ]
The Chicago Police Department is often credited for advancing community policing through the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy program. It was established in 1992 and implemented in 1993 by then-Chicago Police Superintendent Matt L. Rodriguez. CAPS is an ongoing effort to bring communities, police, and other city agencies together to prevent crimes rather than react to crimes after they happen. The program entails increasing police presence in individual communities with a force of neighborhood-based beat officers. Beat Community Meetings are held regularly for community members and police officials to discuss potential problems and strategies.
Under CAPS, 9-10 beat officers[15] are assigned to each of Chicago's 279 police beats. The officers patrol the same beat for over a year, allowing them to get to know community members, residents, and business owners and to become familiar with community attitudes and trends. The system also allows for those same community members to get to know their respective officers and learn to be comfortable in approaching them for help when needed. Beat officers are fully equipped and patrol their neighborhoods in a variety of methods: by bike, by car, or by foot.
Strategic Subject List (SSL) [ edit ]
Strategic Subject List (SSL) is an implementation of a computer algorithm developed by the Illinois Institute of Technology. SSL calculates the propensity of individuals committing or being targeted by gun violence. The fourth iteration now in use, has become a helpful indicator of murders, according to Eddie Johnson, Superintendent of Police.[16]
The system looks at an individual's past criminal activities and specifically excludes biasing variables like race, gender, ethnicity and location according to Illinois Institute of Technology professor Miles Wernick. The algorithm assigns scores to individuals based on criminal records as well as any known gang affiliations and other variables.[17]
As of 2016, the CPD created a list 1,400 of "strategic subjects" that has proven to be accurate and helpful to the department. In 2016, over 70 percent of the people shot have been on the list, and 80 percent of the shooters. According to the CPD, 117 of the 140 people arrested during a citywide gang raid performed in 2016 were on the list. The list is used by social workers and community leaders.[18]
Weapons and duty equipment [ edit ]
Chicago Police camera in 2006
Chicago Police helmet & billy-club circa 1968
Chicago police officers are required to buy their own duty equipment (except Taser x3, x26 and Motorola radio Motorola phone).[citation needed] All field officers must also be qualified to carry a Taser. Some officers choose to carry a backup weapon as well, which must meet certain specifications and requires annual qualification.[citation needed]
The prescribed semiautomatic pistol must meet the following requirements:
Officers who were hired on or before 1 December 1991 may keep their older double-action/single-action pistols, as well as their 4" barrel Smith & Wesson, Ruger or Colt revolvers in .38 Special or .357 Magnum. Recruits hired on or after 28 August 2015 must choose from Springfield Armory, Smith & Wesson, or Glock striker-fired 9mm pistols. Officers hired before 19 May 2008 may continue to use the Double Action Only (DAO) Beretta, Ruger, SIG Sauer, and S&W pistols for duty use.[19]
It was reported in June 2018 that the agency would allow the authorization of the SIG Sauer P320 as another service pistol to be chosen by officers to carry. Shortly after the P320 appeared on the authorized firearms list. [20]
Patrol vehicles contain long gun racks. Remington 870 12-gauge shotguns are available in the event that additional firepower is needed. Officers must complete five days of training to carry an AR-15 type rifle and have the option to purchase their own or use a department provided one.[citation needed]
History [ edit ]
19th century [ edit ]
Chicago Police in the rain in 1973 on Michigan Avenue
Chicago Police officer in 1973 inquiring about a traffic accident
In 1825, prior to the creation of Cook County, in what would later become, the village of Chicago, was in Putnam County.[21] Archibald Clybourn was appointed to be Constable of the area between the DuPage River and Lake Michigan. Clybourn went on to become an important citizen of the city, and the diagonal Clybourn Avenue is named after him.[22] When the town of Chicago was incorporated to become a city in 1837, provisions were made to elect an officer called the High Constable. He in turn would appoint a Common Constable from each of the six city wards.
In 1855, the newly elected city council passed ordinances to formally establish the Chicago Police Department. Chicago was divided into three police precincts, each served by a station house. Station No. 1 was located in a building on State Street between Lake and Randolph streets. Station No. 2 was on West Randolph Street near Des Plaines Street. Station No. 3 was on Michigan Street (since then renamed Hubbard Street[23]) near Clark Street. Political connections were important to joining the force; formal requirements were few, until 1895. After 1856, the department hired many foreign-born recruits, especially unskilled, but English-speaking, Irish immigrants.
In 1860, the detective forces were established to investigate and solve crimes. In 1861, the Illinois General Assembly passed a law creating a police board to become an executive department of Chicago autonomous of the mayor. The mayor was effectively stripped of his power to control the Chicago Police Department. Authority was given to three police commissioners. The commissioners created the office of superintendent to be the chief of police. The title is again in use today.
The first African American officer was appointed in 1872, but black police were assigned to duty in plain clothes only, mainly in largely black neighborhoods. In 1875, the Illinois General Assembly found that the police commissioners were unable to control rampant corruption within the Chicago Police Department. The legislature passed a new law returning power over the police to the mayor. The mayor was allowed to appoint a single police commissioner with the advice and consent of the city council.
In 1896, a parade of Chicago police officers were the subject of the first film ever to be shot in Chicago.[24]
Women entered the force in 1885, as matrons, caring for female prisoners. Marie Owens is believed to have been the first female police officer in the U.S., joining the Chicago Police Department in 1891, retiring in 1923. Holding the rank of Sergeant, Owens enforced child labor and welfare laws.[25]
Despite centralized policies and practices, the captains who ran the precincts or districts were relatively independent of headquarters, owing their jobs to neighborhood politicians. Decentralization meant that police could respond to local concerns, but graft often determined which concerns got most attention. In 1895, Chicago adopted civil service procedures, and written tests became the basis for hiring and promotion. Standards for recruits rose, though policing remained political.[26]
20th century [ edit ]
In 1906, the Department's Mounted Patrol was created to provide crowd control, and in 1908, the force was granted its first three motor cars, expanding in 1910 to motorbikes and boats.[27] Female officers were formally appointed beginning on August 13, 1913, starting with ten officers. In 1918, Grace Wilson, possibly the first black female police officer in United States history, joined the force.
In 1917, the Chicago Police Reserves were formed, organised on a regimental basis. They were used to assist or replace regular officers in high-crowd events, such as Memorial Day, and during the 1918 flu pandemic, worked for two weeks to enforce stringent health regulations.
In 1920, the Chicago Police Reserves were disbanded, owing to the failure of the City Council to provide for their organisation.
The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre led to the creation of the United States' first crime laboratory at Northwestern University, purchased by the Department in 1938.
The Department's Mounted Patrol was disbanded in 1948.
Orlando W. Wilson, the first civilian superintendent, was appointed by the mayor in 1960. A former dean of criminology, Wilson introduced major reforms to the Department, including a new and innovative communications center, the reduction of police stations, a fairer promotion process, and an emphasis on motorized patrol over foot patrol. Vehicles were painted blue and white and given blue lightbars, introducing the familiar silitoe tartan headbands, and the official motto, 'We Serve And Protect'. In 1963, the Cadet Program was also introduced.
The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Grant Park led to major criticism of the Chicago Police's crowd control methods, with the Walker Report criticizing both the Department and the National Guard for use of excessive force, and called the events a police riot.
The Department's Mounted Patrol, due to popular demand, was re-established in 1974, renamed imply as the Mounted Unit.
In August 1983, the Chicago Police Department's first African American superintendent, Fred Rice, was appointed by Chicago's first African American mayor, Harold Washington, followed by the first Hispanic superintendent, Matt L. Rodriguez, appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1992.
In 1994, the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) was introduced, serving as a model for community policing operations nationwide, and in 1995, the Emergency Management and Communications Center, also known as '9-1-1 Center', opened, combining call-taking operations for all the emergency services across Chicago.
21st Century [ edit ]
The new Chicago Police Department Headquarters was opened on June 3, 2000, replacing an extremely aged and outdated building located at 1121 South State Street.
New superintendent Eddie Johnson was sworn in on April 13, 2016, upon the resignation of Garry McCarthy.
Fallen officers [ edit ]
Marker under the Haymarket monument at Chicago Police headquarters
Since 1853, the Chicago Police Department has lost 545 officers in the line of duty.[28] By custom, the department retires the stars of fallen officers and mounts them in a display case at Police Headquarters.
Union [ edit ]
The Chicago Police Department became unionized at the end of 1980.[29] This action was controversial as city officials resisted the union for as long as they could. Chicago police officers are represented by the Fraternal Order of Police.
Appearances in popular culture [ edit ]
Notable former officers [ edit ]
Pension system [ edit ]
The Policemen's Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago, which is the pension fund for CPD police officers, is projected to run out of money to pay retirees by 2021 unless a taxpayer bailout props up the fund.[32]
At the end of 2020, the fund "will have less than $150 million in assets to pay $928 million promised to 14,133 retirees the following year. Fund assets will fall from $3.2 billion at the end of 2015 to $1.4 billion at the end of 2018, $751 million at the end of 2019 and $143 million at the end of 2020."[32]
Miscellaneous [ edit ]
Saint Jude is the patron saint of the Chicago Police Department.[33]
Controversies and brutality [ edit ]
The police motorcade awaits the start of the 2007 Chicago Marathon
Over the years, the Chicago Police Department has been the subject of a number of scandals, police misconduct and other controversies:
Summerdale scandals [ edit ]
The Chicago Police Department did not face large-scale reorganization efforts until 1960 under Mayor Richard J. Daley. That year, eight officers from the Summerdale police district on Chicago's North Side were accused of operating a large-scale burglary ring. The Summerdale case dominated the local press, and became the biggest police-related scandal in the city's history at the time. Mayor Daley appointed a committee to make recommendations for improvements to the police department. The action resulted in the creation of a five-member board charged with nominating a superintendent to be the chief authority over police officers, enacting rules and regulations governing the police system, submitting budget requests to the city council, and overseeing disciplinary cases involving officers.[10] Criminologist O.W. Wilson was brought on as Superintendent of Police, and served until 1967 when he retired.[11]
1968 Democratic National Convention [ edit ]
Film shot by DASPO of the protests and Chicago police and military response to the protests
Both Daley and the Chicago Police Department faced a great deal of criticism for the department's actions during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which was held in Chicago from August 26 to 29, 1968.
The convention was site of a series of protests, mainly over the war in Vietnam. Despite the poor behavior of some protesters, there was widespread criticism that the Chicago Police and National Guard used excessive force. Time published an article stating;
With billy clubs, tear gas and Mace, the blue-shirted, blue-helmeted cops violated the civil rights of countless innocent citizens and contravened every accepted code of professional police discipline. No one could accuse the Chicago cops of discrimination. They savagely attacked hippies, yippies, New Leftists, revolutionaries, dissident Democrats, newsmen, photographers, passers-by, clergymen and at least one handicapped. Winston Churchill's journalist grandson got roughed up. Even Dan Rather (the future CBS News anchor) who was on the floor doing a report during the convention got roughed up by the Chicago Police Department. Playboy's Hugh Hefner took a whack on the backside. The police even victimized a member of the British Parliament, Mrs. Anne Kerr, a vacationing Laborite who was maced outside the Conrad Hilton and hustled off to the lockup.[34]
Subsequently, the Walker Report to the U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence called the police response a "police riot," assigning blame for the mayhem in the streets to the Chicago Police.
The Black Panther raid [ edit ]
On December 4, 1969, Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were shot and killed by officers working for the Cook County state's attorney. Though the police claimed they had been attacked by heavily armed Panthers, subsequent investigation showed that most bullets fired came from police weapons. Relatives of the two dead men eventually won a multimillion-dollar judgment against the city. For many African Americans, the incident symbolized prejudice and lack of restraint among the largely white police. The incident led to growing black voter disaffection with the Democratic machine.[26]
Ryan Harris murder [ edit ]
On July 28, 1998, an 11-year-old girl, Ryan Harris, was found raped and murdered in a vacant lot in the city's Englewood neighborhood. The homicide caught the nation's attention when, 12 days after Ryan's body was found, authorities, with the blessing of police command, charged a 7-year-old boy and 8-year-old boy with the murder, making them the youngest murder suspects in the nation at the time.[35] Semen found at the scene and subsequent DNA tests totally cleared the boys of the crime and pointed to convicted sex offender Floyd Durr. The boys each filed lawsuits against the city, which were eventually settled for millions of dollars. Durr pleaded guilty to the rape of Harris, but never admitted to her murder.[36]
Russ/Haggerty shootings [ edit ]
In the summer of 1999, two unarmed black motorists, Robert Russ and LaTanya Haggerty, were both fatally shot in separate incidents involving the Chicago Police. In the first incident, Russ, an honor student and star football player for Northwestern University, was shot inside of his car. This followed a high-speed chase and what the police claim was a struggle with the officer who shot him. In the second, Haggarty, a computer analyst, was shot by a female officer. Charges of racism against the CPD persisted, despite the fact that officers in both incidents were also black.[citation needed] Both shootings resulted in lawsuits and Haggerty's family reached an $18 million settlement with the city.[37]
In Malcolm Gladwell's book on the cognitive function of snap judgments, Blink,[38] well-known criminologist and police administrator James Fyfe said that Chicago police instructions in cases such as Russ's were "very detailed."[39] He said that the record shows that the officers involved all broke procedure and let the situation become unnecessarily deadly for the suspect. For instance, after claiming to see Russ drive erratically, the officers engaged in a driving pursuit. The pursuit, labeled "high-speed," did not exceed 70 miles per hour, but Fyfe contends that the adrenaline rush of the chase, coupled with the officers' reliance in their numbers, led to their ignoring impulses to maintain rational thinking in a potentially non-deadly situation. They speeded up a process that both allowed and required taking things more slowly and methodically. Russ's car spun out on the Ryan Expressway, at which point several officers quickly approached his vehicle. According to Gladwell, the false safety of numbers gave the three officers "the bravado to rush the car." Fyfe adds, "The lawyers [for the police] were saying that this was a fast-breaking situation. But it was only fast-breaking because the cops let it become one. He was stopped. He wasn't going anywhere."
Fyfe describes appropriate police procedure and contrasts the events that contributed to Russ's death thus,
[According to police instructions] You are not supposed to approach the car. You are supposed to ask the driver to get out. Well, two of the cops ran up ahead and opened the passenger side door. The other [officer] was on the other side, yelling at Russ to open the door. But Russ just sat there. I don't know what was going through his head. But he didn't respond. So this cop smashes the left rear window of his car and fires a single shot, and it hits Russ in the hand and chest. The cop says that he said, 'Show me your hands, show me your hands,' and he's claiming now that Russ was trying to grab his gun. I don't know if that was the case. I have to accept the cop's claim. But it's beside the point. It's still an unjustified shooting because he shouldn't have been anywhere near the car, and he shouldn't have broken the window.[40]
Gladwell also notes that the Russ and Haggerty killings occurred on the same night.[39]
Joseph Miedzianowski [ edit ]
In April 2001, Joseph Miedzianowski was convicted of racketeering and drug conspiracy during much of his 22-year career with the department. In January 2003 he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. His partner John Galligan and 24 other drug dealers were also arrested as part of the same investigation.[41]
William Hanhardt [ edit ]
In October 2001, Deputy Superintendent William Hanhardt pleaded guilty to running a nationwide jewel-theft ring that over twenty years may have stolen five million dollars' worth of diamonds and other gems. He had served with the department for 33 years and was sentenced to twelve years in federal custody.[42]
Eddie C. Hicks [ edit ]
In December 2001, Sergeant Eddie C. Hicks was indicted for operating a gang with other CPD officers. The group would raid drug houses, taking the contraband for resale. Hicks skipped a court appearance on June 9, 2003,[43] and was placed on the FBI's most-wanted list.[44] Hicks was arrested in Detroit on September 12, 2017, nearly 15 years after he fled on the eve of trial on federal drug conspiracy charges. Hicks, 68, has been the subject of an international manhunt since 2003, according to the FBI. He appeared in federal court in Detroit on Tuesday and was ordered held until he can be brought to Chicago to face the charges.[45]
Jon Burge torture allegations [ edit ]
Since the early 1980s, official investigations have responded to numerous allegations against former Commander Jon Burge, who has been accused of abusing more than two-hundred mostly African-American men from 1972 to 1991 in order to coerce confessions to crimes. Alleged victims claimed that Burge and his crew of detectives had them beaten, suffocated, burned, and treated with electric shock. In 1993, Burge was fired from the department, and is currently collecting his police pension. In summer 2006, special prosecutors completing a four-year investigation concluded that they had enough evidence to prove crimes against Burge and others, but "regrettably" could not bring charges because the statute of limitations had passed. In January 2008, the City Council approved a $19.8 million settlement with four men who claimed abuse by Burge and his men.[47]
In October 2008, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, had Burge arrested on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury in relation to a civil suit regarding the torture allegations against him. Burge was eventually convicted on all counts on June 28, 2010 and was sentenced to four and one half years in federal prison on January 21, 2011.
On May 6, 2015, Chicago City Council approved "reparations" of $5.5 million to victims of the torture, after spending $100 million in previous legal settlements. In addition, an apology was offered, and a promise to teach school children about these historical events.[48][49]
Nurse arrests [ edit ]
On November 19, 2002, Rachelle Jackson, a registered nurse, was on her way to work when she witnessed a vehicle accident involving a patrol car, in which Officer Kelly Brogan was dazed and her partner was unconscious. Fearing an explosion, Jackson removed both officers from the vehicle, and voluntarily went to the police station under the assumption of giving a statement after being informed that Brogan's service weapon was stolen. Instead she was interrogated for two days with little food or sleep and no access to a bathroom.[50] She was coerced into signing a statement that she had battered Brogan and taken her gun. She was jailed for 10 months before the charges were dismissed. Jackson was awarded $7.9 million by a jury in her lawsuit against Brogan and the city. In 2009, the amount was reduced to $1.9 million.[51] More than half the original verdict was awarded for "intentional inflection of emotional distress."[52]
Bar attack [ edit ]
Bartender being punched and kicked by off duty Chicago Police officer Anthony Abbate.
In 2007, security camera footage surfaced of an intoxicated off-duty police officer, Anthony Abbate, punching and kicking a female bartender, Karolina Obrycka. This occurred at Jesse's Shortstop Inn on February 19, 2007, after Obrycka refused to serve him any more alcohol. Abbate was later arrested, charged with felony battery, and stripped of police powers after TV news stations aired the footage. The Chicago Police soon terminated Abbate from the force, but questions remained over the city's handling of the case.[53]
Abbate was allowed to enter his courtroom hearing through a side door, in order to shield himself from the press. This generated controversy and allegations surfaced that the police ticketed the vehicles of news organizations and threatened reporters with arrest. Superintendent Cline announced that he would demote the Captain who gave the orders, and launched investigations into the actions of the other officers involved.[54]
On April 27, 2007, 14 additional charges against Abbate were announced. These included official misconduct, conspiracy, intimidation, and speaking with a witness.[55] Abbate pleaded not guilty to all 15 charges during a brief hearing on May 16, 2007.[56]
Referring to Abbate, Superintendent Phil Cline stated, "He's tarnished our image worse than anybody else in the history of the department."[57] The video of the attack has been viewed worldwide on 24-hour news channels and has garnered more than 100,000 views on YouTube. In the wake of this scandal and a similar scandal related to another videotaped police beating at a bar, Cline announced his retirement on April 2, 2007. While both men have denied it, some believe that Cline retired under pressure from Mayor Richard M. Daley.[58] Daley has since announced a plan to create an independent police review authority to replace the current Office of Professional Standards (OPS), which is under the jurisdiction of the police department.[59]
On April 30, 2007, attorneys representing Obrycka filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against the city of Chicago and Abbate and several other individuals.[60] On November 13, 2012, a federal jury found that a "widespread code of silence" within the Chicago Police Department had allowed Abbate to feel that he could attack Obrycka without fear of reprisal. They also found that Abbate participated in a conspiracy to cover up the attack. The jury awarded Obrycka $850,000 in damages.[61]
Abbate was convicted of aggravated battery, a felony, on June 2, 2009. Cook County Circuit Judge John J. Fleming rejected Abbate's claims that he had acted in self-defense. However, since Obrycka testified that Abbate had not identified himself as an officer during the attack Abbate was acquitted of official misconduct charges. Abbate faced up to five years in prison for the attack. On June 23, 2009, Abbate was sentenced to two years probation, including a curfew between 8 pm and 6 am, mandatory attendance at anger management classes, and 130 hours of community service.[62]
On December 15, 2009, Abbate was officially fired from the CPD after a mandatory review by the Chicago Civilian Police Board.[63] The firing was a formality, as the CPD does not allow convicted felons to serve on the force.
Jerome Finnigan [ edit ]
Chicago Police Officers Jerome Finnigan, Keith Herrera, Carl Suchocki, and Thomas Sherry were indicted in September 2007 for robbery, kidnapping, home invasion, and other charges. They were alleged to have robbed drug dealers and ordinary citizens of money, drugs, and guns. The officers were all part of Special Operations Sections (SOS). The officers had allegedly victimized citizens for years; however, allegations of their misconduct was not investigated until 2004. According to the State's Attorney, the officers repeatedly missed court dates and allowed alleged drug dealers to go free. Several lawsuits alleging misconduct on behalf of Finnigan and his team have been filed in federal court. Since the original indictments, Jerome Finnigan has also been charged with attempting to have several fellow officers killed. Since the scandal involving Finnigan, SOS has been disbanded.
On February 11, 2009, charges against Chicago Police Department officers Tom Sherry and Carl Suchocki were dropped. A Cook County judge dismissed all criminal charges accusing them of robbery and home invasion after some evidence was proven to be false, and witnesses in the case against Sherry and Suchocki were unable to place the officers at the scene of the crime. Charges against Herrera and Finnigan, however, are still pending. As of September 25, 2009, seven former SOS officers have pleaded guilty to charges relating to the scandal. The investigation is ongoing as police officers continue to come forward and cooperate with the state and federal investigation.[64][65][66][67][68][69]
Shooting of Flint Farmer [ edit ]
On June 7, 2011, Flint Farmer was fatally shot three times in the back by Chicago police officer Gildardo Sierra. Sierra and a partner had responded to a domestic disturbance call allegedly involving Farmer. When confronted by the police, Farmer fled. Sierra shot at Farmer multiple times, hitting him in the leg and abdomen. Publicly available police video shows Sierra circle the prone Farmer as three bright flashes emit from approximately waist level.[70] The coroner who performed the autopsy on Farmer reported that Farmer could have survived the shots to the leg and abdomen, but any of the three shots through the back would have been fatal.[70] Officer Sierra had been involved in two other shootings in 2011. Although the Chicago police department ruled the shooting justified, by October 23, 2011 Sierra had been stripped of his police powers and the FBI had opened an investigation into the incident. Eventually, no charges were brought against the officers. The city settled the civil case with Farmer's family for $4.1 million but did not admit fault.[71][72]
Richard Zuley [ edit ]
After his retirement multiple inquiries into overturned convictions that had relied on confessions he coerced triggered the Conviction Integrity Unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office to plan to subpoena Zuley's entire complaint history.[73]
Zuley faces multiple lawsuits from individuals who claim he framed them, or beat confessions from them.[73] Lathierial Boyd was exonerated and freed in 2013 after serving 23 years in prison, based on evidence from Zuley and suppression of exculpatory evidence. He filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, as well as suing the city, saying that Zuley framed him for a murder and attempted murder outside a nightclub in 1990. Anthony Garrett, who received a 100-year sentence for killing a seven-year-old boy, alleged Zuley beat his confession out of him.
On February 18, 2015, Spencer Ackerman, reporting in The Guardian, covered Zuley's alleged involvement in the torture and forced confessions of several homicide cases in Chicago. He said several inmates claimed abuse by Zuley.
In addition, he revealed additional details of Zuley's participation as a US Navy Reserve lieutenant from late 2002 to 2004 in the interrogation and torture of Guantanamo captive Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Slahi was among several men classified by the US as high-value detainees, for whom the Secretary of Defense authorized extended interrogation techniques, since characterized as torture.[74]
Jason Meisner, writing in the Chicago Tribune, reported that The Guardian characterized Zuley's use of torture as "brutal and ineffective".[73] Memos Zuley wrote, quoted in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's use of torture, described him using "stress positions"—the shackling of interrogation subjects in painful postures for extended periods of time. Zuley currently faces lawsuits in Chicago for using these techniques against American civilians.
Homan Square [ edit ]
The Guardian reported in February 2015 that the Chicago Police Department "operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site." The Guardian added that the facility, the Homan Square Police Warehouse at 1011 S. Homan Ave in Chicago ( ), "has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units." The Guardian said that interviews with local attorneys and one protester "describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights ... The secretive warehouse ... trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown ... Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside."[75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83]
After the Guardian published the story, the Chicago Police provided a statement saying, without specifics, that there is nothing improper taking place at what it called the "sensitive" location, home to undercover units. The statement said "CPD [Chicago Police Department] abides by all laws, rules and guidelines pertaining to any interviews of suspects or witnesses, at Homan Square or any other CPD facility. If lawyers have a client detained at Homan Square, just like any other facility, they are allowed to speak to and visit them." The Guardian said several attorneys and one Homan Square arrestee have denied this. The CPD statement continued by saying "There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is not any different at Homan Square." The Guardian said the Chicago Police statement did not address how long into an arrest or detention those records are generated or their availability to the public, and that a department spokesperson did not respond to a detailed request for clarification.[75]
Laquan McDonald [ edit ]
On October 20, 2014, 17-year old Laquan McDonald was fatally shot by Officer Jason Van Dyke.[84] The killing sparked protests and calls for the mayor to resign.[84] A video released revealed McDonald walking down a street, carrying a knife.[84] McDonald was walking parallel to the two police cars when he was shot 16 times.[84] A criminal complaint filed in Cook County Circuit Court revealed that Van Dyke was the only officer to shoot.[84] The complaint also said that McDonald was on PCP at the time of his death.[84] Protestors were frustrated that the video took 13 months to release.[84] A freelance journalist sued to have the footage released as it was a public record.[84] A judge found in the reporter's favor and the video became public in November 2015.[84]
Van Dyke was charged with six counts of first-degree murder and one count of official misconduct.[84] He remained on desk duty after the shooting.[84] Van Dyke had a history of complaints in his career but was cleared in a majority of the cases.[84] He pleaded not guilty on December 29, 2015 to the charges against him.[84] After his arraignment, his attorney, Daniel Herbert, said that he would be looking for evidence to clear his client's name.[84]
2017 Department of Justice report and agreement for enforcement [ edit ]
Following the McDonald shooting, Illinois State Attorney General Lisa Madigan requested that the US Department of Justice conduct a civil rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department. They released their report in January 2017, announcing an agreement with the city to work on improvements under court supervision. They strongly criticized the police for a culture of excessive violence, especially against minority suspects and the community, and said there was insufficient and poor training, and lack of true oversight.[6]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
In search of political cover (and not finding a lot of it these days), Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago City Council are patching together a plan to cushion the blow of a massive property tax increase.
Chicagoans are confronting their second-installment property tax bills. Prepare for sticker shock. Maybe each envelope should include a shot of bourbon.
The average homeowner's property tax bill is jumping by roughly 13 percent, though there can be wide swings in either direction. A homeowner whose property has a market value of $225,000 will see his or her bill increase by more than $400. Ouch. In areas of the city where property values have climbed steeply — Gold Coast, South Loop, Streeterville — some property owners could get socked with an additional $5,000 in taxes. Ouch and ouch.
The city's failure to adequately pay into retiree pension funds, coupled with an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that locks in pension promises at their current levels, left the city few options. Last fall, Emanuel and the aldermen passed the largest property tax increase in the city's modern history.
The biggest hit comes this year, followed by additional increases in following years. The total tax increase gradually climbs to $543 million a year by 2019.
All of that money will go to the police and firefighter pension funds. City leaders still have to figure out how to shore up the pension funds for teachers, municipal workers and laborers. Again, the options are limited.
The steep property tax increase is a political problem unto itself. But there's another one: When Emanuel proposed the tax increase, he vowed to protect homeowners whose properties are worth less than $250,000 by doubling their homestead exemption.
You can kiss that promise goodbye. Emanuel's plan would have required the General Assembly to pass a bill and Gov. Bruce Rauner to sign it. Lawmakers didn't send it, and Rauner had indicated he would likely veto it anyway. He wanted Emanuel to include money-saving reforms to city government before raising taxes.
So now the city is working on Plan B, a so-called rebate. Under four options being considered so far, low-income homeowners would qualify for one-time rebates averaging $100 to $254, according to an analysis from the mayor's office.
That might sound like compassionate government, but it's a ruse. The rebates would just take from one pocket to stuff a few dollars in the other. Under the various proposals, the rebates would total $10 million to $50 million, plus the cost of administering the program, which would likely be outsourced.
But the city can't just reduce its contribution to the pensions and rebate that money. It would have to find the money elsewhere in the budget, either by cutting operating costs or levying a new tax or fee to make up those dollars. All that to shell out what amounts to a consolation prize: a rebate of a few bucks to ameliorate that whopping tax increase.
Tax rebates are gimmicky. Look, here's some money back! A responsible government doesn't collect taxes and then give back the change. And there isn't any change, anyway.
In fact, there's likely another tax increase on the way. The state budget deal cut Thursday in Springfield threatens Chicagoans with another $250 million property tax increase, this one to help cover contributions to Chicago Public Schools pensions.
City Hall and CPS (and other Illinois governments) wouldn't have to rescue pension funds with massive property tax increases if, during the past decade, they had reduced costs, negotiated more reasonable agreements with organized labor and gotten a handle on runaway pension obligations. They didn't.
Taxpayers aren't fools. A token rebate isn't going to make them forgive and forget. Thanks for the booby prize, but we'll pass.
Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook. |
Since its first show aired nearly 20 years ago, the Food Network has sliced, diced, baked, grilled, and fried its way into the homes of viewers ravenous for a steady diet of culinary showmanship. Now, the channel that introduced us to celebrity chefs and kitchen competitions is poised to change the way we consume recipes–starting with the first course, naturally.
Soup is the focus of the first of a new series of mobile cookbooks that launches October 11th in iTunes. (Amazon will follow in the coming weeks). Dubbed “Food Network Favorites,” the apps explore a single subject, presenting recipes and interactive editorial content along with a heaping helping of photographic food porn. One new title will be released every two months and devotees can subscribe to get new releases as they’re published.
Bob Madden, Food Network’s general manager and senior vice president of online brands, says the Food Network Favorites series will build off the success of its previous offerings such as “In the Kitchen,” which he says is currently the most popular iTunes paid app. Not to mention pull in scores of users to its website Food.com. The site shared over 450,000 recipes with over 7 million monthly uniques, according to Nielsen NPower, comScore in 2011.
But it’s also not quite going to duplicate the technical bells and whistles within its recently released Cupcakes! app. Though Madden maintains the title is consistently ranking in the top 10 in iTunes’ food and beverage category, thanks to the magic of analytics they discovered that home cooks were more interested in the actual recipes than, say, a bunch of bees flying out of a hive made of cheery, yellow cupcakes.
“We have a little of that in Soups but scaled back to focus on photography and the utility,” he says. So much so that if you’re salivating at that glimpse of a steaming bowl of creamy butternut squash soup, you can swipe the screen to move the copy off the page for a better view.
Interactivity isn’t totally missing. There are embedded videos and select pages that allow foodies to take a deeper dive into specific ingredients such as garnishes.
But the most intriguing thing about Soups–beyond turning mac and cheese or pizza into bowlfuls of spoonable comfort–is the potential to go back to the future of cookbooks. |
Lotus will field Roy Nissany and Rene Binder in the series' first season since the exit of major backer Renault.
"2016 will be a great year," said team boss Antonin Charouz.
"The series has a new name but we are still motivated to fight for the title.
"We chose two really committed drivers and I’m sure we will show our potential in the nine rounds on the schedule. We worked really hard during the winter, and we are ready to be back on-track more determined than ever."
Nissany, the 21-year-old son of former Minardi F1 tester Chanoch, makes the switch over from French squad Tech 1, which fielded him in his rookie FR3.5 season last year.
With Tech 1, the Israeli driver placed 13th in the standings, picking up a maiden podium at Spielberg.
"I’m so proud and happy to join the Lotus squad," said Nissany.
"I felt really comfortable with the car and all the crew during the winter test in Barcelona. I can’t wait to be back in that car, and it was a great experience. The team has been great as well so I really want to be back on track soon!"
Binder, 24, spent the past three years in GP2, his best result a sixth-place finish in Monaco in 2013.
The Austrian made his FR3.5 debut at Nurburgring last year with Pons Racing, scoring points with an eighth place in the second race of the weekend.
“After three disappointing years in GP2, I am really motivated for great results," he said.
"I think the team can help me to achieve this results and I totally trust them for the preparation of the car. We met a few weeks ago but we always had a great feeling.
"I ran only one [round] last season, but I have to find the right chemistry with the Michelin tires and there are also a couple of tracks I’ve never raced before."
Lotus 3.5's campaign in the series last year was spearheaded by Matthieu Vaxiviere, who finished runner-up and took three wins.
The Frenchman is likewise back in the series in 2016 - with new squad Spirit of Race.
2016 Formula V8 3.5 line-up so far: |
Lawyers at the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, above, didn’t see much of an issue, at first, with the Obamacare wording that has sent a case to the Supreme Court. (J. David Ake/Associated Press)
When the Supreme Court takes up the latest challenge to President Obama’s health-care law this week, how the justices interpret a six-word phrase in the bill could determine its fate.
The law, adopted in 2010, says the federal government can pay subsidies to help people afford insurance bought through “an Exchange established by the State.”
But two-thirds of the states have opted against setting up their own exchanges, and as a result, more Americans have been buying insurance through the federal insurance marketplace. Now, opponents of the law will make their case to the high court that Americans who are not using the state exchanges are ineligible for subsidies. And if they win, insurance premiums could skyrocket and many people might drop their coverage — possibly undermining the whole health-care program.
And as the justices weigh whether the health-care law in fact has a fatal glitch, one of the key questions is this: Why did the Obama administration rule-writing officials in the Internal Revenue Service and its parent agency, the Treasury Department, ultimately interpret the language the way they did?
It had never occurred to the Treasury Department official responsible for making the changes in the tax code required by the law that there was more than one way to read the phrase — until she happened across an article in a trade journal.
Emily McMahon, deputy assistant treasury secretary for tax policy, read an article in Bloomberg BNA’s Daily Tax Report in January 2011 raising questions about whether federal subsidies could be paid for millions of Americans buying insurance under the Affordable Care Act, according to Treasury Department officials. The issue was whether the law allowed these payments if the coverage was bought in states that did not set up their own insurance marketplaces.
So McMahon called a meeting with two of her top lawyers, one of them recalled, and asked whether there was “a glitch in the law we needed to worry about.”
In the end, the Treasury and IRS officials who wrote the rules adopted the more expansive reading of the law — allowing subsidies for all marketplaces — because they concluded this was required for the new health-care initiative to succeed, according to current and former agency officials and documents they provided to congressional investigators. And, the officials reasoned, Congress would not have passed a law that it wanted to fail.
“Nobody I talked to in government, including many people involved in the legislative process, thought this was a question,” recalled David Gamage, a tax law professor at the University of California at Berkeley hired to help the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy implement the law. “Nobody thought the argument [limiting the subsidies] was persuasive.’’
While it was clear to the rules’ authors at Treasury and the IRS that the issue was a practical matter and not a political one, they met regularly with White House officials, who were closely monitoring the drafting of the regulations, two former officials said.
And while the team of tax attorneys had no doubt that the subsidies should apply to all marketplaces, there was a significant debate inside Treasury and the IRS about how much of their reasoning should be spelled out in public. The agency was sensitive to the legal and political minefield it was navigating.
The passage of the 955-page health-care law required officials to draft some of the biggest changes to the tax code in years. In weekly meetings in a fourth-floor conference room at IRS headquarters on the Mall, government lawyers deliberated over dozens of provisions of what would become Part 36B of the Internal Revenue Code, the rules governing the tax credits.
At first, the team of Treasury and IRS lawyers considered the subsidy question a minor issue, in part because it was widely expected that states would set up their own marketplaces.
“It didn’t occupy a lot of conversation, because it was not at all clear that a lot of states wouldn’t establish their own exchanges,” said Clarissa Potter, a deputy tax director at American International Group who was the IRS’s deputy chief counsel until May 2011.
When she learned that opponents of Obamacare were targeting the federal subsidies, Potter recalled, “I remember thinking: ‘Jeez, really? Is this the best you can do?’ ”
Among the officials drafting the regulations, the unanimous view was that the opponents didn’t have a case, according to Gamage, Potter and two others who were involved.
Gamage circulated a memo concluding that while the law contained some “awkwardly written” phrases, the best reading of the statutory language was that all Americans who are eligible receive the subsidies. He said the language deems federal marketplaces as a subset of the exchanges established by a state.
The team published a proposed rule in the Federal Register in August 2011, scheduled a public hearing for November and put the issue on the back burner, focusing on other tax issues in the law.
A day before the public hearing, an op-ed piece titled “Another ObamaCare Glitch” by Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler and Michael F. Cannon, a health policy expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, appeared in the Wall Street Journal. They wrote that the IRS had no legal authority to give tax subsidies to people enrolling in a federal exchange. This argument became the foundation for the legal challenge to the law that is now coming before the Supreme Court.
Liz Fowler, a White House architect of the health-care law, read the opinion piece and forwarded it to nine lawyers at Treasury and the IRS. “You probably saw the WSJ article, but note that the hill is asking about a response,” she wrote. “Do you know if we are working on a response? Also might be aware that it could come up at tomorrow’s hearing — though I suppose you have thought about that possibility already.”
Jason Levitis, a Treasury lawyer, replied that the proposed regulations had “worked this issue.”
“If it comes up in the reg hearing tomorrow,” he wrote, “we will thank people for their comments and say we are taking them all into consideration.”
The Treasury and IRS team writing the regulations recognized that the environment was becoming highly charged.
“There was a sense that certain groups were going to sue,” Gamage said. “As increased pressure came from outside,” he said, the exchanges “moved up the issues list.”
House Republicans were writing to the administration opposing the proposed rules and pressing Treasury to document how it wrote the regulations. Investigators with the House Oversight and Ways and Means committees were increasingly frustrated that some of their requests were turned down and others met with redacted documents.
Treasury lawyers said they scoured the law’s legislative history, poring over committee reports and statements from lawmakers on the House and Senate floor that the tax credit applied to all Americans. “We dug into it,” said a former attorney on the Treasury-IRS team who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. “Certainly, it caused us to go back and look at our legal analysis.”
Discussions intensified inside Treasury and the IRS over how to show that the government had considered the opponents’ views but not draw media attention to the debate over subsidies, former officials recalled.
“The overriding concern was not generating negative news stories,” one former official said. Tax attorneys decided to be concise in drafting the regulation and issue a rule that was “not so minor that nothing is said, but minor enough that little is said,” the official recalled.
The final regulation contained language saying that Treasury would not adopt suggestions from some commenters that the subsidies should be restricted to state exchanges.
House Republicans were sharply critical, accusing the White House of urging the rule’s authors to ignore the text of the law. In a joint report, the House Oversight and Ways and Means committees charged the administration with failing to conduct a thorough review before writing the regulations.
At a House hearing in 2013, Douglas Shulman, the IRS commissioner at the time, acknowledged that the law contained “some contradictory language” on exchanges. But he said the government “exercised the rule-writing authority that is delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury in every tax bill.”
Alice Crites contributed to this report. |
In Africa, the birthplace of humanity, ancient humans moved and mixed throughout the continent. But until now, it’s been a challenge to trace those patterns using genetics. Now scientists have analyzed the oldest known human DNA in Africa to shed light on how people migrated—opening up a new field for examining patterns of migration and interbreeding in the region.
Related Content Ancient DNA Could Unravel the Mystery of Prehistoric European Migration
Africa may be the continent where humans first arose, but compared to Europe, relatively little ancient DNA has been sequenced from there. This hasn't been for lack of trying, says Jessica Thompson, an archaeologist at Emory University who focuses on ancient Africa, but rather due to the differences in environment between the continents.
DNA can be a resilient molecule, surviving hundreds of thousands of years under the right conditions. But it can also be very fragile, subject to degrading in the presence of heat or moisture. Both of these are found in abundance in much of Africa, making it far more difficult to extract usable DNA to sequence.
In contrast, scientists have sequenced DNA from Neanderthals in Europe that date back to more than 400,000 years, thanks to a climate that is generally cooler, drier and therefore better suited for preserving DNA.
"For an Africanist, it's frustrating, because we don't have access to the same kinds of data that people who are studying the prehistory of say ancient Europe has," Thompson says, "and I'll admit I've been kind of jealous about that."
At an anthropology conference in 2015, Thompson was confronted again with this paucity of ancient DNA data from Africa. It dawned on her that there might be some places on the continent with conditions that would preserve DNA better—if researchers just knew where to look. "I was silly to think about Africa as this homogenous wet, hot place," she says now.
In Thompson's field work in the southeastern country of Malawi, she recalled visiting sites that were at relatively high elevations that were noticeably cold, where skeletons had been found in the mid-20th century. Thompson’s efforts to track down these skeletons put her in touch with an already nascent effort by anthropologists and other researchers to fill the void of ancient African DNA by harnessing scientific advances.
"We really have all just been kind of waiting and hoping that the day would come when we could access to technology that would enable us to get that same quality of data from Africa as we have in other parts of the world," Thompson says. That day may have finally arrived.
Thompson found two ancient human samples in another lab, but analyzing them produced inconsistent results. So she decided to return to the Malawi sites where they were dug up to look for more clues. She ended up uncovering three more sets of human remains, which contained DNA dating back as far as 8,000 years ago; she collected other samples from scientific archives in Malawi.
Other researchers also sqeuenced eight more ancient samples from southern, which Thompson’s group included in a study published today in the journal Cell. Time had degraded the samples, says Pontus Skoglund, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School who led the study. However, with persistence and advancing genetic technology, researchers were able to obtain at least 30,000 DNA base pairs from each sample—“more than enough to do powerful statistical analyses,” Skoglund says.
The team compared these ancient sequences to hundreds of modern day genomes from Africa and around the world to place the ancestries of modern humans, and see who had moved around and who hadn’t. "What is most immediately obvious is this landscape of hunter-gatherer populations has now been changed quite radically," Skoglund says.
Before the widespread use of agriculture and livestock, humans survived through hunting and gathering. The adoption of agriculture by some groups of people is known to have driven great migrations among humans throughout ancient history, Thompson says, but this study made clear the scale of how much this disrupted the distribution of humans in southern Africa.
Modern-day people native to Malawi appear to be completely unrelated to the ancient humans who lived in their country a few thousand years ago—reflecting a much more dramatic migration than Thompson and others would have expected. Other samples confirmed how much movement within Africa has occurred in the last few thousand years, and included a Tanzanian herder who was found to have descendants spread from north to south on the continent.
These movements mean that the lineage of modern humans in Africa appears to have mixed much more than previously thought, according to Thompson. "It appears to be one of the most complete population replacements ever documented," she says.
"Human genetic history was complex, and ancient DNA studies from Africa are needed to understand the history there, and are eagerly awaited," said Chris Tyler-Smith, a geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, via email. "This is the first substantial study of ancient African DNA."
Tyler-Smith, who wasn't involved in the research, said some of the conclusions were expected, such as the fact that populations of hunter-gatherers were replaced by agricultural populations. But other insights, such as how branched the tree of ancestry for modern-day west Africans is, surprised him.
The completion of this sequencing, he says, opens the door to more and better sequencing down the road, and raises more questions about our ancestors.
Eran Elhaik, a geneticist at the University of Sheffield, agrees. "This study opens a window to the past of one of the world's most genetically diverse regions that thus far has remained largely unexplored," he wrote by email. Many assumptions and reconstructions about how ancient humans settled down in Africa may have to be discarded now, he says.
For Thompson and Skoglund, this paper overall highlights how many questions ancient human DNA could unlock in Africa. "I think it's important to bring this tool of ancient DNA that has been very useful for understanding the history of Europe to understand all parts of the world, especially African prehistory," Skoglund says.
Thompson, who is planning to find and sequence more ancient DNA to paint an even clearer picture of where and how people lived in Africa long ago, says she expects much more research coming out of this tool in the near future. "I think it's going to be a doorway that's wide open now," Thompson says. |
This is heartwarming.
This Northern Fur Seal was released back into the wild after being rehabilitated at the Island Wildlife Natural Care Centre in British Columbia (located on Salt Spring Island). The seal, which was rehabilitated after washing ashore, was rehydrated and released on a beach near Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
The young seal looks almost surprised to be let go. At first he seems to be afraid to leave, but takes off full speed for the ocean as soon as he's confident.
Island Wildlife rescues seals all the time, in various conditions. While some seals require more serious attention, other less critical creatures get rehydrated and quickly released. You can see more images and videos, and learn more about the program, at sealrescue.org. |
It seems we’re hearing a lot about 8-Core streaming devices lately. Idroidnation was nice enough to send us a sample of their brand new Android TV box for review: The Idroidnation I-Box.
The last time we reviewed an Octa-Core streaming device was the Tronsmart Draco. It started off well, but quickly fizzled out because Tronsmart was non-existent with their support of the box. Any time that a new design comes out, you’re buying into the hope that the device will perform better and better as it ages. I’m talking about everything, not just Android boxes.
Will the Idroidnation I-Box age better than the Draco? How does it perform now?
Let’s find out.
Idroidnation I-Box: Specs
The Idroidnation I-Box is built off the Cortex A53 which is an 8-core, 64-bit version of the Cortex A7. This essentially allows the A53 to be smaller than it’s predecessor and give higher performance using less power. Like the Draco, this device also uses ARM’s big.LITTLE technology which enables the CPU to turn on cores when it needs more processing power and turn them off at idle times.
There is also 2GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. The storage is split over two partitions, which I found to be disappointing. Manufacturers started doing this as a cost benefit, but with memory prices so low, I’m not sure why they still feel the need to split storage like this.
It’s also worth pointing out that this is one of the few TV boxes running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. We’ll see this more in the future, but it’s great to see Lollipop finally making it’s way on to streaming devices.
Here are the official specs from Idroidnation’s website:
Operating System Android 5.1 CPU RK3368 – 64-bit Octa-Core Cortex A53 GPU Power VR6110 Supported Formats OpenGL ES3.1, OpenCL 1.2 and DirectX 9.3 4K*2K H.264/H.265 real-time Video playback HDMI2.0,4K*2K@60fps display RAM DDR3 2GB Storage Onboard eMMC Flash 8GB Connectivity Bluetooth BT 4.0, Ethernet 100 Mb LAN Wi-Fi Wireless 802.11a/b/g/n Expandable Memory Micro SD Card (Maximum support 64GB) Antenna Built-in antenna for Wi-Fi UHD 4K×2K Yes Full HD 1080P Yes HEVC H.265/H.264 Yes Video/Picture Decoding Supports *.mkv,*.wmv,*.mpg, *.mpeg, *.dat, *.avi, *.mov, *.iso, *.mp4, *.rm and *.jpg file formats Audio format Support MP3, AAC, WMA, RM, FLAC, OGG Ports USB 2.0 x 3, Micro USB with OTG x 1, HDMI 2.0 x 1, SPDIF x 1, Micro SD card slot Adapter 5V 2A Features Miracast/DLNA Support
What’s in the box
Android TV box manufacturers have gotten a lot better with their packaging since they first popped on the scene a few years ago. The first devices were simply thrown into a box and included a simple one-sheet of instructions which, if you were lucky, were written in English.
By contrast, the Idroidnation I-Box is packaged well. The box is mono-chromatic on plain brown cardboard, and gives it a kind-of “eco-friendly” vibe. Still, it looks like something you’d pick up at any big-box retailer like Best Buy or Target. Once you open the box, the I-Box is there, along with a brief description of the package contents.
Underneath, you’ll find an AC power adapter, USB to micro-USB OTG adapter and an HDMI cable so you don’t have to buy your own.
There’s also a one-sheet setup guide that looks like something that could be produced by Hewlett-Packard. That’s a good thing, by the way. I’ve often said that they have some of the best set-up material in the tech industry for new users. The iDroidnation’s setup page explains not only how to plug in the box, but also how to perform basic Android functions like opening and closing apps. On the back, there’s a walkthrough on how to change language settings and connect to the Internet.
Benchmarks
Since the Tronsmart Draco was the only other Octa-Core device I’ve tested so far, my initial though was to use it as a baseline for the Idroidnation I-Box performance. The Draco scored a pretty respectable 34672 in AnTuTu X. If you remember, there was some controversy with the Draco’s AnTuTu 6 score, so I’m going to be erring on the side of caution here.
The Idroidnation I-Box scored better on the AnTuTu benchmarks than the Draco, getting a verified score of 36022 on its first run. I ran this test several more times and achieved an average of 35496 over ten attempts. This puts it in line with what CNXSoft found with the RK3368 devices they tested. Overall, pretty solid performance, and a slightly higher score than the MINIX NEO X8-H Plus which scored a 32275.
The AnTuTu Video Tester didn’t fare as well, unfortunately. Although the 4K portion of the test worked flawlessly, there were some issues with older formats which you can see in the pictures below. Overall, I’m not too concerned with this as long as Idroidnation updates the firmware down the road. If not, this could be an issue.
I also ran 3DMark’s Ice Storm and PC Mark Android benchmarks for the I-Box. The results weren’t what I expected, but not in a bad way.
The scores for Ice Storm were a pretty respectable 5148. This was less than the NEO X8-H Plus’ score of 5657. Even though the framerates were almost identical, the MINIX box did score higher in the overall graphics tests.
The interesting test was in the PC Mark Android benchmark. Here the Idroidnation I-Box really dominated. It handily beat the MINIX in overall score, 4225 to 3004. Even better, it almost doubled the MINIX’s score in video playback: 4915 to 2456.
Clearly there’s some power underneath the hood in this set top box.
Kodi
Almost everyone who buys a streaming device that’s not made by Roku, Amazon or Google does it to run Kodi.
Idroidnation included Kodi 15 with this TV box and it works great. There was a custom skin already installed, but that can be easily changed.
I’m disappointed that they chose to include a lot of add-ons that aren’t officially endorsed by Team Kodi. Generally when manufacturers do this they are doing it to promote illegal content. This didn’t appear to be the case with Idroidnation, however, which is good.
Including Kodi 15 rather than version 14, or even one of the old XBMC versions is another good sign. I’m always worried when a brand new device comes out with old software. Thankfully, that’s not the case here.
The Verdict
The Idroidnation I-Box surprised me a little bit, which is getting pretty tough to do. It gives good performance that was rock-solid as far as stability during my stress tests. It may not blow away the competition yet, but you need to remember that this is a brand new box with lots of room to grow. Video playback was good, and didn’t show any signs of stuttering at all.
One disappointment was the lack of a custom launcher with this box. One of the great things about Android TV boxes is that we can customize them however we want. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy for newbies, or even casual users to navigate. Especially if you don’t have some sort of air mouse or upgraded controller. There were a couple of minor issues with video formats not being supported, but I expect that those will be fixed in the first firmware upgrade.
All in all, I’m pretty impressed with the Idroidnation I-Box. But what do you think?
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written by Jennifer Warnick Unique Microsoft hiring program opens more doors to people with autism Kyle Schwaneke’s bank account was approaching empty. He’d been unemployed for a year and a half, since the indie game studio he’d been working for shut its doors. His parents, looking for ways to help while he job hunted, had paid the remainder of his apartment lease, but he’d reached the end of that, too. “I interviewed at a bunch of companies, but really didn’t have any luck. Sometimes, I would send in my resume and hear nothing. Other times, I’d go to an interview, and I’d think I did well, and then hear back I hadn’t done well – but they also couldn’t give me any feedback about it,” Schwaneke said. “I eventually started applying at places like Target and Radio Shack for the chance to interview for a minimum wage retail job. I was pretty much out of options.” A promising young developer, Schwaneke graduated from a world-renowned university for computer interactive technologies. He also has Asperger's syndrome, a disorder on the autism spectrum. His situation is far from an anomaly. An estimated 80 percent of people with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are unemployed, though many are fully capable of holding down a job, and some possess exceptional skills in areas such as science, mathematics or technology. The 80 percent unemployment rate becomes even more significant considering an estimated one percent of the world’s population has an Autism Spectrum Disorder. On April 1, about the same time Schwaneke was wondering whether he’d soon need to move back in with his parents, Microsoft’s Mary Ellen Smith stepped before the representatives of 193 countries at United Nations (U.N.) Headquarters in New York City. It was World Autism Day and Smith, corporate vice president of worldwide operations, announced that Microsoft was about to launch a pilot program to hire people with autism. In the months since the program began, Microsoft has hired 11 new employees who have autism and is actively seeking candidates for an ever-expanding list of opportunities, including roles in software engineering, data science, customer service and operations, and for teams like Windows, Xbox and HoloLens. The company plans to continue its growth of the program as well as its support for the autism community, Smith said. Xbox Software Engineer Kyle Schwaneke’s work at Microsoft has included bringing digital personal assistant Cortana to the gaming console. Xbox Software Engineer Kyle Schwaneke’s work at Microsoft has included bringing digital personal assistant Cortana to the gaming console. “These are people who may not be able to pass an initial interview or screen because their social skills might not be 100 percent in line with what’s expected in a typical interview, but what amazing talent are we missing as a result?” Smith said, after recounting her memorable day at the U.N. “There are unique minds being underused and overlooked.” Announcing the launch of Microsoft’s new pilot program to the United Nations was especially meaningful for Smith, whose 19-year-old son Shawn has autism. She recalled a heart-wrenching moment from when he was diagnosed 15 years ago. “I think they understand,” she overheard one doctor say to another on her way out of the medical center. It was the same two doctors who had just told Smith and her husband they needed to seriously limit their expectations for their toddler and what he could achieve, because he had autism. The young family drove the 15 miles home in complete silence. “We didn’t know what to say,” said Smith. “But we do now.” Like many parents who have children with autism, Smith has become a tireless advocate. Smith’s son Shawn, the 4-year-old boy who doctors warned would struggle with basic skills his entire life, is now a 19-year-old college student. He wants to be a marine biologist. “It took us time to learn how to bring out the best of what he has to offer. That’s the reason I’m so passionate about this,” Smith said. “My son has blown past all of whatever their definitions were of his capabilities, and so do a lot of kids. I think the more support someone is given, and the more we listen to what’s required to help them be successful, the more they’re going to blossom, grow and contribute. I’ve seen it time and time again.” Smith and the rest of the Microsoft team returned from the U.N. announcement to a surprising response. “We were inundated,” said Jenny Lay-Flurrie, chief accessibility officer at Microsoft and head of the company’s disAbility employee group. “We got more than a thousand emails and more than 700 resumes. We were getting flooded with phone calls and requests on LinkedIn, and being invited to speak in schools and given awards,” Lay-Flurrie said. “We were being thanked for thinking of doing something in the space. That was our bigger epiphany, it really was. While that’s beautiful, what it said to us is that there’s a bigger need here than we even realized.” Though Microsoft has been committed to enabling people with disabilities for a long time, news of the pilot program to hire people with autism generated tremendous internal support, Lay-Flurrie said. She heard from employees, managers, people with autism already working at Microsoft and parents who have children with autism, including Eric Brechner and Dean Betz, leaders in the Microsoft autism community, who jumped in to help advise and network as the pilot program was being designed. Lay-Flurrie said the consensus from everyone who reached out was, “It’s about time. What can we do to help?” “By adjusting our hiring practices, we are able to recruit from a new talent pool – a talent pool that is rich with mad skills,” Lay-Flurrie said. “We’re hiring these folks because they’re amazingly talented individuals who are going to help us do amazing things at Microsoft.” In that pile of resumes from people with “mad skills” was one from Schwaneke, who heard about the Microsoft pilot program from his mom. “Nothing else has worked, so why don’t we give this a shot,” he remembers thinking.
By adjusting our hiring practices, we are able to recruit from a new talent pool – a talent pool that is rich with mad skills. We’re hiring these folks because they’re amazingly talented individuals who are going to help us do amazing things at Microsoft.
Schwaneke was one of 10 people invited to participate in Microsoft’s first-ever interview process especially for candidates with autism. The jobs selected for potential hires with autism are full-time and offer a competitive salary, just like any other entry-level job listed on the Microsoft Careers website, but the interview process is unique. It’s not a do-or-die phone screen or a several-hour, in-person interview, but rather an academy of sorts – a combination workshop and interview to help put job candidates at ease (and therefore let them more fully demonstrate their skills). During the four-week interview process (which would eventually be shortened to two weeks for the second round of new hires), organizers said Schwaneke quickly emerged as a leader, someone with a strong skillset who remained cool and calm under pressure. Still, the interview process was difficult for him at times, especially the parts that involved working in groups. Schwaneke said he was sustained and encouraged by all the direct and positive feedback he received. Two weeks into the interview process, Schwaneke was thrilled to hear his work was being closely followed by at least a couple of hiring managers, including Zach Johnson, principal software engineering lead for Xbox. “Kyle’s approach to programming was creative, and he was pushing limits,” Johnson said. “It was very clear he was both well-educated and able to apply what he’d learned in school to try new things. He moved to the top of my list early on, and as the interview continued, I kept a close eye on him.” Philip Jarvis presents his work to hiring managers during the extended interview process. Jarvis was hired as a software developer for the team working on HoloLens and other projects. In June, after working with Schwaneke for four weeks in the interview “academy,” Johnson offered him a job as a software engineer. The day he found out he’d been offered a job, his parents were coming over to his apartment to celebrate his dad’s birthday. “During dinner I was able to drop the bomb on them,” he said. “We were all really excited. For me it was stability, and for them it was stability and also relief. We had been gearing up for the worst, financially.”
Schwaneke now works as a software engineer on a small team bringing Cortana, Microsoft’s voice-activated digital personal assistant, to Xbox. “The team I’m on is incredibly supportive, and even though we have deadlines and things change, it’s a very relaxed work environment,” Schwaneke said. “I haven’t felt the extreme stress I felt at college or in other jobs.” The bespectacled, bearded Schwaneke is soft-spoken and lean, his shaggy hair usually topped with a ball cap from DigiPen, the university where he earned his bachelor’s degree in computer programming. He dresses in the comfy-casual style made ubiquitous by decades of developers before him – New Balance sneakers, a black hoodie embroidered with his gamer tag, and a T-shirt emblazoned with some sort of a stylized lobster, which he explains is actually a replica of a shirt worn by the hero Link in the game “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.” Schwaneke said his parents knew from the beginning their son was different, but were incredibly supportive at every step along the way. “It took me a while to start speaking. Then, when I did, I was speaking in full sentences saying very eloquent things,” he said. “My brain is just wired up very differently. I can remember instantly the lyrics to a song I like, but sometimes can’t remember something I did yesterday.” He was the kind of kid who brought cupcakes to kindergarten, but made each and every kid say thank you as he passed them out. “I was always the little police officer,” he said. “At first we thought I had obsessive-compulsive disorder, because I always had to carry around an even number of matchbox cars.” A shelf full of wooden puzzles sits outside Zach Johnson’s office door. A shelf full of wooden puzzles sits outside Zach Johnson’s office door.
Eventually a psychologist proposed Schwaneke might have Asperger’s syndrome, and at that moment everything – his quirks, his fixations, his difficulties – started to make sense. Having a diagnosis made high school both harder and easier, he said. It was a tool in that it allowed him to work with a disabled-student coordinator to hand-pick his classes, but he continued to be ostracized by his fellow students for small tics – things he didn’t even know he was doing. “Even though the other students were a problem in high school – my peers were still teasing me for being different – I at least had the support of my parents and some very good and understanding teachers,” Schwaneke said. “I’m afraid to think of what would have happened if I hadn’t had that. I might have decided I didn’t like learning or didn’t like reading, and that would have been horrible.” High school is also where Schwaneke “instantly fell in love” with programming after taking his first computer science class. “That’s pretty much the point when I decided programming is where I needed to end up,” Schwaneke said. When he started his program at DigiPen, he finally felt surrounded by people with similar interests and outlooks. “For the first time, I felt like I was in place where I understood other people, and they understood me,” Schwaneke said. That feeling also applies to his new job at Microsoft.
For the first time, I felt like I was in place where I understood other people, and they understood me.
He now sits in a large, bright open space. A shelf at his side holds some of his favorite anime figurines, and on the corner of his desk there’s a garden of brightly colored sticky note origami shapes – technically, they are polyhedrons – adjacent to a handwritten note: “Want one? I can make you one or teach you how! Just ask!” “Because of this job, I went from essentially having to move back in with my parents to looking into the future and thinking, ‘OK, in a year or two years maybe I can put a down payment on a house.’ That’s a radical shift. My brain is still trying to catch up to that,” Schwaneke said, looking around his new digs in Microsoft’s Studio X. Johnson, an amiable Seth Rogen lookalike with a shelf full of wooden puzzles outside his office door, laughed. “I bet.” “The funny thing is,” Schwaneke continued, “the interview I had with Zach was probably the most successful interview I had in the year and a half I was looking.” Johnson considered this. “It was probably a balance of your comfort and my comfort.” He continues. “There were some really talented individuals in the program including Kyle, who has continued to demonstrate that in his work. It pains me to think of individuals who have those kind of coding skills but who aren’t using those skills because they don’t fit a standard interview process or because maybe a phone call was awkward. Kyle was sitting idle for more than a year, but instead could have been here helping us bring Cortana to every Xbox user in the world.” On a crisp, autumn Friday morning at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters – the kind where only street lamps and fiery leaves are visible through the fog – 12 eager, young computer scientists had already reduced the contents of a large, pink box of donuts to crumbs.
It was the last morning of the fall interview process for candidates with autism, but to the unaware, it looked like any other gathering of employees on campus – the open laptops, the caffeinated drinks, the hoodies and Star Wars T-shirts, the banter about news headlines and pop culture. A man with a ponytail sat off to the side, wearing headphones and working, while another walked the perimeter of the room as he talked, which he later explained is how he concentrates best – while pacing. After building apps, or working in groups to make robots out of Legos, or presenting project work to hiring managers from around the company, the two-week interview process was about to culminate in a question-and-answer session with a panel of pioneers – the first five employees hired through Microsoft’s autism pilot program three months earlier. Kyle Schwaneke often busies his hands by folding brightly colored sticky notes into intricate origami shapes. Though it had only been about 90 days since Schwaneke and his fellow new hires were on the other side of the proverbial table, they were already paying it forward, sharing their experiences and advice with the group. The newly minted mentors projected confidence and ease as they described their day-to-day duties and teams; answered questions on topics ranging from company benefits to the Microsoft code library; and doled out encouragement. “A lot of you are going to be nervous about your first week and month,” Schwaneke said. “I’m not shy to ask questions of my teammates, and that’s what you want to do. You want to ask questions, you want people to ask questions of you, you want to get more involved. It’s a very supportive place here.” Along with encouragement, he offered some very practical advice aimed at the out-of-town job candidates. “Expect to lose power at least once each fall if you live near trees. There’s a lot of wind. We also get a lot of sun every summer,” Schwaneke said. He continued with a wry smile, “But don’t tell anyone – that’s a secret. It rains here all the time. It only rains. That’s all that happens.” This got chuckles from the room. A few chairs down was Katie Hart, hired at the same time as Schwaneke, who told the job candidates she’d been out of work for 10 months before getting the opportunity to interview at Microsoft. She said she appreciated the way the extended interview helped her prove herself, and loves her new role in Customer Service and Support. During her first month on the job, Hart worked with a cross-company team during Microsoft’s annual week-long summer hackathon to create Neuroversity, a game to help people with autism develop career skills. Cody Takayoshi, another hire from the first round of the pilot program, extolled the friendliness of his new team of fellow Xbox Live network testers. “There are lots of Nerf wars, so prepare yourself,” he deadpanned. Takayoshi also mentioned the importance of being patient during the first weeks at Microsoft. “For the first while, not having much work due was giving me a lot of panic. I was sitting around reading and studying all day thinking, ‘When are they going to realize this and fire me?’ As far as any struggles, there’s a lot of support. Almost too much support at times,” he said looking right at his employment coach Blake Konrady with a mischievous grin. Konrady, standing at the back of the room, smiled and shook his head as Schwaneke quickly clarified for those in the room who may not have picked up on Takayoshi’s Sahara-dry sarcasm: “If there are problems, just basically know there is a network there. You’re not going into this blind. If you need it, it’s there. If you don’t need it, it’s not intrusive.” Takayoshi, 22, explained later that he developed his sense of humor as a way of coping with the more awkward parts of himself. “Humor has always been there for me, especially as soon as I started learning more than ‘Guess what? Chicken butt’ jokes,” he said. “It lessens the tension in the room if everyone’s having a laugh. It breaks the ice. Sprinkle anything with jokes and you’ve got some stew going on.” He listens to a podcast by Ricky Gervais on his drive to and from Microsoft, and it’s not hard to imagine Takayoshi’s self-effacing, off-beat banter must be a bit like talking to the irreverent British comedian. He had recently taken some time off of college programming classes when his father told him about Microsoft’s pilot program. He thought, “What’s the worst they could do, hire me?” “I realized I needed get out of my comfort zone, because nothing life-changing ever happens in your parents’ basement,” Takayoshi said. Takayoshi said he was worried the extended interview would feel like “autism boot camp” but was pleasantly surprised, both by the interview process, and when he was offered a great job on a team he quickly came to love. They even eat and play foosball together at lunchtime. “It only took a couple of days to integrate. It was a pretty good fit,” he said. Teasing aside, Takayoshi and some of the other new employees say they appreciate the deep level of support and patience offered throughout the process, whether from their new teams and managers or from Konrady, who helps the new hires with autism inside and outside of work. “I’m somewhat of a life coach,” Konrady said, and it’s true. He works with Microsoft partner PROVAIL, and his role includes helping support candidates and new hires through all kinds of situations. Apart from logistics, he also provides moral support and advice on everything from work-life balance to ergonomics to professional appearance in the corporate environment. After working with Schwaneke and the other new employees in the pilot program’s first two rounds of hiring, Konrady said he has a newfound respect for companies that take the time to really get to know job candidates before making a decision. “We have individuals with talent who have been hidden, who have not been able to find their voices or show what they can do. These individuals are breaking down the stereotypes of what it means to be autistic,” Konrady said. “This is showing that one of the most influential companies in the world is taking this seriously – is saying that this is something our society should be aware of.” Microsoft has more job openings, and is actively recruiting candidates with autism to join the 11 new employees hired during the pilot program’s first eight months.
“We started small by design so we can learn and make adjustments as we go,” Smith said. “We want to be deliberate in everything we do – to make sure it’s a great experience for the job candidates, the new employees, and the teams and managers at Microsoft. We also want to continue to expand our partnerships inside and outside of Microsoft, all while remaining focused on the business benefit as well.” The business benefits she has in mind? Diversifying the company’s workforce, which will in turn help the company gain a wider reach. “Our effort goes beyond autism,” Smith said. “We are passionate about hiring individuals of all disabilities and we believe with them, we can create, support and build great products and services. Our customers are diverse and we need to be as well.” Smith and Lay-Flurrie said it’s taken a village to help create and run the new pilot program. In addition to invaluable internal support, Microsoft turned to two external partners, PROVAIL and Specialisterne, both of which are well-versed in helping companies hire, train and support employees with neurodiversity (a term many now use to describe people who differ from the cognitive norm, including those with autism). Specialisterne helped connect Lay-Flurrie with other companies with autism employment programs for advice, businesses such as HP, Capitol One and SAP. Though Microsoft and SAP are technically competitors, Jose Velasco, the head of SAP’s Autism at Work program, was glad to assist. “Like all big companies, SAP and Microsoft compete in some areas and we partner in so many others,” Velasco said. “It’s a great opportunity for us to cooperate.” Few people understand the advantages of hiring people who think differently better than Thorkil Sonne. In late 2003, Sonne founded Specialisterne (Danish for “the specialists”) after being blown away by the unexpected intellectual abilities of his son Lars, who has autism. Sonne had the notion that with a little extra support and guidance, many people with autism – people like his son – could not only hold down a full-time job, but use their particular talents as a competitive advantage. Microsoft leveraged Sonne’s experience working with other companies to help craft its own pilot program for hiring people with autism. Sonne said it’s remarkable to see a major global technology company so dedicated to pursuing neurodiversity; he hopes other major technology companies will follow suit.
“We started small by design so we can learn and make adjustments as we go. We want to be deliberate in everything we do – to make sure it’s a great experience for the job candidates, the new employees, and the teams and managers at Microsoft.”
“I think we’re really moving the needle,” Sonne said. “We’re spreading the message that different can be good – different is important. You really have to look at the growing population of people who have a disability or disorder as your potential next resource for different, innovative ideas that can help you become more innovative. I think at Microsoft, they really get that. They’re used to people who are innovative and high performing, but who are not mainstream.”
“There are unique minds being underused and overlooked,” said Mary Ellen Smith, corporate vice president for worldwide operations at Microsoft, who has an adult son with autism. Along with widening the corporate front door for potential talent, the pilot program offers new hires a more immersive onboarding process, making sure they feel supported in their new endeavor by offering a wide circle of services and support. One such service is a training session to help the teams and managers of the incoming new hires to better understand autism. For Schwaneke and his new manager Johnson, this “rolled into one of the few awkward points we’ve had,” Johnson said. “We had to decide whether or not we introduce Kyle to the team by saying he came through the autism pilot program,” Johnson said. “My biggest concern is that it was going to set everyone up with specific ideas and expectations. Kyle said he doesn’t mind people knowing, but he doesn’t want it to change the dynamic.” |
THE British government has issued a vehement rebuttal of a UN panel’s findings that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had been arbitrarily detained.
Published last month, the United Nations working group’s non-binding legal opinion was instantly dismissed as “ridiculous” by London, which has now submitted its formal response, inviting the panel to reconsider its conclusions.
Mr Assange faces a rape allegation in Sweden but has been inside Ecuador’s embassy in London for nearly four years in a bid to avoid extradition.
The 44-year-old Australian fears that from Sweden he could be deported to the United States over WikiLeaks’ release of 500,000 secret military files.
The UN panel said the detention Mr Assange was living under had violated his human, civil and political rights.
“The working group’s opinion is deeply flawed and Mr Assange has never been the subject of arbitrary detention,” the Foreign Office said.
“His human rights have been protected throughout.” Anti-secrecy campaigner Mr Assange initially spent 10 days in a London prison having been refused bail, but his detention was “absolutely in line with the relevant legislation and regulations”, the statement said.
The former computer hacker’s series of failed court appeals against extradition to Sweden took 18 months and “cannot be considered excessive or unfair”, the rebuttal said.
“During this period he was granted bail and so cannot be considered to have been detained.” The UN panel said Mr Assange should be able to claim compensation from Britain and Sweden.
Mr Assange hailed the findings as a “victory”, but has continued to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy.
The working group will consider Britain’s response on April 18 in Geneva. Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire said: “The original conclusions of the UN working group are inaccurate and should be reviewed.
“We want to ensure the working group is in possession of the full facts. Our request for a review of the opinion sets those facts out clearly.
“Julian Assange has never been arbitrarily detained by the UK, and is in fact voluntarily avoiding lawful arrest by choosing to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy.
“The UK continues to have a legal obligation to extradite him to Sweden.” A hero to supporters and a dangerous egocentric to detractors, Mr Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and has been portrayed in two movies in recent years. |
It wasn’t a gloved-fist salute from the medal stand, but Jewish-American gymnast Aly Raisman made quite a statement yesterday by winning a gold medal and invoking the memory of the Israeli athletes killed 40 years ago in Munich.
Raisman finished first in the women’s floor exercise, but she deserves to have another medal draped around her neck for having the chutzpah to face the world and do what needed to be done and say what needed to be said.
At the same Olympic Games where bigoted organizers stubbornly refuse to honor the slain athletes with a moment of silence, 18-year-old Raisman loudly shocked observers first by winning, then by paying her own tribute to 11 sportsmen who died long before she was born.
And if that weren’t enough, she won her event with the Hebrew folk song “Hava Nagila” playing in the background.
“Having that floor music wasn’t intentional,” an emotional but poised Raisman told reporters after her performance.
“But the fact it was on the 40th anniversary is special, and winning the gold today means a lot to me.”
Then Raisman stuck the landing.
“If there had been a moment’s silence,” the 18-year-old woman told the world, “I would have supported it and respected it.”
It was 40 years ago at the 1972 Munich Games that members of the Israeli Olympic delegation were taken hostage and eventually killed by Palestinian radicals.
Executed in the massacre were 11 Israeli athletes and officials and a West German police officer.
The martyrs were remembered this week during a London ceremony filled with sadness and reflection.
But not a peep about them has been said publicly in the one place where it counts — at the Summer Games on Olympic soil.
The International Olympic Committee and its president, Jacques Rogge, have refused to properly honor the dead, arguing that the opening ceremony wasn’t an appropriate forum for a moment of silence.
But if the opening ceremony is good enough for James Bond and Mr. Bean, it’s hard to understand why it’s not good enough for 60 seconds of solitude.
“Shame on you International Olympic Committee because you have forsaken the 11 members of your Olympic family,” said Ankie Spitzer, whose husband, Andre, an Israeli fencing coach, was gunned down in the massacre.
“You are discriminating against them only because they are Israelis and Jews,” she went on.
Rogge was an athlete himself at the very Games where the massacre took place, representing Belgium on the sailing team.
“Even after 40 years, it is painful to relive the most painful moments of the Olympic movement,” Rogge said at an unaffiliated service before Spitzer spoke.
“I can only imagine how painful it must be for the families and close personal friends of the victims.”
But by refusing to hit the pause button for a measly 60 seconds, Rogge and other organizers have committed a sin nearly as grave as denying there was ever a Holocaust.
Were it not for young Aly and her wedding dance/bat mitzvah accompaniment, the Munich dead may have never gotten their due.
“I am Jewish, that’s why I wanted that floor music,’’ Raisman said.
“I wanted something the crowd could clap to, especially being here in London.
“It makes it even much more if the audience is going through everything with you. That was really cool and fun to hear the audience clapping.’’
Raisman’s eyes opened as wide as the gold medal she would win when the judges announced her score of 15.600 points after her mistake-free routine.
Her top finish was the first by an American woman in the Olympic floor exercise, and the win gave Raisman her second gold medal. Raisman admitted the 40th anniversary of the Munich Games made her “hora” gold even more special.
“That was the best floor performance I’ve ever done, and to do it for the Olympics is like a dream,’’ Raisman said.
Raisman did not go to the Games with the star power of her teammate Gabrielle Douglas or the résumé of world champion Jordyn Wieber,
But those who know her best said she works as hard as anyone, and, more importantly, her heart is in the right place.
‘’I’m so happy for Aly,” Douglas, the first African-American to win the all-around title, said after the floor competition. “She deserves to be up on that podium.’’
“She is a focused person,” said Rabbi Keith Stern, spiritual leader of Temple Beth Avodah in Newton Centre, Mass., where the Raisman family are members.
“She’s very proud and upfront about being Jewish. Neither she nor her family explicitly sought to send a message. But it shows how very integrated her Jewish heritage is in everything that she does.”
Stern said he remembers picking up young Aly from preschool, and never imagined she’d be some sort of megastar.
He described the US team captain as a big sister-type who is a mother hen to all her younger siblings.
“I can’t wait to have her at the temple to talk about her experience,” he said.
“I know her sister’s bat mitzvah is coming up, so maybe I’ll catch up with her then.”
Stern said that he, too, was stunned by the IOC’s refusal to hold a moment of silence.
“I’m happy to hear any other explanation,” Stern said. “But short of some racist grudge somebody is holding, I can’t figure out why it would be a terrible thing to do.”
Stern said he watched the routine and was blown away. Even so, he said he is more proud of Raisman’s gold mettle than he is of the new jewelry around her neck.
“I have to say, the statement just warmed me to the very depths of my being,” Stern said.
He compared it to the iconic black-power, raised-fist protest made by track stars John Carlos and Tommie Smith on the medal stand at the 1968 Mexico City Games.
“They’re not going to forget that,” the rabbi said. “I certainly won’t.” |
Recently Thawed out Caveman Misses the Way Scene Used to Be
LOS ANGELES — New York native and recently unfrozen caveman, from the Homo Elitus subspecies known simply as Ugg, admitted to missing the way the scene used to be back in the stone ages, multiple uninterested sources confirmed.
“Man, it used to be about the music. None of this ‘guitar’ or ‘bass,’ just animal-hide drums played with bones,” said Ugg before ravaging the produce section of a Whole Foods. “That’s when it used to mean something. I heard Hoax played in a cave in San Francisco? Big fucking deal! Those were the only venues available to us back then,”
Since being thawed out of a glacier by scientists at UCLA, Ugg has been seen at various shows in the Los Angeles area, cowering in the back, inspecting and sniffing other hardcore kids. Ugg is the only remnant of an ancient hardcore scene forgotten to time.
“The concept of the circle hadn’t been invented yet, so when the fast parts came, we just sorta ran around aimlessly. It was a simpler time man,” Ugg said between shrieks of fear at every passing car. “Did we have a few militant Neanderthals ruin some shows? Sure. That was just part of it. But me and my Homo Habilis brothers stomped those guys out fast.”
Despite Ugg being a miracle of science, some people in the scene are simply not impressed.
“He’s always going on about how revolutionary being able to ‘stand’ at shows is and how he practically invented walking upright,” said 36-year-old Jimmy Blood. “Look, we all understand the scene used to be awesome, but everyone knows the best time for hardcore was when Ten Yard Fight was around, not in prehistoric times like Ugg is talking about. I do agree that the kids today just don’t get it, though.”
Ugg’s erratic behavior and crotchety attitude has earned him a negative reputation amongst members of the scene. Locals reported several incidences where Ugg slapped cell phones out of hands, brandished long spears, and bared his teeth in an intimidating manner.
“I mean, they were all looking at tiny people in these shiny little black boxes. They weren’t even watching the bands! Back in my day we would have clubbed them to death, but I guess that doesn’t fly anymore,” added Ugg. “The scene’s gone soft, man.”
Photo by Tom McHugh and Dom Rodriguez. |
DAO.LINK Bridges Gap Between Business & Blockchain
Despite best efforts from various startups, there is still a gap between blockchain and companies staying true to their physical presence. DAO.LINK, a new initiative by the Slock.it team, aims to bridge this gap in the coming years.
Also read: ECB Reveals Plans for Blockchain E-Governance
DAO.LINK Can Be a Powerful Ally
Most companies who have only recently ventured into the world of e-commerce are hesitant to approach blockchain technology. Not necessarily because they don’t see the value of this concept, but more due to how there is no convenient way to get involved with this innovative solution.
This is where DAO.LINK wants to come into the picture, as the initiative is focused on making brick-and-mortar enterprise interactions with blockchain-oriented organizations a lot easier. This will be of particular interest to creators of DAOs – Decentralized Autonomous Organizations – in the future as their business model is based around and built on top of the blockchain in its entirety.
The interaction between such a DAO and the “real world” will take place through entities known as Contractors. Every single Contractor is to be hired based on various terms, including payment structure, milestones to be reached, and much more. The Slock.it team posted a very comprehensive blog post about this concept recently.
Establishing a properly decentralized DAO is – for now at least – only possible on the Ethereum blockchain, due to the support for complex smart contracts. But while Ethereum has much appeal among investors and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, the same cannot be said for established real world businesses. In fact, most of them struggle to grasp the concept of blockchain altogether, let alone make the effort to get involved with DAOs.
DAO.LINK is designed to make this process a lot easier for established brick-and-mortar businesses. Although many people see the DAO concept as the future of any business in the foreseeable future, there will be a lengthy transitional period before they can become a reality. This “on-boarding process” will be provided by DAO.LINK, while respecting the existing regulatory frameworks and operating within the confines of existing legislature.
What makes this solution even more attractive is how DAO.LINK will remain true to the decentralized nature of blockchain technology. People should envision this project as a tool to set up a legal framework for companies to work with DAOs while contracting with these blockchain-based organizations to provide the necessary legal documentation.
Partnership with BITY
Such a vast project could not be undertaken by Slock.it themselves, as they collaborated with Ethereum and Bitcoin exchange platform BITY. This exchange is quite forward-thinking as well, despite being operated by a fully-licensed company in Switzerland and being audited by KPMG.
BITY co-founder Gain Bochsler told the press:
We live in a world organized around laws and regulations. This cannot be ignored, but in time, a day will come when technology and regulation find an equilibrium. Each big innovation creates a gap which needs to be filled. The DAO.LINK model helps bridge the gaps.
The DAO.LINK initiative holds a lot of promise for the future, although there are still a few questions waiting to be answered. More information on this project will be revealed in the coming weeks. But until that happens, there is a lot to think about for businesses who have been waiting for a chance to get involved with blockchain-based companies in the near future.
What are your thoughts on the DAO.LINK initiative? Will this bridge the gap between brick-and-mortar stores and DAOs? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Medium
Images courtesy of BITY, Shutterstock |
Infrastructure Australia calls for privatisation of public assets
By James Cogan
12 November 2012
A report issued last month by Infrastructure Australia, a statutory body established in 2008 to give policy advice to the federal government, demanded the sell-off of a vast swathe of publicly-owned infrastructure assets. These assets have an estimated value of between $195 and $219 billion, and could be sold on the stock market for between $116 and $140 billion. Their privatisation would provide a bonanza for the major banks and corporate investors, while triggering substantial job cuts and higher costs of living for working people.
Since the 1980s, under the pressures of financial deregulation and ever more closely integrated globalised production methods, Labor and Coalition governments at both the federal and state level have sold off numerous public assets. The list includes banks, telecommunication providers, airlines, airports, ports, railways and bus companies. The major freeways in most cities were constructed as partnerships with private corporations, and continue to operate as toll-roads.
Infrastructure Australia, however, identified four “asset classes” where there is still substantial public ownership: energy, water, transport and plantation forestry. These areas, the report stressed, had already been corporatised and restructured along “free market” and “user pays” lines, and therefore have the potential to generate attractive profits for private investors. With governments “facing increasing pressure on their budgets” and under pressure to “protect their financial position and credit rating and minimise borrowing costs”, the report stated that privatisations could improve their fiscal position.
The federal Labor government has signalled its agreement with the agenda outlined by Infrastructure Australia. In upcoming meetings with his state counterparts, Treasurer Wayne Swan is expected to push for wholesale privatisation by offering to transfer to the states all the corporate tax that will be collected from any publicly-owned companies sold off—partially compensating them for the loss of annual dividend payments.
The largest “asset class” being lined up for sale, valued at over $100 billion, is the energy sector. Privatising the remaining state-owned power plants, and transmission, distribution and retail networks around the country would generate over $60 billion. The Labor government is now actively lobbying state governments to sell their energy assets to corporate investors—a demand that is central to its Energy White Paper released last week.
Water assets are the other major target. They are valued at close to $100 billion, including dams, reservoirs, irrigation networks, water distribution and retailing and sewage treatment plants, and could fetch up to $60 billion. The privatisation of the remaining state-owned transport assets could produce around $15 billion, while selling plantation forests could generate around $1 billion.
The Infrastructure Australia report indicated that other assets could also be considered for sale in the future. The state-owned passenger rail services in the major cities are one prospect. Another possibility referred is the road system which could be sold or contracted out and a “congestion charging regime” imposed by their new owners. A study cited by Infrastructure Australia has estimated that “road pricing” could potentially generate revenues as high as $5 billion a year in the state of New South Wales alone.
The report declared that the sale of assets could result in “more efficient management.” This is code for the mass layoffs and attacks on working conditions that new corporate owners will seek to impose to make former state-owned companies more profitable.
Infrastructure Australia claimed that privatisation would “transfer responsibility for future investment in upgrades and expansions to the private sector.” However, the constant short-term pressure to produce a return to share-holders will see the continued neglect of long-term infrastructure planning and development. Any infrastructure investment that a corporate owner would be compelled to make would be paid for by increasing the cost of services. This is already happening under the present corporatised state operators. Publicly-owned electricity companies, for example, have massively increased power prices in recent years to pay for upgrades to their distribution systems, pushing millions of people into financial stress.
Infrastructure Australia noted the widespread opposition among ordinary people towards further privatisations. It stated that “governments may be concerned at the potential political issues in transferring assets to the private sector” but nevertheless insisted that “the evidence is that the public will accept well managed and effectively communicated transfers.”
The report advised that asset sell-offs be accompanied by promises to invest part of the revenues generated in social infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, and roads. In reality, as with previous privatisations, governments will primarily use the money to pay-down public debt, for the benefit of the banks and the financial markets. The Labor government has continued to open up health, education, and other essential social services to the market, by promoting private providers and slashing public spending and investment.
The real motive behind the privatisation agenda is to provide a boost to the banks, financial advisors and corporate law firms that would organise the fire-sale, and a shot in the arm to the stock markets where the assets would be sold off. Infrastructure Australia noted that “superannuation funds, pension funds from other countries, and sovereign wealth funds have all demonstrated a strong appetite for privatised Australian infrastructure assets.”
In the final analysis, the proposed fire-sale is a response to the failure of the capitalist system. Under conditions of an intractable global economic slump, a desperate scramble is taking place within the financial and corporate elite to secure new sources of profit. They are demanding that every aspect of life be subjected to the free market and the “user pays” principle, so that ever greater sums can be extracted from the working class. |
Google's digital ad dominance might soon have a very tangible benefit for shoppers — a free taxi ride.
"The tech giant just received a patent linking online ads to free taxi rides paid for by advertisers — an option to bring more people to their businesses." (Via KOVR)
The patent explains Google could use its knowledge of customer locations, route mapping and advertising prices to offer shoppers free or discounted lifts to retailer locations.
An algorithm would track where people are and what they're looking to buy. If it were cost-effective, a retailer could pay Google to offer a potential customer a ride to its store, using messages delivered on smartphones or stationary kiosks.
So no, CNET says, this isn't for the weekly grocery run.
"If someone's searching for cars to buy, then serving an ad that offers them a taxi to speed them to the point of purchase is a very cost-effective notion If they're searching, however, for dental floss, then it might not be worth the advertiser's time and money to offer them a ride in a Prius."
But Ars Technica points out a Google Taxi could eventually get more affordable, especially if Google moves forward with its driverless car project.
"An advertiser paying for a bus, train, or taxi might be a little too expensive today, but imagine a self-driving electric vehicle, where driving around doesn't burn gas or involve paying a taxi driver, and suddenly transportation becomes a lot cheaper."
That is, if the law catches up. Currently only California, Nevada, Michigan, Florida and Washington D.C. have legalized autonomous vehicles. (Via the Center for Internet and Society)
In any case, the project appears to remain in the patent stage for now. Don’t sell your car just yet.
- See more at Newsy |
[Henrik] has been working on a program to design electronic circuits using evolutionary algorithms. It’s still very much a work in progress, but he’s gotten to the point of generating a decent BJT inverter after 78 generations (9 minutes of compute time), as shown in the .gif above.
To evolve these circuits, [Henrik] told a SPICE simulation to generate an inverter with a 5V power supply, 2N3904 and 2N3906 transistors, and whatever resistors were needed. The first dozen or so generations didn’t actually do anything, but after 2000 generations the algorithm produced a circuit nearly identical to the description of a CMOS inverter you’d find in a circuit textbook.
Using evolution to guide electronic design is nothing new; an evolutionary algorithm and a a few bits of Verilog can turn an FPGA into a chip that can tell the difference between a 1kHz and 10kHz tone with extremely minimal hardware requirements. There’s also some very, very strange stuff that happened in this experiment; the evolutionary algorithm utilized things that are impossible for a human to program and relies on magnetic flux and quantum weirdness inside the FPGA.
[Henrik] says his algorithm didn’t test for how much current goes through the transistors, so implementing this circuit outside of a simulation will destroy the transistors and emit a puff of blue smoke. If you’d like design your own circuits using evolution, [Henrik] put all the code in a git for your perusal. It’s damn cool as it stands now, and once [Henrik] includes checking current and voltage in each component his project may actually be useful. |
April Baer/OPB
Disjecta Contemporary Arts Center is losing its founder at the end of this year. It’s not a happy split.
The organization’s board took the unusual step of asking founding director Bryan Suereth to leave. It’s referred to in a press release as a leadership transition.
The founding of Disjecta was almost accidental. Suereth and some friends found a vacant building on Russell Street. Sean Healy was one of the first artists to exhibit there.
“I remember one of the very first events [Bryan] and [curator and artist] Cris Moss put together,” Healy said. “Bryan and Cris and others were there tearing up carpeting to have a wood floor. There are things Bryan does behind the scenes no one knows about. The dude is tireless. He puts in insane hours.”
Running a small arts non-profit can include a thousand other duties as assigned: mowing the grass, cleaning the bathrooms, and of course curation, bringing in artists from around and outside the U.S., arranging the use of Disjecta’s spacious building in Kenton by a variety of art and performance events, and staging shows like the Portland Biennial. This year’s edition encompassed 25 venues from Astoria to La Grande to Ashland.
The biennial closed with several complaints from some artists of standing. While some had a good experience, others felt abandoned by guest curator Michelle Grabner and/or Disjecta, without support and promotion they needed to pull off their installations.
But even before the Biennial, the board got into a broader conversation about the future.
Chair Chris D’Arcy says a long-term development training left some board members feeling less than convinced Suereth was the right person to implement Disjecta’s growing ambitions.
April Baer/OPB
“The board really became more aware of, let’s say, the need for our organization to have more structure than it has right now,” Darcy said.
She wouldn’t get into specifics, for personnel reasons, but said if Disjecta’s staff size is going to increase beyond three, it would need a different kind of manager.
Suereth says his path, building Disjecta and steering it through three different facilities, has been a long road, traveled with little money.
“I’m proud to have been around at a time when I provided support for the artists and thinkers and do-ers who created the essence of Portland,” Suereth says.
“To this day, I believe Disjecta acts as a bulwark against the overwhelming crush of “new” Portland…in the sense that we maintain a connection to the original ethic that built our often imitated culture; bold ideas, risk-taking, anti-institutional swagger and, yes, weirdness.”
As for the board’s stated wish for more structure, Suereth says he freely acknowledged different leadership might be needed to grow Disjecta and make it sustainable.
But his version of the story shows a non-profit hampered by anemic board fundraising. He says he’d hoped to be around long enough to keep operations going, while the board found his replacement.
The organization is up to date on its lease. With year-end giving, Disjecta expects to end the year modestly in the black.
Which has led artists like Sean Healy to wonder, what was the rush to hustle Suereth out the door?
“We’re all a little bit put on our heels by this,” Healy said. “We’ve grown up in this city together. To see this happen it kind of makes us realize the city is changing.”
The situation puts board chair Chris D’Arcy in a strange position.
She spent twenty years at the helm of the Oregon Arts Commission, steering grants and policy, only to be shown the door in 2014, over to a mix of personality conflicts and clashing priorities — not unlike what led to the transition at Disjecta.
D’Arcy says believes Disjecta’s non-profit model is sustainable for now. It will, she says, keep on producing contemporary art events, and getting revenue from other groups’ use of its building.
“We are different than the [Portland] Art Museum and PICA and TBA,” D’Arcy said. “We do not charge admission. That may or may not be the right solution long-term.”
But D’Arcy says structurally, the organization has an effective model.
But Suereth says anytime a drastic change is made, there’s an understanding that results will need to follow.
“I certainly think the board is putting themselves in a very difficult position,” Suereth said. “Any transition must be collaborative, strategic and healthy to succeed. Funders are wary of uncertainty. I think most philanthropists gravitate toward more traditional arts: dance, theater, music.”
The board, he said, “have an onus now solely on their shoulders. It is not easy to run and produce contemporary art in the state of Oregon.”
Chris D’Arcy says she expects an interim executive director will be found to run Disjecta after Suereth’s departure, while the board searches for a permanent replacement.
(It’s not entirely clear what bait will be effective in that search. According to recent tax forms, Sureth has been working for tens of thousands of dollars below the city average for non-profit managers.)
For the rest of 2016, Disjecta will host events like a theater work re-interpreting the films of Rainer Fassbinder, a performance art piece about rape culture, and a new discussion series about art and identity,
Right now, the gallery holds the second of four shows by a Puerto Rican curator in residence, Michelle Fiedler.
Suereth says he’d like to help out with the third and fourth shows. |
We are hearing descriptive new 911 calls after a man who was thought to be high on the designer street drug flakka helds up a South Florida gas station. (Published Friday, May 22, 2015)
We are hearing the descriptive new 911 calls after a man, who was thought to be high on the designer street drug flakka, held up a South Florida gas station.
That man, Markus Clark, 26, later died in custody.
What happened at the Exxon gas station near Fort Lauderdale Wednesday night is now the center of an investigation at the Boward Sheriff's Office.
Deputies say it all started when Clark tried to rob the business, his bizarre behavior was caught by surveillance cameras.
Flakka Ridealong Suspect Dies
911 call released after man suspected of being on flakka attempts to rob a gas station and dies a day after his arrest (Published Friday, May 22, 2015)
Clark is seen behind the counter in contact with the clerk, who then called 911.
Dispatcher: "OK sir, sir listen. How did he try to rob you sir?"
Caller: "Yeah, he got inside the register area, he locked my door. Now he’s doing something. He’s pretending like he’s sick but I think he’s well."
Deputies said Clark was showing signs connected to the new street drug flakka. Investigators say it's dirt cheap, selling for just $5 a pop and the high causes people to exhibit excessive strength.
Surveillance video showed deputies as they responded to the 911 call from the gas station. Three deputies were seen trying to hold Clark down.
Officials say it took several deputies to subdue and handcuff Clark. Once they got him in custody, he was rushed to the hospital.
"And when they got to the hospital and took his temperature it was 106.3, so I mean literally someone on fire melting inside," said BSO spokesperson Veda Coleman-Wright.
Clark died the next morning. As detectives continue to investigate his death, the medical examiner's office will also conduct an autopsy. The results could take weeks before they are released. |
He is not part of Australia's squad for next month's Champions Trophy, but Peter Handscomb could hardly be doing any more to ensure he is the first man called upon if Australia need a replacement player. On Sunday at Headingley, Handscomb plundered 140 off 112 deliveries for Yorkshire, his maiden one-day century, and in doing so jumped to the top of the Royal London Cup run list.
In five innings during the tournament, Handscomb has made 46, 86, 47*, 88 and 140, the kind of form that will appeal to Australia's selectors should any of their batsman be ruled out of the Champions Trophy, to be held in England, due to injury. Handscomb played the first five ODIs of his career during the southern summer, but after 82 on debut did not reach double figures again.
"Any time you get dropped from a team there's going to be some disappointment, but I was able to see where the selectors were coming from," Handscomb told radio network RSN. "I only got my opportunity because Chris Lynn got injured during the summer and I was able to come in for him. He's now fit and ready to go for Champions Trophy, so it makes sense to bring him back in and I completely understand that selection.
"Just being in the country, I'm here and ready to go if anything does happen. But the Champions Trophy squad is unbelievably strong. Hopefully for the boys nothing does happen and they can have a great Champions Trophy."
Handscomb has enjoyed a remarkable start to his Test career: it took until his eighth innings before he was dismissed for less than 50, the longest such stretch from debut for any player in Test history. Although life became a little tougher on the tour of India, an unbeaten 72 in the second innings in Ranchi helped Australia grind out a draw and was described by captain Steven Smith as being "worth 150 in my eyes".
Next summer, he faces the challenge of helping Australia regain the Ashes in a home series against England, and he is confident that his winter placement with Yorkshire will help him when the Australian season comes around.
"It's very important. I've often found that when I have been able to play cricket matches over the Australian winter, I've been able to come back and hit the ground running during the Australian summer," Handscomb said. "It's good just to constantly play cricket and that time in the middle is so valuable and so much better than just hitting balls in the nets."
And although Handscomb's form for the time being is outstanding, he is well aware that the relentless nature of the county season can mean that any dip in productivity can be difficult to remedy.
"With the county season, it can be sort of one way or the other," he said. "If you can get yourself onto a bit of a roll, because there is so much cricket, you can find yourself feeling really good out in the middle and hopefully converting that into runs. But on the flip side, you don't get a lot of time to practice if you are out of form. If you're having a tough time out in the middle, you don't really get any time to work on it.
"The job is to make runs every time you go out to bat. Once you start thinking that batting becomes easy, then that complacency sets in, and cricket's a bit of a fickle game like that, it can really take you down if you do start getting a bit complacent." |
This article is from the Fall 2014 issue of the The American Prospect magazine.
For the first time in decades, voters in nearly half the country will find it harder to cast a ballot in the upcoming elections. Voters in 22 states will face tougher rules than in the last midterms. In 15 states, 2014 is slated to be the first major election with new voting restrictions in place.
These changes are the product of a concerted push to restrict voting by legislative majorities that swept into office in 2010. They represent a sharp reversal for a country whose historical trajectory has been to expand voting rights and make the process more convenient and accessible.
Although some of these new laws are harsher than others, and some are still being fought in the courts, they have already dramatically altered the landscape for 2014. The outcomes of some of the tightest races this year could turn on the application of controversial new voting rules. Strict voter ID laws have gotten most of the attention, but are only part of the story. Cutbacks to early voting and voter registration opportunities, and other idiosyncratic changes to voting rules, have the potential to do just as much damage.
Why is this happening? Where are the most damaging new laws? What impact could they have in this year’s elections? And how effective are the efforts by voters to push back?
(AP Photo/J Pat Carter) Betty James holds a sign outside the Faith Community Baptist Church in Miami, Sunday, October 28, 2012, as she tries to rally churchgoers to board a bus that would take them to vote early.
Voting Restrictions in Context
First, some perspective. The current assault on voting is highly unusual. Election rules have long been prone to politicization, but the last large-scale push to curb voting access was more than a century ago, after Reconstruction. The first stirrings of a new movement to restrict voting came after the 2000 Florida election fiasco, which taught the unfortunate lesson that even small manipulations of election procedures could affect outcomes in close races. Even so, only a handful of states imposed new restrictions over the decade that followed.
That changed dramatically after 2010, when state lawmakers across the country introduced hundreds of bills to restrict voting. Although many of the new laws passed in that first year were initially blocked or weakened by courts, the Department of Justice, and citizen initiatives, states continued to press new voting restrictions in 2013 and 2014.
What Explains This Sudden Shift?
Partisanship plays a key role. Of the 22 states with new restrictions, 18 passed them through entirely Republican-controlled bodies. A study by social scientists Keith Bentele and Erin O’Brien of the University of Massachusetts Boston found that restrictions were more likely to pass “as the proportion of Republicans in the legislature increased or when a Republican governor was elected.” After Republicans took over state houses and governorships in 2010, voting restrictions typically followed party lines.
Race has been a significant factor. In 2008, voter participation among African Americans and certain other groups surged. Then came backlash. The more a state saw increases in minority and low-income voter turnout, the more likely it was to push laws cutting back on voting rights, according to the University of Massachusetts study. The Brennan Center for Justice likewise found that of the 11 states with the highest African American turnout in 2008, seven passed laws making it harder to vote. Of the 12 states with the largest Hispanic population growth in the 2010 Census, nine have new restrictions in place. And of the 15 states that used to be monitored closely under the Voting Rights Act because of a history of racial discrimination in elections, nine passed new restrictions.
Some laws are especially egregious in targeting how minorities vote. The push to shut down Sunday early voting in states where African American churches organized successful “Souls to the Polls” drives is a glaring example. Laws restricting voter registration drives are another such tactic. African Americans and Latinos register through drives at twice the rate of white citizens, and in recent years, civic groups have used drives to help close the racial registration gap—as they have for veterans, young people, and other less registered populations. Instead of embracing these efforts, Florida and several other states passed laws that make it difficult—and, before a court stepped in, impossible—for groups to help voters register. The result was a significant drop in registrations.
Early Voting Cuts
The push to trim early voting provides another clear example of how new voting restrictions target minorities. For more than two decades, states have been increasing early voting opportunities. In fact, most states now offer early voting, and in the last two presidential elections, a full one-third of Americans voted early. The reason for this expansion? Early voting works well—voters like it, election officials like it, and it improves the election system. It is so non-controversial that the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration recently recommended that all states adopt it to prevent long lines at the polls.
Despite this consensus, after the 2008 election, support for early voting eroded among Republican legislators in the South and Midwest. What changed? For the first time, African Americans had begun voting early at high rates. In Southern states, early voting by African Americans nearly tripled between 2004 and 2008, overtaking early voting by whites by a significant margin. In North Carolina, for example, seven in ten African Americans voted early in 2008, as compared to half of white voters. And while Republicans have traditionally been more likely to vote early, in 2008 Democratic early votes exceeded Republican ones.
Just as early voting has become successful among minorities and lower-income voters, it has become a target. Since 2011, eight states that saw recent increases in minority early voting usage have sharply cut back on early voting hours and days—Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Generally, the days and hours most likely to be slashed were those most popular with minorities and hourly workers, like Sundays and evenings. According to a 2008 Ohio study, 56 percent of weekend voters in Cuyahoga County, the state’s most populous, were black.
Some politicians have been surprisingly candid about their motives. A Georgia state senator recently caused an uproar by criticizing local election officials for placing an early voting site in a black neighborhood, calling it a “blatantly partisan move,” and vowing to work in the next legislative session to “eliminate this election law loophole” that enabled officials to facilitate minority political participation. An Ohio official, explaining his 2012 vote to limit early voting hours, said: “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban [read: African American] voter-turnout machine.”
©Jenny Warburg Moral Monday protesters in Raleigh, North Carolina, call for the repeal of their state's new voting restrictions.
Other Voting Restrictions
Voter ID. While voter ID laws are nothing new, before 2011 only two states required voters to show government-issued photo IDs at the polls. Since 2011, nine states passed strict new ID laws. (Those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.) Some accept state-issued student IDs while others do not, and some make it easier than others to obtain the necessary IDs. Four more states have passed somewhat less restrictive ID requirements. Nationally, 11 percent of Americans do not have the current state-issued photo IDs required under the stricter laws.
Voter Registration Restrictions. Ten states passed laws making it harder for citizens to register. These include laws curbing voter registration drives (in Florida, Illinois, Texas, and Virginia); rules requiring voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering (in Alabama, Kansas, Tennessee, and previously in Arizona); laws eliminating the highly popular same-day registration (in Nebraska and North Carolina); and a law making it harder for people who move to stay registered (in Wisconsin). Voter registration problems, which tend to pass under the radar, have long been the single greatest barrier to voting, causing millions of lost votes per year. Unless your state has same-day registration, if you are not registered, you cannot vote. One in four eligible Americans is not registered, and millions more have outdated registrations.
Curbs on Restoring Rights to People with Past Convictions. Florida, Iowa, and South Dakota all made it significantly harder for Americans with past criminal convictions to have their voting rights restored. In Florida and Iowa, those citizens are essentially permanently disenfranchised. Nationally, 5.85 million Americans who have done their time have lost the right to vote; 1.5 million are in Florida. Overall, 7.7 percent of African Americans have lost their right—compared to 1.8 percent of whites.
The number and complexity of new voting restrictions across the country are staggering. As Yale Law Professor Heather Gerken put it, “It’s a death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy.”
Key States to Watch
In many of the closest races this year, new restrictions and ongoing court cases could become major factors.
Data: Brennan Center for Justice/Art: Mary Parsons
North Carolina has the dubious distinction of having the nation’s harshest and most sweeping new voting law. Enacted immediately after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act last year, the law slashes seven early voting days, imposes a strict photo ID requirement, eliminates same-day registration, stops pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds, prohibits the counting of provisional votes cast outside of voters’ home precincts, and more. Other than the photo ID requirement, which will be implemented in 2016, all of these changes are currently in effect.
With a tight U.S. Senate race under way, these changes could have an impact on this year’s elections, though it is difficult to predict the magnitude. In 2008, more than 700,000 North Carolinians voted during the week the state cut from early voting—including nearly a quarter of all African Americans who voted that year. Even in the 2010 midterms, more than 200,000 voters cast ballots during that week. Many voters will likely find another way to participate, but some will not. When Florida cut a week of early voting before the 2012 election, it led to congestion and long lines both before and on Election Day. More than 200,000 Floridians did not vote that year because of long lines at the polls.
The elimination of same-day registration and out-of-precinct provisional balloting can also do damage. In 2012, nearly 100,000 citizens used same-day registration in North Carolina, almost one-third of whom were African Americans. Nationally, same-day registration is generally credited with boosting turnout by as much as 5 to 7 percent. Already this year, hundreds of citizens cast ballots that went uncounted in low-turnout primary elections because of the elimination of same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting.
It is uncertain which of these restrictions will still be in place for the elections. The Department of Justice and civil rights groups have challenged the law in federal court. A district court judge declined to block the changes in advance of the election, but during argument on appeal last week, one judge asked: “How come the state of North Carolina doesn’t want people to vote?” (Regardless of the outcome, the issue will not be fully settled this year; the case is scheduled for a full trial next summer.) Voters are pushing back in the streets as well; the new law has spawned large-scale protests across the state by the “Moral Mondays” movement. That movement has also mobilized a voter registration and education campaign to counteract what the NAACP’s Reverend William Barber calls “the most regressive voter-suppression law passed by any state in this country since Jim Crow.”
Texas. In the midst of a high-profile gubernatorial race, the Lone Star State now has a voter ID law that is the harshest in the nation, and called “absurdly strict” by the New York Times. Not only does Texas unnecessarily limit the kinds of IDs it accepts for voting, it also cherry-picks—famously accepting concealed-carry permits but not state-issued student IDs. Before implementing this law, Texas was initially required under the Voting Rights Act to get federal approval to make sure that the ID law was not discriminatory. Both the Department of Justice and a federal court blocked the law ahead of the 2012 elections, finding that it discriminated against minority voters. But while the case was awaiting appeal, the Supreme Court struck down the portion of the Voting Rights Act (Section 5) that required Texas to seek pre-implementation review. Within hours of that decision, Texas moved to implement the law—despite the court’s earlier finding that it was discriminatory. The law is now being challenged under a different part of the Voting Rights Act (Section 2) and the Constitution, but has already been applied in local and primary elections this year.
If allowed to stand, Texas’s voter ID law could have a substantial impact this November. Uncontroverted expert data presented at trial showed that 1.2 million eligible Texans do not have IDs that would be accepted under the new law. Among registered voters, more than 600,000 lack acceptable ID. The effect on black and Latino voters is disproportionate; Hispanic registered voters are 3.2 times more likely than white voters to lack ID, and black registered voters are 2.3 times more likely to lack ID, according to an expert study.
A weak state program to provide free IDs is unlikely to close this gap before Election Day. As of September, Texas had issued only 279 free IDs, and had done virtually no voter education. Even if the ID itself is free, for many people the cost of obtaining the underlying documents necessary to get it is prohibitive. Lifelong voter Sammie Bates testified that it took her a while to save up the $42 needed to order her birth certificate, which she needed to get free ID: “You’re going to put the money where you feel the need is most urgent. … We couldn't eat the birth certificate, and we couldn't pay rent with the birth certificate.”
In the low-turnout November 2013 state primary, more than 250 provisional ballots were rejected because the voters failed to present qualifying ID. While most empirical studies show that requiring voter ID has a negative effect on turnout, there aren’t enough data yet to estimate with precision the impact the law will have on turnout if it remains in effect—especially since there has never been an ID requirement as strict as Texas’s. We may never find out, depending on what happens in the courts over the next few weeks. Closing arguments in the case challenging the law were made on September 22; a decision could come any day now.
Data: Brennan Center for Justice/Art: Mary Parsons The states shown in blue are facing court challenges to voter suppression measures.
Wisconsin. Unless a court steps in, a strict new voter ID law and cutbacks to early voting are slated to go into effect in Wisconsin for the first time this November. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker played a significant role in pressing these controversial new voting measures, and they could now make a difference in his close re-election race this year.
The new voter ID law, which rivals Texas’s as one of the country’s most restrictive, was previously blocked by multiple state and federal courts, but those decisions were recently lifted, just weeks before the election. By a tie vote, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals refused to rehear the appeal en banc, with Judge Richard A. Posner, who famously regretted his vote to uphold Indiana’s ID law, voting to rehear. With almost no time to prepare or educate voters, and with early absentee voting already under way, this last-minute change could create serious snafus in the election. The thousands of people who have already mailed in absentee ballots have been told that they now need to send in copies of their photo IDs—assuming they have them—or their votes will not count. In addition to the confusion, the law will certainly create problems for the 300,000 eligible Wisconsin voters who do not have IDs acceptable under the new law. In Milwaukee County, the state’s largest, 7.3 percent of white voters, 13.2 percent of African Americans, and 14.9 percent of Latinos lack acceptable IDs.
Wisconsin also eliminated weekend early voting, effectively preventing “Souls to the Polls” drives in the state this year. Florida’s experience in 2012 shows that cutting Sunday voting can make a serious dent in turnout; more than 18 percent of Floridians who voted on the last Sunday of early voting in 2008—eliminated in 2012—did not vote at all in 2012, according to an analysis by Professors Paul Gronke of Reed College and Charles Stewart of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kansas and Arizona. Voting restrictions have the potential to make a difference in the close gubernatorial and Senate races in Kansas, and in close House races in Arizona this year. Both states now require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, a measure first authored by embattled Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
Since January 2013, tens of thousands of voter registrations have been submitted in Kansas without the required documents. Although aggressive research and outreach efforts have helped get thousands of these documents to voters, there are currently almost 20,000 Kansans who attempted to register but will not be able to vote this November. There are no new numbers available from Arizona, but when the state first implemented its requirement in 2005, more than 31,000 applications were rejected for lack of documents, and community-based voter registration plummeted by 44 percent in the state’s largest county. Only 11,000 of those applicants were later able to register to vote, and about 20 percent of the remaining 20,000 unsuccessful applicants were Latino. The laws are currently the subject of two lawsuits, only one of which is likely to be decided before the upcoming election. If voting advocates prevail in that suit, then voters who lack citizenship documentation will be able to register and vote in federal races only.
Florida has long led the country in voting restrictions. Most recently, in 2011, the state cut back on early voting, hampered voter registration drives, and rolled back voting rights for people with past convictions. While the early voting and voter registration restrictions have been mitigated by court decisions and even a 2013 partial repeal, the more than 1.3 million Floridians convicted of crimes who have completed their sentences and paid their debt to society are still essentially permanently disenfranchised because of changes Governor Rick Scott and his clemency board made to Florida’s rules in 2011. Scott’s new criminal disenfranchisement rules, which rolled back pro-voter reforms passed by former Governor Charlie Crist, have the potential to make a big difference in this year’s neck-and-neck gubernatorial race between Scott and Crist.
Ohio may not have a close statewide race this year, but its voting shenanigans are always of national concern. This year, state officials tried to cut back dramatically on early voting—stopping all weekend early voting—and to eliminate its period of same-day registration popularly known as “Golden Week.” As a federal court recently found, and an appeals court affirmed, these moves could have hurt tens of thousands of voters, and disproportionately African Americans. The courts initially blocked these changes for this election, but just one day before early voting and Golden Week were scheduled to begin, the five conservative justices of the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated them. These measures were put in place in response to the chaos and long lines at the polls in 2004; their loss could spell trouble this year. The fight in Ohio is not yet over for 2016.
Arkansas passed one of the new wave of strict voter ID laws last year. With one of the country’s hottest Senate races in the balance, the law has taken on much greater significance this year. A state court found that the law violates the state’s constitution, which has strong protections for voting rights, but it declined to block the law. The case was heard by the Arkansas Supreme Court, and a decision could come down any day now.
What’s Next?
New voting laws aren’t the only concerns this year. Watch out for politically motivated attacks on groups that register voters, last-minute attempts to purge names off voter rolls, and voter harassment by vigilante groups—all of which have the potential to chill registration and participation. Watch also for widespread confusion and mistakes as a result of all these voting rules changes. And watch out for long lines at the polls, especially in minority communities; despite the uproar in 2012, the country still hasn’t taken key steps to prevent lines.
The role of the courts will be critical in the coming days and weeks. In five key states—Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, North Carolina, and Texas—the voting rules are still up in the air as lawsuits challenging new laws make their way through the courts. In the lead-up to the 2012 election, 10 courts in seven states blocked, postponed, or mitigated virtually all of the harshest new voting restrictions that were slated to go into effect that year. But that was before the Supreme Court had gutted a key portion of the Voting Rights Act. The jury is still out on whether the courts will be as forceful in protecting voting rights this year. The country needs them to be—or we risk cementing a new pattern of elections marred by discriminatory partisan changes to voting rules. |
Photo by ISIphotos.com
By FRANCO PANIZO
U.S. men's national team head coach Jurgen Klinsmann has released the 24-man roster that will aim to attempt to reach the final round of World Cup qualifying, and there are surprises aplenty.
Sacha Kljestan, Eddie Johnson and Alan Gordon were among the players selected by Klinsmann for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Antigua & Barbuda and Guatemala, while Jozy Altidore, Terrence Boyd, Jose Torres and Chris Wondolowski were all surprisingly left off. Landon Donovan, who suffered a knee injury on Saturday while playing for the Los Angeles Galaxy, was also included on the roster.
Other veterans on the team are Tim Howard, Carlos Bocanegra, Michael Bradley and Clint Dempsey.Timmy Chandler, who told SBI last month he was open to an October call-up, was also once again missing.
Here is the full roster:
GOALKEEPERS (3) : Brad Guzan (Aston Villa), Tim Howard (Everton), Nick Rimando (Real Salt Lake)
DEFENDERS (8) : Carlos Bocanegra (Racing Santander), Geoff Cameron (Stoke City), Edgar Castillo (Club Tijuana), Steve Cherundolo (Hannover), Maurice Edu (Stoke City), Clarence Goodson (Brondby), Fabian Johnson (Hoffenheim), Michael Parkhurst (Nordsjaelland)
MIDFIELDERS (8) : Kyle Beckerman (Real Salt Lake), Michael Bradley (Roma), Joe Corona (Club Tijuana), Jermaine Jones (Schalke 04), Sacha Kljestan (Anderlecht), Brek Shea (FC Dallas), Danny Williams (Hoffenheim), Graham Zusi (Sporting Kansas City)
FORWARDS (5): Clint Dempsey (Tottenham Hotspur), Landon Donovan (LA Galaxy), Herculez Gomez (Santos), Alan Gordon (San Jose Earthquakes), Eddie Johnson (Seattle Sounders)
The U.S. players have already begun convening in Miami for camp, which is the second-to-last one Klinsmann is expected to have this year. The team will train there through Wednesday.
The U.S. is currently tied on points in Group A with both Jamaica and Guatemala with two games remaining. The Americans visit Antigua & Barbuda on Friday before hosting Guatemala in their final group stage match four days later.
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What do you think of this roster? Which inclusion/omission most surprised you? Why do you think Altidore and Boyd were left off?
Share your thoughts below. |
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was apparently grinding away at his Conservative caucus yesterday morning about the need for Senate reform.
An interesting strategy, his!
First you pack the place with self-entitled cheats and porkchoppers like Mike "The Puffster" Duffy, then you argue that their misdeeds are proof the institution needs reform!
If nothing else, this suggests Calgary Centre MP Joan Crockatt was sticking right to the party strategy handbook when she suggested in a now-notorious Tweet that her Conservative Party is more ethical than all those other parties because some of its unethical senators resigned from caucus when they got caught.
Of course, this doesn't mean very much when they can be expected to go on reliably voting for the same things as they would as caucus members while try to insinuate their way back to insider status, at least until they reach 75.
Crockatt's risible suggestion prompted general hilarity among the chattering classes nationwide -- and probably would have gone international had it not been for the antics of Toronto Mayor (and future Conservative senator?) Rob Ford, who was already occupying the Canadian Curiosity slot on foreign newscasts.
(By the way, here's a note for the Globe and Mail's editors, if such a thing is still employed by our National Paywalled Website: Unlike Davy Crockett, the late U.S. Congressman of a similar name, it's Joan Crockatt, with an A.)
Let it be said nevertheless that Crockatt might be well advised to follow the example of former avid Tweeter Pat Martin of the New Democratic Opposition and shut down her Twitter account for the duration, or at least hand it over to a reliable aide.
Speaking of reliable aides, that brings us right back to the prime minister's current sea of troubles.
I expect Harper's suggestion at a studiously public caucus meeting yesterday morning that any of his MPs who are just there for reasons of self interest should "leave this room" was mainly greeted with discreetly rolled eyes.
"I know that like me and my family, you are scrupulous about paying personal expenses," Harper is said to have added, presumably with a poker face and to a largely silent room, before quickly jetting off to the much friendlier environs of Peru and Colombia, leaving Question period to underlings.
Harper's problem is that, right now thanks to Senator Duffy and others, the public has taken a fairly jaundiced view of his government, and he knows it. And nowadays who can blame them for a little cynicism, when just a few layers of the onion are peeled back yet the PM refuses to acknowledge any responsibility or even knowledge of what was going on among his closest aides right in his own office?
Instead, quite typically, Harper blamed the NDP and the Liberals for his self-inflicted troubles -- and privately, no doubt, the "liberal" media as well. You know, those well-known social democrats like PostMedia's Andrew Coyne and the editorial Board of the Globe and Mail, for whom l'affaire Puffster has been too much to swallow even with their usual tolerance for bad-tasting Tory potions.
Despite Harper's not-entirely-successful attempts to "distance himself" form his stinky Senate appointments, the PM had very little to say before his hasty departure about the one issue that would have benefitted from the disinfectant properties of a little sunlight.
To wit: the unethical and possibly illegal payment of $90,172 by the former chief of the prime minister's staff, Nigel Wright, to Senator Duffy.
Wright fell on his sword on Sunday morning to protect his prime minister after his effort failed to bail out the Harper Government by quietly paying off Senator Duffy's improperly claimed away-from-home living expenses.
Alas for Harper -- who has replaced Wright with a callow former National Citizens Coalition hack rather like himself who used to walk around wearing a picket sign reading, "Liberal, Tory, Same Old Story"– the issue just won't fade away.
Indeed, the only way to make it go away forever is to fix the Senate. And unfortunately for the PM's "reform" talk, the only way to fix the Senate that will actually work is to abolish it.
Contracts? Contracts? Who cares about contracts?
Meanwhile, out here in Alberta, Premier Alison Redford has vowed to forestall the inevitable and force former Capital Health and Alberta Health Services CFO Allaudin Merali to go to court if he wants to try to get his half-million or so dollars in severance.
Alert readers will recall how Merali's expense account became a cause célèbre and a huge embarrassment to the Redford Government in August 2012 when CBC investigative reporter Charles Rusnell published the results of a Freedom of Information search revealing "how he spent tens of thousands of dollars on lavish meals at high-end restaurants, bottles of wine, even a phone for his Mercedes Benz car." Merali left the employ of AHS soon thereafter.
Yesterday, Calgary Sun political columnist Rick "The Dinger" Bell quoted Redford as saying, "If people think they are entitled to something in a contract and other people don't think they're entitled to it I guess they can hire lawyers and take legal routes and go to court."
In other words, she said: "We are not going to voluntarily do anything with respect to his severance. … We are not going to simply sit back and take a look at what he may or may not feel he's entitled to without resisting that."
There are just four problems with this plan:
1) Alberta Health Services signed a contract with the guy that says he's owed the money
2) Outrageous as his expenses may have seemed, all of them appear to have met the lax the rules for executive expenses in effect at the time he was a Capital Health Region employee
3) He was rehired and then fired by another employer, AHS, and there's no evidence his expenses at that organization broke any rules
4) Canada, even the part governed by Redford's Progressive Conservative Party, still has an independent and impartial judiciary
In other words, while Redford's attitude is pretty typical of Alberta's Top Tory Dogs -- that is, the law is for you, not for us -- sooner or later we Alberta taxpayers are going to have to pony the money up to Merali.
Yes, we can understand that by getting caught by the CBC successfully claiming expenses that offended ordinary voters, Merali embarrassed the government and incurred the premier's wrath.
But we can also understand that Alberta taxpayers are not very well served by a legal fight against Merali's claim, which as far as can be seen is entirely legitimate and backed up by a long trail of paper.
All Alberta's premier is doing with this posturing, it is said here, is pouring good money after bad.
Unless, that is, she is slicing the facts extremely finely, since it will be AHS that has to pay up, and not technically "her" -- that is, on the principle of l’état c’est moi, the government of Alberta.
On the other hand, if she is proposing to get involved in the affairs of AHS, that is not necessarily a bad thing either.
She could start by telling AHD Board Chair Stephen Lockwood to stop defending bonus pay for the health agency's remaining executives on the grounds "it would be wrong from many perspectives to not compensate them as per their terms of employment."
You know, completely unlike Merali.
This post also appears on David Climenhaga's blog, Alberta Diary. |
A gift in three parts, my Scottish 'Santa is quite the sleuth! The two biggest themes were video games and delicious food. She even made sure my adorkable mutt Pochi got in on the action!
The first to arrive was a really cool poster with colored silhouettes of Nintendo's best-known characters. That will be getting framed and hung in the basement that I've recently converted into a retro gaming den. In fact, it would be there now if I'd had two seconds to sit down and gather myself since December began. =p
The next day, a box arrived that was clearly for Pochi. In fact, he must have been able to smell it, because he started losing his mind as soon as I brought it inside. Upon opening, he found a squeaky toy (that is mercifully ultrasonic, so I can't hear it), two bags of natural treats, a large crunchy bone (which he absolutely demolished in minutes), and a rawhide twist!
About this time, I logged into Reddit to discover that she'd given me three months of Reddit Gold! Whee! =)
The grand finale finally made it to me on Christmas Eve! It was a large, hand-packed box of assorted goodness, with an envelope labelled "Open First". Not one to ignore directions, I opened it to discover her delightfully creative rendition of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" with Zelda-themed substitutions! (Side note: Seriously... How often does a guy get serenaded with The Legend of Zelda? A girl after my own heart!) The card also mentions the hope that I have a sweet tooth. Eeeeyes ma'am. I certainly do.
Anywho, this box contained dozens of little packages, and each of these things was individually wrapped. This must have taken her hours! I started taking pictures of everything as I unwrapped it, before I realized that would be a ridiculous quantity of pictures. Among the deluge of candy and confections (like, legit: I'm about to celebrate the first coming of Christ, and I already have enough sweets to last until the second) were three pairs of cute/funny printed socks (zombie, sneaker, and sandal), a bamboo puzzle game that looks like it will wreck my brain in short order, and a cool fish-shaped toy that curls up in your hand when exposed to your body heat. Finally, just when I thought it couldn't get any better, at the bottom was an incredible hand-drawn portrait of Link from Windwaker! I know that on the card she said she couldn't draw, but she's clearly just being modest. If I had attempted such a sketch, it would be a stick figure done with green crayon. =p
Thank you, Littleone23! You made my first exchange amazing! =) |
President-elect Donald Trump dumped his shares in the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) last summer as demonstrations against the project raised to a fevered pitch.
Trump sold his shares in Energy Transfer Partners, the company working to construct the multi-billion dollar project, the president-elect’s spokeswoman Hope Hicks told the Washington Post. ETP recently agreed to a $20 billion merger with Sunoco in an all-stock transaction.
The financial disclosure form filed in May of 2015 shows Trump dumped between $500,000 and $1 million into the company. The information was disclosed in Trump’s filing to the Federal Election Commission.
Trump tossed another $500,000 in Phillips 66, which will have a 25 percent ownership in the project once completed. He reported making upward of $50,000 in interest, dividends and capital gains from the pipeline.
The $3.8 billion line has come under withering scrutiny from anti-oil pipeline protesters and American Indian tribes.
Standing Rock Sioux tribe, one of the tribes spearheading opposition, argues the pipeline’s construction would trample on tribal lands and destroy artifacts. They also believe it could potentially poison waterways, including rivers such as the Missouri River and Lake Oahe.
Many of the same groups that opposed the Keystone XL pipeline have joined the fight against the DAPL, which would bring 470,000 barrels of Bakken crude oil per day from western North Dakota to southern Illinois.
Trump’s decision to drop the stocks could help him avoid allegations that his role in the company constitutes a conflict of interest; he still must find a way to navigate similar conflicts of interest popping up among his possible future cabinet members.
One of Trump’s possible cabinet members – former Texas Gov. Rick Perry — has served as a director of ETP since early 2015, and owns $100,000 worth of stock in the company, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission form filed in January.
The Texas Republican also serves on the board of Sunoco Logistics Partners LP, which announced Monday it was purchasing ETP for a hefty $21 billion. Perry must determine whether to place his stock in a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest going forward.
President Barack Obama momentarily stopped pipeline construction in September, potentially leaving DAPL’s fate up to the Trump administration.
ETP’s CEO Kelcey Warren’s decision to shovel more than $100,000 to elect Trump. Warren dumped another $66,000 into the Republican National Committee.
Warren contributed $1.53 million in donations to super PACs and $252,300 to individual campaigns and the GOP, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
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Kevin Trenberth wrote the following text:
So it must be a spherical global warming! Before I will mention every sentence of Trenberth's musings, let me offer you a quiz.Click the image above to zoom in.You see a graph that seems to be a graph of some temperatures. You see that the maximum that the temperature has reached on this graph is slightly above 0.7 °C. On the horizontal axis, you see 8 cells. Your task is to guess the value of the temperature now, pretty much in the middle of the next, 9th cell (the first one on the right side that isn't shown on the graph anymore).The function seems to be increasing, right? It could be something like 0.8 °C or 0.9 °C, some readers will say. The tiny dip at the right end of the graph is an irrelevant fluctuation. We see that the temperature was recently increasing by 0.1-0.2 °C per cell.Are they right? Well, they're not right.The latest reading at the moment defined above is actually 0.445 °C. How do I know that?Because the graph above isn't a temperature graph but a graph of something that behaves in a very similar way as the local or global temperatures (at least if you take the logarithm of it) – namely the price of the Apple stock.You may play with the Apple graph at Google Finance and you will immediately see what I did. I charted the price of the stock between early 2005 and late 2012, divided it by $1,000, and added the Celsius degree as a unit to confuse you.You could have bought the stock for $7 in 2003 and it peaked above $700 in September 2012. In that way, you would earn 10,000% (ten thousand percent) of the original investment in less than a decade. Well, I guess that there are some TRF readers who did not do anything less than that...For several years, I was already amazed by the rise of the Apple stock and thought that it couldn't possibly continue – although I seriously admitted that both scenarios were possible. I was proven wrong about the "primary guess" a few times. However, since September 2012, the stock went from $700 to $445. That's more than 35% decrease. Those who bought into the stock in Fall 2012 are probably not excessively happy now.The rise of the stock had some causes – it wasn't a collection of coincidences that just happened to conspire to increase the price of the stock every year. But the idea that these causes are guaranteed to work forever is just childishly naive. There is no real evidence that the global mean temperature should behave differently than the Apple stock – and rise for the following decades and centuries, as long as the mankind burns the fossil fuels.In order to show how naive the global warming alarmists' reasoning is, I will replace the belief that everything is about the enhanced greenhouse effect which is guaranteed to last forever by the belief that the Apple stock has to rise forever due to the ingenuity of the iPod. Here is Trenberth's article (I deliberately used a not-quite-primary product of Apple, the iPod, because this is what the global warming alarmists are doing with CO2, too: it is far from being the most important greenhouse gas and the greenhouse effect is far from being the most important contribution to the energy balance and temperature variability):Has the rise of the Apple stock stalled? This question is increasingly being asked because the MP3 player market seems cool and hot, or because the price on the Wall Street is not increasing at its earlier rate or the long-term rate expected from financial model projections.The answer depends a lot on what one means by the “rising Apple stock”. For some it is equated to the “price paid on the Wall Street”. That keeps going up but also has ups and downs from year to year. More on that shortly.Why should it go up? Well, because the demand for iPods is warming as a result of human leisure-time activities. With increasing collections of songs, videos, and other time-wasting media files in the society, there is an imbalance in data flows in and out through the cables connected to the MP3 players: the devices increasingly trap more media files and hence create a rising demand for the iPods. “Warming” of the market really means heating, and this can exhibit itself in many ways.Rising demand for the stock among buyers on the Main Street are just one manifestation. Melting Research in Motion is another. So is collapse of Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, and other competitors that contribute to the rising unemployment among non-Apple-trained IT specialists. Increasing the traffic of the Apple Store and invigorating viral video industry is yet another. But most (more than 90%) of the data imbalance goes into the internal flash disks of the iPods, and several analyses have now shown this. But even there, how much the upper layers of the RAM are being filled, as opposed to how much penetrates deeper into the internal flash memory of the iPod where it may not have much immediate influence, is a key issue.My colleagues and I have just published a new analysis showing that in the past decade about 30% of the media files has been dumped at levels below 700 megabytes beneath the most frequently accessed portions of the flash memory, where most previous analyses stop.The first point is that this is fairly new; it is not there throughout the record. The cause of the shift is a particular change of the behavior of consumers who listen to the music in winds, especially in the Pacific Ocean where the subtropical trade winds have become noticeably stronger, changing the minimum volume that is needed to hear the songs and providing a mechanism for data to be carried down into the flash memory. This is associated with patterns of changes of the popular songs in the Pacific, which are in turn related to the female performances of the male interpreters.The second point is that we have found distinctive variations in Apple's stock price with male musicians. A mini rise of the stock price, in the sense of an increase of the figure on the Wall Street, occurs in the latter stages of the publication of a new song by a male interpreter, as the music comes out of the flash drive and activates the speakers. The amount of data in the flash memory is also affected by volcanic eruptions, which also affect the perceptions of Apple's stock rise, especially if a volcano covers an Apple factory by lava.Normal usage of the Internet also interferes by generating clouds that store the users' files for a while and then send them back, and there are fluctuations in the global data imbalance from month to month. But these average out over a year or so.Another prominent source of expected variability in the industry’s data imbalance is changes in the electricity industry itself, seen most clearly as the cycle of variable spot prices. From 2005 to 2010 the power plants went into a quiet phase and the data energy imbalance is estimated to have dropped by about 10 to 15%.Some of the penetration of the data into the depths of the flash memory is reversible, as it comes back when the user turns the iPod on again. But a lot is not; instead it contributes to the overall filling of the deep flash memory. This means less short-term addition of the data into the RAM, but at the expense of greater utilization of the flash memory, and faster deterioration of the competing companies. So this has consequences.Coming back to the stock price record on the Wall Street, one thing is clear. The past decade is by far the most successful one for Apple's stock price on record. Human interest in Apple Inc really kicked in during the 1970s, shortly after the company was founded in 1976, and Apple's stock price has been pretty steady since then.Mean NOAAWhile the overall increase of the price is about $500 per decade, there are three one-year periods where there was a hiatus in warming, as the graph above shows, in 2000, partly in 2002, in 2008, and between 2012 and 2013. But at each end of these periods there were big jumps. We find exactly the same sort of flat periods at random places of financial model projections, lasting easily up to 15 months in length.Focusing on the wiggles and ignoring the bigger picture of unabated rise of Apple's stock price is foolhardy, but an approach promoted by iPod success deniers. The elimination of the competition keeps marching up at a rate of more than 30 companies per decade since 1992 (when global markets using instantaneous transactions were made possible), and that is perhaps a better indicator that Apple's stock price continues unabated. The deterioration of all the competitors comes from both the melting of companies associated with the PC industry, thus adding more finances and flash memory chips to the market of intelligent phones, plus the warming and thus expanding market for the media players itself.Apple's stock rise is manifested in a number of ways, and there is a continuing wireless data transfer imbalance in the vicinity of the iPods. The current hiatus in the rise of Apple's stock price is temporary, and this increase has not gone away.LM: I hope that at least some readers were laughing. By this parody, I wanted to emphasize that while Trenberth writes and says lots of things about many random components of the atmospheric and weather systems, none of them really proves – or provides us with any significantly strong evidence – that CO2 is important enough so that the temperatures will be higher in 20, 30, 50, or 100 years. Much like the price of a stock, they may be higher but they may be lower, too. Rationalization of a predetermined conclusion is not genuine science.In fact, it seems that he talks about so many things just in order to impress the readers who don't have a clue about climatology or, and it is even worse, to distract the reader who would otherwise realize that a previous claim by Trenberth was proven wrong. Randomly jumping from one topic to another creates excuses that undemanding readers are satisfied with. He isn't carefully verifying the statements individually. Chances are that about 1/2 of his statements are simply incorrect and even those that are correct have nothing to do with the main claim that Trenberth would like to justify but he cannot justify it because there exists no scientific evidence – namely the claim that CO2 matters and is a significant (or even main?) factor for the forecasts. |
Video Version with Commentary is here
I can't remember the last time the collective energy felt so heavy. An analogy came through a week or so ago that we were being 'squeezified' in order to become 'juicified', and the suggestion was to focus on the juice when you're feeling emotionally and energetically squeezed. (that post is here) Well that suggestion applies a hundred fold today!!
You may feel like the walls are closing in on you - and on the world. Some may even feel like the 'darkness' is winning or that all your healing work has been for nothing. Yet really it is just that the 'darkness' is becoming more obvious, both within us and outside us - 'darkness' in this context is that which we have been unaware of.
More of us are becoming aware of the multiple ways in which we have been restricted as a humanity, and the ways in which we have been restricting ourselves personally. It feels like *@!# because life is not supposed to be restrictive. We are here to remember our truth, our power and what we are capable of creating. We are here to embody who we really are so that we can live free of beliefs, influences and systems that have kept us disempowered.
Today is a good day to remind yourself of how far you have come, of who you have become compared to years ago. It is a good day to remind yourself of how far the world has come, and how many people are truly awakening. It is easy to throw our hands up and say I give up, what's the point? But then where will we be?
All this new awareness can ironically trigger a lot of depression, because we feel at a loss as to what we can do to truly help so many situations. So when you do become aware of something, ask to be put on the 'solution' train track. Later that day you may find yourself doing something as simple and unrelated as watching a hilarious video clip - but that is enough to get you out of your slump and re-connect you to your flow, and suddenly you feel better about the problem you had that morning, or you feel more motivated or clear about how to tackle a greater, even global, issue. It is a good day to watch, read or do something fun, positive, empowering or invigorating that connects you with the 'juice'.
How are you all feeling? |
4-year-old Alyssa Brown visited Snow White’s wishing well atCalifornia’s Disneyland theme park with only one single wish in her mind. "Iwish with all my heart that my daddy would come home," she said inregards to her father who was serving in Afghanistan. Covering both hereyes over the well’s edge, Alyssa opened her eyes to see her father,Marine Lt. Scott Brown, down on one knee before her in Marine Dress uniform. It was a touchingmoment for everyone involved and it lived up to the fairy tale endingonly Disney can deliver.Watch the event unfold below,tissues optional….Grasping the success of such a magical well, Alyssa later told her parents shealready had her next wish ready. “My next wish is for a puppy!”, hermother said of her daughter’s wish. ‘No, we’ve got a brother instead.’Kids. You give ‘em an inch.Uploaders remarks:Welcome Home Marine LT Brown! Thank you for your service to this nation. |
Myths & Misconceptions about Hoarding Disorder
This post is part of a series of guest posts on GPS by the graduate students in my Psychopathology course during Spring 2014. As part of their work for the course, each student had to demonstrate mastery of the skill of “Educating the Public about Mental Health.” To that end, each student has to prepare two 1,000ish word posts on a particular class of mental disorders, with one of those focusing on evidence-based treatments for those disorders and the other focused on a particular myth or misunderstanding about mental illness.
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Myths & Misconceptions about Hoarding Disorder by Kelly Jent
How many of us have watched shows like Hoarding: Buried Alive or My Strange Addiction and immediately judged the people on the show? Comments like “Ew. Look at all of that junk in their house… it’s so dirty! How could someone live like that?! That’s disgusting!” tend to surface. As a matter of fact, while writing this and googling different addictions, I said (to my empty house), “Oh, woah that’s weird.” It’s natural to have reactions like that about something that appears so odd to many of us and something that seemingly would be so easy to fix by quitting getting new things, cleaning, stop saving, etc. However, these comments aren’t helping anyone and are only adding to the stigma about people who having hoarding problems. Speaking of stigma, a reoccurring pattern that I noticed while researching obsessive-compulsive related disorders (e.g. hoarding disorder, trichotillomania, body dysmorphic disorder) is that the stigma surrounding them severely misrepresents the reality that the people with the disorders actually live. To the uneducated, the people are “freaks” or “weirdos” and likewise, these disorders just appear “weird” and are dismissed and justified as “being glad you don’t do stuff like that.” Once disorders like hoarding become media-ized, the public assumes they know the in’s and out’s of what goes on; they feel that they know enough to give you the gist of the problem (which most likely consists of subjective judgments rather than empirical evidence), which is all you really need to know anyway, right?
Wrong.
There are a number of myths surrounding Hoarding Disorder (just referred to as “hoarding” from here on out), but I think in order to know what hoarding is not, it is important to understand what hoarding actually is first. Hoarding is a newly recognized diagnostic category in the DSM-5 in the Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders section. This disorder involves difficulty parting with possessions regardless of what their actual value is. There is a perceived need to save possessions and distress is linked to the idea or process of discarding them, therefore, items accumulate and clutter living areas which takes away from the functionality of the space. The effects of hoarding must also cause significant distress or impairment in different areas of functioning (social, occupational, familial). I stress: significant distress and impairment in functioning is a must for a diagnosis. That being cleared up, on to the misinformation!
One common myth about a person who hoards is that they are lazy, unmotivated, selfish, or gross. This is false. In fact, people who hoard ARE bothered by the clutter and dirt; they just learn to mentally block it out. They also feel shame and embarrassment due to their living situations. Studies have compared the brains of people who compulsively hoard with “healthy” brains and found that compulsive hoarders have decreased activity (less activation) in their anterior and posterior cingulate cortex. Great…but what does that mean? These brain areas are highly responsible for actions such as problem solving and decision making (anterior), spatial orientation, memory, and emotion (posterior). Decreased activity in these areas is likely contributing to the difficulty that people who hoard experience in deciding what to keep and what to throw away. People who hoard are worried that if they discard something they may actually need it someday in the future – so they keep everything from actually valuable items to items that appear meaningless such as dozens of second-hand eyeglasses that are kept “just in case.” With an accumulation of items comes a significant amount of impairment and distress and this is what distinguishes this disorder from regular collecting. Rather than being lazy or unmotivated, individuals simply may not be as able as an average person to carry out certain tasks in order to make decisions and organize things. With this in mind, it is easier to understand that hoarding is largely an information processing issue.
Now, back to the decreased activation in the posterior cingulate. Many people who hoard experience extreme anxiety when being faced with having to discard items. This is due partly to the unique emotional relationship that they have formed with their possessions. For example, some individuals anthropomorphize objects. For example, they may think that if they throw out the box that a gift came in, it would hurt the box’s feelings. There is also an association with the memory of when they received something or an event surrounding an item. The lower activity in this area of the brain also governs memory and spatial orientation; they need to have things in sight in order to remember where it is. Individuals think that they will lose items or not remember where something is if it is not in clear view which explains the plethora of items stacked from the floor to the ceiling, covering beds and spilling over tables and counters. Another example is the collection of newspapers – by throwing them away, one might forget the information that is inside of them.
Finally, people who hoard are likely to show signs of other accompanying disorders. Depression and anxiety are the two most common co-morbid disorders. Cory Chalmers of the TLC show ‘Hoarders’ says that 80-90% of all cases that they see on the show are trauma or depression based – meaning that these other experiences trigger the hoarding behavior in individuals as a way to fill a void in their life. Not surprisingly, a higher level of social disability is also found in people who hoard than not.
I was looking up YouTube videos to go along with this blog and decided to read the comments written about the videos to see what the general attitudes were towards the people in the videos. While, yes, there were some commenters who were positive and/or sympathized for the person featured in the video, the vast majority were negative and downright ignorant and rude. Here are a few gems that I came across.
“That isn’t hoarding she is a slob!” “That’s so sick. How could anyone live in there?” “Oh please miss stop making excuses and clean up your nasty house.” “This ain’t called being a horder, this is called being a lazy bum.” “Hoarding possessions I can go some way to understanding but the ones who sit in a pile of rubbish are just filthy pigs, that is not hoarding that is blatant slobbery and laziness.”
So… there’s that. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t really get warm fuzzy feelings reading those. The only warm feeling I got was due to my blood boiling. These delightful commenters perfectly illustrate why this disorder is stigmatized, and as you’ve hopefully seen, these comments only reinforce the myth that hoarders are lazy, selfish, unmotivated, or gross. Unfortunately, with the saturation of these shows and comments in the media, I don’t foresee this changing any time soon. However, next time you’re watching a show like this, keep in mind that these individuals in fact are not merely too lazy to clean, but there is most likely other underlying issues that are exacerbating this behavior. |
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"Top whatever" lists are popular on the internet -- quick, easy-to-read posts packaged in a convenient list for scrumptious digestion. Porsche is taking that form a step further by make its list into a video -- the first in what appears to be a new series for the automaker.
Dieter Landenberger, manager of historical archives at Porsche, pulls the sheet off five super-rare Porsche factory models that look immaculate on camera. The five rare cars are the Porsche 964 Turbo S (86 produced), 1981 924 Carrera GTS (50 -- one in white, the other 49 in Indian Red), 911 GT1 (21 made), 911 SC/RS (20 produced) and the American Roadster (only 16 produced).
The voice-over seems a bit more excited -- and Americanized -- than you'd expect from Porsche. However, considering we are going to be hearing the five best sounding Porsches next week as selected by the company, we get the excitement. Check back then for what promises to be a stunning soundtrack. |
We love to speculate on the next-generation of stars, players with a chance to take the next step in their careers, going from good to potentially great.
Heading into the 2016 season, I have a come up with a team that I call my Step-Up Team, players who have flashed early in their careers and now can take the next step on the path to being a star.
All the players are young, most in their second and third seasons in the league. That's why speculating can be tough, yet their limited resumes and game tapes help to give me the idea that they have the ability to turn it up a notch. Experience matters, and now they all have some. Maybe not enough yet for some, but they have games under their belts.
In a league where timetables are sped up now more than ever, the speed of the next step is crucial for the success of teams and the staying power of a coach. If the supposed candidates don't take that step, coaches will be fired and general mangers will likely be right behind.
So here's my team of the players I think take the next step in 2016.
Offense
He threw for 4,042 yards and 22 touchdowns as a rookie, but his completion percentage was only 58.3 percent and he threw 14 picks. Even so, he has the look of a future top-10 passer. His work ethic is outstanding and he loves the game. That matters.
He was really good as a rookie, rushing for 581 yards in part-time duty. I think he gets more of the rushing load this season, which means his numbers will go up. He's also a good receiver. He caught 36 passes last season. In his second season, he should be a 1,200-yard rusher with 50 catches.
I was going to put Dorial Green-Beckham here, but his trade to the Eagles changed that after the Titans gave up on him. So I went with Funchess. He came on strong late in 2015 and will be even better with a year under his belt. I thought he might be better suited as a tight end coming out of Michigan, but he's trimmed down some and developed into a big, strong receiver.
For a WR with his size and skill set, Funchess faces big expectations. USATSI
He had 51 catches with six touchdowns last season, and he really didn't get going until the second half. He is small, but he can fly. He's also a heck of a return man.
He caught a career-best 64 passes last season, but that was with Andrew Luck sitting much of the year. Now in his third season, he should push 80 catches this season. His yards-per catch should also go up from 11.5 last season.
Those who watch the tape know how good this kid is, but the majority of NFL fans don't. That's why he's on this list. He is a real talent and he's only 24 years old. He will be in the Pro Bowl this season.
When he played as a rookie last season, he was a mauler and a bruiser. This former college tackle has a chance to be special at guard. Teaming with Zack Martin, the Cowboys might have the best duo in the league.
La'el Collins should only continue to get better in Big D. USATSI
He is moving from right guard to center and the team is raving about his ability to pick up the mental game. He was a physical guard and should be a physical center. He might not be a Pro Bowl player this year, but he will be for a long time.
This player from small school Hobart College had a nice rookie season in 2015. He was good against the run and held up in pass protection. With a year of experience, he will be better in both.
On a Rams line that had issues last season, he was solid as a rookie at right tackle. He is a big, powerful player who is good in the run game. He surprised some with how well he handled himself in pass protection. He has missed the open of camp with a foot injury, but is expected to be ready for the opener.
Forget that he got paid a big deal. He's a player who hasn't lived up to the expectations yet. But I think in the Saints offense, with Drew Brees throwing to him, he will have a big-time season in terms of numbers. He's a perfect fit.
Defense
He isn't even a starter, but he might be by season's end. As a rookie last season, he had six sacks with just one start. At 6-foot-5, 252 pounds, he is a powerful rusher.
He impressed as a rookie last season, splitting time up front. But he has the talent to be a real force on their defense. He is big, strong and quick.
In 2015 as a rookie he was one of the best defenders on the Chicago defense. At 6-4, 320 pounds he is a power player but he can also push the pocket. He had 4.5 sacks last season.
When he played last season, he was an effective pass rusher. He didn't put up big sack numbers, but that's coming. As long as he's on the field, he will be a force off the edge for the Texans this year.
With J.J. Watt sidelined, the Texans need Clowney to be consistent. USATSI
He had four sacks as a rookie last season, but he had three of those in the final seven games. In the Cardinals defense, there's a need for an outside rusher to play a big role and this should be his time to do so.
He started nine games last season as a rookie and impressed as run defender. He's only 5-11, but he is a big-body player at 240 pounds and is more than willing to throw his body around. He needs to improve in coverage.
He had eight sacks in two starts last season, including five in the final three games. He had three in one game against the Eagles. At 6-5, 268 pounds he has speed of a player much smaller.
The Redskins are high on Smith. USATSI
The Packers have high hopes for this second-year player. He was a safety in college, but moved to corner last season as a rookie. He can play outside and in the slot.
He will be the "other" corner this season with Josh Norman on the roster. But he is a talented young player who loves matching up with top receivers.
He showed some real cover skills as a rookie last season. He is smooth, can lock down as a press-man player, and he is willing tackler. He will be in the Pro Bowl this season.
He struggled as a rookie in 2014 when asked to play more in coverage, but last year he fit better in the new scheme brought in with coach Todd Bowles. He is a big hitter who has improved in coverage.
Calvin Pryor can hit, but can he be more consistent in coverage? USATSI
He played corner and hybrid safety last year as a rookie, but he is a fill-time safety now. With his athletic ability, he would be a perfect player to have roaming in the middle of the field. |
She swallowed two pills with a sip of tap water and looked at me. I don’t know how she knew what was going through my mind — all the what-ifs and why-nots and should-haves. All the regret, and all the sadness, while I watched the person who used to call herself my boyfriend disappear with a sip of tap water. I didn’t miss having a partner who could pass as male. I didn’t even really miss straight privilege. It was something else.
“Would it make you happy,” she asked, “If we tried for a baby? Before it’s too late?”
We had talked about it off and on for months. We already had one child — our amazing little girl, who was born out of a previous relationship — but our little family still seemed like it was missing something. I found my eyes watering every time I held or saw a newborn baby. I would look at the old photos of my wife, a chubby-cheeked kid in boyish clothes that didn’t suit her, and I’d sigh. I felt like there was a child who I had known my whole life, a little boy with intense, dark eyes and an underbite. He was supposed to be part of our family.
We both knew that on hormone replacement therapy, she might have as many as two years of fertility left, or as few as three weeks. It wasn’t the best time. We were broke, we were young, we were stressed, and I had more than my fair share of health problems that I knew would make pregnancy difficult. But we knew it was now or never. There was always adoption, if we would ever be allowed to adopt, and there was always the option of using a donor, if we could ever afford it, but we both knew that putting our child into the realm of “one day” would mean writing him out of existence. “One day” would never come unless it was today.
Later that night, we were skin-to-skin under a pile of warm blankets. I ran my fingers through her black hair while we talked. Just tonight, we agreed. We’ll try tonight, and tonight only, and if it’s meant to be, it will happen. It wasn’t the most responsible possible plan for conceiving a baby, but it seemed right. I had never known my skeptical, atheist wife to put stock into the invisible cosmic force of “meant to be,” but the leap of faith gave me comfort. Sometimes, there’s something to be said for leaving the most difficult decisions in the hands of destiny.
I kissed her and she pulled away for just a moment. “You have to promise me,” she said, locking her eyes on mine, “Promise me that you will never, ever call me the father.”
I promised.
Last week, my wife and daughter sat by the examination table while an ultrasound technician pressed a wand against my swollen belly. A grainy black-and-white image developed on the screen: a fluttering heart. A little round head. Tiny arms and legs. I felt a tiny quiver when it raised its hand — five little fingers — as if it were waving hello to us. I smiled and looked at my wife, who suddenly burst into a high-pitched fit of tears. I knew what was happening to her. It hadn’t really hit her that the baby was real. Not until she saw it.
The sonographer smiled at both of us. I wondered how many times she had witnessed this scene in her career. She moved the wand a little to my left and smiled again.
“It’s a boy.”
I already knew — I’d told my wife that I was sure it was a boy, just two weeks after we conceived — but, in my mind, I put an asterisk next to the word. It’s a boy, until and unless he tells us otherwise, I thought. It’s a boy who will be raised without gender roles. It’s a boy who will be defined by his heart and mind, not by the organs that happen to be between his legs. It’s a boy who will be loved wholly, deeply, and completely by the two women who created him.
A preacher in North Carolina wants to send gay couples to concentration camps, where he says we will become extinct, along with our queer genes, within a generation. “You know why? They can’t reproduce!”
My stepmother says that being gay doesn’t make sense, because two men and two women have never, “in the history of the world,” conceived a child together.
Sixty-two percent of people in my home state vote against marriage equality. Their number-one argument is that queer families aren’t real families. Most of us — or, by their perception, all of us — can’t have children who are biologically related to both of their parents. That, they say, makes our love unnatural, and even sinful. I’ve often wondered when they’ll start trying to ban postmenopausal women and other infertile people from marrying.
Here, there be dragons. We aren’t the first queer couple to conceive a child, and we won’t be the last, either. But this territory is strange and uncharted, and it often feels like we’re alone. After scouring the whole online globe, I found a total of two other couples like us who are expecting babies this year. The conversations have been strained. We’re looking at each other and desperately hoping that at least someone might know what we’re supposed to do next.
Our baby will be born this summer and will join the family with two loving moms, one doting big sister, a hyperactive dog, and two purring kitties. I don’t know what the future has in store for our family, or, in particular, for my son. I don’t know how much his rights will be limited by our relationship, or if boys really do have a need for masculine role models, or when we will all grow exhausted with the people who lean in close and ask, “Is she the dad?” I do know that our son will never once doubt that he is loved and wanted, and I’m grateful every day that we have the rare and wonderful opportunity to be his mothers.
Special Note: Autostraddle’s “First Person” column exists for individual queer ladies to tell their own personal stories and share compelling experiences. These personal essays do not necessarily reflect the ideals of Autostraddle or its editors, nor do any First Person writers intend to speak on behalf of anyone other than themselves. First Person writers are simply speaking honestly from their own hearts. |
beyondthebreach:
The LAST COPIES left over of Beyond the Breach are up for sale! Grab one over here!
http://beyondthebreach.storenvy.com/
(Please limit yourself to one book. Since there is no more after this, we want to do whatever we can to make sure the people that wanted one can get one.)
PLEASE BE CAREFUL! Since these are the LAST copies of Beyond the Breach, make doubly sure your address is correct if you are ordering. I thankfully had only one lost book in the first batch that sold, so we’re doing pretty good, but it could happen. And if it does happen, I don’t have replacement copies to send out and will simply have to offer you a refund. Just be careful, and if you know you’ve had problems receiving things in the mail before, perhaps ask a friend to get it shipped to them. If you’re making an international order and certain things have made shipments to you difficult, feel free to email me and let me know what I can do with your order to ensure it makes it to you.
If the listing says it is sold out, or the storefront is closed, then the books have all sold and that’s it! I’ll be making donations with the excess funds before the year is out. :)
Thank you everyone! |
Image caption The abandoned factory, which made landline and coin-operated telephones, closed in 2000
Donald Trump says he would bring back outsourced manufacturing jobs from Mexico and China. There's a factory that is a symbol of outsourcing.
"You thought you had a job for life," says Gregg Trusty. "As long as you didn't show up to work drunk or punch your supervisor, you thought you could work there until you retired."
A wander around the factory Trusty is talking about gives a stark example of the precarious nature of the American economy today.
The gigantic Western Electric plant in Shreveport, Louisiana was once one of the country's biggest producers of telephones. Now it's abandoned, the machinery silently rusting. Nature creeps in on all sides. Dusty papers sit on desks and lights still blaze on to empty factory floors, as if the people working there were forced to leave in a hurry.
If you want to understand how Donald Trump has tapped into economic insecurity across America, this humid city of 200,000 in northern Louisiana is an excellent place to start. Western Electric was the wholly-owned manufacturing arm of corporate behemoth AT&T, which for most of the 20th Century held a monopoly on the US telephone business.
At its height, the company employed 7,500 people at its Shreveport plant. But long before the rise of Chinese competition, the ubiquity of the mobile phone and the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico - which Trump has called "worst trade deal ever" - the factory's future was clear.
Starting in the 1980s, AT&T slashed its domestic workforce and moved telephone manufacturing to Singapore.
"There was a feeling of disappointment," says Don Corliss, who worked at the plant for 25 years. "We moved from a manufacturing economy to a service economy.
"Did the average worker on the shop floor realise what was hitting them? I don't know."
Image caption Don Corliss worked at the plant for 25 years
Several factors led to the factory's closure. In 1984, a lawsuit ended AT&T's monopoly and opened up American telecommunications to competition. And, of course, the last 30 years have seen unprecedented international competition and technological change.
When Trusty moved here from the Midwest in the late 1960s he recalls that big celebrations would be held every time the plant added an additional 1,000 jobs, which in the early days happened every few years.
Later, as part of the company's public relations team, he would face the local media to announce round after round of layoffs.
"One time I was asked a question about how it made me feel," he says. "I told the reporter straight: 'We've lost some damn fine people today.'
"I meant it. It hurt, every time we did it. It was painful."
Image caption One of the coin operated phones manufactured by the Shreveport factory
After years of job losses, the plant, located in the Southern Hills area of Shreveport, closed for good in 2000. The fortunes of the workers themselves varied. Many retired, while others shifted gears with the aid of generous redundancy packages and company-funded education grants. Trusty worked in other jobs in public relations and journalism. Other former employees became small business owners, consultants, care home workers - and in one case, an elected state politician.
Randy Doss started on the factory floor and later became a supervisor. After he left the company in 1995, Doss ran a local transportation business with his wife before retiring earlier this year.
"We all had a sense of security. We thought we were fine," he says. "And we all bit the dust."
Despite that, Doss says he holds no ill will towards the company.
"It's a business decision pure and simple, and they could make phones cheaper elsewhere. That's business."
In Shreveport the absence of manufacturing jobs is palpable. Another iconic American company, General Motors, shut its local factory in 2012. That set off a wave of job losses at local suppliers, and today there's little heavy industry left.
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Harold Sater of the Southern Hills Business Association says the area around the AT&T plant suffered for years and despite rows of busy restaurants, petrol stations and other small businesses nearby, it doesn't quite compare to AT&T's heyday.
"The traffic you see now is just starting to come back to the levels back then," he says.
There were knock-on effects. Richard Corbett, the business association's current president, says crime increased in the area - a trend he saw first-hand in his day job as a local sheriff.
"It's simple. Fewer jobs nearby means fewer people came to the area to shop," Corbett says. "That led to problems and we're still working through them today."
Yet Shreveport does seem different from those Midwestern cities that were strangled by loss of their main industries.
BBC Newsnight: Trump's appeal in Ohio
The economy here shifted and diversified. It's a regional centre for health care. Nearby oil and gas reserves have provided jobs, although that industry has gone through boom and bust. There's a large military base nearby and the city once had a thriving film industry lured in by tax breaks.
Meanwhile, casinos dotted along the Red River have led to a small revival downtown. The city's growth has slowed, but its population is stable - there's been no mass exodus.
Although most of the former AT&T site is abandoned, a couple of companies have moved in. One is even a small-scale manufacturer. Skyrunner is making futuristic recreational vehicles that can both drive and fly. The company is perfecting its designs and aims to ship its products around the world.
Image caption One of the vehicles that Skyrunner is making in one corner of the old AT&T site
What's missing is big industry of the kind that provides that elusive path for the low- and semi-skilled workers.
"We're still working on getting good-paying jobs for those people," says Sater. "There's almost nothing that pays $15 an hour outside of work on oil and gas fields. That's frustrating."
AT&T, meanwhile, no longer manufactures telephones in Singapore or anywhere else. It's a technology and media company. Its latest move is a bid to buy Time Warner, a proposal that both Democrats and Republicans are concerned about.
Among the firm's former employers in Shreveport, faith in Trump and his economic plan is decidedly mixed. Some, like Corliss, say they'll vote for him but only because they dislike Hillary Clinton more.
Doss is a staunch Trump supporter. He says he believes the Republican candidate when he says he can bring back manufacturing jobs to the US, even though he's thin on specifics. For Doss, like for many Trump supporters across the country, voting for Trump is a leap of faith.
"I don't know how he's going to do it," Doss says, "but I think that he can."
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