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An already tense situation escalated late on Sunday night, when an activist for Mr. Ivanishvili’s party, Georgian Dream, in a region east of the capital reported that her 9-month-old niece had been abducted and found drowned. A spokeswoman for the party, Maia Panjikidze, claimed at a hastily arranged news conference that the child’s aunt had received numerous threats from representatives of the ruling party who wanted her to stop promoting Georgian Dream.
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The Georgian Interior Ministry said it would investigate and called it “unfortunate that the Georgian Dream coalition has politicized this tragic event.”
A crowd estimated at more than 100,000 thronged the center of Tbilisi on Saturday to hear a campaign speech from Mr. Ivanishvili. He has promised to bolster agricultural production and address the country’s unemployment rate, which is said to be far higher than the official figure of 16 percent.
“I smell victory, and I smell a free country,” Mr. Ivanishvili told a crowd extending for blocks down Rustaveli Avenue. He made a pointed appeal to the police and other government officials, apparently in anticipation of a standoff after the election results are announced.
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“Do not raise your hands against the citizens of your own country,” he said. People interviewed in the crowd said they were certain that Mr. Ivanishvili’s party would win the election, and equally certain that the government would declare victory. Alexander Cherkezishvili, 49, said he was bracing for what would happen. “Nothing will happen on Monday, we will have elections, that’s all,” he said. “The main question is what will happen on Tuesday. If there is fraud, people will fill the streets. I personally will go out.”
The government’s pollsters are equally confident, saying that Mr. Saakashvili’s party, the United National Movement, began with a hefty lead and has rebounded from the damage inflicted by the release of the prison abuse videos last month. Giga Bokeria, Mr. Saakashvili’s national security adviser, told reporters in Tbilisi that his fears about election-related violence had subsided since then, though he said opposition leaders were stoking tensions.
“Any party raises expectations of victory, it’s normal,” Mr. Bokeria said. But, he said, pointing to a certain number “and saying that anything different from this number, like 60 percent, would automatically mean a stolen election, is also a problematic message to core supporters, and could bring up the temperature and contribute to incidents.”
Giorgi Gogia, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said his expectations had changed markedly since two weeks ago, when he expected the United National Movement to win 55 or 60 percent of the vote. At Saturday’s demonstration, he said, the opposition crowds were “very, very confident,” and left the impression that they would take to the streets if they were unhappy with the results. “It’s the first time in 20 years of Georgia’s history that we actually don’t know the outcome of the elections,” he said. “This is the first time when the opposition also has the resources to galvanize people.” |
Gary Kubiak has agreed to become the head coach of the Denver Broncos, the team announced Monday.
Editor's Picks How does Kubiak's hire affect Manning's return? Incoming Broncos coach Gary Kubiak has always run a version of the West Coast offense. Peyton Manning comes with his own offense. Can the two work together? Jeff Legwold asks.
Hensley: Kubiak jumped at dream job Everyone in Baltimore should be ticked off at Gary Kubiak for breaking his word to the Ravens, right? Not really.
Five quick thoughts on the Kubiak hiring The Denver Broncos will hire Gary Kubiak as coach. Jeff Legwold delivers some quick takes on what it means. 2 Related
Kubiak's deal is for four years, according to multiple reports. He spent the past season as the Baltimore Ravens' offensive coordinator.
Before joining the Ravens' staff, Kubiak had served as head coach of the Houston Texans. The Broncos will introduce him at a Tuesday afternoon news conference.
"Gary Kubiak has established a track record of leadership, success and high character during his 30 seasons in the NFL," Broncos general manager John Elway said in a statement Monday. "While there is no question he is a Bronco, what Gary has learned from his other opportunities around the league -- especially in his eight seasons as a head coach -- will tremendously benefit our organization.
"Having coached on three Super Bowl champions and 11 playoff teams, Gary knows what it will take to deliver another world championship to Broncos fans. Coach Kubiak is all about winning and doing things the right way, which are values that have always been most important to the Broncos and owner Pat Bowlen."
Kubiak had said after the Ravens' loss to the New England Patriots last week in the divisional round of the playoffs that he was staying in Baltimore, but he had a change of heart when the Broncos job became available.
Kubiak served as backup quarterback to Elway before becoming a part of the team's coaching staff after his retirement.
Ravens quarterbacks coach Rick Dennison and tight ends coach Brian Pariani will be following Kubiak to Denver, sources told ESPN.com's Jamison Hensley.
Kubiak replaces John Fox, who parted ways with Denver following the team's divisional round playoff loss to the Indianapolis Colts a week ago. Fox has since been hired as head coach of the Chicago Bears.
The Broncos' hiring of Kubiak leaves the Atlanta Falcons as the lone team without a head coach.
Kubiak's son weighed in via Twitter on Sunday: |
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CHAPTER XIII
ROOT HABITS OF ALFALFA
Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is a perennial. Its length of life is dependent both on the variety and on the environmental conditions. Usually, it live s only 5 to 7 years, but in semiarid regions, fields over 20 years old are found. Common alfalfa has no rhizomes, although they occur on some of the hardy, yellow-flowered varieties of Medicago falcata. They also sometimes appear on some variegated types, i.e., hybrids of ordinary and yellow-flowered alfalfa.
Like the wild legumes of the grassland, alfalfa is deeply rooted. The seedling usually gives rise to a single taproot which takes a vertically downward course. Considerable variation occurs in the number of side roots which arise from the taproot.
Early Root Habit of Common Alfalfa.--A 63-day-old alfalfa plant is shown in Fig. 93. The crop was grown on upland silt loam soil near Lincoln. The great extent of root in relation to top is very striking. When the plants were only a month old (May 1) and the tops were half an inch high, the taproots were already 5 to 6 inches long. The unfolding of the first pair of leaves was accompanied by the appearance of the first lateral roots. In the 2-months-old plants, the absence of laterals in the surface soil was as characteristic as was their abundance deeper, where 10 to 12 rootlets regularly occurred on an inch of the taproot. Some short secondary branches were present and nodules were abundant.
Fig. 93.--Alfalfa plant 63 days old.
Later Development.--By August 10, the roots had reached the stage of development shown in Fig. 94. Owing to a favorable season, the plants had made a fair growth and were 15 inches tall. Roots were fairly abundant to 5 feet, and some had penetrated to a maximum depth of 5.5 feet. The taproot was the prominent feature, laterals not being abundant below the surface 18 inches of soil. The longest branches did not exceed 6 to 10 inches in length. The general course of the roots was vertically downward. Nodules occurred to depths of over 3.5 feet. A crop of similar age on lowland soil had a better development of tops, which averaged 21 inches tall, and the roots were a little more extensive but otherwise similar. Root development in both upland and lowland during the preceding year was very similar to that just described.
Fig. 94.--Alfalfa root 4.5 months old.
Root Habit of Two-year-old Plants.--The lower plot was adjacent to a 2-year-old field of alfalfa. A long, deep trench was dug in this field, and the roots were thoroughly examined during the first week in June. No other plants were present, and the soil was occupied entirely by the roots of alfalfa. The taproots, near the soil surface, were 5 to 10 millimeters in diameter. Just below the crown and to a depth of 1.5 feet, the roots were well supplied with a great abundance of small laterals, usually less than a millimeter in diameter. These often ran parallel with the soil surface for a distance of 1 to 12 inches or even more. Other branches ran more obliquely downward, usually making wide angles with the taproot. They were well supplied with secondary laterals, mostly less than 3 inches in length. All of the rootlets, but especially those in the surface 2 feet of soil, were abundantly furnished with nodules 2 to 3 millimeters long and 1 to 1.5 millimeters in diameter. In fact, these occurred to the maximum depth of root penetration, about 12 feet. The taproots tapered rather rapidly, so that at a depth of 2 feet, the diameter was seldom greater than 1 to 3 millimeters, and below 9 feet none of, the roots were more than a millimeter thick and usually much less. Many ended at depths of 7 to 10 feet, and others extended to the water level at 12 feet, where they terminated with little branching. Not infrequently, the main root ran for distances of 2 to 5 inches in the deeper so il, giving off few or no branches. Branches more than an inch in length were rare in the deeper soil, and usually they were very much shorter. Here, the roots showed a marked tendency to branch only in the soil crevices. As a whole, the taproot predominated throughout, and typically it branched but little, many plants penetrating deeply without giving off any large laterals (Fig. 95).
Fig. 95.--Two-year-old alfalfa root grown in rich lowland soil. Water table at depth of 12 feet.
The actual number of roots in a vertical layer of soil extending only 4 inches into the wall of the trench, together with the lack of large branches, is shown in Fig. 96. The presence of earthworm burrows in the deeper, stiff, clayey subsoil is significant, These, with countless small holes left at all depths, even to 12 feet, upon the death and decay of older alfalfa roots, are very important in aiding soil aeration. It would seem that the excellent development of other crops upon old fields of alfalfa, sweet clover, and red clover, the roots of which penetrate deeply, is due not only to an increased nitrate supply but also to better aeration. The fertilizing effect of the deeper portions of these decayed root systems is below the reach of most crops.
Fig. 96.--Upper portion of 2-year-old alfalfa roots in their natural position in the soil.
Effect of Environment on Root Habit.--One part of this field of 2-year-old alfalfa extended up a rather steep hillside to the crest of the hill. Here, the plants had a good even stand, which was almost as dense as that on the low ground, and the tops were equally well developed. It was discovered that subsoil conditions were far from typical for the region. The surface 1.2 feet of dark clay loam was rather rich in humus, but below this was a subsoil of stiff yellow to slate-colored clay about 2 feet thick. It was somewhat intermixed with streaks of decomposed Dakota sandstone which modified its tenacity. Below 3.2 feet, the clay became very hard and much jointed, roots being largely confined to these joints. The clay was intermixed with pockets and streaks of chalk. The soil was so hard, especially the deeper soil, that it was removed with considerable difficulty. Its glacial origin was shown by pebbles, often 2 to 3 inches in diameter, which occurred throughout, although not abundantly.
The taproots were as large in diameter as those from the lowland, but a marked difference in branching-habit was apparent. Branches were not only very much more numerous but much larger (Fig. 97). In fact, the first 8 inches of taproot gave rise to two or three times as many branches. Some of the larger ones ran obliquely for 1.5 feet from the base of the plant in the surface 18 inches, and then, turning downward, reached depths of 5 to 6 feet. Frequently, they divided into a large, profusely branched, absorbing network, especially prominent in the first 2 feet of soil. Very rarely did any taproots extend beyond 7.5 feet in depth, and all but the deepest were well branched, especially throughout the last 18 inches of their course.
Fig. 97.--Portions of the root systems of alfalfa from lowland (left) and upland (right). Scale 1 foot.
These differences in root habit, namely, a deep taproot with no major branches and relatively few smaller ones in lowland and a shallower taproot with numerous large, widely spreading branches in the upland, must be attributed to soil conditions with their resultant effect upon water content, soil solutes, and perhaps aeration. Which of these or what combination of these is the controlling one can be definitely answered only by a series of experiments carried on under conditions where the effect of each factor can be evaluated. Experiments with several varieties and strains of alfalfa grown at Ithaca, New York, show that in compact soil all varieties and strains develop branch roots, but in open soil the taproots predominate. 39a
Year-old plants grown in fairly moist loess soil in north central Kansas, from the same lot of seed used at Lincoln, had a root habit like that described for plants of a similar age at Lincoln. But those grown on the short-grass plains of eastern Colorado were very different. Although the tops were 11 inches tall and had blossomed, root penetration was limited by a hardpan layer of very dry soil which occurred at a depth of 2 feet. The root habit was very similar to that of the 2-year-old plant shown in Fig. 98. Low water content of soil and very dry air caused the crop to pass many days in a semiwilted or wilted condition, growth being resumed when showers occurred. The taproots were only 2 to 4 millimeters thick but profusely branched with both large and small laterals. Not infrequently, some of these were equal in size to the taproot. A horizontal spread of 1 to 1.5 feet was characteristic, some roots running 2 feet in the dry soil. Small branches were so numerous that the soil was remarkably well occupied by a network of roots, a condition quite unusual in fields of young alfalfa of more humid regions. Indeed, the modification of the root habit was so great that one would scarcely recognize the roots as those of alfalfa.
Fig. 98.--Alfalfa excavated in the short-grass plains on June 28 during the second year of its growth.
Chemical analyses showed that the soils were rich in all the necessary nutrients; nodules occurred on the roots at all levels; aeration could not have been a limiting factor to growth in this dry soil; and, undoubtedly, water played the dominant rôle. Further investigations at Greeley, Colo., substantiated this conclusion.
Root Behavior under Irrigation and in Dry Land.--A study of crops growing with and without irrigation was made at Greeley, Colo. 104 The plots adjoined those already described for corn. Turkestan alfalfa was drilled 1 inch deep in rows 20 inches apart on the dry land but sowed broadcast in the irrigated plot where it was worked into the soil with a hand rake. The dry-land plot was hoed at frequent intervals throughout the season to conserve the moisture, but the irrigated plot was not tilled. Sowing was done on April 11.
Early Development.--Owing to favorable temperatures, the crop grew well, and when 2 months old, that in the irrigated and fertilized soil was 6 inches tall. Each plant had 6 to 8 leaves. In the dry land, owing largely to a lack of moisture, the plants were only half as tall, although they had the same number of leaves. Differences in root habit were already pronounced (Fig. 99). Plants in the dry land, where water was very scarce in the first foot, had penetrated deeper. They had slightly fewer but longer laterals and more secondary branches. Tubercles were also more abundant.
Fig. 99.--Roots of alfalfa plants 2 months old, those from dry land with greater depth and longer branches.
Midsummer Growth.--Root development was again examined on July 8. Practically no efficient rainfall had occurred up to this time. In the dry land, there was almost no water available in the surface foot and only 2 to 3 per cent remained in the deeper soil layers. In the irrigated field, the 3-months-old plants were 18 inches high, and many were in blossom. In the dry soil, they were only half as tall and most of them had not bloomed. A glance at Fig. 100 shows the marked differences in root habit. The prominence of the taproot, its greater depth of penetration, and the relative scarcity of large branches characterized the Plants in the moist soil. This contrasted sharply with the shallower, more profusely branched taproot found in the dry land, where several of the major branches frequently reached depths nearly or quite as great as the main root.
Fig. 100.--Roots of alfalfa plants 3 months old, the one from the dry land having the greater number of branches.
Most of the dry-land plants had from three to six large branches in the first foot; about half of the plants in the moist soil had none, and many had only one, although some, especially isolated individuals, frequently had two or more. There was a greater tendency for the branches to turn downward with less lateral spreading in dry land than in the irrigated soil. The number of small laterals varied from 6 to 10 per inch and was about the same in both cases, although they extended much closer to the root tips in the dry soil. This was due, undoubtedly, to the slower rate of elongation of the main roots. In the irrigated plot, the taproots had grown at the average rate of about half an inch a day, some reaching depths of over 3 feet. Nodules 1 to 2 Millimeters in diameter occurred abundantly over the entire root system of the irrigated plants, but in the dry land, they were smaller, not abundant, and fairly well distributed only in the first 18 inches of soil. Thus, it seems clear that an unfavorable environment not only affects crop growth directly but also indirectly through its influence upon nodule-forming as well perhaps as on other types of nitrogen-fixing bacteria. The activities of other soil organisms are, undoubtedly, also greatly modified.
Root Habit at the End of the First Year.--A final examination was made near the end of the growing season on Sept. 12. Rainfall since July 8 had been very light, and little water had been available at any level in the dry land. This was especially the case in the shallower soil. The second growth in the irrigated plots, the first crop having been cut on July 26, was 26 inches tall. The plants were in full bloom. In the dry land, the crop was only 8 inches tall. A root depth of 6.1 feet had been attained by the more vigorously growing crop, at which level seepage water occurred. Plants in dry land reached a maximum depth of 5.5 feet. The roots were much more kinked and curved, probably owing to the greater difficulty in penetrating the hard, dry soil (Fig. 101). Working depths were 4.6 and 3.2 feet, respectively. As before, the dry-land plants were characterized by a greater number of strong branches in the surface foot and by a marked tendency to spread but little before turning downward and penetrating deeply. The spread of branches in the better watered soil, where they frequently originated at a depth greater than 1 foot, was much more pronounced, sometimes reaching 2 feet . No nodules were found on dry-land plants, but they were abundant to 4 feet in the irrigated soil.
Fig. 101.--Alfalfa roots near the end of the first season's growth: A, dry land; B, irrigated soil.
Root Extent during the Second Year.--By July 10 of the second year, which was relatively very wet, the dry-land alfalfa had extended its depth from 5.5 feet, where dry soil had occurred, to 9 feet. Below 6 feet, the soil was sandy and gravelly. In the watered plot, growth had ceased the preceding season at the 6-foot level, owing to seepage water saturating the soil, but the roots now extended to nearly 10 feet. A comparison of Figs. 101 and 102 shows clearly the differences between the root systems in the two fields.
Fig. 102.--Root systems of alfalfa on July 2 of the second year of growth: A, dry land; B, irrigated soil.
Other Investigations of Alfalfa.--The root habits have also been studied in several other places in Colorado in soil varying from sandy loam to heavy clay. 84 In all cases, a marked taproot with relatively few large or widely spreading branches was characteristic. Six-year-old plants on stiff clay soil near Fort Collins were found to penetrate to a depth of about 12 feet, although 7 feet was the more usual depth of penetration found in the other Colorado soils. Little correlation was found between depth of roots and age of plants. Year-old plants in fine loam with a clayey subsoil were about 4 feet deep but 9-months-old plants had root lengths of nearly 9.5 feet. Roots of 6-year-old plants were found which were larger than 9-year-old ones. The causes for these differences were not determined. They may have been due in part to thickness of planting and the effects of frequency of cutting. In the sandy soils of Wisconsin, where the roots reach depths of 7 to 10 feet and sometimes more, a study of the effects of different treatments on the growth of the crop has been made. In these light soils, too frequent and especially too early cutting greatly retards root development. 145
At Stillwater, Okla., where a porous open subsoil is overlaid by a plastic clay hardpan, root penetration was limited to the soil above the hardpan. Where lime was applied, the roots entered the hardpan but did not pass through it, though on soil which had been treated with barnyard manure, the roots extended through the hardpan. The greatest depth of root penetration and the greatest root development were attained, however, where both lime and manure were applied. The taproots, under these conditions, extended below the hardpan into the more porous lower subsoil. Increased root length of 10 to 23 inches was thus brought about. Whether the results were due to the stimulating effect of the lime and manure on the plant or to their action on the hardpan was not ascertained. 15 Undoubtedly, in soils with a very deep, moist subsoil, alfalfa roots reach great depths. However, roots seldom reach a diameter greatly exceeding 1 inch and are usually about ½ inch thick.
On upland loam soil at Manhattan, Kan., roots have been traced to depths of 8.5 feet 204 and, in stiff clay soils, to a depth of 10 feet without finding an end. Alfalfa roots are said to extend 15 to 30 feet in depth in fairly good soil. It may be recalled that depths of 21 to 25 feet are attained by the wild rose and certain other prairie species. The need for an extensive absorbing system can be appreciated when it is recalled that the crown of alfalfa may produce from 100 to over 300 leafy stems.
Varietal Differences in Root Habit.--In regard to the root habits of different varieties, studies made in South Dakota are of interest.
There are outstanding differences between the root systems of southern-grown common and yellow-flowered alfalfas in the prominence of the taproots, the development of branch roots, the number and development of rhizomes, and in the number and place of most profuse production of fibrous roots. Between many plants of common alfalfa, especially of the less upright forms, and many plants of the Turkestan and Grimm alfalfas, however differences are not great, and it is often impossible to determine by their root systems the groups to which these plants belong. In brief, the root systems of the least hardy forms of purple-flowered alfalfa may be distinguished from the most hardy hybrid and yellow-flowered alfalfas with accuracy, but the intermediate forms are not sufficiently distinct to be distinguishable from one another or invariably from some forms of the non-hardy or yellow-flowered alfalfas. 65
Relation of Root Habit to Crop Production.--An examination of seedling alfalfa roots helps to make clear why a well-prepared seed bed is essential to a good stand, the delicate roots growing best when in close contact with well-pulverized soil. It also explains why a crop sowed early in the fall does not winterkill as badly as the less developed plants of a late-sowed one. Although alfalfa is not exacting as regards soil texture and will grow well even in heavy clay soils, a knowledge of its deeply rooting habit explains why it thrives best in deep, permeable soils, as loam, silt loam, or sandy loam. The roots are very sensitive to poor aeration resulting from standing water, complete submergence for only a day frequently being fatal, and the crop grows poorly or not at all if water stands within 2 to 3 feet of the. surface. Hence, the soil must be well drained; in fact, the deeper root system demands more complete drainage of the soil than do many other field crops. If the soil lacks depth due to such factors as a high water table, hardpan, rock ledge, etc., the crop is unable fully to utilize its deeply rooting habit. Although adapting its root habit to a considerable extent, growth will usually be less vigorous and the plant less able to withstand the competition of weeds rooting in the surface soil. Its deeply rooting habit is a character which well adapts it to semiarid regions, where, because of moderate precipitation, the soils are well drained, rich in unleached lime and other nutrients, but often fairly moist to considerable depths. Its ability to withstand drought and to continue growth, often when other plants are wilting or dead, is due, in a large measure, to its deep root system drawing upon water in the moist layers of the deeper soil.
Because of its large root growth, alfalfa exerts a very beneficial effect upon the soil, even compact soils becoming porous and friable. Aside from the fertilizing effect of the decayed roots and the increased nitrogen supply resulting from the activities of the bacteria in the nodules, some of the nutrients obtained from the deeper subsoil are left near the soil surface upon the decay of the roots and stubble and are thus made available for other plants. The roots and crowns decay quickly, leaving the soil mellow and highly productive. It should be noted, however, that alfalfa requires much more of certain other nutrients, notably phosphorus, potassium, and calcium, than equivalent yields of many other crops, and the soil is consequently more depleted of these elements.
It has been found in Colorado and in Canada that alfalfa plants having a branched root system are better able to withstand winter soil heaving than those having only a single taproot. Plants which develop rooting underground stems are able to maintain themselves after the death of the main root. When alfalfa has the habit of spreading by root proliferations, the plant is better able to recuperate from injury and to withstand cold. It has also been ascertained that such plants are generally more drought resistant. 16a, 193
Recent physiological investigations have shown an important interrelationship between the size and composition of the roots of alfalfa and the productivity of tops.
New top growths, especially in their early stages, are initiated largely at the expense of previously deposited organic root reserves. The quality of these storage materials and their relative availability to the early growth requirements of a young shoot influence its subsequent growth and ultimate production. The translocation of the storage products from the root to the young stems results in root-reserve depletion. This deficiency cannot be restored by supplying mineral nutrients to the plant; but, since the reserves appear to be largely organic, they must be elaborated by the plant itself and translocated to the root. Before the partial depletion of the root reserves is fully replenished, the stems must reach a certain degree of maturity. In alfalfa, this is apparently the seed-pod stage. 145
Frequent cutting in an early bud stage checks root growth. In one experiment involving the measurement of 355 plants, the root diameter near the crown was reduced 29 per cent by two cuttings in the early bud stage as against one cutting in full bloom. The growth of new stems is accompanied by an appreciable decrease in the roots of both available carbohydrate and nitrogen reserves.
With favorable soil and climatic conditions, the growth of new shoots and stems of alfalfa is largely dependent on the organic food reserves remaining in the root and crown when the last cutting is made. Since the early growth of alfalfa stems tends to exhaust the root reserves, the primary cause of root exhaustion is a removal of the leaves and stems before they have had opportunity to replenish completely these losses. Cutting the crop too often in an immature stage ultimately robs the root and crown of its stored products, and the plant is left in a weakened and exhausted state. Each successive premature cutting results in increased detrimental effects until finally the plant dies. 145
Prematurely cut alfalfa often exhibits decided pathological symptoms of yellowing and stunted growth. Accompanying decreased vigor and stand is a corresponding increase in weeds and bluegrass infestation. Depleted root reserves are associated with a high water content of the root and a low concentration of dissolved organic constituents, a condition which may be a contributing factor in winterkilling. 145
SUMMARY
Alfalfa is a long-lived, very deeply rooted perennial. Upon germination, a strong taproot develops rapidly and penetrates almost vertically downward. It often reaches a depth of 5 to 6 feet the first season, 10 to 12 feet by the end of the second year, and may ultimately extend to depths of 20 feet or more. It is notably a deep feeder. In common alfalfa, practically no branches occur in the surface few inches of soil, and those that originate deeper do not spread widely but turn downward after running a little distance obliquely and usually pursue a course more or less parallel with the taproot. Often, both large and small branches are quite scarce, and the taproot is always the most prominent part of the root system. Under favorable soil conditions, nodules occur at all depths. The root habit shows considerable variation among the different varieties, and that of a given variety varies markedly under different environmental conditions. When depth of penetration is limited, the degree of branching and wide lateral spreading of branches may become very pronounced. The crop makes its best growth in deep, moist soils where the full extent of its deeply penetrating root system may be utilized. A close relation exists between development of tops and growth of roots, too frequent and, especially, too early cutting retarding root growth. |
Do Catholics pray to Mary?
An Evangelical friend said, "When I go to a doctor I don't want to talk to his mother." That is an interesting analogy. However, this Evangelical talks regularly with his pastor and asks the pastor to pray for him. The pastor doesn't turn him away by saying, "Don't talk to me! Don't ask me to pray for you! Go straight to Jesus!" The pastor has compassion and "intercedes" (stands in the gap) for him. He prays for the congregation and for individuals. He wants to assist people in their relationship with Christ. This in no way diminishes Jesus' role as the Lord and Saviour.
Heaven is not a "dead" place. Catholics believe people in heaven are alive. (Mat 19:29, 25:46, 10:17-22, Mk 10:30, Lk 10:25-30, Lk 18:18-30, Jn 3:15-16). Catholics ask Mary to pray to Jesus for us.
Mary is a "born again" Christian who received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and spoke in tongues 2000 years before Pentecostals got the gift (Acts 1:14, 2:3). She knows how to pray - yes, even in tongues!
Many Christians reading this have had powerful experiences with the Holy Spirit. It is amazing when he comes upon us. Some of us have experienced miraculous healing.
But who among us has experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in such a way that the God of the universe became flesh inside us. Mary experienced the Holy Spirit like none of us have.
In the Rosary we ask Mary to "Pray for us sinners."
We think Mary is totally alive, and is praying for us the way a faithful pastor would pray for his congregation, except much more so. She's interceding for the unborn, for mothers contemplating abortion, and for many others who are experiencing sorrows in our world, and who need Jesus.
Our Lady of Sorrows
Painting by Tianna Mallett (daughter of our friend, Mark)
Do Catholics Worship Mary?
Many Evangelicals think the word "pray" means "worship." So it makes sense that they think Catholics who "pray" to Mary actually "worship" her. Let's look up the word "pray" in the dictionary. Here is what Webster's says about the word pray:
(1) To utter petition to God ... (2) To make a fervent request: PLEAD (3) To beseech: implore (4) to make a devout or earnest request for.
The first thing to notice is that the word "worship" is not included in the definition of "pray." It does not mean "worship." A prayer to Mary is clearly not a petition to God. Mary is not God, and there is not one faithful Catholic since the apostles who has said she is. So clearly it is not the first meaning.
The English language is often limited in that we often have to use the same word to say different things. Most Evangelicals understand the different Greek words for "Love" (Agape, Eros, Philia,etc..). Someone who mixes up Agape love for Eros could be in serious hot water. There are also several meanings of the word "pray." When Catholics pray to God they "utter a petition to God." When they pray to Mary and the Saints they are making a "devout or earnest request for" prayers from Mary or the saints. In mediaeval times when a royal court official was asking something of a person who outranked him, he would say "I pray thee your majesty." You have to say that in an English accent to get the full effect! The person was simply making a request in a polite manner.
Catholics think Mary is a prayer warrior. That's her job. We think she was given a full-time 24/7 prayer ministry. She said, "all generations will call me Blessed" and "my soul magnifies the Lord" (Luke 1:46). Catholics think this word of Scripture is significant, although its one of the list of scripture passages we almost never hear during surmons in Evangelical churches.
"The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart." - Martin Luther, Sermon - September 1, 1522
Latria - adoration that is given to the Trinity alone; occurs 5 times in the Bible but always refers to God (Jn 16:2, Rm:9:4, 12:6, Heb 9:1,6) Hyper-dulia - veneration to Mary (as the mother of God) Dulia - honor paid to saints and angels; occurs 5 times in the Bible (Rm 8:15, 21; Gal 4:24, 5:1; Heb 2:15)
There are plenty of Old Testament references that distinguish veneration from worship. "Then Moses went out to meet his father in law, and he bowed down and kissed him.." (Exo 18:7)...(also 1 Chron 29:20, 1 Sam 24:8)
Some evangelicals say "consecration" shows that Catholics worship Mary. The word "consecrate" means to entrust. I entrust myself to my closest friends but only one is my Savior.
“Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did.” - St. Maximilian Kolbe (a priest who died in Auschwitz as a result of taking the place of a Jewish father, who was present at Kolbe's canonization 50 years later)
Video: The Bible and Mary
"Mary's role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it." - Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 964
Here's a great video about what the Bible has to say about Mary:
Testimony of a Jewish Convert
Here is Roy Schoeman, a Jewish Catholic, who gives his experience with Mary.
Click "like" if you love Our Lady!
Does hanging out with Mary de-focus us from Jesus?
We got an email that said:
Why then would we want to take the focus off of Jesus and pray through Mary, or any one else for that matter? I also see a lot of the issues surrounding Mary as distractions.
We appreciate concern that attention paid to Mary defocuses from Jesus. It is an interesting choice of words because Mary said the opposite about herself. In the Bible, Mary clearly spells out her role in eternity:
My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the lowly state of his maidservant;
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed. (Lk 1:46-49)
The Bible says Jesus is magnified by Mary's soul. A soul is not limited by life on earth. Mary reinforces her eternal ministry by saying "all generations will call me blessed." If the Bible intended Mary's ministry to end with the birth of Jesus, or at Jesus' death, or even at Mary's death, we don't think it would use that language.
A magnifying glass increases the object it is focused on, so being in relation to Mary's eternal soul does not draw focus away from Jesus, it does the opposite. It magnifies him. This is the Bible's word to the people of God.
We've heard Evangelical pastors do sermons on just about every passage of Scripture except this one. I invite you to try to remember a sermon on Luke 1:46-55. The movie "The Nativity" removed words from the Bible that referred to Mary when they flashed the passage on the screen during the final scene. It's crazy to remove words about Mary from the Bible to make some Christians feel more comfortable.
Click to expand the words that were removed The Nativity Story changes a critical line of the Bible For me the most problematic section was the way Mike Rich, the screenplay writer, changed the Magnificat (Luke 46-55), which he also relegated to the end of the movie. In Mike Rich's revision of the Bible, he changes Mary's line in Luke 1:49 to say: "For He who is mighty has done great things, and holy is His name. And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation." The two important words that he left out were "...for me..." In the Bible Mary said: "For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation."..." It is wrong to leave words out of the middle of a sentence of Scripture. Revelation warns against this. (Rev 22:19) In fact, I would say that leaving those two words out of the sentence changes the whole meaning of the Magnificat. Those two words "...for me..." put the rest of the Magnificat into relation with Mary, they put her at the centre of it. Mike Rich also leaves out any other mention of Mary in the Magnificat. He leaves out this: My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden,
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
(Lk 1:46-49) The omission of this text in the Magnificat divorces it of its natural significance in relation to Mary.
Catholics believe Mary's soul still "magnifies the Lord" for Christians of our generation who choose to relate to her. Currently, Catholics are pretty well the only ones upholding the biblical prophecy to call her blessed, which was intended for all generations, and for all Christians.
Our experience with Mary has actually significantly improved our relationship with our Lord and Saviour, Jesus. We think time spent with Mary is no more de-focusing than time spent with our other Church friends or with my our pastor. The logical end to the "defocusing" theory is that we should never talk to or pray with any other Christians. It suggests we shouldn't go to prayer groups, or even read the Old Testament (because it predates Christ). It suggests we should only talk with Christ alone and never even talk to another human being. That seems like a definition of a hermit and although it is a valuable calling, it's not for us.
When I (Hugh) was a performer in the US National tour of "Cats" my mother did not want to jump on the stage and take my place in the spotlight (although that would have been pretty funny). She wanted everyone to know that her son was in "Cats." She wanted everyone to go see me. That was her role. Mary's role is not to jump on centre stage and take the place of Jesus. She just wants everyone to know about her Son Jesus and she will do anything to help that relationship.
We got an email that said:
... unlike Kings here on earth, God doesn't need a Queen. He has been, He is, and He always will be complete on His own.
Absolutely. God is complete. It is not out of Jesus' incompleteness that He has called angels and saints to join him in ministry. It is not because He is not strong enough and needs help. He could easily snap his fingers and the entire population of the world would suddenly see God and know He exists. He does not need Mary, angels, or saints. Nor does He need you or me.
It is out of his overabundance of Graces. It is his generosity, his desire to share his graces, his overflowing goodness, and his great Love for us. The Psalmist said "my cup overflows" (Ps 23). That is what God is. He is overflowing with graces that he shares with his mother and all his children. If he loves you and me so much as to invite us to join in his ministry, it is not hard to imagine that he would invite his mother to join in his ministry.
Catholic versus the Evangelical approach to a relationship with Jesus
Scenario 1: If a guy falls in love with a girl he might say:
I love you so much. I love you so much that I want to spend all my time with you. I never want to talk to your mother. I never want to see your family or friends. I want you to banish them when they come around, I just want to spend my whole life with you and love you.
That's how we understand the Evangelical take on a relationship to Jesus.
Scenario 2: On the other hand he could say:
I love you so much. I love you so much that I want to spend my time with you. Your mom is welcome to visit our home. Your family is my family, your friends are my friends. The people you love, I will love. We are one flesh and I welcome everyone you welcome."
We think the second one sounds like a more authentic love. We think that is the Catholic approach to a relationship with Jesus.
Isn't there only one mediator between God and man?
We got an email that said:
Christ is the one and only mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 8:6; 9:15; 12:24)...It can not be made any clearer in the scriptures that God wants to communicate with us directly, and to be cautious of those who try to step in to mediate.
1 Timothy 2 does not say that God wants us only to communicate with Jesus. It says there is only one mediator between God and man, which is a different thing. The passage does not say "be cautious" of asking people to pray for us. It doesn't do anything of the sort. The chapter begins by not only allowing intercessory prayer by third parties, but requiring it and indicating that it actually helps bring them to salvation and knowledge of truth. Any mother who prays for her children knows that.
I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone ...This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4. who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. (Tim. 2:1-4)
We cannot read the rest of the chapter without considering that overarching idea. We think that Christians in heaven pray through Christ much better than we on earth. They are much closer to Christ than us. Evangelicals pray for each other, and they don't say they are taking God's place. When we pray for one another we are participating in the mediation but we are not the mediator. Catholics feel that saints in heaven, including Mary, can pray for us just as well (or infinitely better) than our friends on earth.
Hebrews 8:6 says Jesus has obtained a more excellent ministry than any of the high priests. In 9:15 and 12:24 the passage goes on to say he is the mediator of a New Covenant, Catholics fully agree. We fully agree he is the mediator. We think Christians in heaven are a heck of a lot more aware of who Christ is than we are. The Bible says that he has helpers that participate in his ministry by his invitation. We believe he has invited Christians on both sides of heaven to do that.
When a saint enters into the joy of their Master, they are "put in charge of many things" (Mat. 25:21)
Saints are serious prayer warriors. We don't think that praying with the Saints detracts from the worship of God anymore than praying with friends detracts from worship of God. Saints are not all knowing, but they know a heck of a lot more about this spiritual game than us. They are creatures. This does not take away the tremendous benefit we can get from communing with them. Catholics think "their intercession is their most exalted service to God's plan. We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world" (Catechism 2683).
If only God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, how does Mary hear "a million" requests for intercession at one time?
The best way to respond to this "million prayers at once" objection is to describe something in our lives. We have a little computerized recording studio. A friend of mine knows nothing about computers and when he heard our CD he said:
Hey how is it that you are singing all those voices and playing all those instruments at the same time. You are not omnipresent!
We explained to him that it takes us 150 hours to record a 3 minute song. With the computer we record each instrument and voice one after another and then mix them all together into this 3 minute song. So the measure of time we use to record the song is not the measure of time that people perceive when they hear the song on the radio. The recording was not made in "real time."
Heaven is not in "real (earth) time." Heaven is outside of earth time!
On one of our songs, I (Hugh) am singing 75 voices and playing 60 music tracks at the same time because we do not record in "real time." That does not make me "omnipresent!" If we can do this, heaven can figure out how to respond to multiple requests for prayer because they are not handled according to "earth time."
Calling on the Saints is not like calling the help desk for your internt provider, where they say "due to unusually high call volume there may be a wait time of 10 minutes, you are 8th in queue." Heaven doesn't work that way. It is outside of earth time.
The great scientist, Einstein describes the physical universe in 4 dimensions, length, width, depth and time. Jesus said "My kingdom is not of this world," therefore it makes sense that it is outside of time. The universe is a big place, omnipresence implies being everywhere in the universe and beyond at one once. A saint's ability to hear a bunch of requests for prayers at once doesn't infer omnipresence. It just means they are outside of time like everyone else in Heaven.
Catholics don't think people have to be omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent in order to be in heaven. Scripture tells us there are many levels of authority in heaven (archangels, angels, cherubim, seraphim, etc.) I think Evangelicals believe angels know what is happening in different parts of the earth at the same time, yet they are not omnipresent. Mary doesn't need all knowledge or be present everywhere to hear more than one request for intercession at once.
The scientist Albert Einstein describes the physical universe (our world) in 4 dimensions, length, width, depth and time. Jesus said "My kingdom is not of this world." If "time" is part of our physical universe and Jesus' Kingdom is not of this world, it makes sense that heaven is outside of time. So hearing 1,000,000 requests for prayers at one time would be no problem. Just line them up (or whatever). Being out of time is more than sufficient to overcome the standard "million prayers at once" objection. Catholics believe people in heaven are out of time and are enabled to observe and hear what is going on in the earth (which is expressly indicated in Scripture - at least the observing. The "hearing" is a valid deduction). (1)
Talking to Heaven is not like calling a "help desk," where you sit in the queue waiting for them to answer while you listen to bad music on the phone.
There is no help line prayer queue in heaven...
Oh, and they speak English perfectly in heaven too, they understand.
The universe is a big place. The term "omnipresence" implies being everywhere in the universe and beyond. We think objecting to Mary' intercession because it implies omnipresence is as short-sighted as medieval people thinking the universe revolved around the earth. Mary's ability to hear a bunch of prayers at once doesn't mean she is omnipresent. It just means she is outside of time like everyone else in Heaven.
When I was a baby, God trusted my earthly mother to care for me. That did not make my mom omnipresent, although I thought so when I was a kid. God trusted Mary to care for her Son when He was a child. At the foot of the cross Jesus trusted her with the care of John. Catholics think in this gesture Jesus gave Mary as a mother to all humanity.
"I don't pray to dead people"
An Evangelical friend said, "I don't pray to dead people." Catholics don't think heaven is a "dead" place. Catholics believe people in heaven are alive. (Mat 19:29, 25:46, Mat 10:17-22, Mk 10:30, Lk 10:25-30, Lk 18:18-30, Jn 3:15-16). We see Lazarus alive by Abraham's side (Lk 16:22). At the transfiguration we see Moses and Elijah alive beside Jesus. (Mat 17:3) There seems to be a lot of conversing in Heaven in Revelation (i.e. Rev 4:10). The Church thinks heaven is a lively place with lots of singing and stuff. They don't think people in heaven are saying "Hey shut up with the singing will ya, I'm trying to sleep!!!" Jesus opened the gates to Heaven. "Graves of the dead were opened and they went into town to preach the Gospel." (Mat 27:52). Jesus said "Now he is a God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive." (Lk 20:39-40)
I recently read an interview with Gracia Burnham, an Evangelical missionary who was held hostage by Muslim terrorists for over a year with her missionary husband. Her husband was shot to death. In this interview she said the following:
Phil Calloway (editor of Servant Magazine-Evangelical): He sounds like an amazing guy. Is he making trouble up in heaven right now? (laughter) Gracia: I used to tell the kids, I can just imagine your dad pulling on God's sleeves saying, "There's Gracia, she needs a car, she needs something." And then I told the kids why would almighty God who knows us and loves us and died for us need a human to tell him what we need. And I switched my thinking to God pulling on Martin's shirt sleeve and saying, "Hey Martin, look what I'm going to do for Gracia and her family." (Mission Fields Magazine spring 2004, pg 3)
It does not appear that Gracia thinks her husband is in some kind of a coma until the final judgment. Here is a perfect example of how the Catholic view on death is very prevalent among Evangelicals who have had a loved one die. Sure she distanced herself from her initial instinct of Martin praying for her in heaven, but I think her initial instinct was better. She said "Why would God need a human to tell him what we need." Yet in the same interview she attributes her escape from the terrorists to the faithful prayers of Christians back home.
In his #1 Evangelical book, The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren, says:
Your spiritual family is even more important than your physical family because it will last forever. Our families on the earth are wonderful gifts from God, but they are temporary and fragile, often broken by divorce, distance, growing old, and inevitably, death...our spiritual family-our relationship to other believers-will continue throughout eternity. It is a much stronger union, a more permanent bond than blood relationships. (The Purpose Driven Life, pg 118, my emphasis)
Here Pastor Rick, an Evangelical, almost perfectly describes the Catholic Dogma of the Communion of Saints.
Isn't the Bible against invoking "the dead"
Some Evangelicals think that asking a person in heaven to intercede for us is condemned in Deuteronomy 18:10-12. The Catholic Church believes that Deuteronomy 18:10-12 speaks about the occult, soothsayers, sorcerers, spells, ghosts and spirits. It is not about heaven, angels and Jesus. Ghosts have not entered into heaven so it would displease God to talk with them. Also this passage occurs before Jesus was on the scene so no one was in heaven. Samuel was in the ground (1 Sam 28:8-25). They were all in Sheol (dead) so the passage makes sense. Leave them in peace.
Catholics believe that it is perfectly safe to ask Christians in heaven to pray for us. Mary's place in heaven is assured and she's not going to do anything dumb like cast an evil spell on us. She's Jesus' Mother! Mary is in Heaven and as such she can be a trusted friend. All Christians are baptised into one Body. We see nothing in Scripture that tells me that that relationship ends after a Christian gets into heaven. Mary is a "born again" Christian who received the Holy Spirit at the Pentecost and spoke in tongues 2000 years before Pentecostals got the gift. (Acts 1:14, 2:3)
"There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven." - Martin Luther, Sermon - August 15, 1522
Martin Luther also spoke to her in the first person:
"No woman is like you. You are more than Eve or Sarah, blessed above all nobility, wisdom, and sanctity." - Martin Luther, Sermon - Feast of the Visitation, 1537
Catholics do not think of Mary as a "dead" example of faith. They think of her as a living witness to it.
Doesn't Revelation say not to bow in worship to Angels?
We got an email citing the book of Revelation:
Then I fell at the angel's feet to worship the angel, he said ""You must not do that! [worship me] I am a fellow servant with you and your comrades the prophets ...(Rev 19:10)
This person was suggesting that it is unscriptural to communicate with anyone in Heaven except Jesus. Let us examine the relationship between John and the angel. The angel is his "fellow servant". The angel was sent by God to give a critical message to John and all Christians: "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book." The angel told John to write down what the angel showed him. What was the result?...The Book of Revelation...
The Bible, the word of God, was given through an angel.
Revelation opens with this verse...
1:1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place; he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John...
God used an angel, he could have done it himself. The angel didn't say "hey, don't talk to me, talk to God alone." We suggest that God uses servants...servants who know a lot more than us humans on earth. This takes nothing away from God. It simply reflects his overabundance of grace. We suggest that the communication John had with the angel was called prayer.
The passage supports the Catholic viewpoint on the role of heavenly servants rather than the contrary position held by some non-denominationalists.
Was John a peer with his "fellow servant?" obviously not! In an army, is a "private" a peer with his fellow soldier who is a "corporal?" No. There is a hierarchy in heaven... archangels, angels, seraphim, cherubim, etc... And at the bottom is us lowly fellow servants on earth. Most evangelical theologians readily preach this hierarchy in heaven and we Catholics think there is nothing whatever unscriptural about communicating with heavenly creatures. Apparently, John, Mary, Zachariah and a ton of other holy servants have no problem with it either. The Bible says so.
God commissioned us to fight the spiritual battle on earth. Catholics don't think He'll decommission us when we get to heaven. It is perfectly fitting that God would use the mother of Jesus and spouse of the holy spirit in this battle against Satan and his team of evil spirits. She spoke in tongues at the Pentecost (Acts 1). Scripture is plain that all generations will call Mary blessed (Lk 1:48).
How can Mary be in Heaven before the final judgment?
Some Evangelicals are nervous about asking Christians in heaven to pray for us because the final judgment hasn't occurred yet (however, they are certain that a Christian's place in heaven is assured the moment they are "born again"). If there was any doubt about Mary being born again at the foot of the Cross, surely any Evangelical would admit Mary was "Born Again" at the Pentecost when she got hit by the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14, 2:3). She spoke in tongues that day (Acts 2:6).
At Evangelical funerals we hear people saying, "He is with the Lord now." They are confident the person is in Heaven. We Catholics think the faithful guy who "dies" is dancing and singing and rejoicing in heaven. If a faithful Christian is alive in heaven, why would we not ask for them to pray for us. And Catholics don't think any Christian has ever been more faithful than Mary.
A Biblical discussion of this stuff is in the section on Saints and also in Are Catholics "Born Again?" (Don't worry, we Catholics are into a personal relationship with Jesus. Honest...Jesus Rocks!)
All this to say that Catholics think it is perfectly safe to ask someone in heaven to pray for us. Especially a prayer warrior like Mary.
In Catholicism, Jesus - in the Eucharist - takes centre stage
Another thing to take into consideration before dismissing Catholics who pray with Mary (or the saints) is that in Catholicism the highest form of devotion is to Christ living in the Eucharist (those who think the Eucharist is a pagan sun-god may want to read this). Evangelicals don't believe in the "real" presence of Jesus, so any kind of honour given to Mary or a saint appears to put them on an equal footing with Jesus. Catholics believe the Eucharist is Christ in the flesh. Given this, every other form of devotion pales in comparison. Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords above all else. The angels, saints and Mary are just his helpers as we Christians on earth are also helpers in Jesus' work. In the context of the Eucharist, any prayer to Mary or the saints is clearly a request for help. It is not a request for salvation. Jesus is the one and only Saviour and the Catholic Church has always taught that.
St. Louis de Montfort was probably the most "Marian" of all the Saints. He said "If devotion to our Lady distracted us from our Lord, we would have to reject it..." (True Devotion pg. 62) He goes on to say that devotion to Mary does not do this. Mary said "my soul Magnifies the Lord." She did not say "my soul obscures the Lord." She said this immediately after Elizabeth called her "Mother of my Lord" (Lk 1:43). Some Evangelicals say it is blasphemous to be "devoted" to Mary. Yet these same people would say they are "devoted" to their wives or husbands or children or even their jobs. Devotion does not deify something or someone, it only acknowledges a deep respect.
"We do not slight the Son when we honour the Mother." (Saint Louis De Montfort, "True Devotion" pg 94)
"There is no other way of Christian prayer than Christ. Whether our prayer is communal or personal, vocal or interior, it has access to the Father only if we pray "in the name" of Jesus... to invoke him." - Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 2665-2666
The Catholic Church is clear about the centrality of Jesus. The Saints are simply "alumni" in the "university of life" who are there to help Jesus in the same way the angels help.
"The Cross, which seems to rise up from the earth, in actual fact reaches down from heaven, enfolding the universe in a divine embrace. The Cross reveals itself to be the centre, meaning and goal of all history and every human life." - Pope John Paul II, Message to World Youth Day 2000
Lumen Gentium and "Queen of Heaven"
We've snipped a few passages from the Lumen Gentium, an official document of the Church from Vatican II. It is often quoted by Evangelicals for its "Queen of Heaven" statement. The document accurately makes clear Jesus' authority over heaven and earth:
60. There is but one Mediator as we know from the words of the apostle, "for there is one God and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all." (298) The maternal duty of Mary toward men in no wise obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows his power. For all the salvific influence of the Blessed Virgin on men originates, not from some inner necessity, but from the divine pleasure. It flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it and draws all its power from it. In no way does it impede, but rather does it foster the immediate union of the faithful with Christ. (298 1 Tim. 2, 5-6). 62. ...For no creature could ever be counted as equal with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer. Just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways both by the ministers and by the faithful, ...The Church does not hesitate to profess this subordinate role of Mary. 67. .. But it exhorts theologians and preachers of the divine word to abstain zealously both from all gross exaggerations as well as from petty narrow-mindedness in considering the singular dignity of the Mother of God.(23*) Following the study of Sacred Scripture, the Holy Fathers, the doctors and liturgy of the Church, ... rightly illustrate the duties and privileges of the Blessed Virgin which always look to Christ, the source of all truth, sanctity and piety.
Click "like" if you love Our Lady!
An invitation - Pray to Jesus about Mary
Many people wish that this thing about Mary would go away and that the Church would be in greater unity with other Christians if it would.
It appears that most of the closed feelings against Mary have crept into the reform movement in the last 100 years. Many great Protestants have had strong feelings for Mary including C.S. Lewis. Most early reformers had strong positive feelings for Mary including Calvin, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Wesley. Even Martin Luther spoke to her in the first person saying:
"No woman is like you. You are more than Eve or Sarah, blessed above all nobility, wisdom, and sanctity." - Martin Luther, Sermon - Feast of the Visitation, 1537
We are not apologists. Apart from all this doctrine and stuff, the reason we believe that Mary is in heaven helping us is because each of us had an experience with Mary that we cannot refute (Hugh's testimony here, Diane's testimony here). No one can tell us she is dead. We don't worship her. She is a friend who prays for us and has shown us very cool things about her Son, Jesus. We believe we are better Christians today because of Mary.
If you are afraid to talk to Mary, we invite you to:
Pray to Jesus about Mary.
Any Evangelical would say it is perfectly safe to pray to Jesus about anything. Ask Jesus what's up with Mary. Give him time to respond. We pray you have the same experience that has led to our powerful convictions about the validity of Mary as a helper for the helpless, and a great prayer warrior.
(1) I got this from Dave Armstrong
Related articles
Lord Jesus, let Your prayer of unity for Christians
become a reality, in Your way.
We have absolute confidence
that you can bring your people together,
we give you absolute permission to move.
Amen |
In the hours leading up to the administration's surprise decision Tuesday to delay implementation of Obamacare, the president's team gave no indication of the course reversal, in a way hiding it by spending $32 million on children's health care and announcing plans to expand the PR campaign.
One example: three and a half hours before notifying the public of the change in a Treasury Department blog post, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius held a conference call with reporters to announce a $32 million spending program to enroll poor and immigrant kids into the Children's Health Insurance Program.
"Every child in America should have access to the quality health care that they need," she said, giving no hint that Obamacare, which supplied the $32 million, was about to be sidelined.
What's more, she talked about how Obamacare's insurance exchanges were going to kick in on time "this fall."
Also on the call was top Medicare and Medicaid official Cindy Mann who, when asked about the National Football League deciding against helping in the Obamacare public relations effort, said that the administration still "reaching out" to other groups to help get Americans to sign up for the mandatory health insurance program.
Paul Bedard, The Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. |
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As President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team takes shape, Trump’s guiding principle appears to be choosing people who are loyal to him. And one man’s devotion is paying off nicely.
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who built a reputation in the Senate with his extreme opposition to immigration, is Trump’s pick for attorney general. But his influence could reach far beyond that powerful role: Trump’s transition team is full of current and former Sessions staffers. The depth of Sessions’ clout on the Trump team is perhaps the clearest sign that the anti-immigrant agenda Trump campaigned on is one step closer to becoming reality.
Sessions has faced repeated accusations of racism stemming from his time as a young lawyer in Mobile, Alabama. In the Senate, Sessions has been most vocal as an opponent of immigration. Tucker Carlson, the founder of the conservative Daily Caller, met Sessions during one of his battles against immigration in 2014 and came away describing him as a “nationalist.” When Sessions became chairman of a Senate panel on immigration in January 2015, he promptly renamed it the “Immigration and the National Interest” subcommittee, “as a declaration to the American people that this subcommittee belongs to them,” not to the “financial and political elite.” Just a few months later, Trump was running for president promising to put “America First.”
Sessions has built his reputation in the Senate by waging all-out assaults on the last two efforts in Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. His efforts were instrumental in killing a reform bill in 2007. Six years later, he took a similar stand against another reform bill. Breitbart News—the right-wing site run by Stephen Bannon, now slated to become Trump’s chief White House strategist, as a platform for the white nationalist “alt-right” movement—closely and approvingly covered Sessions’ opposition to the 2013 bill. When it passed the Senate, Sessions distributed a 23-page handbook to House members, arming his allies with figures and talking points to kill the bill in the lower chamber. Intimidated by right-wing opposition to the measure, Republican leaders in the House never brought the bill up for a vote. Sessions won.
“Sessions is the most anti-immigrant senator in the chamber,” says Frank Sharry, who runs the pro-immigration reform group America’s Voice. “He enjoys that distinction without much competition.”
Sessions’ current and former staffers are playing a major role in the Trump transition and will likely have posts in the administration next year. His former staff director on the Senate Judiciary Committee, a lawyer named Brian Benczkowski, is running the transition at the Justice Department. According to the Daily Caller, Stephen Miller, Sessions’ former communications director and right-hand man in his battle against the 2013 bill, is being considered for a number of positions, including deputy chief of staff for policy and director of the Domestic Policy Council. Rick Dearborn, Sessions’ chief of staff who worked unofficially with the campaign for months, is being considered for director of the Office of Legislative Affairs in the White House. Sessions’ chief counsel on the judiciary committee, Danielle Cutrona, is in charge of “Immigration Reform & Building the Wall” on the Trump transition team, according to document obtained by the New York Times. The transition at the Department of Homeland Security, which overseas much of the government’s immigration policy, is being led by Cindy Hayden, who served as Sessions’ chief counsel on the judiciary committee during his battle to defeat immigration reform in 2007; Sessions and others have credited Hayden with “stomping that bill to death.”
“Sessions is the most anti-immigrant senator in the chamber. He enjoys that distinction without much competition.”
Even as he prevailed in derailing two immigration reform efforts, Sessions stood apart from his colleagues on the issue. Sessions doesn’t just oppose a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, as many Republicans do; he wants fewer immigrants, period. That includes people who come to the country legally. Sessions and his staffers “viewed this much more as a fight for the soul and identity of America as they knew it, rather than one of policy disagreements,” says one former Democratic aide who worked on the 2013 immigration bill. “And this sort of animated the level of vitriol and emotion among both the senator and the staffers on that bill.”
As the former aide points out, Sessions and his staff obsessed over the number of immigrants who would enter the country, claiming that the bill would give 30 million new immigrants legal status. “The entirety of it is: Albert Einstein or Osama bin Laden are just a digit, number one, and they’re all equally bad, basically, from the standpoint of how they deal with immigration,” says the staffer.
Sessions wasn’t shy about his opposition to immigration, but he had few allies on this point—until Trump came along. In spring 2013, as the immigration reform bill was undergoing a mark-up in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions put forward an amendment to limit legal immigration. Only Sessions voted for it, and it failed 17-1. “He was isolated in the Senate, and now he has the president’s ear,” says Sharry. “And that is a frightening thing.”
When most of the political press and Capitol Hill lawmakers were laughing at Trump’s presidential run in the summer of 2015, Sessions and his staff began to reach out. Sessions and Miller helped Trump write his immigration and trade policies. Shortly before the Iowa caucuses, Miller officially joined Trump’s campaign, becoming an increasingly influential figure in Trump’s small circle of advisers and aides. A month later, Sessions became the first—and only—senator to endorse Trump during the primary. Trump was adopting policies that Sessions had been pushing, largely in isolation, for years. “Whether the issue was trade or immigration or radical Islam, for many years before Donald Trump came on the scene, Senator Sessions was the leader of the movement and Stephen was his right-hand man,” Bannon told Politico Magazine this summer, shortly before he, too, joined Trump’s campaign.
Democrats and immigration advocates will put up a big fight during the Senate hearings on confirming Sessions as attorney general. “I think he’s going to have a pretty rough ride and I think there will be a lot of opposition to him,” Sharry predicts. “Remember, Jeff Sessions wasn’t confirmed last time he was before the Senate.”
Sessions doesn’t just oppose a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, as many Republicans do; he wants fewer immigrants, period.
In 1986, Sessions was a prosecutor in Alabama when President Ronald Reagan nominated him for a federal judgeship. In his confirmation hearings, witnesses testified that Sessions held troubling and backward views on race. A Justice Department official said Sessions had called the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union “un-American” groups that “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” A black prosecutor named Thomas Figures, who had worked in Sessions’ Alabama office, claimed the nominee had referred to him as “boy,” once warned him to “be careful what you say to white folks,” and commented that he was okay with Ku Klux Klan members “until I learned they smoked pot.” Sessions said his comment about the KKK was a joke—perhaps one that some senators in 2016 will not find amusing given that the KKK endorsed Sessions’ presidential candidate of choice.
At the time of his contentious 1986 confirmation hearings, Sessions had recently wrapped up unsuccessful prosecutions of three civil rights activists, including a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., for voter fraud after they had worked to register black voters in Alabama. The jury acquitted the men after a few hours. In his confirmation hearings, Figures said Sessions had been reluctant to prosecute civil rights cases.
Sessions denied most of those allegations, including calling Figures “boy,” and said his comments about civil rights groups being “un-American” was in reference to their foreign policy stances. But the testimony derailed his nomination, and he was not confirmed.
“Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past,” the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) said on the first day of Sessions’ 1986 confirmation hearings. “It is inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a US attorney, let alone a US federal judge.”
Thirty years later, Sessions is poised to rise to an even higher position under Trump. |
A split-second decision by woman to get back in a vehicle with a man after he’d exchanged gunfire with a Department of Public Safety trooper resulted in her being charged with a first degree felony, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Ashley Elesha Simpson, 20, and Marcus Christopher Lott Jr., 23, the accused gunman and driver during the resulting 20-mile chase, are both charged with attempted capital murder of a peace officer. They were being held Thursday with no bond at the Ector County Detention Center.
The charges are in connection to shots fired at DPS trooper Max Honesto after he stopped a 1994 blue Toyota Camry for speeding Wednesday afternoon on Interstate 20.
Simpson and Lott Jr. are both residents of Radcliff, Ky., where Lott Jr. has outstanding warrants.
According to public records, Lott was convicted of a 2006 aggravated robbery in Shelby County, Tenn., on Aug. 27, 2007. Radcliff Police Department Public Information Officer Bryce Shumate said Lott had an outstanding warrant for possession of a handgun by a convicted felon in Radcliff. Shumate said Lott fled from police on Nov. 30 and threw a Glock .45 while being chased.
“This is a bad man who knows how to get guns,” Shumate said.
The third person inside the vehicle and original driver, Alfonso Butler Jr., 3800 Ruth Road, Richland Hills, Texas, was being held at the Ector County Detention Center with no bond on a parole violation.
All three were in a Toyota Camry when Honesto pulled the vehicle for speeding near mile marker 95 while eastbound on Interstate 20, an arrest affidavit stated.
Honesto first talked to Butler, the driver, who told the trooper he was on parole for possession of a firearm in a weapon free zone, the affidavit stated.
Honesto then talked to the front passenger, Simpson, and could smell marijuana, the affidavit stated. Honesto then asked Simpson and the passenger in the back seat, Lott, get out of the vehicle, Barton said in a news release.
While Honesto was conducting a pat-down on Lott, Lott pulled out a handgun, later identified as a .22 revolver, and shot Honesto once, the affidavit stated. Texas Department of Public Safety Public Information Officer Trooper John Barton said Lott hit Honesto in the arm, the bullet getting lodged in his back.
Honesto fired at Lott in return, the affidavit stated. Barton said the bullet went through Lott’s left knee and was lodged in his right knee.
After the shots were fired, Lott and Simpson got back into the vehicle and fled the scene, the affidavit stated.
Alfonso, however, stayed at the scene.
“He surrendered to troopers when backup arrived,” Barton said.
During the chase, Lott threw the gun out of the window around mile marker 115, which was recovered later, the affidavit stated.
The chase finally ended after the vehicle rolled over spike strips, popping the tires and causing the Camry to run into a pole at the entrance to Comanche Trail Park, Barton said.
A search of the vehicle found two bags of marijuana, a pound of marijuana and two firearms, Barton said.
Possession of between one to five pounds of marijuana classifies as a state jail felony.
Honesto, an eight-year DPS veteran, is stationed in Big Spring. He was released Wednesday evening from Medical Center Hospital.
Lott Jr. and Simpson had also taken to MCH, where they were released Wednesday afternoon.
@OAcrime |
Videos Walt Disney World Announces Its First Drone Light Show By
Drones are officially coming to Disney World.
The Walt Disney Co. DIS, +0.28% on Monday released a preview video of the company’s very first drone light show. The show will happen over the night skies at Disney Springs, an outdoor shopping center at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.
The video shows what appears to be drones in a field, and then shows drones circling in the air with green lights on them, making the shape of a Christmas tree. There appear to be about 75 drones in the air based on the clip Disney released.
Disney first indicated it was developing drones in August 2014, when it filed numerous patents for drones that it dubbed “Flixels.”The patents indicated that the drones would follow pre-programmed flight paths and emit LED lights at various intervals, lighting up the sky. Others might be able to fly through the air with puppets suspended from the base.
This is the second recent major drones-as-entertainment announcement. Intel announced last week that it put a record-breaking 500 drones in the air at one time for a private light show in Krailling, Germany.
The light show was a proof of concept for Intel Corp.’s INTC, +0.03% leap into the drones-as-entertainment business. Intel announced its own drone called the “Shooting Star,” a flying contraption about the weight of a volleyball that can light up in 4 billion color combinations for commercial entertainment light shows.
Drones should prove to be safer than traditional fireworks, which accounted for an estimated 10,500 trips to U.S. emergency rooms in 2014 and at least 11 deaths, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The U.S. has seen rapid growth in the fireworks industry in the past decade and a half. In 2015, Americans purchased 285.3 million pounds of fireworks, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association, spending $1.09 billion.
Whether drone-focused light shows will prove to be more cost-efficient is a bigger question. The devices would only have to be purchased once, but would likely cost much more than a standard small-scale fireworks show.
Small-town holiday fireworks displays typically cost about $2,000 to $7,000 for a basic show, according to Premier Pyrotechnics, while the city of Houston spent an estimated $100,000 on its 2016 Fourth of July fireworks show, according to Houston Business Journal. On a grander scale, estimates suggest Macy’s Inc. M, +1.35% may spend $6 million on its annual Fourth of July fireworks show.
Intel’s drones are not publicly for sale, and the chip maker would not disclose how much they would cost. For now, the drones are proof of the ability to automate multiple drone flights at once, using software that could be adapted to commercial applications like mapping or inspections.
“We want to showcase that drones can be used for something different,” said Natalie Cheung, Intel’s product manager for unmanned aerial vehicles.
The previous time Intel used drones for entertainment was in 2015, when 100 drones were each manually pre-programmed to take their positions in the sky, which Cheung admitted was not practical. Now, users can enter images into a software program, and an algorithm determines the path the drones need to fly to create the image.
“I can’t imagine how you would manually place 500 drones in the air for a five-minute show,” Cheung said. “And while 100 is amazing, 500 is breathtaking.”
Intel already manufactures its own commercial-grade drone called the Falcon 8+, and earlier this week announced it had acquired flight-planning software startup MAVinci for an undisclosed price. It has also invested $60 million in consumer drone company Yuneec.
Reference: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/can-drones-replace-fireworks-2016-11-04 |
Ian Walton/Getty Images
Despite one of the toughest months of the season, where Arsenal only accumulated eight out of a possible 15 points so far, the Gunners are still top of the table at the time of writing, albeit by a one point margin. With tough fixtures such as Manchester City, Everton and Chelsea out of the way, the next few weeks serve as a chance for Arsenal to strengthen their claim for a first title since 2004.
Barring tomorrow's away clash against Newcastle, up until February Arsenal have some very winnable games coming up—along with Newcastle, Arsenal will face Cardiff (H), Aston Villa (A), Fulham (H), Southampton (A) and Crystal Palace (H).
In the same period, title rivals Liverpool and Chelsea will face each other tomorrow, Manchester City will play back-to-back games with Tottenham and Chelsea in just over a month while Chelsea will host Manchester United in three weeks.
There are bound to be dropped points in this period for Arsenal's rivals, while Arsene Wenger's men could very well extend their lead at the top of the table in the process. A 3-1 comeback win against West Ham was the perfect boost as the Gunners climbed back to the top of the table. As reported by Fox Sports after the game, Wenger was pleased with the comeback and feels Arsenal are proving critics wrong.
"That was a kind of game that many people would have questioned us had we not won and even more if we had lost. We have another good game now on Sunday at Newcastle, who are in full confidence as well, so that will be another test. The team wants to do well and the character is great. The concentration is top. I believe we had a difficult period just now but honestly that was mainly down to the schedule we had.
With Theo Walcott and Lukas Podolski back along with the eventual return of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, if the Gunners perform to the standards they've been used to for the majority of this season, they should be gaining at least 16 out of the next possible 18 points. And this would no doubt consolidate their position at the top, heading into a crucial period from February to March. |
SCOTTSBURG, Ind. — A customer’s act of kindness in the drive-thru ended up sparking a chain reaction of goodwill at a southern Indiana McDonald’s.
Hunter Hostetler, a cashier at the restaurant, said an older woman waiting in the restaurant’s drive-thru Sunday decided to pay for a large order for the van behind her in line as a kind gesture for Father’s Day. A man and four children were inside the van. They’d ordered “a bunch of Happy Meals, two Quarter Pounders, a Big Mac meal” and some other items, Hostetler told WDRB.
The woman told Hostetler to wish the man a “Happy Father’s Day” before paying for the order and driving off.
That would’ve been a heartwarming story in its own right. However, the dad in the van didn’t just take his food and run. Instead, he paid for the orders for a couple cars behind him in line.
The idea spread like wildfire, quickly becoming 10 drivers, then 20, and so on. By the time all was said and done, 167 customers decided to pay it forward from 8:30 p.m. to midnight at the drive-thru.
Hostetler said everyone was on pins and needles wondering how long it would last.
“I had people telling me, ‘No, it’s going to stop here, It’s going to stop at 100. You’re not going to make it past [that],'” he said.
The pay-it-forward chain included Abby Smith, who was in car number 161 with her boyfriend. She told WDRB that it’s a “great feeling to know that there’s a lot of great people out there.” |
A handout picture made available on March 27, 2015, by the Egyptian presidency shows Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi (right) meeting with Yemen's President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheik. (AFP PHOTO / EGYPTIAN PRESIDENCY)
On Friday, Yemen's President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi arrived at the Egyptian seaside town of Sharm el-Sheik on a plane from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The smiling Hadi, who was about to attend a session of the Arab League, now presumably feels safer abroad, among his regional counterparts, than he would in Yemen.
Earlier in the week, Hadi was forced to flee the approaching Houthi rebel forces, who had already taken the country's capital Sanaa last year and were now eyeing the southern coastal city of Aden, where Hadi and the tattered remnants of his government had taken sanctuary.
A Saudi-led bombing campaign against the Houthis has escalated what was a civil war into a regional conflagration, pitting the Saudis and a host of Sunni Arab states against the rebel forces marshaled by the Houthis, who have Iranian backing. Egypt already dispatched a number of warships toward Aden; Egyptian officials have talked up the prospects of sending in troops should a ground invasion take place.
With his country embattled in conflict, Yemen President Hadi calls the Shiite group, which has taken over large parts of the country, Iranian "puppets." (Reuters)
If that happens, Egypt would be treading on terrain haunted by the past.
In the 1960s, Egypt entered into a long, costly quagmire in Yemen. The Egyptian president at the time, Gamal Abdel Nasser, a secular autocrat and a champion of pan-Arabism, chose to intervene in Yemen in support of a republican coup led by military officers seeking to oust the country's monarchy in 1962. Nasser himself came to power the decade prior on the back of an officers' coup which overthrew Egypt's fusty constitutional monarchy. Now, he wanted to help a neighboring Arab nation follow in Egypt's mold.
But Saudi Arabia was set against this state of affairs and sought to return Yemen's ruling Imam to the throne, and pumped in arms and money to royalist militias. Ironically, these included many tribesmen from the Shiite Zaydi sect, which now forms the backbone of the Houthi rebellion the Saudis are so desperate to quash.
The tens of thousands of soldiers Egypt sent in as an expeditionary force into Yemen soon found themselves on the front line of a civil war, taking the lead in the defense of Yemeni republicanism. What followed was a long, difficult conflict that ground on for nearly a decade.
According to one historian's account, Yemen proved to be "a hive of wasps" for the Egyptians, who were unable defeat the well-equipped and well-funded royalist forces. The Saudis, Jordanians and the British -- who were still running a colonial protectorate around Aden -- all provided assistance to the royalists. The Egyptians, meanwhile, received tacit support from the Soviet Union.
Western media at the time painted the intervention as a classic blunder in a woebegone, faraway land. Nasser has "lavished ill-spared funds and fighting men on the backward, arid republic of Yemen," wrote Time in 1964.
"In this terrain," the New Republic explained with Orientalist relish in 1963, "the slow-moving Nile Valley peasant has proved a poor match for the barefoot, elusive tribesmen armed only with rifle and jambiya -- the vast, curved, razor-sharp dagger which every male Yemeni wears in his belt."
At the peak of deployments, Nasser committed as many as 70,000 Egyptian soldiers to Yemen. After the war's end in 1970, Yemen remained a republic, but Egypt had paid a terrible price: More than 10,000 Egyptian soldiers died and the country ran up massive war debts. The conflict has been dubbed "Egypt's Vietnam," and is cited as one of the reasons why the Egyptian military suffered such a withering defeat in the Six-Day War with Israel in 1967.
Now, it serves as a cautionary tale more for the Saudis than the Egyptians, whose participation in "Operation Decisive Storm," writes Egyptian blogger Nervana Mahhmoud, "is more a simple acknowledgment that the leadership in Cairo cannot afford to say no to Saudi Arabia." The kingdom has doled out billions of dollars in aid to the government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, a military officer who threw out the country's elected Islamists in 2013.
"Decisive Storm is not an operation to stabilize Yemen," writes Mahmoud. "It is an operation to restore the Saudis’ eroded pride in the face of Iran’s growing dominance in the region." There's no guarantee, though, that the current Saudi-led offensive will bring about the status quo its royals desire.
As has been the case often in Yemen's history, foreign adventures rarely go as planned. |
One of the hardest jobs in politics is coming up with a decent slogan. I say this not with any particular experience of party politics, but rather a weary familiarity with the slogans of yore which fail to inspire. Remember "Back to Basics", for instance? Or "Vote Blue, Go Green?". Utter tripe, both. And what of Labour's corking re-election gambit in 2001, "A lot done, a lot still to do?". That sounded like something Alan Partridge would say at Glastonbury.
And though the competition is fierce, I think the offering plastered on lecterns at the Lib Dem conference this year - "Fairer tax in tough times" - is up there with the best of them. It's the sort of phrase - plodding, witless, earnest - that you might associate with a retired travelling salesman, or a Jehovah's Witness who can't take a hint. More's the pity, because the basic message, being a plea for social justice, is unimpeachable; and so, in the interests of our comrades in Brighton, let me dare to venture an alternative.
It's not quite "Change you can believe in", and it doesn't have the metaphorical allure of Ronald Reagan's seminal "Morning in Britain". But it does make sense and have the virtue of being both simple and something all three parties and the public would support. Plus it's alliterative, which is always good.
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TAX WEALTH NOT WORK. There I said it.
I've banged on about it here before. Tax is a terrible and terribly necessary thing. It should be designed so that, as much as possible, it rewards socially desirable behaviour and disincentivises socially undesirable behaviour. Two things in the former category are: people going to work (especially very poor people, who might otherwise be welfare recipients); and entrepreneurs taking risks to start companies that create jobs. Two things in the latter category are: property bubbles (a chief cause of our economic woe); and old and rich people acquiring, through inflation in property and land value, wealth much faster than the young and poor.
TAX WEALTH NOT WORK.
Herbert Asquith laid out the case marvellously in 1907, and David Lloyd George incorporated it into his People's Budget of 1909: unlike income, property is visible and thereby hard to evade. The total value of land in Britain has been estimated at £50trn; tax that at one per cent and you get £500bn. Nice. If proper taxes on property and land - which make people rich not through effort and industry but good fortune and windfall gains derived from public infrastructure - were combined with radical tax cuts to income tax for all earners, and corporation tax for small businesses, even pleb-hating Tories ought to get behind it.
TAX WEALTH NOT WORK.
Morally and economically necessary, as well as right; capable of generating huge public support; consistent with the crowded centre of British politics; and alliterative to boot. What's not to like?
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
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I love my dog as much as my child We are not allowed to say this, but sometimes it is true. We connect with animals as deeply as our own offspring
Although he is usually a kind man, a man, we now know, who lets his children race their tiny cars around the road ring called his bald spot, my husband nevertheless insists, as he always has, that an animal’s worth is roughly equivalent to its edibility. If you can carve, slice, boil, or bake the beast, then it is generally welcome in our home, packaged and frozen or live and wild; but if the animal presents no potential for consumption of the gastrointestinal sort, then in my husband’s mind the life form is an excess weight on the world, an evolutionary glitch that serves no purpose except to clutter our already jam-packed planet.
Recently I’ve begun to think his attitude has something to do with the fact that, as a child, he watched his scientist mother drain the blood from rabbits regularly sacrificed for experiments, the soft carcasses tossed away in a floppy heap. As a seven-year-old child, I had a white rabbit, an enormous overgrown rabbit with pale pink eyes and a quashed nose that continuously quivered in response to the scents around her. I named my rabbit Boul de Neige, which means “snowball” in French, and this rabbit became a companion more important to me than any human at the time. Boul de Neige rode in my bike basket when I pedaled or in the baby carriage when I was in a maternal mood, a bonnet on her head and a blanket over her hunched form. Boul de Neige learned to take a collar and a leash, and hopped alongside me on the sidewalks of the Golden Ghetto, and although it seems impossible to believe now, she also learned a few commands, like “Sit!” and “Come!” which she did, bounding to me when I called from across our lawn, her ears streaming backwards like braids, her huge floppy paws uplifted so I could see their undersides as she galloped, thick and soft as slippers.
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Boul de Neige got to know her name, and when tired, she lay her fragile bony head in my lap, and I would stroke her skull and feel what a rabbit felt like; the head hard underneath the fluff of white fur, the seams where the plates had fused. Long after Boul de Neige died, I saw a picture of a rabbit’s brain hanging in a hall at Harvard; it was so tiny, truly a pea on a slender stem, barely big enough for dreams, never mind love. And yet, the rabbit had loved me, loved me largely and well.
Over the years, as I grew up, I came to understand that this was not the point. Whether animals can love, or grieve, or hope, is far less important than the fact that they elicit these emotions in us. What I learned from Boul de Neige was that I can love, and grieve, and hope, and so it was that I grew into my humanity, traveling the tunnels dug for me by some small, dumb beast. I am an animal lover. I say this in no small way. I don’t mean I enjoy animals, or find them entertaining, or cute. Nor do I mean that I care for animals as accessories, a peripheral part of a well-lived life. What I mean is that animals—especially mammals, and not especially insects—enchant me and inhabit me.
I understand that I speak from a position of privilege. I understand that if I were a struggling farmer whose chickens were always swallowed by coyotes, or a villager in Africa, hunted regularly by hungry lions, I might feel quite differently on the subject; I perhaps would be singing, as they say, a new tune. I am thankful for the simplicity of this song. I am also aware that its simplicity is in its surface. Underneath lurk a million dilemmas. Is my attachment to animals a sign of some pathology, a flawed capacity for human intimacy? What is the difference between love and sentimentality? What would it mean if I actually care as much for the family dogs as I do for my husband, or, worse, my ... children? Do I perhaps lack the very humanity I just claimed was mine? Am I a wolf dressed up as a lover, a mother? As I write this I can hear, downstairs, the dogs as they awaken. Their collars jangle; their claws click on the floor. The younger dog is blind. She has glaucoma. It’s been four years now since she lost her sight completely, and much has come from the dark swamp of her unseeing, things for my husband and also for me, things we never expected. The blind dog’s name is Lila Tov, which means good night in Hebrew. I hope, for her unseeing sake, that this is so.
If you are a middle-aged woman living in a suburb or a city in the United States of America, then chances are good that your chosen animal of adoration will be a dog. I met my husband before I met my dogs, Lila and Musashi, and my husband’s soothing ways gave me no reason to think he was one of those speciesists, so aptly named by Peter Singer, boxed in by his own human brain.
It was easy to fall in love with Benjamin; he made the world seem elfin with his curious assortment of facts about plants and animals and star-shaped molecules he made from marshmallows and toothpicks so we could eat estrogen and air. I met him in the wet, humid summer of 1990, the summer Nelson Mandela came to Boston and preached peace and everywhere the domed caps of mushrooms were popping up in the rain-fed fields. He was, as I’ve said, a kind man.
And yet, if that is so, then why is it so difficult for me now to recollect the forms his caring took? What makes a man gentle? Why are some beings so easy to love, while others feel so serrated? And if love is easy—as in the love one woman has for her copper-colored dogs—is it love she in fact feels or something simpler, like affection? What I question is the question: Why the need to define love in the first place? I suppose it proves that I am human.
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Where was I? Digressions, I suppose, are also uniquely human. Can you imagine a cat digressing from his mouse? Gentle. My husband was gentle when we first met, although the particularities—the proof—escapes me now. Benjamin chose the winter solstice as our wedding day; December 21, dark by 4 p.m., the trees jeweled with ice. I loved our wedding. We had a chuppa and fat white flowers in bouquets tied with blue ribbons of silk. When the guests left, Benjamin and I drove together in his tiny dinged-up car—a car he still owns today, fifteen years later—to a hotel, where we feasted on leftover root vegetables and drank cheap champagne foaming with fizz. We made love, more out of obligation than desire; but still, it was sweet. Four weeks later, while walking up a hill, my legs went oddly weak. The angle of ascent seemed suddenly unreasonably steep. I began gasping for breath. Collapsed on the curb, head in my hands, I knew I was pregnant. At home, the plastic test wand showed the palest plus, tentative but definite at the same time. We aborted that baby—too soon; it was just too soon.
* * *
A few weeks after that terminated pregnancy, I announced to my newlywed Benjamin that I thought we should get an animal. As a girl I had read Gerald Durrell’s "My Family and Other Animals." In Durrell’s world, birds perched on shoulders and spoke a language that was and was not human; if birds could talk, than who—or what—else could know our words? Might I wake up one night to the moon telling its celestial news? Might the rocks have speakable stories? Animals sit on the edge of possibility. They imply—no, prove—that there are worlds outside our world, or worlds within our world—but beyond our grasp—and this fact is fantastic, and all one needs in order to experience enchantment.
And it was for the love of enchantment that I wanted an animal other than my husband in the home we were now making. I didn’t want a human infant—that much was clear to me—so what was I thinking about? “A monkey,” I said one morning to Benjamin over coffee. “Why not get a monkey?”
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“An iguana,” he said to me. “If we’re going to have a beast in this house, then it has to be a reptile.”
“Cold blooded,” I said. “Who wants cold blood?”
“Monkeys bite,” he said. “They’re not necessarily nice.”
“We could get a dog,” I said.
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“Foul hounds,” he said. “Dogs have no dignity.”
“And people?” I said.
“The only animals I want in my home are those that can fit in a soup pot,” my husband said. “A beast must be fit to eat.” He smiled then, took a bite of his cinnamon toast.
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I knew he was half joking, but I could also see, and for the first time, something wicked in Benjamin’s smile. I could suddenly see he had a second smile, different from the first one, which was, until that point, the only one I knew. This second smile was both curve and flicker, sharp and sudden.
* * *
Later on, that night in bed, Benjamin told me more. I knew when we married that his boyhood had been filled with science and that dinner-table conversations were more likely to be about correlation coefficients than current events, but I hadn’t known how his mother used to take him to her lab where he had watched her inject guinea pigs with hormones so their litters came out large and twisted. A fertility researcher, my husband’s mother had showed him the pickled preserves of hairless pups born to rats dosed up on Fertinex and the strange remains of monkeys disfigured by progesterone. At age nine he had learned to shuck the hide from a rat and it all seemed sane to him. He told me how his mother had once brought home a wild fox pup, which they kept until its adolescence, and this canine cousin of the dog he described for me fondly, waking up one morning to new snowfall, seeing the animal in the yard, its red coat starkly bright against the fresh encompassing white. “But mostly,” Benjamin said, “we used animals for experiments. Their purpose was to answer questions that concerned human beings.”
“And did you ever question the method of questioning?” I asked.
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“No,” he said. “How can you question human health?”
“If it involves the suffering of a sentient being ...”
“What would you rather have: a few dead dogs or penicillin?”
“That’s a predictable argument,” I said. Back then I had not yet found my way to Peter Singer, so I lacked the logic—a logic I could feel in my bones but could not bring to the level of language—to really undo his argument. Instead I said, “I can’t believe your mother showed her nine-year-old how to—”
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Benjamin cut me off. And from his tone I could feel we had slipped into a new space, without warning: there it was. Little did I know that this was both a space and an oncoming speech that would pepper my marriage until, one day, long past the point of a pain with no name, it ceased to do so.
• * *
It is a well-documented fact that children who abuse animals are at risk for becoming sociopaths later in life, and from my training as a psychologist I know that standard forensic assessment tools include questions about harming animals right alongside questions about what weapons the patient owns or how many people he has hurt. Of course neither my husband, nor his mother, nor the thousands of others who have a cold disregard for animals would be considered abusers, but it’s also impossible to deny the possibility that they nevertheless may share some of those traits.
On the other hand, any biped could well argue, we all know about crazy ladies who keep households full of felines and who mutter odd terms of endearments to pets called Precious. I once knew a woman who had an incontinent dog named Betsy. She so adored this dog that she downloaded the animal’s bark as her own personal ring tone on her cell phone. Surely this zoophilia is some sort of sickness as well as its opposite, zoogyny. Granted I have made up these terms, but they point to a nonfiction phenomenon—that much is for sure.
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* * *
I nevertheless knew, then and now, that my love of animals was extreme—but whether that was extremely good or extremely bad—a sign of mental health or mental illness—I couldn’t tell, and frankly, I still can’t. And because, in the end, love overrides analysis anyway, I didn’t much think about what I was doing when, a few days after our bedtime conversation, with my husband on a business trip to Nevada, I traveled forty-five minutes from Boston and came back home with not one but two puppies. I decided on the Shiba Inu breed because they are smart, agile, and slightly aloof, all qualities that reminded me of my husband. “The babies’ names,” said the breeder, “are Wrinkles and Tinkles.” Tinkles, I assumed, was the girl.
I have never understood the term some women use to describe their feeling of wanting a child—“baby lust.” The term disturbs me not only because it fuses maternity with what sounds practically pornographic but also, and perhaps more to the point, because I cannot imagine ever lusting after a being so recently drenched in the juices of a placenta. Human babies, for days, weeks, even months after they are born still stubbornly reflect their neonatal state; they have that tough, grizzled, weeping stub of an umbilicus; they have that waxy lanugo and are speckled with blood. Human babies are essentially fetuses ejected too early. Puppies, on the other hand, are born as babies and within a few days of their arrival are playful and soft. Puppies catch onto cuteness ASAP and, at the same time, when you look into their eyes, you can see how they once were wild. I loved our new puppies, whom I renamed Lila and Musashi, immediately. I loved them because they were cute and because, perhaps, I lacked the depth or discipline needed to love a human infant so unambivalently.
I had the puppies, Lila and Musashi, for two days on my own and then it was time for Benjamin to return. I picked him up at the airport. In the week or so he had been gone, his beard had grown, not exactly longer but wider, so his face seemed fat.
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Benjamin got into the car, kissed me. There was his smell again (another reason for my kinship with the canine?), and I loved him all over again.
“There’s a surprise for you when you get home,” I said.
What, he wanted to know.
“Guess,” I said.
“You got a dog,” he said, without even pausing to think.
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“Jesus,” I said. I paused. “Musashi and Lila,” I said.
“You named the dog Musashianlila?” he said. “Cool,” he said. “Original.”
“Musashi and Lila,” I said. “‘And,’ as in an article of speech, a coordinating conjunction between two separate beings, as in, two dogs: one, Musashi; two, Lila.” I talked this way for a reason. Benjamin loves me best when I can use numbers in my communications.
“Two dogs?” he said. “Two foul hounds. I knew you were going to do something like that.”
“Are you mad?” I asked.
“I am,” he said. “A little.”
“Look,” I said. “I know with 100 percent assuredness that you will fall in love with these puppies. They are the cu—they are not only very cute,” I said, “but they are the perfect vehicles through which to reflect on our culture’s attitude toward cuteness. I’m telling you,” I said. “Owning a dog can be intellectual.”
He didn’t say anything.
“All right,” I said. “Aside from giving them back, what can I do to make this up to you?”
“You can stop at the next store,” he said.
“Why?” I said.
“As soon as I buy two soup pots,” he said, “everything will fall into place.”
Then he smiled, and I figured we’d be fine.
* * *
We got home from the airport. The two precious pooches were right there at the door, so small, so furry, their tiny tails jiggling so hard they looked like they might detach. “Benjamin, Musashi,” I said, picking up the slightly larger male and giving Ben his penny-sized paw to shake. Benjamin, good sport that he is (sometimes), shook it and doffed an imaginary hat. “Nice to meet you, sir,” he said. We repeated the same ritual with Lila, who was very much unlike her high-strung brother. Lila had a Cyndi Lauper personality. She was tough and flamboyant, a rock star of the dog world. She howled and crooned her ballads while Musashi, at the sound of anything that snapped or popped, crouched in a corner and shivered. Lila gave Ben a wet canine kiss that left a line of glisten on his face.
* * *
Before the dogs we had been a happy couple in an uncomplicated way. It was therefore inevitable, I suppose, that something divisive would enter our lives, because marriage—like physics, literature, and carpentry—is almost always synonymous with complexity. The dogs came over us like a cloud, something impossibly soft and fuzzy. They arrived in our home in the winter of our first married year, during a freeze so deep the snow was solid enough to stomp on, and mornings were filled with the sounds of cars coughing and squealing as they slid on icy streets. The puppies, of course, were incontinent, for all intents and purposes. Housetraining required that I rise every three or so hours and head outside, into the pitch-black coldness, parka wrapped around my nightgown, feet shoved sockless into big rubber boots. Midnight, 3 a.m., no one around then but me and my pups, their urine steaming small holes through the snow, good boy, good girl. There were the required visits to the vet, the building of a fence, a carpenter who came to cut a square in our back door—a dog door they learned to use with the aid of chicken and cheese as rewards. There were several emergency overdoses, rushing Musashi to the veterinary hospital at dawn, the embarrassing explanation to the blonde female vet who always seemed severe and judgmental. “He, um, he, uh, he swallowed my medicine.” “What kind of medicine?” In an age of polypharmacy, embarrassment nearly replaced my fear for the dog’s survival. First it was Prozac; then it was Ativan for anxiety; then it was the mood stabilizer, lithium—Musashi sampled them all, the child-protection caps no impediment to him as he cracked the bottles with his teeth and chomped on pills he found strangely tasty. “I don’t understand,” said the vet at our third visit, “how he manages to get your medications.” I thought I heard her emphasize the plural. “I mean, they are in a drawer, aren’t they?”
“Of course they are in a drawer,” I said. “This dog can open drawers,” which was true, but she clearly believed I was delusional. I finally solved the problem by hiding my drugs on a shelf so high that to this day I need a stepstool in order to medicate myself.
And it was all terrible and amusing and fun and hard work, but in the center of it all was a little hole, like those the dogs left when they pissed in the snow, a cold, steamy, smelly little hole in my heart because Benjamin participated in none of this with me. These were not our dogs. They were my dogs. He petted them; he occasionally tossed a ball or a bone, but when I asked him, “Do you love the dogs?” he always said, “No. I like them.” Once, in a fit of blind maternity, I said to one of the pups, “Mama’s here,” and he looked at me with something like scorn and horror combined. “You’re not their mother,” he said.
“I am,” I said. “These dogs are a part of our family, aren’t they?”
“No,” he said. “These dogs are our roommates.”
* * *
In every marriage there are betrayals; the question is how soon they happen, how many, and of what sort. I remember quite clearly the first time I betrayed Benjamin. The puppies were growing fast, their fluff becoming fur, the round snouts taking on a sharper shape. At four months or so Lila’s urine came out tinged with blood; an infection? No. She was going into heat. Our regular vet—a jolly Irish woman completely unlike the ER vet—told me it was time. Lila needed to be spayed. Musashi, who had testicles so tiny one couldn’t really see them, nevertheless now needed to be neutered as well.
Of course it sounds terrible—spayed—a sharp hoe, shredded earth—and neutered—not as violent sounding but shameful nonetheless. Still, the reason for the procedures far outweighs the recoiling they naturally give rise to. I told Ben. He was eating oatmeal at our table, spoon at the ledge of his lips; he set down his spoon. Clink. “You’re going to remove Musashi’s testicles?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
I could tell by his tone we were in for trouble, entirely unanticipated, because I knew he didn’t give a damn about the dogs, so I never imagined he might care in any way about one of their body parts.
“You can’t remove a man’s testicles,” he said.
“He’s not a man,” I said. “He’s a dog.”
“You can’t do that,” Ben said. He seemed truly stumped, his eyes alarmed; this was a highly articulate person, a person with a love of debate who was suddenly silenced, stumbling over a panic as primitive as what a fish might feel flailing on a hook. I could not believe it. I could not believe my husband, for all his professed distance from dogs, was confusing his testicles with theirs, and I said so.
“I am not confused,” Ben said.
“Seems to me like you are,” I said. “You can’t be a responsible pet owner and not neuter your dogs.”
“That’s just some right-wing mumbo jumbo,” he said. “Remove an animal’s testicles and you fuck up its hormones. You cripple it. The animal doesn’t mature the right way.”
“I thought you didn’t care about animals,” I said.
“I don’t,” he said. “I raise this objection on theory. You can’t take testicles from a male. I won’t have a neutered male in this house.”
I knew, then, that I was dealing with an irrational man. And worse, a man who would protect his kind, but was fine as concerned the fate of the female. Lila would be sliced open like a freshly baked cake, her core cut out, the tiny bean-sized sac of the uterus, the ovaries even now stuffed with their millions of eggs, and then sewn up, her healing hard.
I said okay; I would not fix Musashi.
* * *
And the betrayal? I had Musashi neutered behind Ben’s back. The night of our neutering fight, I planned my strategy with barely a twinge of guilt. I would wait four months, enough time so that the conversation—the issue itself—was all but forgotten but not so much time that the puppy would have become a dog with observable scrotum, at which point a secret surgery would have been impossible. Lest our vet ever somehow let it slip in Ben’s possible future presence, I would bring the dog to a different vet, one we were sure to never see again. Problem #1: Explaining why Musashi had stitches between his legs. I would say he got a deep scrape at the park. Problem #2: Explaining, when the dog finally became fully mature, why he had no testicles. When this happened, as it inevitably would, I decided right then and there that I would feign concern, promise to take him to the doctor, then claim I had and announce that night at dinner that the vet had diagnosed Musashi fully male but with undescended testicles. It all seemed so simple. And, in fact, it was.
Winter turned to summer turned to fall. As planned, Musashi was neutered in a covert operation and when later that evening Ben noticed the small stitches, I gave my rehearsed explanation. It all went by without a hitch. Brilliant. Bad. It seemed a long time went by before the inevitable confrontation, before the day Benjamin finally observed, nearly one year later, that the dog, now fully grown, had no balls.
“Hey,” he said, still kneeling, looking down.
“Hey what,” I said, although I knew exactly what was coming.
“This dog has no balls,” he said.
“No balls?” I said. “C’mon.”
“Seriously,” he said. “Look here.”
I did, of course, look there. “I see some balls,” I said. “Right there.” I pointed to a place too near the tip where there was a tiny bilateral bulge, a quirk the dog had had since infancy.
“You think those are balls?” Ben said to me. “Are you serious?”
“Well,” I said. “Isn’t it possible to have, you know, high balls?” I started laughing then, slapping my knee and snorting. “I’m so hilarious,” I said. “Aren’t I?”
“What’s wrong with Musashi?” Ben said. “Could they have neutered him before you bought him?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I mean, he was practically new born. I’ll take him to the vet, check it out.”
Which I didn’t. But three nights later I said, “So I took him to the vet—” Etc., etc.
“Undescended?” Benjamin said to me.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Undescended,” Ben then said again, not a question but a statement. He looked from the dog to me back to the dog again. A long time seemed to pass. At last he went, stood by the window. What was it he saw out there?
“Hey,” I said, but he either didn’t hear or didn’t want to listen. Then he left the room.
* * *
If it sounds like our marriage was bad, it wasn’t. We shared so many things, I am only telling of the troubles. Benjamin called me “Pie,” short for Sweetie Pie. I loved to hear him sleep talk, long monologues about dolphins and computer code. In 1999 I decided I was ready, and we set about the task of conceiving as though it were exactly that—a task, a military mission. My zealous approach to conception arose more in response to challenge than desire. “Look how much you care for the dogs,” my friend Audrey kept reassuring me. “If you love the dogs so much, obviously you’re a person capable of attachment. You won’t have a problem.”
But I would. I did. Have a problem. It was easy enough to give voice to my ambivalence about having a child; maternal ambivalence is très chic these days; there are lots of books about it, and Oprah did a whole show on the topic, each female guest confessing that, yes, she had a shadow side; that, yes, when it came to babies and feelings about them, it wasn’t all cream and talc. None of this comforted me. It seemed to me my ambivalence was of altogether a different sort, or species. A single question circled round and round inside my skull, its serrated edges making a scraping sound that no one else could hear. What I didn’t say ... Okay. What if I couldn’t love the baby as much as I loved my dogs? Or, what if I found I loved both the baby and the animals equally? Can you imagine admitting to that, should it occur? One must rigidly remember not to anthropomorphize and above all not to ooze emotion over domesticated beasts, the toys for which consumers stupidly spend over billions of dollars while so many in this world are starving.
So how could I comfortably say, or feel, that I might love daughter and dogs equally? And, yet, were I to claim I valued my dogs and my daughter equally, I would not in fact be making an insignificant statement. I would be in violation of a sacred human stance in place since pets, thousands of years ago, first took up residence in human households.
* * *
I had the baby. Human birth is an unreasonable proposition; her head was too big for my pelvis; it got stuck in the brackets of bone. Hyenas, however, give birth through the clitoris, so I still count myself amongst the luckier of the beasts on our blue ball. There she was, seven pounds, waxy and wet.
Five days later, C-section healing, Benjamin and I brought our daughter home. We arrived to two dogs howling with joy – hello, hello, hello, kisses and slurps all around, such a long time, so good to see you, you too, leaping on hind legs, their short forelegs dangling the way they do, their ears pressed back in pleasure. All the books I’d read emphasized the importance of letting the dogs thoroughly sniff the new family member. I lowered the bundle of baby down. The summer breeze blew in, and halfway to their level, the dogs caught a whiff of the strange smell. They froze. Their eyes turned canine, carnivore, the little dots of yellow in the iris with a wolfish gleam.
“Stop,” said Ben. He claims he heard a low growl emanating from Lila’s throat. Had I heard it, I would have stopped, of course. I, however, heard nothing.
“Musashi, Lila,” I sang. Something was amiss, but what? “This is Clara,” I said, and then she was down, this baby so bundled only the disc of her face was visible, the tiny lips, the perfect mini nose, and eyelids scrawled with arteries.
Lila, always the more aggressive, stepped forward. Her snout was wet, her black lips seamed shut; but it was the eyes that gave me pause. Slowly, slowly, she lifted one leg and pawed at the bunting, almost batted it. Playful? Aggressive? Curious? Musashi followed, his blocky head low down and then, before I could stop them, their noses were in the wrappings, the huff huff of their hungry breath, the child screamed, the dogs shot back. Ben grabbed the baby from me, his own face full of canine rage. “How could you?” he spit. “They’ve bitten her.”
Understand, I was doped up on drugs, painkillers coursing through my system, the whole world wavy, and I had done what all the books instructed. “No,” I said. “No.”
We peeled back the wrappings. Our baby was unbroken, everywhere. In an instant she plunged into slumber again.
* * *
I have never brought up, certainly not then, or now, until now, the idea that I might love my animals as much as my child, or children. No one has ever thought to ask, despite the fact that everyone I know, as hypereducated as they all are, understands that meaning is often found in the questions we fail to form. The oversight has freed me to fret privately, and sometimes not at all. While some pluck petals off the daisy—he loves me, he loves me not—my chant is less melodic, as clunky as the conundrum it echoes: I love her more; I love her less; I love them all the same. At the end of this exercise, what am I left with? A shredded flower, hands painted with pollen, cupped up and empty. I said nothing, to anyone, ever.
But, as a strategy, silence does not work to tamp the tugs one would rather not feel. As a mother, I wanted to feel clearly and cleanly driven only to my offspring, that packet of genes and nerves, that person in my pocket for the first nine months of her life, but it didn’t happen that way. In the early years of my daughter’s life, and then my son’s life too, when he was later born, I would sometimes feel a longing for my dogs that overrode every other affection and made no sense to me, given that I had as much physicality from my mate and babies as any person could possibly need. But I wanted to touch another kind of being. I wanted snout and paw.
And it was this, this felt biological need to connect beyond my human confines, that drew me downstairs, again and again, after my babies were asleep. I’d sit in the kitchen and groom my dogs. Their undercoats were always dense with down; the fur flew, piling up in drifts I swept into big green bags, huge bloated bags that looked heavy but that drifted in the wind on garbage night. I’d stack them on the curb for the next day’s trash truck, but the fur-stuffed bags always flew away, flew high above the roofs of our city while over and over again I brushed the pups, until it was very late, and Benjamin came down, tired-eyed, 2 a.m., the first feeding over now. He’d see me on the floor, then and now, as well. “Making love with the pups?” he’d ask, and I say the only thing I could.
Yes.
Excerpted from "The $60,000 Dog: My Life With Animals" by Lauren Slater. Copyright 2012. Excerpted with permission by Beacon Press. |
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“Net neutrality” is a simple thing: it mandates that ISPs (internet service providers, usually your cable or mobile phone company) provide the same level of service to all comers—from mighty Disney to modest Breitbart to tiny little startups. Without it, internet providers can sign exclusive deals with big companies so that their sites are nice and fast, while the also-rans are sluggish and unreliable.
But would internet providers do this? One of the arguments against net neutrality is that it addresses a problem that might happen in the future, not a problem that actually exists. This argument doesn’t do much for me, since I think the probablility that internet providers will sign lucrative deals like this is pretty close to 100 percent. Hell, some internet providers have already come pretty close. Netflix pays Comcast for fast service on its lines. In the past, T-Mobile has “zero rated” certain sites so they don’t count against your data limit. These should be viewed as opening salvos, not full-blown non-neutrality, but they’re certainly a sign that monopoly internet providers know they have a very valuable commodity that they can auction off to the highest bidders if they’re allowed to.
But what concrete evidence do we have about the future of a non-neutral internet? How about overseas, where net neutrality isn’t universal? I was thinking I should look into that, but Rep. Ro Khanna beat me to it:
In Portugal, with no net neutrality, internet providers are starting to split the net into packages. pic.twitter.com/TlLYGezmv6 — Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 27, 2017
Britain allows similar arrangements. Michael Hiltzik picks up the story from there:
Although both countries are part of the European Union, which has an explicit commitment to network neutrality, they’re allowed under provisions giving national regulators some flexibility. These regulators can open loopholes permitting “zero rating,” through which ISPs can exclude certain services from data caps….The potential for abuse is obvious: The system gives ISPs the ability to set terms for any service’s inclusion in one of these special tiers. …. In early January the FCC staff, in one of its last published reports before President Trump appointed Pai chairman of the FCC, concluded that zero-rating deals offered to broadband customers by AT&T and Verizon violate net neutrality principles. The deals “present significant risks to consumers and competition…because of network operators’ potentially unreasonable discrimination in favor of their own affiliates,” the staff reported. ….The arrangements that offended the FCC staff were AT&T’s “sponsored data” and Verizon’s “FreeBee Data 360.” AT&T, according to the FCC staff, gives content providers the ability—for a fee—to offer programming to its subscribers without its counting toward the subscribers’ monthly data usage limits. The problem is that AT&T offers this service to programmers at terms worse than those it gives DirecTV, which it owns….Verizon pulled the same stunt to favor its own go90 video service, the FCC staff found.
This is just the start. At the moment, ISPs like Comcast and Verizon are being careful because they don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the elimination of net neutrality. But once they’re convinced it’s gone for good, they’ll start experimenting to see how far they can push things.
Can I prove this? Of course not. But it’s obvious that in a non-neutral market, ISP’s can make a huge amount of additional money by charging content providers for fast service. So why wouldn’t they do it? It’s not as if their customers can switch to someone else, after all. |
Four gay men were beaten and detained by moral vigilantes in Cario, after being caught having sex in car
A group of styled moral vigilantes detained four men who were said to have ‘practiced immorality’ (i.e. gay sex) in Cario, Egypt.
The four men were apparently caught in the act by the group in a private car on Game’et el Duwal el Arabya (Arab League Blvd), Mohandeseen neighbourhood, Cario last night (26 October).
The car driver apparently tried to drive away, but the vigilantes with the help of other car blocked the passage and beat up the four gay men, reported the Egyptian portal January 25.
They then detained and brought them to the local police station.
In the last year there have been increased concerns in Egypt over the presence of self-proclaimed morality vigilantes.
Many groups become well organised during and after the revolution, that combined with a reduced police presence in many areas after the revolution, has raised concerns that self-appointed morality vigilantes will start flexing their muscles on the street.
Speaking with Gay Star News, Ali, a 23-year-old law student from Cairo said: ‘I don’t know who this group is but the portal is connected with the revolutionary and Islamic groups.
‘Many groups connected with various political parties are operating in Egypt and often take the law into their own hands.
‘We had a number of cases of people being arrested, beaten up and even killed (like in Suez this summer), by some of these groups.
‘I am very concerned about these four men, and I urge NGOs to verify this information and check how they are being handled.
‘The general atmosphere here in Egypt is a bit scary for the LGBT community, I don’t know what exactly to do, but sit tight and wait and see.’ |
As wars become less about states and more about societies, women can play a greater role in shaping or ending conflicts. So why do we still think of war as inherently male?
An Afghan artist removes rubbish in front of her graffiti in an industrial park in Kabul / Reuters
Asked to describe war, most Americans would probably throw out words like troops, tanks, guns, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Our historical and cultural understanding of war is shaped by our focus on the men who fight -- and it is still overwhelmingly men who fight -- and the tools they use, and this has become the prism through which we understand war and its consequences. War is a male domain, says conventional wisdom, in which women play little direct role.
But the idea of war as a male domain is increasingly out of touch with the way that war is fought today -- and whom it impacts. Across the globe, conflicts are primarily fought not by well-trained armies at the behest of their governments but by non-state groups with complex motivations and little incentive to obey the laws of war. In these wars, civilians are often targets, not just collateral damage; 90 percent of conflict casualties are civilians, many of whom are women and children. A 2009 study by the Peace Research Institute of Oslo concluded, "men are more likely to die during conflicts, whereas women die more often of indirect causes after the conflict is over." When our understanding of a given war focuses so overwhelmingly on its male soldiers and statesmen, we miss the larger context -- namely, we underestimate the many roles women can and do play -- which makes it harder to end war and create durable peace.
I Came to Testify, a documentary that tells the story of Foča, the town in Bosnia that was the site of multiple rape camps during the war there. The site later became central to the International Criminal Tribunal's efforts to prosecute rape as a crime against humanity. Prosecutors were able to collect physical evidence from Foča and gather 16 women willing to Our common understanding about what war is and who participates can change, but it's a slow process. For example, the idea that wartime rape is a crime against humanity -- rather than an inevitable byproduct of war -- is relatively new. After the Holocaust, there was little effort to collect evidence of systemic rape; at the Nuremberg trials, no charges of rape were filed. In contrast, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia opened a case devoted solely to sexual crimes -- a watershed moment in the development of international law regarding the intersection of women's rights and conflict. As part of their excellent, five-part Women, War & Peace series, PBS produced, a documentary that tells the story of Foča, the town in Bosnia that was the site of multiple rape camps during the war there. The site later became central to the International Criminal Tribunal's efforts to prosecute rape as a crime against humanity. Prosecutors were able to collect physical evidence from Foča and gather 16 women willing to testify before the court. The inclusion of women as witnesses, lawyers, and judges was key to the case's success and to the establishment of systematic rape as a crime against humanity.
Through ten years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has begun to appreciate the importance of gender in war -- and not just as an artifact of political correctness. As the U.S. moved to a strategy of counterinsurgency, they put less emphasis on killing bad guys and more on engaging with locals as a way of de-escalating violence. The military, though a male-dominated institution itself, became increasingly aware of the role of women in society and their influence over the men in their families. The military created Female Engagement Teams , whose members can talk directly with Afghan women (whose culture forbids them to talk to men outside their family). That was a strong start, but the idea that traditionally female spheres are of secondary importance during war and are not a male concern still persists, and may hamper future counterinsurgency efforts.
Men still tend to dominate peace negotiations -- often the same men who were responsible for starting the war -- in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Women are still in the minority at these talks, if they're invited at all. The 2008 documentary film Pray the Devil Back to Hell tells the story of the women of Liberia, who ended the decades-long conflict there by pressuring dictator Charles Taylor to attend peace talks in Ghana -- then followed him to Accra to keep the pressure on. The women were led by Leymah Gbowee, who, along with Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Yemeni activist Tawakkul Karman, won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent work to ensure women's voices were heard in the peace process. In the documentary, Gbowee discusses the talks in Ghana, where the men acted like they were on vacation until the women staged a sit-in and refused to allow the negotiators to leave their conference room until they took their work seriously. The imagery is telling: the men are inside bargaining while the women are outside, with no direct influence over talks that could change their lives until they decide to use their bodies as doorstops.
There are lessons here for Afghanistan, where women are struggling to hold on to what gains they've made since the Taliban was driven from power in 2001. In Liberia, women have helped prevent the return of large-scale violence through their influence over family members and communities, which might be more likely to use violence without this women-led, behind-the-scenes diplomacy. Though there are cultural differences between Afghanistan and Liberia, of course, the need to include Afghan women in the peace process is clear when the stakes for women -- and the country -- are so high. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged that she will not bargain away Afghanistan's women, but Afghan women themselves are still not sufficiently represented at international talks, such as the 2010 London Conference on Afghanistan.
Including women becomes even more important in post-conflict reconstruction, particularly disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration efforts. In peace time, women generally bear the responsibility for the health of the family and the education of children; after war, they often take up the added burden of sick and injured relatives. Because women often suffer more in conflict than men, they may have greater incentive to pursue non-violent strategies.
Local women may also understand on-the-ground realities of war in ways that the international community cannot. And yet, outside forces and peace-builders -- NATO in Afghanistan, for example, or the United Nations in Libya -- often fail to seek their input. In an interview, Gini Reticker, director of Pray the Devil Back to Hell, recounted an incident where the United Nations planned to collect guns from former combatants. The UN had expected it to be a symbolic event; when thousands of men showed up to accept a payout to turn in their guns, the UN was unprepared and a three-day riot followed in which 12 people died. If UN workers had engaged the women of Liberia in the planning process, they would have understood that the women were pushing hard for their sons to disarm. These women also knew the communities that the guns would be coming from, and could have told the UN which factions needed to be separated in the disarmament camps. Liberia's disarmament process went as well as it did because women were eventually involved, but it would have gone even better if they'd been included earlier.
By understanding war as a male pursuit, we obscure the suffering, the triumphs, and the contributions of women. We also limit our ability to conduct war and to negotiate lasting peace. Without a dramatic shift in our popular conceptions about war and the roles women can play during and after conflict, we will have a harder time escaping the cycle of war and will be unable to find new ways to limit conflicts and rebuild societies.
War Redefined, the final episode of Women, War & Peace, airs tonight on PBS. |
Why I can’t stop putting dildos into the hands of powerful conservatives
Matt Haughey Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 12, 2015
There have been so many gun massacres of late it’s difficult to recount them all. Increasingly, they’re striking closer and closer to home for me as well. Just a couple months ago, a shooting happened on an Oregon college campus a few hours from where I live. My wife is a college professor in Oregon and I never in a million years thought that was a dangerous profession, but now every day when she goes off to work I will have this thought in the back of my mind. The most recent San Bernardino shooting was about ten miles from where I went to college and took place at a location I used to drive by weekly. A couple of those injured in the attacks went through the same program I did at my school.
Like most of these tragedies, they involve powerful weaponry, sold legally to people that shouldn’t have had them in hindsight. Over the past few years we’ve had countless gun-related atrocities take place in the US. Kids killed in a school. Worshipers at a church shot point blank. Women in a medical clinic gunned down in broad daylight. A holiday party at a public health department ending in bloodshed.
In the wake of most horrific news events, change takes place. We realize something in the system is broken and close the loopholes that make future events improbable or less likely. Yet with guns, we do nothing. No matter how high the body counts reach, we hear the same refrains: now’s not the time to talk about guns, if anything we need more guns in more places, and perhaps most famously the only thing stopping a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
After every massacre I think ok, enough’s enough. We’re finally going to see meaningful change to prevent a future tragedy like this one from happening again. And then… our leaders do nothing.
The contrast in the first Republican and Democrat debates a few months back couldn’t have been more stark. At the democratic debate, the candidates (except Jim Webb) talked openly about curtailing sales of military-style weapons and putting tighter controls on gun show and private party sales loopholes. While at the GOP debate, it was a battle of one-upmanship to see who could toe the National Rifle Association’s harsh anti-gun control stance.
Of course, these kinds of atrocities happen regularly only in America. Most every other developed nation has active controls on weapons designed to kill humans. It makes logical sense. And you never feel the threat of violence and death even if you’re walking in the dodgiest parts of London late at night in the way any major US city feels at that hour.
Heck, in America you can’t even sell a car at a car show or via Craiglist without alerting licensing organizations. Every car carries a unique identifier that anyone can lookup and track instantly for the entire life of that car. Why is that we don’t even treat guns like we do automobiles in the US?
The GOP Candidates
With all this in mind, I read yet another news article on the GOP responses to a tragedy, and as they often do, it featured an image of a candidate proudly displaying a weapon to show his cred. Again, I felt a sense of powerlessness at a Congress that does nothing about guns and would do nothing, then I got a goofy idea to do something with it. I will freely admit it’s something very stupid, but at least I could blow off some steam and protest in my own tiny way.
I decided to take every GOP candidate/leader photo featuring a gun and replace it with a dildo.
Yes, it’s very juvenile, and I know it’s fairly pointless, but I wanted to rob the original images of any power they hold by making the same subjects appear ridiculous when the photos were altered. That’s all there is to it.
At first, I did some Google Image searches and figured I’d be done in a week with the current crop of candidates, but doing deeper searches with better tools, I suddenly found myself picking and choosing the best shots from hundreds of options, where candidates and leaders of the GOP featured themselves holding, shooting, and proudly displaying guns. In one week, I’m already up to 32 completed images and I have a downloads directory with dozens more. I joked that maybe I’d hit 500 images someday, but now I’m starting to think that’s actually possible, and that’s a frightening observation about gun culture in the US.
The Rules
Like any web project I take on, there are guidelines that lay out boundaries to help the work support the original idea. Mine are pretty simple. The subjects are conservatives in power, that work in lawmaking or help support it, and yet do nothing to curtail guns. I locate an original photo of them with a gun (I’ll never use a photo of them holding a phone, or a microphone, or a corndog, just real guns near them), photoshop the gun out, plop a dildo image in, and make it look somewhat realistic. I post it to GOPdildo.tumblr.com along with a link to the original so you can see what I started with. Then I added links to the dildos themselves because so many people asked. Later on I usually tweet out links to the new posts as well. Sometimes friends send me their doctored images and I post them too.
The dildos are all from Amazon. Right now a search on Amazon turns up 55,311 dildos for sale, complete with high resolution photographs of them on a white background. This comes in really handy for a project like this.
It’s worth noting I don’t wish to bring any shame to dildos. I think they’re harmless and delightful objects men and women are free to use however they see fit. A dildo is practically a teddy bear when compared to the vast variety of sex toys, sex acts, and sex fetishes out there. I don’t feel any embarrassment when I see one in a shop window. But I don’t think the subjects of my images feel the same way, and therein lies the tension for the project.
The Reaction
It’s been hilarious to see what I originally thought might be a tiny twitter art project that would hopefully crack up my friends spread like wildfire across social networks, and later to news sites, and eventually into many other languages. Mostly people see it for what it is, a silly way to express frustration at The United States’ current endless cycle of gun tragedy followed by inaction while leaders posture with their weapons in defiance of any changes.
Of course, it being on the Internet, there’s a flipside reaction as well. I’ve been asked to meet people to see their guns, and perhaps to experience getting shot by them, I’ve had people on Twitter tell me all the things they want to do with a dildo to me, and I’ve even had a guy say he’d love to shove his gun up my ass and pull the trigger so I got the full idea of how powerful his weapons are. Usually I block or mute people on Twitter that tell me stuff like that so I don’t have to see it again.
The strangest reaction to me is when someone finds these images “hateful”. I’ve seen the word pop up a few times in responses, and it really throws me how something as harmless as a dildo crudely added to an image is seen as hateful, as if the original photo of someone proudly displaying a weapon capable of ending anyone’s life instantly is instead seen as righteous. That right there? That is a set of priorities that are fucked up, full stop.
My Someday Wish
I think the US should have stricter gun controls. Ultimately, I wish we could follow a model close to Australia’s, where basically nobody but farmers wanting to control vermin or humanely kill livestock when needed have 3 foot long shotguns that are registered and licensed (and only people with legitimate reasons even get considered for). Handguns are rare and you have to shoot in a club’s range for six months before you can even apply to own one for sporting purposes only. Semi-automatic weapons are limited to the military. Australia is a special case, being isolated from neighboring countries and going on nearly 20 years of strict controls, but their numbers of deaths from guns run about 200 per year, while in the US the number runs above 30,000/yr.
I would also be happy with controls less strict than Australia’s in the US. Gun shows and private sales should carry the same oversight a sale in a shop does. Every gun should be identifiable and tracked. Mostly, I would like to see politicians (yes, from both parties, but especially the GOP, who control Congress completely on this issue) do something, anything to bring some sanity to the hard-line, 239 year old ideas concerning firearms, and bring it into the reality of the present. Sure guns are in the Constitution and woven into our history, but so was slavery and we certainly changed our tune on that since 1776.
And yes, even if we banned the sale of all guns overnight on January 1, 2016, we would not be living in a safety wonderland. It will take many years before grandfathered-in guns move out of circulation and use, but that still doesn’t mean we should continue to do nothing. Imagine if in the wake of the Columbine shootings back in 1999, we put stricter controls on firearms? Would there be less than over 300,000 people that died by gunshot since that massacre? Sixteen years on, I bet it would have made a serious dent.
Finally, my last wish is that people stop sending me Michele Fiore’s family christmas card where everyone’s holding guns. I’m not going to put dildos in the hands of her entire family, jesus christ people have some decency. |
A barge carrying 1 million pounds of debris that washed up on Alaska and Canada coastlines — half of it from the 2011 Japan tsunami — signals a larger cleanup that needs to be done.
A barge docked in Georgetown stretches the size of a football field and is piled high with 3,400 large white sacks of marine debris — buckets, water bottles, nets and even shoes.
In total, the barge tied up at Waste Management’s Duwamish facility holds about 1 million pounds of trash, roughly half of which is debris from the 2011 Japan tsunami that found its way onto Alaskan and Canadian shores.
Despite its enormity, the trash represents less than 1 percent of the debris littering the Alaska coastline, said Chris Pallister, co-founder of Gulf of Alaska Keeper, a nonprofit that works to clean up the coastline there.
“It’s one of the greatest environmental tragedies on the planet right now,” Pallister said.
The barge arrived in Seattle on Thursday at the end of a $1 million project funded mostly by Japan to clean up Alaskan and Canadian shorelines in the aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami.
Japan estimates that 5 million tons of debris washed out to sea in the tsunami. Most of it sank in the first few miles, leaving an estimated 1.5 million tons floating in the Pacific.
Even without a natural disaster, winds and currents routinely deposit large amounts of debris on Alaskan beaches, said Peter Murphy, Alaska regional coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program.
Next month, the trash that arrived in Seattle this week will be sorted by volunteers coordinated by the nonprofit Parley for the Oceans. Unusable debris will be sent to the Columbia Ridge landfill at Arlington, Ore., while most of the plastic will be recycled.
Alaska’s shoreline stretches 44,000 miles, more than double the length of the East and West coasts combined.
With so much beachfront, and some areas of steep shorelines and cliffs, it’s not easy to get the debris out. So once the trash was collected and bagged on the beaches, Pallister used helicopters to lift the sacks to the barge.
Advocates for clean shorelines faced another hurdle last year when, due to a lack of capacity, Anchorage’s landfill stopped accepting marine debris unless it was in small pieces, Pallister said.
Getting the barge safely to Seattle was a milestone in itself, Pallister said.
“It’s a real sense of relief that this is here,” he said.
It first stopped in Kodiak, Alaska, on July 15. From there it traveled to 10 other sites, including Montague Island near Prince William Sound and Gore Point on the Kenai Peninsula.
Pallister’s plan for coordinated barge stops to pick up debris at multiple locations was unprecedented, Murphy said.
Supporters of the project, including NOAA, Waste Management and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, all agree on one thing: The coasts need to be cleaned.
Most of the debris on the barge is from Alaska, with refuse from just one British Columbia site — Ucluelet, on Vancouver Island. Karla Robison, the manager of environmental and emergency services in Ucluelet, called on more Canadian cities to step up to help clean the coasts.
Prepare for an earthquake Earthquakes may be unpredictable — but they are also inevitable. Here are some tips to help you get ready before the next one hits.
Japan has provided $5 million to the U.S. for tsunami debris removal. Alaska received $2.5 million of that, using it on this project and other, smaller efforts to clean up coastlines and complete aerial surveys.
Janna Stewart, the tsunami marine-debris coordinator for Alaska’s environmental-conservation department, said she hopes the state can receive another $1 million left in the $5 million pot to continue the cleanup.
In terms of efficiency and safety, the project has been a success, she said.
Pallister knows there’s much more debris to be removed — but progress has been made.
“It’s not completely bleak,” he said. “There is some light way out there. It’s a flicker, but it’s out there.” |
Got Sneakers?
ATTENTION LADY CAT FANS!
The Lady Cats have teamed up with an organization called GOTSNEAKERS?, to help get needed footwear to 3rd world countries. We will be hosting a drive to collect used old sneakers that will be refurbished by this company and shipped to needy people across the world. We will have donation boxes in the front office and the gym starting on January 7th 2019. The Lady Cats will also receive a donation from the company for our participation. So now that you got those new sneakers for Christmas, please bring all your old used sneakers to WMHS! The Lady Cats need your help to reach their goal of 2000 pairs of donated sneakers. We will be collecting donations until March 1st. We have collection boxes set up in the front office and in the gym.
The Lady Cats want to thank you in advance for your donations! |
Berkeley to offer course on the ‘politics of needing to go’
Last Summer’s heated debate over North Carolina’s controversial “bathroom bill” inspired the University of California, Berkeley to devote an entire course to the “politics of needing to go.”
A course description for the four-credit class confirms that students will spend an entire semester discussing how “a public restroom is a charged social site,” addressing questions such as: “Who has access to it? Who cleans it? How have public restrooms segregated people into strict categories of gender, race, class, and ability? What does it mean for a public space to be designed for private activities? [and] Who are we socially when our bodies need to go?”
“A public restroom is a charged social site.”
Students taking the course will apparently “hone academic research skills” by writing a “substantial research paper” on the topic, earning students who successfully complete the class four academic credits, or units, as Berkeley refers to them, towards their degrees.
[RELATED: Coalition accuses Berkeley course of political indoctrination]
In fact, Berkeley students may even elect to take the class as one of the two courses needed to fulfill the school’s general “reading and composition requirement,” according to Berkeley’s academic guide.
Notably, the course will actually be taught in Berkeley’s “Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies” department, which will offer a host of courses on social issues during the approaching calendar year, including one on the “artistic, scientific, and philosophical imaginings of a sustainable society.”
That course will address concerns about the “impending climate-related apocalypse,” asking students if they can “imagine a society that would be ecologically sustainable over the long term.”
[RELATED: Berkeley students barricade bridge, forces whites to cross creek]
“Rather than focusing on ideas of large-scale collapse, this course will explore writings and media pertaining to ways of human life that don’t rely on petroleum for energy, and that cooperate with nature rather than utilize it as a resource,” a description for the theater course explains.
Students enrolled in the two-credit seminar will even have the opportunity to watch films such as Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, as well as Mad Max: Fury Road and Avatar, all of which “thematize ecological crisis and potential solutions.”
Campus Reform reached out to the department for comment on what relation these courses have to theater, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @AGockowski |
GitHub user Zeffy has created a patch that removes a limitation that Microsoft imposed on users of 7th generation processors, a limit that prevents users from receiving Windows updates if they still use Windows 7 and 8.1.
This limitation was delivered through Windows Update KB4012218 (March 2017 Patch Tuesday) and has made many owners of Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Bristol Ridge CPUs very angry last week, as they weren't able to install any Windows updates.
Microsoft's move was controversial, but the company did its due diligence, and warned customers of its intention since January 2016, giving users enough time to update to Windows 10, move to a new OS, or downgrade their CPU, if they needed to remain on Windows 7 or 8.1 for various reasons.
When the April 2017 Patch Tuesday came around last week, GitHub user Zeffy finally had the chance to test four batch scripts he created in March, after the release of KB4012218.
His scripts worked as intended by patching Windows DLL files, skipping the CPU version check, and delivering updates to Windows 7 and 8.1 computers running 7th generation CPUs.
Patches have been open-sourced on GitHub
The four batch scripts are now available on GitHub, open-sourced and ready to be inspected, just in case anyone fears Zeffy might have disguised any malware.
According to Zeffy's README file, he created the four batch scripts by reverse engineering the KB4012218 Windows Update, and comparing versions of the new files with the ones already on his PC.
By running a simple diff operation on these files, he was able to discover two new functions "IsCPUSupported(void)" and "IsDeviceServiceable(void)" inside the March 2017 version of wuaueng.dll, delivered through KB4012218.
Zeffy's scripts patch this DLL file and make the two functions output "1", which translates to "supported CPU." This, in turn, starts the update procedure, delivering new security updates to users Microsoft wanted to block.
"The only downside of these solutions is you have to apply a new patch whenever wuaueng.dll gets updated," says Zeffy in his GitHub repo README. Fortunately, the entire task doesn't take long to complete.
Bleeping Computer hasn't tested Zeffy's patch because we don't have a 7th-gen CPU on hand. It's recommended that you create a system restore point and save a copy of the original wuaueng.dll file just in case things go horribly wrong. |
Veteran Timberwolves center Nikola Pekovic has been ruled out for the season, and now has admitted that retirement may be in the cards for him. Pekovic, who will turn 31 next week, acknowledged during a press conference in Serbia that his health issues could make it impossible for him to return to the court, according to a Mondo.rs report (translation via Emiliano Carchia of Sportando).
“For two years I have struggled with this injury,” Pekovic said of his troublesome ankle and Achilles. “I have been mentally exhausted. This year I went to Minneapolis for two months and I did everything possible to return to the court, but there are times when you simply can’t. I can’t run without pain.”
Pekovic had a couple very productive seasons for the Timberwolves in 2012/13 and 2013/14, averaging 16.9 PPG and 8.7 RPG in 116 games during that stretch. However, he has long been plagued by injuries, having never appeared in more than 65 games in a season. Last year, Pekovic played just 12 times before being shut down, and before training camp this year, Wolves owner Glen Taylor confirmed that the veteran big man wouldn’t play for the team in 2016/17, though he remains on the 15-man roster.
The Wolves are currently on the hook for $12.1MM this season for Pekovic, and $11.6MM in 2017/18. However, the situation is somewhat similar to Chris Bosh‘s in Miami. As of January 31, if Pekovic is ruled medically ineligible to play by a doctor jointly approved by the NBA and NBPA, the team could get salary cap relief for his contract. Pekovic would still earn the remaining salary on his contract, but Minnesota would be able to wipe the deal from its books for cap purposes.
For now, there’s no rush for either side to make a final decision, but as January 31 nears, we’ll likely get a better idea of what the plan is for Pekovic and the Wolves. |
On Thursday, the California Legislature allocated $5 million toward the creation of a new research center dedicated to providing data on the efficacy of current gun control laws.
The proposal to create the center, whose $5 million funding will be apportioned over a five-year period, was part of a larger “trailer” bill that was a component of the new state budget. That bill — SB 1006 — was introduced in January by state Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, who stressed the importance of increasing the role of hard science in the gun control debate.
“I’ve been in the Legislature for many years, and I believe that research leads to better policies,” Wolk said. “We have lots of strong opinions but not a lot of data.”
Wolk said the bill received overwhelming support from both sides of the aisle, as well as from law enforcement. She added that the main opponents of the measure were the National Rifle Association and other gun-advocacy groups.
According to UC spokesperson Claire Doan, the specific details of the center’s creation — including where it will ultimately be located — are yet to be determined.
“The University of California is appreciative of the state funding, which comes on the heels of the Orlando tragedy,” Doan said in an email. “(It) underscores our need to better understand the impact of firearm violence.”
According to Craig Reynolds, Wolk’s chief of staff, the research center will be located at a UC campus to be selected by UC President Janet Napolitano with funding coming from the state’s General Fund. Reynolds noted that the legislation also allows the center to provide small grants to researchers at any UC campus.
Daniel Acland, a UC Berkeley assistant adjunct professor of public policy, said the “primary theory” on strict gun control laws is that they would help prevent dangerous people from getting guns more than they would deter such people from trying to acquire guns in the first place. He conjectured that the effectiveness of laws like background checks likely varies, hinging on the reasons individuals have for wanting to arm themselves.
“My educated guess is that whether gun control laws would dissuade someone from getting a gun illegally would depend on their motivation,” Acland said. “For someone who says, ‘I’m going to kill 50 people in a gay nightclub,’ they would probably keep trying to get a gun regardless of the law.”
The fact that the Orlando nightclub shooting coincided with the vote on the gun research bill was “a terrible, terrible coincidence,” Wolk said, though she added that the incident undoubtedly called attention to the urgency of legislative reform.
According to Wolk, federal study on the effects of gun control laws has been lacking since 1996 when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention halted their research on the subject because of pressure from Congress and pro-gun organizations. She highlighted that, in light of this lack of “sound data” on gun control, the research center was particularly vital.
“We need to bring the power of science into the discussion,” she said.
Logan Goldberg is the executive news editor. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @logangoldberg. |
Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich took to Twitter to call for Secretary of State John Kerry to resign for calling global warming the “world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”
Gingrich, a failed Republican presidential candidate, tweeted out his disgust with Kerry’s comments (Note: He spells Kerry’s name wrong in the tweets):
Does kerrey really believe global warming more dangerous than north Korean and iranian nukes? More than Russian and Chinese nukes? Really? ? — Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) February 18, 2014
On his trip to Indonesia, Kerry said that global warming is “the world’s largest weapon of mass destruction” and particularly harms low-lying countries that are at risk from rising sea levels.
“This city, this country, this region, is really on the front lines of climate change,” Kerry said in a speech in Jakarta, one of several in a series of speeches planned throughout this year.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that your entire way of life here is at risk,” Kerry added. “In a sense, climate change can now be considered the world’s largest weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even, the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”
Kerry has been playing up the national security angle of global warming since at least 2009, during his Senate years, when congressional Democrats were trying to pass a cap-and-trade bill. Kerry told The New York Times that he touted the national security concerns of global warming as a way to lure Republicans to support the bill.
But Gingrich, a longtime Republican, is not buying it.
Every American who cares about national security must.demand Kerrey’s resignation.A delusional secretary of state is dangerous to our safety — Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) February 18, 2014
Gingrich ended his Twitter rant by apologizing to former Nebraska Governor and Senator Bob Kerrey for the misspelling of Sec. Kerry’s name.
I apologize to bob kerrey for spelling john kerry’s name as though he were bob’s relative. Callista caught my error. Please edit to kerry — Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) February 18, 2014
In a 2008 ad with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for Al Gore’s We Can Solve it campaign, Gingrich introduced himself as “lifelong Republican” who “used to be speaker,” saying “our country must take action to address climate change.” (Gingrich on global warming ad with Pelosi: ‘The dumbest single thing I’ve done in years’)
Kerry’s remarks come after the Obama administration submitted their proposal to the United Nations for an international climate agreement for the next round of negotiations in 2015. The administration’s proposal would have countries impose domestic policies to cut emissions.
“We simply don’t have time to let a few loud interest groups hijack the climate conversation,” Kerry said, adding that “big companies” that “don’t want to change and spend a lot of money” to stop global warming are behind the pushback.
Most importantly, Kerry stressed that other nations do not “get a free pass” in the fight against global warming, despite industrialized nations being most responsible for emissions.
“They don’t have a right to go out and repeat the mistakes of the past,” Kerry argued. “At the end of the day, emissions coming from anywhere in the world, threaten the future of everyone in the world.”
One of the biggest sticking points for other industrialized countries signing onto a climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol was that large developing countries were not required to cut carbon dioxide emissions — virtually undoing the efforts of rich countries that cut emissions. The Obama administration’s climate proposal would bind some developing countries, like China and India to the same carbon emissions reduction targets as industrialized nations.
Obama’s proposed international climate deal would also not require any congressional approval to implement, since it’s already being done in the U.S. through executive orders.
“So this is just the latest example of President Obama’s contempt for obeying the Constitution and our laws,” Myron Ebell, director of the Center of Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “In the past, rulers who act as if the law does not apply to them were called tyrants.”
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected]. |
Audio feedback Problems playing this file? See media help.
[1] "Block diagram of the signal-flow for a common feedback loop."
Audio feedback (also known as acoustic feedback, simply as feedback, or the Larsen effect) is a special kind of positive loop gain which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input (for example, a microphone or guitar pickup) and an audio output (for example, a power amplified loudspeaker). In this example, a signal received by the microphone is amplified and passed out of the loudspeaker. The sound from the loudspeaker can then be received by the microphone again, amplified further, and then passed out through the loudspeaker again. The frequency of the resulting sound is determined by resonance frequencies in the microphone, amplifier, and loudspeaker, the acoustics of the room, the directional pick-up and emission patterns of the microphone and loudspeaker, and the distance between them. For small PA systems the sound is readily recognized as a loud squeal or screech. The principles of audio feedback were first discovered by Danish scientist Søren Absalon Larsen, hence the name "Larsen Effect".
Feedback is almost always considered undesirable when it occurs with a singer's or public speaker's microphone at an event using a sound reinforcement system or PA system. Audio engineers use highly directional cardioid microphones and various electronic devices, such as equalizers and, since the 1990s, automatic feedback detection devices to prevent these unwanted squeals or screeching sounds, which detract from the audience's enjoyment of the event. On the other hand, since the 1960s, electric guitar players in rock music bands using loud guitar amplifiers, speaker cabinets and distortion effects have intentionally created guitar feedback to create different sounds including long sustained tones that cannot be produced using standard playing techniques. The sound of guitar feedback is considered to be a desirable musical effect in heavy metal music, hardcore punk and grunge. Jimi Hendrix was an innovator in the intentional use of guitar feedback, alongside effects units such as the Univibe and wah-wah pedal in his guitar solos to create unique sound effects and musical sounds.
History and theory [ edit ]
The conditions for feedback follow the Barkhausen stability criterion, namely that, with sufficiently high gain, a stable oscillation can (and usually will) occur in a feedback loop whose frequency is such that the phase delay is an integer multiple of 360 degrees and the gain at that frequency is equal to 1. If the small signal gain is greater than 1 for some frequency then the system will start to oscillate at that frequency because noise at that frequency will be amplified. Sound will be produced without anyone actually playing. The sound level will increase until the output starts clipping, reducing the loop gain to exactly unity. This is the principle upon which electronic oscillators are based; although in that case the feedback loop is purely electronic, the principle is the same. If the gain is large, but slightly less than 1, then high-pitched slowly decaying feedback tones will be created, but only when at least some input sound is already being sent through the system, such as through a microphone.
Early academic work on acoustical feedback was done by Dr. C. Paul Boner. Boner reasoned that when feedback happened, it did so at one precise frequency. He also reasoned that it could be stopped by inserting a very narrow notch filter at that frequency in the loudspeaker's signal chain.[2] He worked with Gifford White, founder of White Instruments to hand craft notch filters for specific feedback frequencies in specific rooms. Boner was responsible for establishing basic theories of acoustic feedback, room-ring modes, and room-sound system equalizing techniques.[3]
Distance [ edit ]
To maximize gain before feedback, the amount of sound energy that is fed back to the microphones must be reduced as much as is practical. As sound pressure falls off with 1/r with respect to the distance r in free space, or up to a distance known as reverberation distance in closed spaces (and the energy density with 1/r²), it is important to keep the microphones at a large enough distance from the speaker systems. As well, microphones should not be positioned in front of speakers and individuals using mics should be asked to avoid pointing the microphone at speaker enclosures.
Directivity [ edit ]
Additionally, the loudspeakers and microphones should have non-uniform directivity and should stay out of the maximum sensitivity of each other, ideally at a direction of cancellation. Public address speakers often achieve directivity in the mid and treble region (and good efficiency) via horn systems. Sometimes the woofers have a cardioid characteristic.
Professional setups circumvent feedback by placing the main speakers a far distance from the band or artist, and then having several smaller speakers known as monitors pointing back at each band member, but in the opposite direction to that in which the microphones are pointing. This allows independent control of the sound pressure levels for the audience and the performers.
If monitors are oriented at 180 degrees to the microphones that are their sources, the microphones should have a cardioid pickup pattern. Super- or hypercardioid patterns are suitable if the monitor speakers are located at a different angle on the back side of the microphones, they also better cancel reverberations coming from elsewhere. Almost all microphones for sound reinforcement are directional.
Frequency response [ edit ]
Almost always, the natural frequency responses of sound reinforcement systems is not ideally flat. This leads to acoustical feedback at the frequency with the highest loop gain, which may be much higher than the average gain over all frequencies (resonance). It is therefore helpful to apply some form of equalization to reduce the gain of this frequency.
Feedback can be reduced manually by "ringing out" a sound system prior to a performance. The sound engineer can increase the level of a microphone or guitar pickup until feedback occurs. The engineer can then attenuate the relevant frequency on an equalizer preventing feedback at that frequency but allowing sufficient volume at other frequencies. Many professional sound engineers can identify feedback frequencies by ear but others use a real time analyzer to identify the ringing frequency.
To avoid feedback, automatic anti-feedback devices can be used. (In the marketplace these go by the name "feedback destroyer" or "feedback eliminator".) Some of these work by shifting the frequency slightly, with this upshift resulting in a "chirp"-sound instead of a howling sound of unaddressed feedback. Other devices use sharp notch-filters to filter out offending frequencies. Adaptive algorithms are often used to automatically tune these notch filters.
Deliberate uses [ edit ]
Electric guitarist Jimi Hendrix , pictured here in a 1967 concert, was an innovator in the use of guitar feedback effects.
To intentionally create feedback, an electric guitar player needs a guitar amplifier and a loudspeaker cabinet, with very high gain (amplification) and/or the guitar brought near the speaker. The guitarist then allows the open strings to vibrate freely and brings the guitar close to the speaker enclosure of the guitar amp. The use of distortion effects units also facilitates the creation of intentional feedback.
Early examples in popular music [ edit ]
A deliberate use of acoustic feedback was pioneered by Blues and Rock'n'Roll guitarists such as Willie Johnson, Johnny Watson and Link Wray. According to AllMusic's Richie Unterberger, the very first use of feedback on a commercial rock record is the introduction of the song "I Feel Fine" by the Beatles, recorded in 1964.[4] Jay Hodgson agrees that it was the first chart-topper to showcase feedback distortion, created by John Lennon leaning a semi-acoustic guitar against an amplifier.[5] The Who's 1965 hits "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" and "My Generation" featured feedback manipulation by Pete Townshend, with an extended solo in the former and the shaking of his guitar in front of the amplifier to create a throbbing noise in the latter. Canned Heat's "Fried Hockey Boogie" (off of their 1968 album Boogie with Canned Heat) also featured guitar feedback produced by Henry Vestine during his solo to create a highly amplified distorted boogie style of feedback. In 1963, the teenage Brian May and his father custom-built his signature guitar Red Special, which was purposely designed to feed back.[6][7]
Feedback was used extensively after 1965 by the Monks,[8] Jefferson Airplane, the Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead, who included in many of their live shows a segment named Feedback, a several-minutes long feedback-driven improvisation. Feedback has since become a striking characteristic of rock music, as electric guitar players such as Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Dave Davies, Steve Marriott and Jimi Hendrix deliberately induced feedback by holding their guitars close to the amplifier's speaker. Lou Reed created his 1975 album Metal Machine Music entirely from loops of feedback played at various speeds. An example of feedback can be heard on Hendrix's performance of "Can You See Me?" at the Monterey Pop Festival. The entire guitar solo was created using amplifier feedback.[9]
Introductions, transitions, and fade-outs [ edit ]
In addition to "I Feel Fine", feedback was used on the introduction to songs including Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady", the Beatles' "It's All Too Much", Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic", David Bowie's "Little Wonder", the Strokes's "New York City Cops", Ben Folds Five's "Fair", Midnight Juggernauts's "Road To Recovery", Nirvana's "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter", the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Tumbledown" and "Catchfire", the Stone Roses's "Waterfall", Porno for Pyros's "Tahitian Moon", Tool's "Stinkfist", and the Cure's "Prayer For Rain".[10] Examples of feedback combined with a quick volume swell used as a transition include Weezer's "My Name Is Jonas" and "Say It Ain't So"; The Strokes' "Reptilia", "New York City Cops", Dream Theater's As I Am, and "Juicebox"; as well as numerous tracks by Meshuggah and Tool.[11]
Cacophonous feedback fade-outs ending a song are most often used to generate rather than relieve tension, often cross-faded too after a thematic and musical release. Examples include Modwheelmood's remix of Nine Inch Nail's "The Great Destroyer"; and the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Teenage Lust", "Tumbledown", "Catchfire", "Sundown", and "Frequency".[12]
Examples in modern classical music [ edit ]
Though closed circuit feedback was a prominent feature in many early experimental electronic music compositions, it was contemporary American composer Robert Ashley who first used acoustic feedback as sound material in his work The Wolfman (1964). Steve Reich makes extensive use of audio feedback in his work Pendulum Music (1968) by swinging a series of microphones back and forth in front of their corresponding amplifiers.[13] Hugh Davies [14] and Alvin Lucier [15] both use feedback in their works. More recent examples can be found in the work of for example Lara Stanic,[16] Paul Craenen,[17] Anne Wellmer,[18] Adam Basanta,[19] Lesley Flanigan,[20] Ronald Boersen [21] and Erfan Abdi.[22].
Pitched feedback [ edit ]
Pitched melodies may be created entirely from feedback through changing the angle between a guitar and amplifier after establishing a feedback loop. Examples include Tool's "Jambi", Robert Fripp's guitar on David Bowie's "Heroes" (album version), and Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone From The Sun" and his live performance of "Wild Thing" at the Monterey Pop Festival.[23]
Regarding Fripp's work on "Heroes":
Fripp [stood] in the right place with his volume up at the right level and getting feedback...Fripp had a technique in those days where he measured the distance between the guitar and the speaker where each note would feed back. For instance, an 'A' would feed back maybe at about four feet from the speaker, whereas a 'G' would feed back maybe three and a half feet from it. He had a strip that they would place on the floor, and when he was playing the note 'F' sharp he would stand on the strip's 'F' sharp point and 'F' sharp would feed back better. He really worked this out to a fine science, and we were playing this at a terrific level in the studio, too. Tony Visconti[24]
Contemporary uses [ edit ]
Audio feedback became a signature feature of many underground rock bands during the 1980s. American noise-rockers Sonic Youth melded the rock-feedback tradition with a compositional/classical approach (notably covering Reich's "Pendulum Music"), and guitarist/producer Steve Albini's group Big Black also worked controlled feedback into the makeup of their songs. With the alternative rock movement of the 1990s, feedback again saw a surge in popular usage by suddenly mainstream acts like Nirvana, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine and the Smashing Pumpkins.
Devices [ edit ]
The Boss DF-2 Super Feedbacker and Distortion pedal (on the left) helps electric guitarists to create feedback effects.
The principle of feedback is used in many guitar sustain devices. Examples include handheld devices like the EBow, built-in guitar pickups that increase the instrument's sonic sustain, string drivers mounted on a stand such as the Guitar Resonator, and sonic transducers mounted on the head of a guitar. Intended closed-circuit feedback can also be created by an effects unit, such as a delay pedal or effect fed back into a mixing console. The feedback can be controlled by using the fader to determine a volume level. The Boss DF-2 Super Feedbacker and Distortion pedal is an electronic effect unit that helps electric guitarists to create feedback effects.
See also [ edit ] |
Manson and his ‘family’ became notorious for the murder of Sharon Tate and six others during the summer of 1969
Charles Manson, the pseudo-satanic sociopath behind a string of killings that shocked California out of its late 1960s cultural reverie, died on Sunday after almost a half century in prison.
The 83-year-old, who died of natural causes, had been serving multiple life sentences in state prison in Corcoran, California, for orchestrating the violence in 1969 that claimed the lives of Sharon Tate, the heavily pregnant wife of film director Roman Polanski, and six others.
While his death prompted the inevitable and renewed questioning around why his grim notoriety had been so enduring, Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County, said: “Today, Manson’s victims are the ones who should be remembered and mourned on the occasion of his death.”
She went on to quote the late Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor who put Manson behind bars, who had said: “Manson was an evil, sophisticated conman with twisted and warped moral values.”
Quick guide A quick guide to Charles Manson Show Hide Who was Charles Manson? Charles Manson was one of the most notorious murderers of the 20th century. He led a cult known as the Manson Family in California, most of whom were disaffected young women. Some became killers under his messianic influence. Murder from afar Despite spending more than 40 years in prison for the murders of seven people in 1969, Manson did not carry out the killings. Instead he convinced members of his ‘family’ to murder. One of their victims was the actor Sharon Tate, who was married to Roman Polanski and was more than eight months' pregnant when she was killed. Celebrity friends By the time of his trial in 1971, Manson had spent half of his life in correctional institutions for various crimes. He became a singer-songwriter before the Tate murders and got a break in the music industry when he met Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson, who let him crash at his home. Helter Skelter It is believed that Manson intended using the murders to incite an apocalyptic race war he called Helter Skelter, taking the name from the Beatles song. Notorious by name The killings and the seven-month trial that followed were the subjects of fevered news coverage in the US. Manson occupied a dark, persistent place in American culture, inspiring music, T-shirts and half the stage name of musician Marilyn Manson. Photograph: Los Angeles Times
As the leader of a cult known as the Manson Family, Manson had instructed his followers, made up mostly of disaffected young women, to carry out the killings. The brutality of the murders set Los Angeles on edge, and ended the sunny optimism of the 60s counterculture and its aspirations to a new society built on peace and love. Manson presented himself as a demonic force: at trial, he carved a Nazi swastika into his forehead.
The five received the death penalty but were spared when capital punishment was temporarily abolished following a ruling by the supreme court in 1972.
Manson and three female followers, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten, were convicted of murder and conspiracy to murder. Another defendant, Charles “Tex” Watson, was convicted later.
The second summer of Charles Manson: why the cult murders still grip us Read more
Tate, the wife of Polanski, who was out of the country the night of her murder, was eight and a half months pregnant when Manson’s followers broke into her home in Los Angeles. They stabbed and shot Tate and her visitors, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, coffee heiress Abigail Folger and Steven Parent. The word “Pig” was written in blood on the front door. Tate, who had starred in The Valley of the Dolls, was stabbed 16 times, and an “X” was carved into her stomach.
The next night, his followers murdered couple Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.
Although the followers committed the murders, Manson had ordered them. At the LaBianca home, he tied up the couple before leaving others to carry out the killings.
After his death on Sunday night, Tate’s sister Debra told NBC: “One could say I’ve forgiven them, which is quite different than forgetting what they are capable of. It is for this reason I fight so hard to make sure that each of these individuals stays in prison until the end of their natural days.”
In the 2004 book Sharon Tate Recollection, Polanski wrote: “Even after so many years, I find myself unable to watch a spectacular sunset or visit a lovely old house or experience visual pleasure of any kind without instinctively telling myself how much she would have loved it all.”
Prosecutors at the time said Manson and his cult were trying to spark a race war that he believed was foretold in the Beatles song Helter Skelter, and hoped the Black Panthers would be blamed for the killings.
Before the murders, Manson spent most of his teens and 20s in and out of prison, and he later became a singer-songwriter. He got a break in the music industry when he met the Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. The group later recorded Never Learn Not to Love, which Manson had written.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Manson in a 2017 California department of corrections photo. Photograph: Reuters
He became friends with the Byrds producer Terry Melcher (the son of Doris Day) and even recorded 13 folksy songs for an album that eventually was titled Lie: The Love and Terror Cult; it was released in March 1970 to help pay for his defense.
Manson had established himself as a would-be cult leader in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. He took a handful of followers, some of whom would later be convicted in the killings, to the old Spahn Movie Ranch north of LA and turned it into a hedonistic commune.
Van Houten, the youngest member of the original Manson Family, later said that Manson had used sex, LSD, Bible readings, repeated playing of the Beatles’ White Album and rambling lectures about triggering a revolution to brainwash her.
Van Houten, 68, was convicted of the killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. She was recommended for parole in September but California’s governor, Jerry Brown, has yet to approve the recommendation. He rejected an earlier decision, concluding that Van Houten posed “an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison”.
In June, officials denied a parole request by Krenwinkel, the state’s longest-serving female prisoner, after her attorney said she had been abused by Manson or another person. She has been denied parole multiple times in the past.
Manson’s lawyer, Irving Kanarek, claimed his client was innocent during a 2014 interview with the Guardian. “No question he was legally innocent. And, more than that, he was actually innocent,” Kanarek said, arguing that there was no evidence connecting him to the case.
At a 2012 parole hearing, which was denied, Manson was quoted as having said to one of his prison psychologists: “I’m special. I’m not like the average inmate. I have spent my life in prison. I have put five people in the grave. I am a very dangerous man.”
Charles Manson – a life in pictures Read more
According to the LA Times, Manson committed hundreds of rules violations while being held at the Corcoran state prison, including assault, repeated possession of a weapon and threatening staff. Officials said he has spat in guards’ faces, started fights, tried to cause a flood and set his mattress ablaze.
In 2014, Manson and Afton Elaine Burton, a 26-year-old Manson devotee, were granted a marriage license, but it expired before the two could marry. She had faithfully visited him in prison for seven years. Manson had been denied parole 12 times, with his next hearing set for 2027.
His death is unlikely to end interest in his crimes. Quentin Tarantino is believed to be preparing a film that uses the murders as a backdrop for its main plot, and an adaptation of Emma Cline’s bestselling 2016 novel, The Girls, is on the way.
Writer Joan Didion interviewed Linda Kasabian, the Manson family member who acted as a lookout in the Tate and LaBianca killings and later gave evidence at the trial, and described the atmosphere in Hollywood in an essay from her collection The White Album (1979).
“Everything was unmentionable but nothing was unimaginable…” Didion wrote. “A demented and seductive vortical tension was building in the community. The jitters were setting in. I recall a time when the dogs barked every night and the moon was always full.
“I remember that no one was surprised.”
Reached at home in Manhattan, Didion, 82, told the Guardian: “Manson’s legacy was never obvious to me. It wasn’t obvious when I went to talk with Linda Kasabian, and it isn’t obvious to me now. But I do find it easy to put him from my mind.”
In 2008, California officials ordered the search of a deserted ranch in Death Valley where Manson and his family briefly resided. The search turned up no evidence of human remains.
Manson may be gone but the persistence of his dark vision endures. “I am crime,” he proclaimed in a telephone call to the New York Post from prison in the mid-2000s. |
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Three serial killers who targeted members of Hungary’s Roma minority in 2008 and 2009 were jailed for life on Tuesday, the state news agency MTI reported on Tuesday.
The 18 months of violence, in which six people, including a small child, were killed and several more were injured, highlighted Hungary’s difficulties in integrating its 500,000-strong Roma population. The killers were caught in August 2009.
The killings came at a time when Hungary, a landlocked central European nation of 10 million, underwent economic and political crisis. Its gross domestic output plummeted, its government collapsed and the far-right Jobbik party rose to prominence.
The three perpetrators were Zsolt Peto and the brothers Istvan Kiss and Arpad Kiss, militants with skinhead pasts from eastern Hungary.
The country’s top court passed the harshest possible sentence for a crime that a judge at a lower court said was a showcase to demonstrate that racist murders would incur the toughest penalties.
A fourth accomplice, Istvan Csontos, who drove the murderers on their criminal outings, got a 13-year sentence last year.
The string of murders played out gradually, with the country slowly realizing that the perpetrators were the same people following a racist ideology. Several people, including Roma, were erroneously detained at early stages for the first attacks.
After several non-lethal attacks they committed their first murder in November 2008, killing two people.
In February 2009 they struck in Tatarszentgyorgy, central Hungary, setting a house on fire and shooting a 28-year-old Roma man and his 5-year old son who were fleeing the flames in what became the single most gruesome of the attacks.
The long trial inspired a documentary, titled Sentence in Hungary. Its director Eszter Hajdu told the news web site Origo that she hoped the film would forge unity among the Roma.
“I kept wondering why Jews like to watch Holocaust movies,” she said. “While making this film I understood it taught vigilance and lead to emancipation.”
“After this film it will no longer be possible to engage in a good old round of Roma bashing.” |
LOS ANGELES, CA - JULY 27: A job seeker listens to The Home Depot recruiter Andrew Rodriguez at the Diversity Job Fair during the NAACP's 102nd annual national convention at the Los Angeles Convention Center on July 27, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. California's state unemployment rate for June rose slightly to 11.8 percent, even as employers added workers. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
Home Depot has agreed to pay a former cashier $100,000 for firing her while she was on unpaid leave battling cancer.
Judy Henderson, who started working for Home Depot in Maryland in 1997, was fired in 2010 after notifying the company that she would extend her sick leave longer than expected because of a cancerous tumor. The company cited a seasonal slowdown as the reason for terminating Henderson, but not before hiring a new cashier to replace her.
Under the settlement reached Tuesday, Home Depot will be forced to pay Henderson $100,000 and also give anti-discrimination training to employees at the company, according to court documents.
Stephen Holmes, a Home Depot spokesman, said in an email to The Huffington Post that the Atlanta-based retailer does not admit any wrongdoing in its recent settlement with Henderson.
“We ... do not believe we violated the law with respect to Ms. Henderson, as we have accommodated her on numerous occasions in different ways throughout her thirteen years of employment -- including four and half years of cumulative leave,” Holmes added.
Home Depot isn’t the only retailer that has faced allegations it illegally dismissed disabled staff. Several years ago, a Wal-Mart employee who suffered from a heart condition that causes shortness of breath and difficulty walking was denied a handicap parking space and then fired when he filed a complaint.
Workplace discrimination cases have risen to record levels in the U.S., according to a government study released earlier this year. In 2011, the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission received an all-time annual high of 99,947 complaints alleging worker discrimination. About 26 percent charged employers with discriminating on the basis of a disability.
Compared with other industrialized nations, the U.S. has a poor track record when it comes to accommodating disabled workers. A 2009 study of 22 “rich countries” found the U.S. is the only one that does not provide paid sick leave for a worker undergoing a 50-day cancer treatment. It is also one of only three rich nations that does not give paid leave to a worker missing 5 days because of the flu.
Recent efforts that aim to force private companies to grant employees more paid sick time have met with limited success.
(Hat tip: the Atlanta Journal Constitution.) |
The election campaign is heating up, so much so that even your pyjama-wearing, junk-food-eating Netflix binges are the subject of an official Conservative Party announcement.
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has just released a new party video, explaining that, just like everybody else, he loves movies and TV. In fact, he loves them so much that he’s 100 per cent against a Netflix tax.
I love movies and TV shows. I'm 100% against a #Netflix tax. Always have been, always will be #NoNetflixTax #elxn42 https://t.co/oUYgTkXH3q — Stephen Harper (@pmharper) August 5, 2015
“Some politicians want to tax digital streaming services, like Netflix and YouTube. Some have even called on us to introduce a Netflix tax. Now, Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair have left the door wide open to doing just that. I’m 100 per cent against a Netflix tax. Always have been, always will be.”
He goes on to say that voters can trust the Conservative Party since they’re the only ones to “focus on the needs of Canadian consumers”.
The hashtag #NoNetflixTax is now trending on Twitter in Canada, but perhaps not for the reason Harper would want. Instead, many are ridiculing the party and sarcastically thanking Harper for addressing the important issues.
#nonetflixtax Thanks focusing on the big issues Canadians care about! Who cares about PR, minimum wage, healthcare, or climate change! — Andrew (@xaxxryx) August 5, 2015
Fun fact: the world just learned that Breaking Bad is one of Harper’s all-time favourites.
#NoNetflixTax Cons are now making up imaginary taxes and then opposing them. We are through the looking glass, people. #elxn42 — Jeff Mackey (@Jeffrey_Mackey) August 5, 2015
I love how @pmharper's #NoNetflixTax pledge is driving the Left bonkers. — Blaise Boehmer (@boehmerB) August 5, 2015
Harper must think we are cats. We're occupied by real issues and he's franticly dangling Netflix tax at us. #NoNetflixTax #elxn42 #cdnpoli — Mary Linville (@mrsdrjim) August 5, 2015 |
Marinus (Rinus) van der Lubbe (13 January 1909 – 10 January 1934) was a Dutch council communist tried, convicted and executed for setting fire to the German Reichstag building on 27 February 1933, an event known as the Reichstag fire.
Biography [ edit ]
Marinus van der Lubbe was born in Leiden in the province of South Holland. His parents were divorced and, after his mother died when he was twelve years old, he went to live with his half-sister's family. In his youth, Van der Lubbe worked as a bricklayer. He was nicknamed Dempsey after boxer Jack Dempsey, because of his great strength. While working, Van der Lubbe came in contact with the labour movement; in 1925, he joined the Dutch Communist Party (CPN), and its youth wing; the Communist Youth Bund (CJB).
In 1926, he was injured at work, getting lime in his eyes, which left him in the hospital for a few months and almost left him blind. The injury forced him to quit his job, so he was unemployed with a pension of only 7.44 guilders a week. After a few conflicts with his sister, Van der Lubbe moved to Leiden in 1927. There he learned to speak some German and founded the Lenin House, where he organised political meetings. While working for the Tielmann factory a strike broke out. Van der Lubbe claimed to the management to be one of the ringleaders and offered to accept any punishment as long as no one else was victimised, even though he was clearly too inexperienced to have been seriously involved. During the trial, he tried to claim sole responsibility and was purportedly hostile to the idea of getting off free.
Afterwards, Van der Lubbe planned to emigrate to the Soviet Union, but he lacked the funds to do so. He was politically active among the unemployed workers' movement until 1931, when he fell into disagreement with the CPN and instead approached the Group of International Communists.[citation needed] In 1933, Van der Lubbe fled to Germany to take action in the local communist underground. He had a criminal record for arson.
Reichstag Fire (1933) [ edit ]
Van der Lubbe said that he set the Reichstag building on fire as a cry to rally the German workers against the fascist rule. He was brought to trial along with the head of the German Communist Party and three Bulgarian members of the Comintern. At his trial, Van der Lubbe was convicted and sentenced to death for the Reichstag fire. The other four defendants (Ernst Torgler, Georgi Dimitrov, Blagoi Popov, and Vasil Tanev) at the trial were acquitted. He was guillotined in a Leipzig prison yard on 10 January 1934, three days before his 25th birthday. He was buried in an unmarked grave on the Südfriedhof (South Cemetery) in Leipzig.
After World War II, moves were made by Marinus van der Lubbe's brother, Jan van der Lubbe, in an attempt to overturn the verdict against his brother. In 1967, his sentence was changed by a judge from death to eight years in prison. In 1980, after more lengthy complaints, a West German court overturned the verdict entirely but this was protested by the state prosecutor. The case was re-examined by the Federal Court of Justice of Germany for three years until, in 1983, the court made a final decision on the matter, overturning the result of the earlier 1980 trial on grounds that there was no basis for it, making it therefore illegal. However, on December 6, 2007, the Attorney General of Germany Monika Harms nullified the entire verdict and posthumously pardoned Van der Lubbe based on a 1998 German law that makes it possible to overturn certain cases of Nazi injustice. The determination of the court was based on the premise that the National Socialist regime was by definition unjust; and, since the death sentence in this case was politically motivated, it was likely to have contained an extension of that injustice. The finding was independent of the factual question of whether or not it was Van der Lubbe who actually set the fire.[1][2][3]
Claimed responsibility for the Reichstag Fire [ edit ]
The window through which Van der Lubbe allegedly entered the building.
Memorial at the Südfriedhof in Leipzig.
Historians disagree as to whether Van der Lubbe acted alone, as he said, to protest the condition of the German working class. The Nazis blamed a communist conspiracy. The responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains an ongoing topic of debate and research.[4][5] According to Ian Kershaw, writing in 1998, the consensus of nearly all historians is that Van der Lubbe did, in fact, set the Reichstag fire.[6] William Shirer writing in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" surmises that Van der Lubbe was goaded into setting a fire at the Reichstag, but the Nazis set their own, more elaborate fire at the same time. The case is still actively discussed.
In July 1933, Marinus van der Lubbe, Ernst Torgler, Georgi Dimitrov, Blagoi Popov, and Vasil Tanev were indicted on charges of setting the Reichstag on fire. From September 21 to December 23, 1933, the Leipzig Trial took place and was presided over by judges from the old German Imperial High Court, the Reichsgericht, Germany's highest court. The presiding judge was Judge Dr. Wilhelm Bürger of the Fourth Criminal Court of the Fourth Penal Chamber of the Supreme Court.[7] The accused were charged with arson and with attempting to overthrow the government. At the end of the trial, however, only Van der Lubbe was convicted, while his fellow defendants were found not guilty.
In popular culture [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
2Awesome Studio, the team behind a Kickstarter campaign for the shooter Dimension Drive, just had their hearts put through the ringer.
With their time almost up, and with thousands remaining to hit their goal, a single backer appeared out of nowhere and pledged €7000.
The devs were, unsurprisingly, thrilled.
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But then, heartbreak.
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The clock has since run out, and the game was just under €7000 short of hitting its goal.
“We honestly do not know what to say”, 2Awesome’s Alejandro Santiago tells Kotaku. “We are quite devastated in the team right now. It has been a roller-coaster night for us to be honest.”
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2Awesome say the pledge, which was made a few hours before the campaign’s closure, was withdrawn by Kickstarter for being “fraudulent” with only 31 minutes remaining.
“Honestly speaking it has been a exhausting month for us. We have been working really hard to make our campaign a success, and right now we are speechless, demoralized, you name it”.
A Kickstarter rep tells Kotaku that the user behind the fraudulent bid has been suspended.
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It’s one thing to have a game come up short on Kickstarter. Shit happens, the market pays for what the market wants, etc. But nobody should have to go through this. |
It's been a rough day for Microsoft. Several NeoGAF users discovered a lot of information, including videos and images, about what will be included in Microsoft's E3 2016 press conference tomorrow. These users have been slowly posting screenshots from the trailers over the course of the day. Microsoft has been largely silent, but it finally has released a statement on all of the leaks: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
That's it. Seriously. Microsoft provided GameSpot with its official response to the leaks, and it's an ASCII emoji followed by a link to Microsoft's E3 page. Although, you can't really blame the feeling--it's probably not fun to see all the reveals get ruined early.
However, although much of the information has been leaked already, the users with the information have yet to share full videos. This means that whatever gameplay Microsoft will show off tomorrow is still under wraps.
To recap, we've found out today that Dead Rising 4 is real and got some GIFs of gameplay, Recore's release date and a few screenshots were posted, and the Xbox One S was leaked. You can read about all of them here. Keep an eye on GameSpot for more news from these leaks as well as from the Microsoft press conference tomorrow! |
White House special counselor Ivanka Trump pushed back Tuesday on a German newspaper that called her a “loyal accomplice” to her father, President Trump.
“I don't like the word ‘accomplice’ because in this context, I don’t know that that’s productive,” Trump told NBC News’ Hallie Jackson.
Trump traveled to Berlin, Germany to participate in a women's panel at the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This is her first trip abroad in an official capacity as a White House employee.
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Berliner Zeitung, a daily Berlin-based newspaper, called Ivanka Trump a loyal accomplice according to a CNN translation.
The first daughter also addressed whether she pushes President Trump in a more moderate direction, saying he is open to “divergent viewpoints.”
“One of the things that I value about my father, as first a businessman and now as the leader of our country, is that he curates ideas and he likes to hear from people with divergent viewpoints. And that’s not always true in politics. It’s actually seldom true,” she said.
More of the interview will air Tuesday night on NBC’s “Nightly News with Lester Holt” and Wednesday morning on NBC’s “Today.” |
RIM seems to be learning very quickly that when it rains, it pours. Word of a BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) outage quickly began making the rounds this morning, leaving (once) loyal customers in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East without email and web access.
This is the second outage RIM has dealt with in as many months: their popular BBM service went down this past September, shortly after the company released their disappointing quarterly financials.
For what it’s worth, it’s business as usual for corporate users as BlackBerry Enterprise services don’t seem to have suffered the same fate.
In usual RIM fashion, they’ve acknowledged the issue through their official Twitter account, but they’re keeping quiet when it comes to what caused the outage or how people are currently being affected. A little legwork by The Telegraph points to a server at Slough as being the likely culprit as all three regions affected by the outage are all served by the Slough data center. There’s still no ETA for a fix, but some users are reporting that service is slowly being restored so the wait may soon be over.
https://twitter.com/#!/BlackBerryHelp/status/123437227324870658
BlackBerry users the world over are understandably miffed at RIM, and who knows how events like this will shape the Canadian company’s future. Their stock price recently hit a new five year low, and these outages aren’t likely to instill customers with much confidence. It’s up to RIM to fix things, dust themselves off, and keeping working, but company morale has to be taking a beating right now. |
TOPEKA - When former State Sen. Ruth Teichman, Stafford, was asked to join fellow Republican leaders in an endorsement of Democratic House Minority Leader Paul Davis for governor, she said yes - "right away," she added.
"I am concerned with the direction this state is going," said Teichman Tuesday. She and 103 current and former Republican officeholders from across Kansas are throwing their support to Davis in his coming race against Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.
"Historic" and "unprecedented" were adjectives the Paul Davis-Jill Docking campaign ticket used in the press release Monday to tout the announcement to occur Tuesday morning in Topeka. The campaign said multiple endorsements would be made, but kept a tight lid on the names.
At 11 a.m. Tuesday, about 40 people entered the ballroom in the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center in downtown Topeka, filling a riser that included Davis and Docking. Former State Senate President Steve Morris, Hugoton, and former State Sen. Fred Kerr, Pratt, were there, along with State Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger.
Speakers roasted Brownback's tax code changes and handling of the state budget. They repeatedly chastised Brownback over school funding.
Brownback has exhibited a "divisive" and "hyper-partisan brand of leadership," said former State Sen. Wint Winter Jr., Lawrence.
Supporting a Democrat for governor "is a big step for every one of us," said former State Senate President Dick Bond, Overland Park, a life-long Republican.
The Republicans indicated they won't change parties - they'll just work for the victory of Davis-Docking in the November general election.
Docking said she was conducting door-to-door campaigning Monday, and that's something "all these folks know how to do."
"They're all willing to help us," Docking said.
Among the 104 names on the list of Republicans for Kansas Values were, from this region: Reno County Commissioner Brad Dillon and former Newton Mayor Marge Roberson, and former state legislators Bob Frey, Liberal, and Fred Gatlin, Atwood. Ted and Sue Ice, Newton, former delegates to Republican National Conventions, were on the list, as well as former State Rep. Ellen Samuelson, Hesston, and former State Board of Education member Sonny Rundell, Syracuse.
"Absolutely," Morris said, when asked later if he will remain a Republican. "We're also loyal Kansans. To us the future of this state comes first," he said.
"This is all about policy," said Kerr, criticizing the Brownback income tax cuts as "distorted" in favor of the wealthy.
As for the potential impact on the Kansas Republican Party, Kerr said, "Ultimately I hope the Kansas Republican Party comes back to the mainstream."
Read more in the Wednesday edition of The News. |
Published
Associate Professor Jacqui Ewart and Professor Mark Pearson from the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science answer key questions about their flagship Reporting Islam Project.
What is this project about?
The Reporting Islam Project is developing user-friendly and readily accessible resources underpinned by research-based evidence to help journalists adopt more mindful practices in stories about Islam and Muslims. It is believed that fair, ethical and accurate reporting on matters involving Islam and Muslim communities will help promote social cohesion and may assist in the reduction of community tensions.
While it is a highly nuanced body of scholarship, the research overwhelmingly highlights the problematic nature of the framing of Islam and Muslims by Western news media. This includes routine negative stereotyping of Islam and its adherents, the incorrect use of key terms in news stories, a lack of Muslim sources or voices in news stories, the portrayal of Muslims as religious or cultural “others” at odds with democracy and Western values, the conflation of Islam with violence and terrorism, and the portrayal of Islam as a religion that condones both.
The independent research project is national in its ambit and has been funded under a competitive grants scheme facilitated by the Commonwealth’s Attorney-General’s Department (about $480,000 has been allocated over the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 financial years).
We completed stage 1 of the project in June 2015. This involved an extensive review of the literature about news media coverage of Islam and Muslim people, an assessment of case studies of news media reportage across media types at national and community levels, interviews with experts in the field, and the distillation of international studies to develop a schema for assessing reportage against world best practice in the area. We recommended the development of a suite of research-driven curricula, training and resources to better equip the news media report more mindfully in this space.
Stage 2 of the project started in mid-2015 and we are due to complete it in mid-2016. Funding for a third stage in 2016-2017 will be subject to a new application process under the Commonwealth competitive grant scheme.
In the current stage of our project we are being supported by a full-time Project Manager (Mr Abdi Hersi), a full-time Principal Research Fellow (Dr Kate O’Donnell) and part-time Muslim researchers and/or trainers.
What resources are being developed?
Our focus is on developing key training and education resources for journalists, journalism educators and journalism students. These are:
A database-supported app for Mac and Android as an easy access tool for information, reporting tips and suggestions for journalists and journalism students; A website to host electronic copies of training and education materials and to provide an interface with identified stakeholders and collaborators via comment streams and social media engagement; Case studies and a range of print materials; Audio-visual material focusing on scenarios/role playing in relation to possible issues that might arise in the research and reporting of stories about Islam and Muslims; A Handbook of Reportage for journalism, focusing on tips and suggestions for covering stories involving Islam and Muslims, as well as suggestions for considering legal issues that might arise in the course of covering such stories.
Who are you consulting with during the project?
Open communications, consultations and meaningful collaborative relationships with a broad range of key stakeholders underpin this project. In 2015 an Expert Advisory Panel was formed to provide input into the Project, shape its direction and influence its outcomes. Members of this panel include key Muslim community members, international academic experts, educators and leading media industry personnel. This panel has been and will continue to be consulted throughout the Project.
Every effort has been made to include Muslims and journalists in the project to ensure that their voices resonate throughout the training and education resources being developed. For example, we recorded an interview with leading foreign correspondent Peter Greste on the need for more mindful coverage of Islam, while Muslim academic and community leader Professor Mohamad Abdalla explains the potential impact of adverse media coverage on Muslim people.
Having successfully trialled the resources, we are now rolling out training for a broad range of media practitioners including editors and news directors, sub-editors and producers, social media editors, digital media professionals, journalists, journalism educators and journalism students at selected locations across Australia.
What are the key research outputs?
There is a strong research dimension to this project, with several conference presentations already presented and planned, a journal article under review and several in progress, and a book proposal drafted. We are running a training session at the International Communication Association Conference in Japan in June 2016 and presenting a paper at the World Journalism Education Conference in Auckland in July 2016.
Where can I get more information?
More information is progressively being made available on the Project’s website. See www.reportingislam.org. |
FLINT, MI -- An insurance company representing Genesee County said in a federal lawsuit that it should not have to help the county pay a $36.6 million trial verdict from a jail beating lawsuit.
Ironshore Specialty Insurance Company filed the lawsuit last month in Detroit U.S. District Court alleging it's not responsible for covering damages against Genesee County after jurors found five jail deputies used excessive force against inmate William Jennings.
The company was the excessive liability insurer for Genesee County at the time Jennings was beaten inside the Genesee County Jail following an arrest for suspected drunken driving on Sept. 18, 2010.
It's asking a federal judge to rule that it has no duty to cover the damages or defend the county in the Jennings case, which was filed in August 2013.
Jennings suffered a trauma-induced cataract in one eye, a torn rotator cuff, broken facial bones, nerve damage in one of his hands and a chipped tooth as a result of the beating.
Genesee County Board of Commissioners went into executive session on Monday, April 3, to discuss the lawsuit brought by Ironshore, according to Commissioner Bryant Nolden.
"We're just now getting the information," Nolden said. "That's what we were in closed session for, so I really can't discuss that."
Nolden forwarded further questions to the county's corporation counsel. Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton, who serves as corporation counsel, directed questions to attorney Edward Davison, who was hired to represent the county in the case.
Davison said his response to the lawsuit should be filed by the end of the week.
"They don't feel like they should pay," Davison said of Ironshore. "The county, the deputies and I think they should. It's a relative fairly common way of dealing with things with insurance companies."
The lawsuit filed by Ironshore claims the company carried a liability insurance policy for the county that was to cover claims in excess of the county's underlying liability insurance with another company, Everest National Insurance Company.
Genesee County is self-insured to an extent, according to attorney Edward Davison, adding that it was basically like a deductible one would pay on homeowners or auto insurance.
The next layer is the primary liability insurance policy Genesee County has through Everest National Insurance Company, Davison said.
If that policy is extinguished, Davison said, Genesee County is covered by the Ironshore Specialty Insurance policy.
Davison refused to say how much coverage is included at each level.
"I prefer not to divulge that," he said. "That's something that my client likes to keep close to the vest."
County officials refused to release the specific figures and told MLive-The Flint Journal to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get the information. A FOIA request was submitted to the county Tuesday, April 4.
A term of Ironshore's policy required the company be notified in writing "as soon as practical" of a lawsuit that would be likely to involve its policy, according to its lawsuit.
However, Ironshore contends county officials failed to satisfy this condition by waiting to notify it of the case until after jurors reached their verdict on Nov. 3, 2016 -- more than three years after Jennings' lawsuit was initially filed.
Ironshore's lawsuit claims the county and its attorneys should have known the case was likely to involve the excess coverage policy when Jennings' case was filed in 2013 and it alleged nerve injuries, serious burns and severe damage.
Any doubt that the Ironshore policy would be involved should have been removed in July 2015, Ironshore claims, when the trial judge in the Jennings case denied the county's argument it was immune from the lawsuit.
Since notifying Ironshore of the verdict, the lawsuit claims the county and its lawyers have failed to turn over records Ironshore has sought in relation to the Jennings case.
Ironshore also argues it is not responsible for covering the claim because jurors found the jail deputies' actions were "willful, wanton or oppressive" and the county had punitive damages awarded against it.
There were multiple instances of intentional wrongdoing by the deputies, which also excludes Genesee County from coverage, Ironshore argues.
Jennings' lawsuit alleged the jail deputies threw Jennings to the floor, slammed his head against a metal bench, kicked and punched him while he was on the ground, sprayed pepper spray into his mouth and face at close range and placed him in a restraint chair with a hood over his face for several minutes.
Jennings was also strapped down to a restraint bed face down in a cell for more than two hours. The lawsuit claimed the alleged attack was unprovoked and began as Jennings was being searched.
After more than a two-week trial and nearly two days of deliberations, an eight-member jury concluded the deputies used excessive force against Jennings and awarded him past damages of $10.42 million and future damages of $7.21 million, according to a news release from the court.
Jurors reached the verdict against deputies Patrick Fuller, David Kenamer, Mark Wing, Jason White and Lt. Robert Nuckolls.
The jury also awarded punitive damages to Jennings from each defendant as follows:
Fuller -- $5 million.
Kenamer -- $4 million.
Wing -- $3 million.
White -- $2 million.
Nuckolls -- $5 million.
Attorneys representing the five guards have appealed the decision and in multiple motions filed in December with the Detroit U.S. District Court say the two-week jury trial was conducted improperly and that the $36.6 million decision was improper.
The motions are still pending.
Davison said the lawsuit from Ironshore isn't unexpected.
"It is a common way for insurance companies and their insured to resolve their differences," he said. "I prefer to try my cases in the court, not in the press."
New trial requested in $36.6M excessive force case against jail deputies The Genesee County jail guards charged with $36.6 million for using excessive force against a prisoner have motioned to appeal the United States District Court's jury decision.
An insurance policy is a contract between the insurance company and its policyholder, according to Pet Kuhnmuench, executive director of Insurance Institute of Michigan.
"In exchange for coverage, the insurance company requires the policyholder to adhere to provisions in the policy," he said. "If those provisions are not met, there may not be coverage.
"An insurance policy is a not a blanket of coverage because the cost of such a product would be out of reach. An insurance policy insures specific risks that are detailed in the policy language and also the responsibilities of the policyholder for obtaining that coverage." |
Only a few years ago, navigating Paris with a vegan appetite would have been close to impossible. Traditional French fare favors hearty cuts of meat, cheese plates after dinner and food that has been cooked in butter or duck fat, making even the most unsuspecting dishes off-limits for vegans. Only serving to make it worse, there was a lack of understanding as to what falls within a vegan diet—were eggs ok? What about honey?
But recent years in the capital have witnessed an abundance of vegan- and vegetarian-friendly restaurants like those you would stumble upon in many Anglophone cities, favoring the seasonal produce that grows so abundantly and crowds the city’s greenmarkets on a daily basis. These restaurants have innovated French techniques and borrowed from other cultures to make vegetables and fruits the highlight of the dish rather than an afterthought, and like many of Paris’ more gastronomic spots, often feature menus that rotate with the season, ensuring fresh, local dishes year round.
Though I’m not a vegan myself, I do very much appreciate the vegetable-laden culinary innovation in Paris—it’s a nice reprise from standard café food, and one that ensures more thought has been given to each dish to take it beyond the status quo. I’ve guided several vegan friends through Paris, and these were the spots that made their visit a trip to remember, and finally allowed them to gush about the delicious food in Paris.
1. Wild & the Moon
I’m convinced that Wild & the Moon (pictured above) was designed to be an Instagram paradise. The bright, natural lighting paired with an abundance of greenery makes the café the perfect spot to Instagram their signature smoothie bowls, golden lattes and wide selection of vegan lunch bowls, like cauliflower “couscous” with nut cheese, cucumber, parsley, mint, pomegranate and chick peas. They specialize in raw, cold-pressed juices, but sell plenty of tiny treats as well, like homemade energy bars, granola and kale chips.
2. Le Potager de Charlotte
Photo by Anne Elder
Nearly hidden on a side street in the 9th arrondissement, Le Potager de Charlotte is a cozy restaurant boasting a local selection of natural wines and homemade juices, in addition to their constantly-changing menu of plant-based cuisine.
They offer vegan “formules,” allowing diners to try their appetizers, entrées, and desserts at a reasonable price. The must-try dishes here are the “avocat style œuf dur” (a hard-boiled egg style avocado), where an avocado is served filled with a chick pea and turmeric spread, and the chick pea pancakes smothered with cashew cheese. The main dishes rotate with the seasons, and feature flavorful roasted vegetables and vegan gnocchi, which surely must be the holy grail of vegan fare.
3. Miznon
Photo by Anne Elder
Just off the cobblestone rue des Rosiers in the Marais, Miznon is only steps away from some of the hottest falafel competition in Paris. But this Israeli-run restaurant specializes in homemade pita sandwiches that nearly melt in your mouth, filled with roasted vegetables and a healthy smattering of tahini. Their whole-roasted cauliflower and broccoli heads are both to die for, and the pitas are perfect when to appease both omnivore and vegetarian and vegan eaters.
For vegan fare, remember to ask for their popular ratatouille pita sans œuf (without egg). Miznon is closed for all Jewish holidays, so make sure to check your calendar before you head over, and get there early—they get busy fast.
4. Le Tricycle
This entryway to this tiny Rastafari restaurant in the heart of the 10th arrondissement is filled with crates of produce, as a team of chefs prepares their signature variety of vegan hot dogs and vegetable grain bowls. They use organic produce, and the bowls are always changing, from vegan “chili” to eggplant marinated in soy over a bed of rice and beets. It is a perfect inexpensive lunch option that will keep you full for hours, where adding avocado is always a good idea.
5. Café Pinson
Café Pinson is the go-to spot for when you have a craving for vegetarian comfort food. The ambiance is perfect for dining with close friends, and they serve up a wide variety of vegan appetizers and entrées, from soups and salads to hearty vegetable bowls. A true sign of their innovative nature, though, was a recently spotted ceviche made with mushrooms rather than seafood. Better yet? There are two locations in Paris if you’re tight on time.
6. Le Bichat
If you’re hoping to appease omnivore friends, head to Le Bichat near the Canal St. Martin. Here, you make your own bowl, choosing between vegetarian and omnivore-friendly options. As an added bonus, they always keep a vegan dessert on hand, which surely can be justified by a long stroll around the Canal.
7. Bob’s/Shakespeare and Co.
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The Left Bank cheered in 2015 when Bob (of Bob’s Kitchen, Bob’s Juice Bar, and Bob’s Bakeshop) became available on the other side of the Seine at the Shakespeare & Co. Café. Next to the historic bookstore of the same name, they serve up Bob’s famous baked goods, as well as some phenomenal veggie stew that is particularly welcome on Paris’ cold, misty days. While you’re there, it would be a shame to leave without trying the coffee, which is locally roasted by Café Lomi.
Anne Elder spends more time talking about food than eating and is currently researching cuisine as a means of integration among refugee chefs in Paris. She can be found via her blog (www.hardlysnarky.com) or on Instagram or Twitter. |
Computer Vision has become ubiquitous in our society, with applications in search, image understanding, apps, mapping, medicine, drones, and self-driving cars. Core to many of these applications are visual recognition tasks such as image classification, localization and detection. Recent developments in neural network (aka “deep learning”) approaches have greatly advanced the performance of these state-of-the-art visual recognition systems. This course is a deep dive into details of the deep learning architectures with a focus on learning end-to-end models for these tasks, particularly image classification. During the 10-week course, students will learn to implement, train and debug their own neural networks and gain a detailed understanding of cutting-edge research in computer vision. The final assignment will involve training a multi-million parameter convolutional neural network and applying it on the largest image classification dataset (ImageNet). We will focus on teaching how to set up the problem of image recognition, the learning algorithms (e.g. backpropagation), practical engineering tricks for training and fine-tuning the networks and guide the students through hands-on assignments and a final course project. Much of the background and materials of this course will be drawn from the ImageNet Challenge |
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We have forgotten just how deep a cultural revolution Christianity wrought. In fact, we forget about it precisely because of how deep it was: There are many ideas that we simply take for granted as natural and obvious, when in fact they didn't exist until the arrival of Christianity changed things completely. Take, for instance, the idea of children.
Today, it is simply taken for granted that the innocence and vulnerability of children makes them beings of particular value, and entitled to particular care. We also romanticize children — their beauty, their joy, their liveliness. Our culture encourages us to let ourselves fall prey to our gooey feelings whenever we look at baby pictures. What could be more natural?
In fact, this view of children is a historical oddity. If you disagree, just go back to the view of children that prevailed in Europe's ancient pagan world.
As the historian O.M. Bakke points out in his invaluable book When Children Became People, in ancient Greece and Rome, children were considered nonpersons.
Back then, the entire social worldview was undergirded by a universally-held, if implicit, view: Society was organized in concentric circles, with the circle at the center containing the highest value people, and the people in the outside circles having little-to-no value. At the center was the freeborn, adult male, and other persons were valued depending on how similar they were to the freeborn, adult male. Such was the lot of foreigners, slaves, women...and children.
High infant mortality rates created a cultural pressure to not develop emotional attachments to children. This cultural pressure was exacerbated by the fact that women were more likely to develop emotional attachments to children — which, according to the worldview of the day, meant it had to be a sign of weakness and vulgarity.
Various pagan authors describe children as being more like plants than human beings. And this had concrete consequences.
Well-to-do parents typically did not interact with their children, leaving them up to the care of slaves. Children were rudely brought up, and very strong beatings were a normal part of education. In Rome, a child's father had the right to kill him for whatever reason until he came of age.
One of the most notorious ancient practices that Christianity rebelled against was the frequent practice of expositio, basically the abandonment of unwanted infants. (Of course, girls were abandoned much more often than boys, which meant, as the historical sociologist Rodney Stark has pointed out, that Roman society had an extremely lopsided gender ratio, contributing to its violence and permanent tension.)
Another notorious practice in the ancient world was the sexual exploitation of children. It is sometimes pointed to paganism's greater tolerance (though by no means full acceptance) of homosexuality than Christianity as evidence for its higher moral virtue. But this is to look at a very different world through distorting lenses. The key thing to understand about sexuality in the pagan world is the ever-present notion of concentric circles of worth. The ancient world did not have fewer taboos, it had different ones. Namely, most sexual acts were permissible, as long as they involved a person of higher status being active against or dominating a person of lower status. This meant that, according to all the evidence we have, the sexual abuse of children (particularly boys) was rife.
Think back on expositio. According to our sources, most abandoned children died — but some were "rescued," almost inevitably into slavery. And the most profitable way for a small child slave to earn money was as a sex slave. Brothels specializing in child sex slaves, particularly boys, were established, legal, and thriving businesses in ancient Rome. One source reports that sex with castrated boys was regarded as a particular delicacy, and that foundlings were castrated as infants for that purpose.
Of course, the rich didn't have to bother with brothels — they had all the rights to abuse their slaves (and even their children) as they pleased. And, again, this was perfectly licit. When Suetonius condemns Tiberius because he “taught children of the most tender years, whom he called his little fishes, to play between his legs while he was in his bath” and “those who had not yet been weaned, but were strong and hearty, he set at fellatio,” he is not writing with shock and horror; instead, he is essentially mocking the emperor for his lack of self-restraint and enjoying too much of a good thing.
This is the world into which Christianity came, condemning abortion and infanticide as loudly and as early as it could.
This is the world into which Christianity came, calling attention to children and ascribing special worth to them. Church leaders meditated on Jesus' instruction to imitate children and proposed ways that Christians should look up to and become more like them.
Like everything else about Christianity's revolution, it was incomplete. For example, Christians endorsed corporal punishment for far too long. (Though even in the fourth century, the great teacher St John Chrysostom preached against it, on the grounds of the victim's innocence and dignity, using language that would have been incomprehensible to, say, Cicero.)
But really, Christianity's invention of children — that is, its invention of the cultural idea of children as treasured human beings — was really an outgrowth of its most stupendous and revolutionary idea: the radical equality, and the infinite value, of every single human being as a beloved child of God. If the God who made heaven and Earth chose to reveal himself, not as an emperor, but as a slave punished on the cross, then no one could claim higher dignity than anyone else on the basis of earthly status.
That was indeed a revolutionary idea, and it changed our culture so much that we no longer even recognize it. |
WELLESLEY, Mass. — Members of the Wellesley College faculty reacted strongly when word spread that Peking University might fire Prof. Xia Yeliang, a critic of the Chinese government. Professor Xia, an economist, had visited Wellesley over the summer after the college signed a partnership agreement with Peking University.
In September, 130 Wellesley faculty members sent an open letter to Peking University’s president, warning that if Professor Xia was dismissed for his political views, they would seek reconsideration of the partnership. The next month, Professor Xia was fired. Peking University said it was because of his teaching, not his politics, but many at Wellesley doubted that. Still, after much debate, the faculty voted to keep the partnership, as the college president preferred.
Like American corporations, American colleges and universities have been extending their brands overseas, building campuses, study centers and partnerships, often in countries with autocratic governments. Unlike corporations, universities claim to place ideals and principles, especially academic freedom, over income. But as professors abroad face consequences for what they say, most universities are doing little more than wringing their hands. Unlike foreign programs that used to be faculty-driven, most of the newer ones are driven by administrations and money.
“Globalization raises all kinds of issues that didn’t come up when it was just kids spending junior year in France,” said Susan Reverby, one of the Wellesley professors supporting Professor Xia. “What does it mean to let our name be used? Where do we draw a line in the sand? Does a partnership with another university make their faculty our colleagues, obliging us to stand up for them? Do we wait for another Tiananmen Square?” |
News > ESPORTS > DreamHack Winter 2014 Last Call Qualifier – Teams & Schedule
DreamHack Winter 2014 Last Call Qualifier – Teams & Schedule
A special Last Call LAN Qualifier will be organised to determine the last slots in the CS:GO Major Tournament at DreamHack Winter 2014.
The qualifier will be held at Inferno Online in Stockholm, Sweden on Saturday, 22nd of November to replace Titan and Epsilon in the main tournament at DreamHack Winter 2014. A single elimination bracket will be played with 4 invited teams that were willing to accept and come to Stockholm with short notice. The top-2 teams will qualify for DreamHack Winter 2014.
The participating teams in the qualifier:
Copenhagen Wolves
Flipsid3
3DMAX
London Conspiracy
All four teams will be traveling to Stockholm tomorrow to play the qualifier on LAN.
Last Call Qualifier Details:
Location: Inferno Online, Stockholm, Sweden
Day/date: Saturday, 22nd of November 2014
No. of teams: 4
Tournament format: Single elimination Best-of-3
Schedule:
13.00 Semifinal #1 (BO3) Copenhagen Wolves vs. 3DMAX
(16.00)* Semifinal #2 (BO3) Flipsid3 vs. London Conspiracy
(19.00)* Final – only decide seeding into group (BO1)*
*Times are preliminary since we’ll go ahead and play all matches after each other.
Stream: www.twitch.tv/roomonfire feat. Semmler and co-caster.
Important information:
Group B: Team Dignitas will receive the top seed and face Penta eSports in the first game while iBUYPOWER will meet a team from the Qualifier in their opening match.
Group D: Epsilon will be removed from the group and NaVi will meet a team from the Qualifier in their opening match. VP and myXMG stays the same.
Group A & C won’t be affected by this.
More information
Find more information about the tournament
here. |
The Dorian Gray syndrome (DGS) denotes a cultural and societal phenomenon characterized by a man's extreme pride in his personal appearance and the fitness of his physique, which is accompanied by difficulties in coping with the requirements of psychological maturation and with the aging of his body.
The DGS is characterized by a triad of symptoms that overlap, and so combine diagnostic signs of dysmorphophobia, narcissistic character traits, and the immaturity of arrested development, which often are found in paraphilias.[1]
To preserve ephemeral youth, the man afflicted with DGS tends to consume cosmetic products and services, hair-restoration procedures, anti-impotence drugs, and cosmetic surgery; hence, he might resist the psychosomatic and psychodynamic explanations of the syndrome.[2] The term "Dorian Gray syndrome" refers to the protagonist of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), an exceptionally handsome man whose hedonism and excessive self-love proved detrimental to the personal, social, and emotional aspects of his life, and who sought to escape the ravages of time and his own decadent lifestyle by having a supernatural portrait of himself age in his place.
History [ edit ]
The portraitist Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton observe the beauty recorded in the picture of Dorian Gray.
The DGS was first described in The Dorian Gray Syndrome: Psychodynamic Need for Hair growth Restorers and other "fountains of youth" (2001), in a symposium about the unrealistic male pursuit of bodily perfection — by means of lifestyle-enhancing drugs, aesthetic surgery, and psychotropic medicines — and its consequences for his mental health as a social being.[3]
The culturally descriptive name of the syndrome refers to the eponymous protagonist of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), by Oscar Wilde, the story of a very handsome young man who much admires and envies the just-completed portrait of himself, and wishes that it would grow old, rather than he. In order to resist the physical corruptions of time and nature, and unable and unwilling to mature, Dorian Gray "gives his soul away", and his wish is granted.[4]
The oil portrait and the narrative of the novel transgress and cite narcissistic mirror motives; as such, eternal beauty, aging, and maturation are represented with the psychological dyad of "the person and the mirror". The personal character of the man Dorian Gray is the background for the clinical description of the Dorian Gray syndrome that afflicts the patient.
Causes [ edit ]
The Dorian Gray syndrome arises from the concurring and overlapping clinical concepts of the narcissistic personality, dysmorphophobia, and paraphilia. Psychodynamically, the man afflicted with DGS presents an interplay among his narcissistic tendencies ("timeless beauty"), his arrested development (inability to psychologically mature), and his use of "medical lifestyle" products and services — hair restoration, drugs (for impotence, weight-loss, and mood modification), laser dermatology, and plastic surgery — in order to remain young.
Although the DGS patient displays diagnostic features of said mental disorders, the syndrome describes a common, underlying psychodynamics of mental illness, which is characterized by narcissistic defences against time-dependent maturation, expressed by actively seeking the timeless beauty of youth.[5] The article Das Dorian Gray syndrom (2005) reported that approximately 3.0 per cent of the population of Germany present features of the Dorian Gray syndrome.[6]
Diagnosis [ edit ]
The diagnostic criteria for Dorian Gray syndrome are:
Signs of dysmorphophobia
Arrested development (inability to mature)
Using at least two different medical-lifestyle products and services: Hair-growth restoration (e.g. finasteride) Antiadiposita to lose weight (e.g. orlistat) Anti-impotence drugs (e.g. sildenafil) Anti-depressant drugs (e.g. fluoxetine) Cosmetic dermatology (e.g. laser resurfacing) Cosmetic surgery (e.g. a face-lift, liposuction)
Sequelae [ edit ]
Episodes of major depressive disorder and of suicidal crisis occur in the man afflicted with Dorian Gray syndrome when the defense mechanism activities, the pursuit of eternal youth, fail to indefinitely preserve his handsome face and sculpted physique; usually, anti-depressant drugs and psychotherapy are prescribed and applied to counter his feelings of failure.[7]
Furthermore, if the man misunderstands the self-defensive character of "acting out" the DGS, and continues pursuing the timeless beauty of male youth, without being aware of the psychodynamics of narcissism, then he, as a psychiatric patient, establishes a cycle of chronic psychological depression. In extreme cases of DGS, the man seeks self-destruction, by means either of drugs or with plastic surgery, or both, in order to fill the narcissistic emptiness that is the Dorian Gray syndrome.
Analogous applications [ edit ]
In sport, the Dorian Gray syndrome is applied to ageing baseball players who retain their competitive edge (athleticism) with drugs that are illegal in professional sport. [8]
In architecture, the Dorian Gray syndrome is applied to the rehabilitation of a building to a pristine condition greater than when the building was new.[9]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
^ Uwe Gieler et al. eds., Clinical Management in Psychodermatology (2008) pp. 46-47 ^ U. Gieler et al eds., Clinical Management in Psychodermatology (2008) pp. 47 and 172. ^ Brosig 2000, Brosig et al. 2001, Euler 2003 et al. ^ I. Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1995) p. 738. ^ Alex Boese, Hippo Eats Dwarf (2010) p. 265 ^ Brosig, B., Euler, S., Brähler, E., Gieler, U. (2005) "Das Dorian Gray Syndrom", in Trüeb, R. A. (Hg.): Smart aging. Darmstadt, Steinkopff. ^ U. Gieler et al eds., Clinical Management in Psychodermatology (2008) p. 47 ^ V. A Belton, Baseball is America (2010) p. 328. ^ M. Glendinning, The Conservation Movement (2013) p. 433.
Further reading [ edit ] |
Praveen Kumar, who has had a history of on-field brawls, is in the firing line again. He was reported for offensive behaviour during the recent Corporate Trophy match between ONGC and Income Tax on February 4. Umpires Ajit S Datar and Kamlesh Sharma have charged him with ‘Code of Conduct’ violation under clause 2.2.8.
The incident happened during the 48th over of the Income Tax innings. Playing for ONGC, Kumar had reportedly made an insulting gesture and even used “violent physical contact” against Ajitesh Argal, the Income Tax medium-pacer, known more for his feats in the ICC U-19 World Cup in 2008.
In a letter to the BCCI and match referee Dhananjay Singh, the umpires have given a detailed account of Praveen’s conduct. A part of the letter reads:
“He (Kumar) shouted, ‘M******** tu batting kar, umpiring maat kar (you just bat, don’t have to be an umpire)’.”“When ordered to stop it, he repeated, ‘Woh m******** batting kyon nahin karta (why doesn’t he simply bat?)’”
“After bowling the first ball, Praveen Kumar advanced aggressively towards the striker and made violent physical contact with him, head-butting and chest-butting the striker.”
They have suggested that a hundred per cent penalty be imposed on him as per the BCCI guidelines, with a warning that he should not “indulge in such acts in future”.
More damning is a written note to KVP Rao, the Indian cricket board’s game development manager.
The umpires have gone on record as saying that Praveen “is not in a mental frame to play the game”. Furthermore, they claim that his own teammates have deserted him.
According to the letter, “He is very aggressive and gets hostile with little trigger. He is very abusive and passes very filthy comments to his own team mates, opponents and even to the spectators.
During the first match also (ONGC vs CAG on February 1), he had some spat with the spectators at Raipur. It was informed to me by the other match referee Mr Prakash Bhatt. Even his own teammates are keeping some distance from him.”
Two years ago, during India’s tour of the West Indies, he had scrapped with a spectator in Port of Spain. In 2008 also, he was involved in a fracas in Meerut, his home town, and had allegedly thrashed a doctor.
In the 2011 series in England, he had reacted angrily to fans’ gibes in a tour game against Northants.
The mercurial medium pacer, once a find because of his whippy action and cocked wrist, has fallen out of favour with the selectors. Sadly, his off-field demeanour has been undermining the talent that’s gradually losing way.
—The writer works with ESPN-Star Sports |
Informant warned ASIO of planned Sydney terrorist attack
Updated
Court documents have revealed Australia's spy agency ASIO was fed information about two Sydney men who were plotting to carry out a terrorist attack on behalf of Islamic State.
Omar Al-Kutobi, 25, and Mohammad Kiad, 27, were under surveillance for about a month when they were arrested and charged with preparing to carry out a terrorist attack in February 2015.
Court documents reveal an informant tipped off the Joint Counter-Terrorism Team (JCCT) to the plot on February 10 and said the attack was imminent.
"The lions will depart to carry it out in a few hours," the JCCT was told.
The JCCT is a multi-agency taskforce comprising New South Wales Police, the Australian Federal Police and ASIO.
The same day, counter-terrorism police swarmed on the granny flat Al-Kutobi and Kiad shared in Fairfield and arrested the men.
The pair was arrested just minutes after they had filmed a video in which Al-Kutobi can be seen speaking Arabic in front of a home made Islamic State flag.
"I swear to God almighty, yellow people, there is no reproach between us," Al-Kutobi said in the video.
"You will only get from us the stabbing of your kidneys."
Officers also discovered a note which said "we are here to cut off your heads", along with home made napalm, a machete, a hunting knife and instructions and ingredients to make an improvised explosive device.
Informant helped thwart attack
The court documents state the pair was planning to target a Shiite prayer hall in western Sydney with an "incendiary device", but that plan was abandoned in favour of an alleged plot to attack a person or persons with a bladed weapon.
The documents also alleged Al-Kutobi and Kiad made an oath of allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State group and received instructions from an IS recruiter known as "Rahman", who was based in, or on the border of, Syria.
But the documents also reveal Rahman fed information about the two men to a person overseas who is known only as "Witness A".
Witness A then passed that information on to ASIO and the JCCT.
The NSW Supreme Court heard Rahman acted as an informant in return for money and refuge.
But a barrister acting for the Commonwealth told the court that fact was disputed by the Federal Government.
Videos played in court
The video of Al-Kutobi kneeling in front of the IS flag was played to the court.
Al-Kutobi is speaking Arabic on the video, and at times, Kiad can be heard responding.
Minutes later, both men were arrested and charged with acting in preparation for a terrorist act.
They have since pleaded guilty.
The two men the two men were committed to stand trial in February after they waived their rights to a committal hearing.
Kiad, 27, is a student from Kuwait, while Al-Kutobi, 25, is a refugee from Iraq.
Police footage of two separate improvised explosive device demonstrations were also shown. Prosecutors said the devices were made using substances found at the men's flat.
CCTV footage of Al-Kutobi and Kiad purchasing a hunting knife at a camping supplies store in Smithfield on the day of their arrest was also viewed.
The employee who served them has described it as a "run-of-the-mill sale".
The hearing continues.
Topics: courts-and-trials, terrorism, sydney-2000, parramatta-2150
First posted |
A 17-year-old Virginia teen faces up to 15 years in prison for blog and Twitter posts about encryption and Bitcoin that were geared at assisting ISIL, which the US has designated as a terror organization.
The teen, Ali Shukri Amin, who contributed to the Coin Brief news site, pleaded guilty (PDF) Thursday to a federal charge of providing material support to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
Dana Boente, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said the youth's guilty plea "demonstrates that those who use social media as a tool to provide support and resources to ISIL will be identified and prosecuted with no less vigilance than those who travel to take up arms with ISIL."
According to the defendant's signed "Admission of Facts" filed Thursday, Amin started the @amreekiwitness Twitter handle last June and acquired some 4,000 followers and tweeted about 7,000 times. (The Twitter handle has been suspended.) Last July, the teen tweeted a link on how jihadists could use Bitcoin "to fund their efforts."
According to Amin's court admission (PDF):
The article explained what Bitcoins were, how the Bitcoin system worked and suggested using Dark Wallet, a new Bitcoin wallet, which keeps the user of Bitcoins anonymous. The article included statements on how to set up an anonymous donations system to send money, using Bitcoin, to the mujahedeen.
In August, the youth tweeted that the Khilafah—Islam's political system and messenger—needed an official website "ASAP" and that ISIL should stop releasing propaganda "in the wild" and instead should consider using JustPaste.it.
"Through various tweets, the defendant provided information on how to prevent the website from being taken down, by adding security defenses, and he solicited others via Twitter to assist on the development of the website," according to his signed admission.
On his blog, the boy "authored a series of highly technical articles targeted at aspiring jihadists and ISIL supporters detailing the use of security measures in online communications to include the use of encryption and anonymity software, tools and techniques, as well as the use of the virtual currency Bitcoin as a means to anonymously fund ISIL."
Sentencing for the honor student at Osbourn Park High School of Manassas is scheduled for August 28. The boy remains jailed.
Amin's lawyer, Joseph Flood, said his client's motivation was religion and distaste for the Syrian government. "Sometimes people feel frustrated in their inability to effect change against a government committing atrocities," Flood said. "He was blogging on the Internet. It's as simple as that."
Amin is also accused of radicalizing an 18-year-old Virginia youth, Reza Niknejad, who traveled to Syria in January to join ISIL. Niknejad was charged Wednesday with conspiring to provide material support to ISIL and conspiring to kill and injure people abroad. Amin admitted that he helped Niknejad get a mobile phone, assisted him with travel, and hooked him up with ISIL supporters overseas.
He also said he delivered a letter from Niknejad to his family. The letter said that Niknejad "did not plan to see his family again." |
Studies highlight differences between banned pesticides
21 January 2014 by Alex Peel
Two separate studies have added new weight to the idea that some varieties of controversial neonicotinoid pesticides are less harmful to bees than others.
The research tested the effects of feeding two different neonicotinoid compounds, thiamethoxam and imidacloprid, to bumblebees. The EU recently banned both pesticides over concerns about their effects on bee health.
Ian Laycock, from the University of Exeter, led the studies.
"We found that both thiamethoxam and imidacloprid were capable of repressing feeding and brood production in bumblebees," he says. "But with thiamethoxam this only happened with very large concentrations of the pesticide - concentrations that bees are unlikely to encounter in the environment."
In contrast, imidacloprid reduced both egg production and pollen consumption by half even at the very low concentrations that bees are likely to encounter when they forage on treated crops.
What our study shows is that we cannot simply apply the conclusions about the safety of imidacloprid to other neonicotinoids - Ian Laycock, University of Exeter
"We think this occurs because imidacloprid produces a stronger repression of feeding in bumble bees than thiamethoxam, and this imposes a greater limitation on the bees' ability to produce eggs," says Laycock.
"Brood production is particularly important in bumblebee colonies because the number of eggs and larvae a colony produces can dictate how many workers it has - and colonies with more workers tend to be more successful."
"In particular they produce more queens that go on to found new colonies and keep the colony cycle going the following year. So our results raise further concern about the threat of imidacloprid to bumblebees."
But the research also had some better news for bees. After two weeks' exposure, the bees were allowed to recuperate, and seemed to bounce back well.
This kind of 'pulsed' exposure is designed to replicate the scenario in the wild, where bees feed on mass-flowering crops, like oil-seed rape, for a window of just a few weeks while they're in flower. When the bloom is over, wild bees often switch back to pesticide-free wildflowers.
While the scientists tested imidacloprid on regular colonies, the research on thiamethoxam was carried out on micro-colonies, each made up of four worker bees kept apart from the queen. This allowed the scientists to monitor responses such as feeding, egg-laying and brood survival in precise detail.
In natural colonies, the queen bee does most of the brood production herself, and Laycock acknowledges that the lack of queens in the micro-colonies does limit the study's ability to replicate the bees' real-world environment.
But he believes the research still gives a useful insight into the different effects of neonicotinoid compounds. And he maintains that lab studies have an important role to play in gathering evidence on pesticides.
"It's impossible to perfectly replicate the real world in the lab, and for that reason some people will always question the environmental relevance of lab studies," he says.
"But carefully designed lab studies are vital because, unlike field studies, we can precisely control variables such as the concentration or dose of the pesticide that the bee receives."
In December last year, the EU introduced a two-year moratorium on neonicotinoids. The UK voted against the ban, citing a lack evidence of harm to bees in field studies.
Laycock believes that the evidence against imidacloprid is probably strong enough to justify a temporary ban, giving researchers more time to look into its effects. But he says we shouldn't tar all neonicotinoids with the same brush.
"What our study shows is that we cannot simply apply the conclusions about the safety of imidacloprid to other neonicotinoids," he says.
He is also concerned that the moratorium could encourage farmers to use alternative pesticides on their crops, whose effects on bees are unstudied, and may prove to be even worse.
These thoughts are echoed by Dr Chris Connolly, from the University of Dundee, who was not involved with either study.
It's irrational to set the bar higher for one pesticide than all the others - Dr Chris Connolly, University of Dundee
"Whether or not these pesticides are responsible for bee decline, there is clear evidence that they have an effect, and so the moratorium seems like a wise precaution."
"But it would be totally unwise if they are just replaced with other compounds, which we know very little about - it's irrational to set the bar higher for one pesticide than all the others. The whole thing needs to be looked at a bit more scientifically."
One potential alternative, belonging to a group of chemicals called pyrethroids, was the subject of a separate lab study at Royal Holloway, University of London. Colony exposure to the pesticide was shown to reduce the size of bumblebees' offspring, posing a potential risk to colony success. |
Software maker Microsoft on Tuesday reported revenue and earnings well ahead of expectations, although the company took a big hit from a writedown of its Nokia phone unit acquisition.
For the three months ended June 30, Microsoft posted a net loss of $3.2 billion, or 40 cents per share, on revenue of $22.2 billion. Excluding the costs related to the Nokia writedown and other restructuring charges, Microsoft said it would have posted per-share earnings of 62 cents.
The company had been expected to post per-share earnings of 56 cents on revenue of $22.06 billion, according to Yahoo Finance.
“We finished the fiscal year with solid progress against our strategic priorities, through strong execution and financial discipline,” CFO Amy Hood said in a statement.
Nonetheless, Microsoft shares fell in after-hours trading. Shares changed hands recently at $45.65, down $1.63 or more than 3 percent.
Microsoft said it would wait until a 2:30 pm PT conference call to offer up its outlook for the current quarter.
The report follows the company’s announcement earlier this month that it would cut a further 7,800 jobs and take a $7.6 billion writedown on its purchase of Nokia’s phone business.
Microsoft said that its commercial revenue (aka sales to businesses) rose slightly to $13.5 billion, while consumer revenue from Office, Windows and Windows Phone all dropped from a year ago. Microsoft plans to release the PC version of Windows 10 next week, with updates to its phones and Office also due out later this year.
The company sold 8.4 million Lumia smartphones, up 10 percent from the prior year, but revenue fell as more of the devices sold this year were in the lower end of the market. Surface revenue more than doubled, to $888 million, while sales of 1.4 million Xbox consoles represented a 30 percent year-over-year increase.
In its online business, Microsoft said search revenue increased 21 percent, with Bing’s U.S. market share rising to 20.3 percent, up 1 percentage point from a year ago.
Here is Microsoft’s summary of its quarterly highlights:
Update, 2:35 p.m. PT: CEO Satya Nadella kicked off the conference call on an optimistic note, noting that the company has restructured itself to deliver better products at “a more rapid pace.”
He said that the company’s cloud-based services for business are on an $8 billion run rate and on track to reach his goal of $20 billion in such revenue by fiscal 2018.
2:40 p.m.: Lots of billion dollar opportunities out there, Nadella says, ranging from Azure cloud-based operating system to CRM to security.
2:41 p.m.: Nadella, on Windows 10: Our aspiration with Windows 10 is to change people “from needing to choosing to loving Windows,” repeating a line he used back in January.
“I do believe Windows 10 will broaden our opportunity and return Windows to growth,” Nadella said.
First Windows 10 PCs will be available on launch day, with widest-ever assortment on sale by the holidays. Phone losses will narrow, Nadella said, with the new focus (less models, fewer markets).
“We’re confident these are the right levers to revitalize Windows and restore growth,” Nadella said, pointing to Surface tablet as an example where the company has turned things around. “Surface is clearly a product where we have gotten the formula right.”
2:46 p.m.: Bada-bing.
“Bing will transition to profitability in the coming fiscal year,” Nadella said.
2:53 p.m.: CFO Amy Hood noted that the company’s bookings were flat from the prior year, but that the company reached a milestone in another key measure of future sales. The company’s level of sales to businesses that are “contracted but not billed” hit an all-time high of $24.5 billion.
2:56 p.m.: On to 2016 guidance.
The company is deferring a portion of the Windows 10 revenue and recognizing it over a period of two-to-four years but plans to give guidance excluding that impact.
Strengthening fo U.S. dollar should affect the company for the coming year, assuming a similar exchange rate, denting revenue by 5 percent.
The company expects, as Nadella noted, a profitable Bing.
Microsoft now sees operating expenses of $32.1 billion to $32.4 billion, below its April guidance, reflecting the cuts it has made in the phone business.
3:01 p.m.: For the first quarter, Microsoft sees revenue from consumer licensing to be $3.4 billion to 3.6 billion. Computing and gaming hardware revenue should be $2.0 to $2.1 billion. Phone hardware sales should be about $900 million, but with gross margins improving from the prior quarter due to the cost cuts being made.
Commercial revenue should be roughly flat due to the impact of currency.
3:02 p.m.: On to Q and A…
First question is on Office 365 subscription service, prompting Nadella to say “Overall we are very excited about the growth we are seeing in Office 365.” He added that consumer subscribers increasing by about 1 million per month and that, on the enterprise side, the growth “remains very exciting for us.”
3:08 p.m.: People still can’t agree how to pronounce Azure.
3:12 p.m.: Nadella says that he is excited for Windows 10, but says that financial impact will build over time. “My bullishness for Windows 10 is more in the second half of the fiscal year.” (Microsoft’s fiscal year runs from July to June.)
On the changes to the phone business, Nadella said the biggest shift “is not to think about phones in isolation.” Being a part of the phone business is important, Nadella said.
One area that remains important to Microsoft is flagship phones for Windows fans: “That’s actually a segment today (where) we don’t have good devices and we hope to change that with Windows 10.”
The company can also play in business phones and at the low-end of the smartphone market, but that last area is where the company needs to be more efficient, Nadella said. “That’s where you will see the most significant operational changes,” he said.
3:25 p.m.: A lot of talk about CRM and ERP and SaaS. OMG. |
China today said that it cannot share with India the hydrological data of the Brahmaputra river for the time being as the data collection station in Tibet is being upgraded.
China, however, said it is ready to "keep communication" with India to reopen the Nathu La pass in Sikkim for the Indian pilgrims visiting Kailash and Manasarovar in Tibet, which it had suspended in mid June over the Doklam standoff.
"For long time we have conducted cooperation on the river data with the Indian side. But to upgrade and renovate the relevant station in the Chinese side, we do not have the conditions now to collect the relevant statistics of the river," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told media here.
Asked when will China provide the data, which was reportedly suspended due to the Doklam standoff, he said, "We will later consider that."
Asked whether India has been informed about not sharing of the hydrological data, he said according to his information the Indian side is aware of it.
On August 18, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar had said there is an existing expert-level mechanism, established in 2006, and there are two MoUs under which China is expected to share hydrological data on rivers Sutlej and Brahmaputra with India during the flood season of May 15 to June 15.
"For this year, we have not received hydrological data from the Chinese side," Kumar had said.
The data share by upper riparian state, China, to lower riparian states, India and Bangladesh is essential every monsoon to allow anticipation of the flow of the water and take necessary measures to deal with flooding in India's northeastern states.
On the reopening of the Nathu La Pass for the Indian pilgrims visiting Kailash and Manasarovar in Tibet which was suspended over the Doklam standoff, Geng said China is ready to "keep communication" with the India.
"For a long China has made efforts against all odds to provide necessary convenience to the Indian pilgrims. According to the agreement reached between the two leaders and based on the fact that the western section of the India-China boundary has been recognised by the two sides, China opened the pass to the Indian pilgrims," he said, replying to a question when China will open the route to the Indian pilgrims as the Doklam standoff has been resolved.
The foreign ministry spokesman said the opening of the Nathu La pass was suspended as the Indian troops "illegally crossed the border leading to the tensions at the border".
"The Indian troops illegally crossed the border leading to the tensions at the border. So the opening of the pass was suspended," he said.
"So China stands ready to keep communication with the Indian side in regard to the opening of the pass and other issues relating to the pilgrims," he said.
The Sikkim route to Mansarovar was opened in 2015, enabling pilgrims to travel the 1500-km long route from Nathu La to Kailash by buses.
The Yatra was being organised by External Affairs Ministry since 1981 through Lipu Pass in Himalays connecting the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand in India with the old trading town of Taklakot in Tibet. |
Project Tango is a new mobile platform by Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) team which brings motion tracking, depth perception, and area learning to smartphones and tablets. This technology can be used to realize real world measurement applications, indoor navigation and virtual reality environments. With its motion tracking technology, Project Tango is also suitable for precise three dimensional augmented reality (AR) applications. The areas of applications for augmented reality are diverse, from medicine, the entertainment industry, education and many more industries. Accessible help for navigation, display insertion for personal assistance, context sensitive projections and computer games are typical AR application scenarios.
The illusion in AR applications can be realized by equating the extrinsic and intrinsic camera properties of the real and the virtual camera in a virtual scene. Motion Tracking can then be used to update the virtual camera location and orientation continuously. But the illusion of model projection in these AR applications is often disrupted when real objects in the scene are located in front of virtual projections, but not occluding them. This can be seen in the following AR example, where the missing real world wall occlusion is destroying the illusion of the second picture.
In my master’s thesis I focused on this augmented reality problem and compared three occlusion mechanisms which can solve the virtual object occlusion with Project Tango’s Depth Perception on mobile hardware and in real time.
The idea of real world occlusion by determined depth information was first introduced by Wloka and Anderson (1995). They used the z-buffer algorithm and a depth estimation with stereo cameras to prevent a rendering of virtual object parts which are occluded by real object depth information. For this mechanism I indicated three different approaches to fill the z-buffer with depth information captured by the infrared laser sensor, which is integrated in the Project Tango device. It is filled by the direct sensor data projection, by a TSDF (Truncated Signed Distance Function) based reconstruction called Chisel by Klingensmith et al. (2015) or by a plane based reconstruction combined and implemented by myself. Project Tango does not produce a depth map which could be integrated into the z-buffer directly. Instead it generates a point cloud with depth information of the current camera perspective. The first naive approach mentioned above is the projection of the point cloud to an image plane which then can be used as z-buffer. The results can be seen in the following two examples:
A problem of this approach is that the depth sensor is limited to a range of 50 cm to 4 m and has issues capturing the depth of complex or reflecting surfaces. Another limitation is the reception rate of only 5Hz. Each of these issues negatively affects the pointcloud projection due to noise and latency.
Breen et al. (1996) are mentioning that the z-buffer based occlusion can also be realized by rendering a reconstruction based on primitives or spatial information as a depth map. Therefore the second approach for solving the mentioned problems is a plane based reconstruction which was developed for this thesis. It relies on the RANSAC plane estimation from point clouds by Yang and Förstner (2010) and on the plane augmentation and plane range determination method which is used in a SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) method by Trevor et al. (2012). In this approach all incoming points of the depth sensor get collected into an octree with a limited depth for spatial clustering. Then, the RANSAC (RANdom SAmple Consensus) algorithm is applied to all clusters with new points. It either augments existing planes in this cluster or creates new planes with a limit of three planes per cluster. The reach of each plane is calculated and triangulated by the convex hull. A result of this first reconstruction approach can be seen in the following examples:
The second reconstruction and third depth generating approach of this thesis is based on the real time reconstruction field of research. Unlike the offline reconstruction methods such as the Poisson reconstruction by Kazhdan et al. (2006) or the approach of Hoppe et al. (1992), the challenge for real time reconstruction methods is the migration of continuous depth information from different perspectives into a single augmentation model. Klingensmith et al. (2015) have presented a real time reconstruction method based on truncated signed distance functions (TSDF) focusing on the mobile applications called Chisel. In this TSDF approach the world is divided into voxels which contain the shortest distance to the next surface. Usually, this representation is rendered via GPU ray casting on desktop environments like in KinectFusion by Newcombe et al. (2011). In contrast, Klingensmith et al. (2015) are using the marching cubes method to get a polygon based representation of the surface. They also integrate a spatial hash data structure presented by Nießner et al. (2013) to minimize the footprint of Chisel for mobile devices and to be able to realize Chisel as a CPU implementation. This approach is also shown in the following pictures:
All theses depth map generating approaches produce errors because of noise and limitations in cluster or voxel sizes. Also the plane based reconstruction is producing gaps between planes, which lead to missing depth information in the depth map. To solve this issue I tried to improve the generated depth map quality by taking the current RGB frame into account. The best results in terms of performance and quality were achieved by the guided filtering by He et al. (2010). This filter can interpolate the depth according to the edges and gradients of the current color image frame captured by the Project Tango device. Applied on a Chisel reconstruction depth map, it can improve the quality drastically:
During this thesis, all mentioned approaches were implemented or ported to the Project Tango development kit as a proof of concept. The final implemented prototype is containing all depth generating approaches and also the guided filter which can be combined and manipulated dynamically for evaluation purposes. It is written in C++ using OpenGL and OpenCV for rendering and filtering. Each combination was tested on this static and reproducible setup next to another more complex test setup to ensure the same input information for each tested approach. In addition, some immeasurable dynamic tests have been performed to get an impression of how the different approaches can be used in production. The overall process of this prototype can be seen in the following figure:
All six approaches mentioned (three depth map generating methods combined with the guided filter) can be used to achieve augmented reality occlusion by real objects. The naive point cloud projection has the already mentioned disadvantages of noise and the limited depth range because of sensor limitations. Noise can be successfully reduced by the guided filter which, however, is limited to 2 − 3Hz due to the OpenCV CPU image processing. Nevertheless, in combination the point cloud projection could be used for more detailed but size constrained AR scenes.
The guided filter is also able to close the depth gaps of the developed plane based reconstruction. Although the plane based reconstruction was producing good results in the static tests, it is still rebuilding non-planar surfaces with rough plane approximations. This leads to greater depth map errors in a more dynamic augmented reality scene where the camera position is not constrained. The cluster size also cannot be reduced, otherwise the RANSAC plane detection would produce statistically more false positives because of less measurement results inside each cluster.
Good results could be achieved by using the TSDF reconstruction Chisel as seen in in the previous example. Although the voxel resolution was quite rough in this prototype, this reconstruction system could still be implemented on the GPU, benefitting the parallel processing characteristics. By negotiating the reconstruction scale, voxel resolution and performance, the voxel resolution could be still reduced to the limits of the depth sensor.
The guided filter was always able to improve the quality of the real world occlusion in the static scenes. However, some artifacts were observed during dynamic testing. When an edge in the color frame was just painted on a flat real world surface, which also produced a flat depth map, the filter was alternating the depth map with some artifacts caused by the underlying color structure. This should be investigated next to alternative depth map upsampling methods for mobile usage in future work, like the approach of Ferstl et al. (2013). Another future idea could be the integration of the guided filter into the OpenGL fragment shader. This would make the OpenCV binding superfluous and could save the conversion time. The filter would also benefit from the parallel GPU computing characteristics implemented in OpenGL and would run much faster than in this prototype realization.
Prototype Demo
Unity TSDF Demo
Thesis / Slides / Code can be found on GitHub.
Literature
Breen, D. E., Whitaker, R. T., Rose, E., and Tuceryan, M. (1996). Interactive occlusion and automatic object placement for augmented reality. In Computer Graphics Forum, volume 15, pages 11–22. Wiley Online Library.
Ferstl, D., Reinbacher, C., Ranftl, R., Ruether, M., and Bischof, H. (2013). Image guided depth upsampling using anisotropic total generalized variation. In The IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV).
He, K., Sun, J., and Tang, X. (2010). Guided image filtering. In Computer Vision–ECCV 2010, pages 1–14. Springer.
Hoppe, H., DeRose, T., Duchamp, T., McDonald, J., and Stuetzle, W. (1992). Surface reconstruction from unorganized points, volume 26. ACM.
Kazhdan, M., Bolitho, M., and Hoppe, H. (2006). Poisson surface reconstruction. In Proceedings of the fourth Eurographics symposium on Geometry processing, volume 7.
Klingensmith, M., Dryanovski, I., Srinivasa, S., and Xiao, J. (2015). Chisel: Real time large scale 3d reconstruction onboard a mobile device. In Robotics Science and Systems 2015.
Newcombe, R. A., Izadi, S., Hilliges, O., Molyneaux, D., Kim, D., Davison, A. J., Kohi, P., Shotton, J., Hodges, S., and Fitzgibbon, A. (2011). Kinectfusion: Real-time dense surface mapping and tracking. In Mixed and augmented reality (ISMAR), 2011 10th IEEE international symposium on, pages 127–136. IEEE.
Nießner, M., Zollhöfer, M., Izadi, S., and Stamminger, M. (2013). Real-time 3d reconstruction at scale using voxel hashing. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 32(6):169.
Trevor, A. J., Rogers III, J. G., Christensen, H., et al. (2012). Planar surface slam with 3d and 2d sensors. In Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2012 IEEE International Conference on, pages 3041–3048. IEEE.
Wloka, M. M. and Anderson, B. G. (1995). Resolving occlusion in augmented reality. In Proceedings of the 1995 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics, pages 5–12. ACM.
Yang, M. Y. and Förstner, W. (2010). Plane detection in point cloud data. In Proceedings of the 2nd int conf on machine control guidance, Bonn, volume 1, pages 95–104.
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Reacting to the deteriorating and order situation in Uttar Pradesh, (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy on Monday said that Article 256 empowers the government to give directions to a state government, and that even President's rule can be imposed on Uttar Pradesh, if they refused to follow those directions.
"Articles 256 empowers the central government to give directions to state government in such a situation, and if they refuse to do that, Presidents rule can be imposed on the state," Subramanian Swamy.
leader Yogi Adityanath said there is a state of anarchy in Uttar Pradesh.
"There is a state anarchy in Uttar Pradesh. They had created such situation in Firozabad during elections also. This government has had such a history, the condition of the state will be the same," said Adityanath.
There has been an outrage against the deteriorating and order situation in Uttar Pradesh, with many politicians demanding for state Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's resignation and President's rule to be imposed on the state.
Yesterday, a 32-year-old woman was gangraped in Baduan. This is the second rape case to be reported in the area in a month and the third in the state, after two Dalit girls and a minor girl in Moradabad were raped and left hanging from a tree. |
Farmers Insurance announced Monday that it has begun offering its Rideshare Insurance Coverage endorsement in New Jersey.
The endorsement is designed to offer ride-hail drivers coverage options as part of Farmers personal auto insurance policies.
Farmers said the company worked with transportation network companies (TNCs) to develop a product designed for ride-hailing drivers. The product is currently also available in Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.
Farmers said its Rideshare Insurance Coverage can provide Farmers customers coverage when a driver turns on the ride-hailing application and during the time the driver is awaiting a match. It will extend a driver’s Farmers auto insurance coverage until they accept a ride, at which point their TNC affiliate’s commercial insurance coverage would apply.
Farmers’ rideshare coverage allows a driver to select the coverage that fits their needs; including comprehensive and collision coverage that can pay for damages to their own vehicle, uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage (in case they are hit by a driver who isn’t insured or is underinsured), and Personal Injury Protection coverage.
Farmers serves more than 10 million households with over 19 million individual policies, across all 50 states, through more than 48,000 exclusive and independent agents and approximately 21,000 employees. |
Israeli jets struck a Syrian military target and a Hezbollah weapons convoy early Wednesday, Arabic-language media reported Wednesday morning.
Israeli warplanes struck the military target in the Syrian capital of Damascus, while the raid on the weapons convoy occurred on the Damascus-Beirut highway, according to the reports.
As with past claims of Israeli strikes, Israel did not immediately confirm or deny news of the purported attacks. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, a number of airstrikes in Syria or close to the border with Lebanon have been attributed to Israel.
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News agencies affiliated with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad said the air raid on the military compound occurred at 1:15 a.m. local time and that four large explosions were heard in the capital. They further reported that the strikes were carried out by Israeli Air Force planes operating in Lebanese air space.
According to the Kuwaiti news network al-Rai, the warplanes also struck a number of vehicles traveling on the main highway believed to have been part of a weapons convoy led by Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has thousands of fighters in Syria, providing military aid to Assad regime and Iranian forces.
In April, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that Israel had carried out dozens of strikes against Hezbollah to prevent the group from obtaining advanced weapons — a rare Israeli admission.
Israel has vowed to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining “game-changing” arms — in particular advanced anti-aircraft systems and chemical weapons.
Earlier this week, the Israeli Air Force struck a military target belonging to the Islamic State terror group on the Syrian side of the southern Golan Heights.
The raid early Monday was the second Israeli airstrike to respond to an attack a day earlier by IS fighters against IDF soldiers. According to an army spokesperson, soldiers from the Golani Brigade’s reconnaissance unit came under attack from small arms fire after crossing the security fence on the border but remaining inside Israeli territory. They returned fire, but soon came under attack from mortar shells. No Israeli soldiers were injured in the exchange, the army said.
The IDF responded with an airstrike that morning that killed four members of an Islamic State-affiliated terror group that it said had launched the attack. The military said the second airstrike Monday was also in response to the initial attack.
The IDF “will not hesitate to act against terror groups that operate against the State of Israel,” a military statement read.
The Syrian Golan has been the site of intense fighting in recent years between Assad regime forces and the IS-affiliated Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, though the front on the border with Israel has been relatively quiet in recent months after previous intense bouts of violence.
Israeli officials fear Hezbollah and Iran’s al-Quds Force, which are allied with Assad, are aiming to use the area to open a new front against Israel in a future conflict.
Since March 2011, when the Syrian conflict began, dozens of mortar shells have landed in Israeli territory as a result of accidental spillover from the fighting. The IDF often responds to fire that crosses into Israel by striking Syrian army posts. Israel maintains a policy of holding Damascus responsible for all fire from Syria into Israel regardless of the source. |
In 1999, a man named by the name of Stewart Brand was stuck at a large desk in San Francisco trying to put his finger on how to best show the pace at which the world changes. The former merry prankster, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, and creator of one of the earliest online communities eventually came up with a simple drawing consisting of just 6 layers. On the bottom he put nature, the slowest, then culture, governance, infrastructure, commerce, and at the very top – fashion. Fashion, unlike all the other lines twisted and turned, went forward and back. It was wild, unpredictable.
The insight Brand’s pace layers provided wasn’t that trends in fashion or art are hard to track. What the sketch did was put all of these different parts of our life in context. Doing so illustrated his point that the world around us moves all together, but at different speeds. Given this context, it also highlighted the difficulty of trying to predict the beginning or end of any trend on the top end of those layers.
Is the trend dying, or is it being subsumed into the broader cultural palate? Is there even a difference?
Of course, that hasn’t dissuaded anyone. Almost as if by reflex, people will predict the death of a trend as soon as it begins to take shape. This tendency can at times feel less like an attempt to provide insight and more a race to have ‘called it’ first. The style of clothing that seems to have been on the receiving end of this type of prediction has been technical apparel, or ‘athleisure’.
Characterized by the use of synthetic fabrics cut into clothing with an athletic fit and stylish look, these are the clothes that you’d be just as happy to wear in the gym as at a cafe. Yet, despite literally years of eulogizing – there has yet to be a funeral. If anything, it seems like the techniques developed by these designers are becoming increasingly mainstream. So which is it? Is the trend dying, or is it being subsumed into the broader cultural palate? Is there even a difference? We got tired of reading half-baked predictions and armchair opinions, so we reached out to some of the biggest and most interesting players in the world of technical apparel to try and get their perspective on the fate of technical wear. |
MAKE senior editor Phillip Torrone reviewed NOVA's Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.
When the advocates of Intelligent Design during the trial said that the book “Of Pandas and People” had nothing to do with creationism, they lied; it turned out the original drafts were all about Creationism. After the drafts were subpoenaed (thousand of pages) it was discovered that a simple search and replace was used to change the text from creationism wording to something, well, less creationism sounding. It was changed because the Supreme Court in 1987 ruled it was unconstitutional to teach creationism in public schools. When I say “search and replace” I really mean they found examples of where the words didn’t exactly get changed enough. You can see it here…
Wherever the word “creationists” appeared it was replaced with “cdesign proponentsists” - that’s merely creationists without the “reation” and with “design” and “proponents” replaced in. |
Policemen often press their hand against a stopped vehicle, usually the taillight or trunk. Officers employ this practice as a safety precaution. This way they are leaving fingerprints and DNA that indicate the officer was in contact with the vehicle. As Santa Monica Police Department’s information office stated, if something happen to the policeman the fingerprints will provide evidence that can identify the perpetrator’s vehicle.
Police officers are no longer advised to tap on the taillights of cars, as this gives the officer’s position away, making them more susceptible to attack.
Today in most police cars video cameras are installed, but many police officers still practice this physical safety measure.
Earlier tapping the trunk or taillight was used in order to surprise the driver in the car. Tapping should prevent people in the car from hiding illegal substances and to help policeman in identifying anything suspicious. |
College faculty begin their “forced vote” on a contract offer on Tuesday, as their strike — now in its fifth week — becomes the longest job action in their history. At 30 days so far, it is longer than the three previous strikes — in 1984, job action lasted 24 days, in 1989 it went on for 28, and in 2006, 18 days.
Striking faculty stand on the picket line outside of Humber College, in Toronto on Oct. 16, 2017. Faculty at 24 Ontario colleges have been on strike for almost a month, affecting more than 500,000 students. Staff are voting on a deal with week. ( Cole Burston / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
The 1984 strike ended with back-to-work legislation, and for the subsequent two, both sides agreed to mediation or arbitration. The College Employer Council, which bargains for the province’s 24 community colleges, made the request to the Ontario Labour Relations Board for the forced vote on its latest offer to the 12,000 full-time and partial-load faculty, who are represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. Voting ends Thursday and results should be available that day.
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But experts have said the move is a risky one — given it is a proposal their union bargaining team already rejected during talks, which broke off a week ago despite a four-day blitz that had built up hope a negotiated deal could be reached. The strike has not only impacted students, who are worried about losing their semester, but also those who work in food services positions on campus. At Fleming College in Peterborough, Aramark has laid off about 40 part-time and student employees after closing four of seven locations, said Travis Doak, the college’s director of housing, food and conference services. At George Brown College, food locations have been reduced and Chartwells “have laid off most of their staff,” said a spokesperson. Even though the Liberal government hasn’t ruled out back-to-work legislation, during a union town hall OPSEU President Warren “Smokey” Thomas, said “they have also indicated that they would not be inclined to do that,” and that they “would be extremely reluctant to use” it because of possible legal challenges.
Ontario college students lent support to striking faculty members Oct. 25 at a rally outside the province’s advanced education ministry in Toronto. One student says the length of the strike, which began Oct. 15, is “nerve-wracking.” (The Canadian Press)
J.P. Hornick, the faculty union’s chief negotiator, has repeatedly called on the colleges to return to the bargaining table for a negotiated deal. She said the colleges “could have tested their offer before the strike happened, or even in the early days of the strike.” When talks broke off, she said academic freedom was the key issue left to resolve.
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The union has been urging members to vote against the offer for a number of reasons. The vote requires 50-per-cent plus one approval, meaning if all 12,000 members voted, 6,001 would have to vote in favour. A weekend letter sent from Conestoga College President John Tibbits to faculty says the two sides are “in uncharted territory now” given how long the strike has dragged on. He said despite talk that “no students has ever lost an academic year as the result of a strike … we’re in uncharted territory now. No faculty strike has ever lasted this long and what’s happened in the past is not necessarily an accurate predictor of what will happen in the future.” Correction – November 14, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said there was an Ontario college faculty strike in 2016. In fact, the strike took place in 2006. |
The family of a woman born without a vagina has launched a crowdfunding campaign for surgery that would allow her to experience intimacy and live a more normal life.
Kaylee Moats, from Arizona, suffers from Mayer Rokitansky Küster Hauser syndrome (MRKH) — which means she has no cervix, uterus or vaginal opening.
Her boyfriend of four months, Robbie Limmer, says he doesn’t care about the lack of sex in their relationship.
Moats needs $15,000 for the surgery and the crowdfunding page set up by her sister, Amanda, has already raised $5,720 in two months.
“I met Robbie in my senior year of college when I was working at the front desk. He thought I was cute so he came up to me and we started talking,” she told the Daily Mail. “It took about a month for me to tell him that I have MRKH. He was confused at first but supportive and said that it doesn’t change how he sees me.
“He doesn’t really focus on the sexual side of our relationship because we can’t do anything since I don’t have a vaginal opening,” she said. “But I am looking forward to having a sexual relationship. I’m not sure if I want to wait until marriage, but I think having that option there is a lot more comforting.
“I’m a bit nervous to have sex for the first time after surgery because I’m not sure if something is going to go wrong down there or if it’s going to hurt,” she said.
Moats says her vagina looks exactly how it should — except that instead of a vaginal opening, there’s a little dimpled skin where the hole should be.
She says she ovulates like other women but it gets dissolved into her ovaries.
Moats says the crowdfunding is necessary because her health insurance won’t cover the surgery.
“The fact that insurance considers this a cosmetic or a gender surgery really upsets me,” she said. “I have all the correct chromosomes of a woman so it’s not a gender or cosmetic thing because it’s not what’s outside that is different. I can’t see inside what is wrong with me.”
Her sister has even offered to carry any children Moats might want in the future if she can’t have them herself.
Related Video 1:12 This woman was born without a vagina |
Sweltering in the hot desert sun, Masdar City sits under a global microscope at the nexus of rising clean technology and the development of sustainable urban life in the glaring light of climate change.
Conceived on a zero-moisture stretch of barren desert sand in Abu Dhabi, UAE, the zero-carbon, zero-waste settlement of Masdar City has diligently sustained itself through every struggle and step of progress.
Masdar City: A Living, Striving Test Case for Earth’s Future
As the warming effects of global climate change guide human needs and technologies toward more protective living environments, Masdar City appears on the leading edge of adaptive strategies. The successes and struggles of Masdar City are providing a living, striving test case for Earth’s future.
Taking a close look at the technologies and strategies under manipulation in this unique city, Susan Lee and her colleagues from UK’s University of Birmingham School of Civil Engineering lay out their findings in a recent study.
Lee states that Masdar’s contribution as a “test bed for innovations in fuel efficiency and renewable energy is more important than ever before.” She and fellow co-authors explain, “Ready access to ‘clean’ energy is essential if we wish to maintain our current way of life without compromising our wellbeing or the carrying capacity of the planet.”
Minimizing the Sun’s Glare & Heat
Impressed with the overall layout of the city, Lee notes: “The streets and buildings of Masdar City are specially designed to be energy efficient. In line with traditional Arab design, Masdar City’s shaded paths and narrow streets are designed to create a pleasant space for walking in the region’s hot climate.”
Lined with buildings not exceeding five stories, and combined with the presence of street-level “solar canopies,” roads receive protective shade for pedestrians throughout the city.
The main buildings, such as the IRENA Global Headquarters, the Siemens Building, and the Incubator Building, “are highly insulated and energy efficient, with three quarters of their hot water produced using solar energy. They also have angled facades to minimise the amount of glare and heat from the sun.”
Maximizing the Use of Electric Vehicles
IRENA Global Headquarters. Credit: masdar.ae
Moving from innovative strategies for maximizing pedestrian comfort, Susan Lee and her colleagues point next to the innovative transportation system in the city. From a car park at the city’s outer boundary, personal rapid transit (PRT) vehicles (driverless pods) are utilized to “ferry commuters” to and from all points within the city.
Electric buses offer access to and from Masdar’s residential areas, and a number of electric cars are also publicly available. Running on 16 kWh lithium-ion batteries capable of reaching speeds of up to 130 kph (80 mph), these public electric vehicles can be recharged at convenient stations throughout Masdar.
Innovative Renewable Energy Initiatives
Also impressed with the proliferation of sustainable technologies throughout Masdar, Lee cites such innovative renewable energy initiatives as a 100 kW thermal power plant, solar cooling, and geothermal cooling projects.
However, “Perhaps the most ambitious project,” notes Lee, “is SHAMS 1, a stand-alone 2.5km², 100 MW Concentrated Solar Power plant.” Built at an estimated cost of £453 million, or $600 million, Lee confirms that SHAMS 1 “displaces 175,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually – equivalent to the emissions of 29,000 UK homes.”
The city’s 45-meter-high (147.6 feet) wind tower also received special mention by Lee and her team of British civil engineers, inspired by the modern use of traditional Arab technology. Cool breezes from higher up are redirected down the tower to the pedestrian level, displacing and pushing hot air up and away from the courtyard and ground floors of the surrounding buildings.
One of the Most Sustainable Cities in the World
With sustainability uppermost in mind, Masdar’s goal has always been to become one of the most sustainable cities in the world. Every aspect of urban planning and architecture has addressed this goal, finessed with the desire to appeal to the aesthetic senses of its residents.
In fact, according to The Future Build, several overriding characteristics define the city’s innovative design:
• High Quality of Life: Masdar City is designed to provide the highest quality of life with the lowest environmental impact, in part to demonstrate that environmentally responsible living does not imply hardship.
• Integrated: There are no separate zones for industry or culture. The university and traditional business elements are embedded in the heart of the community, as are entertainment and leisure facilities. Residents and commuters living and working here will find everything they need close at hand.
• Vibrant Urban Realm: Public spaces are as important as the buildings in Masdar City, with a variety of tactics used to activate these spaces. As a result, the city is a place where streets and squares facilitate interaction and engagement with fellow residents, commuters and visitors.
• Low Rise, High Density: These two elements are central to a low-energy urban community for a variety of reasons, including lower energy use on transportation (both between and within buildings) and reduced heating/cooling loads.
• Pedestrian Friendly: A pedestrian city on the pedestrian level of the street allows buildings to be closer together, thereby providing greater overshading and a cooler street environment.
• Optimally Oriented: The city and street grid are oriented on a southeast–northwest axis, thereby providing some shading at the street level throughout the day, minimising thermal gain on building walls and facilitating the flow of cooling breezes through the city.
Providing Inspiration to Cities Around the World
Anthony “Tony” Mallows, Executive Director of Masdar City, states that the city “is a template for sustainable urban development, and its evolution is taking place in partnership with a growing community of developers, investors and private sector companies.”
Mallows adds, “This community is actively contributing to and benefitting from the sustainable building practices and advanced technologies deployed in the realisation of the City, whether it’s the application of renewable energy, energy- and water-saving processes, or the use of low-carbon cement and recycled metals.”
Susan Lee and her colleagues agree with Mallows on the value of Masdar as a template but recognize some significant differences affecting implementation of many of the city’s strategies in other locations.
“While Masdar City has enabled the development of state-of-the-art, energy-saving buildings and exciting new technologies in a hostile, arid environment,” Lee states, “not all of the solutions on show would work for other cities.” She explains, “while Masdar City started with an empty site, established cities have to work around existing infrastructure.”
Lee continues, “Even so, as the global climate changes, warmer summers are expected to become more likely, so any case studies which show how buildings can be modified to mitigate the heat will be useful.”
“In this way, and many more,” Lee concludes, “Masdar City will continue to provide other cities around the world with inspiration to help them become more robust, resilient and sustainable in the face of global challenges.”
View More Inspiration from Masdar City
Below are a couple of videos conveying a great sense of Masdar City’s evolution and the inspiration it is offering to the future sustainable cities of the world.
Also, don’t miss Zach’s awesome post on CleanTechnica, “Masdar’s Continued Evolution.” (He made his own videos to go along with it!)
earthrise – Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Plan (by Al Jazeera English, uploaded in 2011):
Masdar City Welcome Video (by Masdar VideosChannel, published in 2014):
Is this the greenest city in the world? (by CNN, published in 2014): |
Are Poland and Hungary justified, under international law or EU law, in restricting migration to defend their “Christian heritage”? How about the so-called “European way of life” or their “constitutional identity”? More generally, can a liberal democracy restrict immigration and/or access to citizenship in order to protect the "majority culture” and still remain liberal? Cultural defense policies are mushrooming in Europe, as refugees and migrants from Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East many of them Muslims keep coming to our shores in unprecedented numbers. Can the “cultural defense” of majorities be reconciled with liberal values and, if so, how?
The current international legal structure for managing global migration was established in a different era, when cross-border movements were of a different scale, pace, and composition. The 2015 refugee/migrant crisis has caught Europe unprepared, politically and legally. The crisis has brought to the fore the relationship between immigration policy and constitutional identity. Leading officials in the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia declared an admission preference to Christian refugees in order to defend what they perceive as the "national identity" and the "European way of life." This jargon has been more than mere political rhetoric. According to the preamble of the EU plan for the distribution of refugees, in deciding which state "should be the Member State of relocation, specific account should be given to the specific qualifications and characteristics of the applicants concerned, such as their language skills and other individual indications based on demonstrated family, cultural or social ties." The meaning of “cultural ties,” however, has not been defined, and right-wing governments in Europe are currently claiming to have a right to defend their Christian heritage by restricting entry of Muslims, as is the recent case of Poland and Hungary.
The recent populist trend in European politics toward immigrants has enhanced the already-existing discussion on justifiable and unjustifiable attempts by states to protect their cultural essentials in the immigration context. How can liberal democracies welcome immigrants without fundamentally changing their cultural heritage, forsaking their liberal traditions, or slipping into extreme nationalism? This issue is one of the greatest challenges facing liberalism today.
Cultural Defense of Nations
Global migration affects concepts of sovereignty, self-determination, and the nation-state. One of its expressions is the rise of what I term "cultural defense policies"—immigration and naturalization policies that are aimed at protecting different forms and expressions of the national identity. In Europe, integration has become mandatory, sanctioned, and test-based. It applies to all types of immigrants, including family members, and it is more invasive than the classic requirements of familiarity with a country’s history and civics. In some states, the frontiers are moving beyond the territorial borders with the creation of a new concept—"integration from abroad." Cultural defense policies are implemented through five main measures: (a) citizenship tests; (b) integration contracts; (c) loyalty oaths; (d) attachment requirements; and (e) language requirements (other measures include fences, preferences to ethnic diaspora, etc.). Although the law uses politically correct language, such as "community," "society," and "state," and in spite of the fact that politicians try to show that the law defends "common," "prevailing," and "shared" values, the defended culture essentially represents the ways of life, traditions, and values of the non-immigrant groups, the native-born population (autochthon, autochtonen, Français de souche).
The Paradox of Majority Rights
Talking about a liberal theory of majority rights seems paradoxical. Liberal theorists have always been troubled with the constant threat posed to individual liberties by democratic majority rule. Democracy is a "government of the people, by the people, for the people," but "the people" is essentially a majority population expressing itself through a majority vote. In a democracy, as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his essay The Tyranny of the Majority, the majority may "do whatsoever it pleases" and tyrannize the minority. In liberal political philosophy, majorities are associated with "evils against which society requires to be on its guard," to quote John Stuart Mill. The phrase "The will of the people," Mill argued, is deceptive, because it "practically means, the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this, as against any other abuse of power." This widely-shared view—that the power of the majority should be restrained—has become one of the most important pillars of international human rights law.
Given the fact that a democracy is based on majoritarian politics, democratic theory assumes that the majority culture "can take care of itself." It can dominate the public sphere by controlling entry into the community and by utilizing the forces of democratic decision-making. Thus, it does not need special legal privileges, nor is the concept of the "majority" even legally recognized.
A Rift in the Democratic Theory
In the post-World War II international system, Western countries did not struggle with the question of "who we are?"; they had a solid sense of what was British, French, or German. But times have changed. The recent influx of refugees and asylum seekers, foreign workers, and family migrants, together with the rise of multiculturalism and minority rights—as well as the erosion of national identities as a result of technological developments, globalization, and transnationalism—have led to a new reality where the assumption that the majority can take care of itself is no longer self-evident. Majorities in the West, particularly in Europe, have become smaller in size—numbers matter, especially in a democracy—and their culture has become more needy.
Furthermore: talks about the adoption of the majority culture to the minority culture have become popular. A recent article in The New Republic has called France to abandoned the concept of laïcité to accommodate the realities of multiculturalism; an article in The Economist has called the UK to revisit the status of the Church of England to adopt itself to a new era; and in Cologne, after 120 women reported being sexually assaulted, the mayor has called women to keep arm’s length from strangers to prevent sexual harassment—to give just three examples from this week.
Three Conceptions of Majorities
The first step in talking about majorities would be to legally recognize the existence of the majority entity. Identifying a majority is an exercise in classification; there is no one size-fits-all formula. In particular, it is difficult to decide how and where to draw the line between majorities and minorities; after all, majorities politically are made, not born. In many cases, today’s majority is composed of a coalition of yesterday’s minorities. Still, the fact that a concept is elusive does not mean that the reality to be denoted by it does not exist. With few exceptions, Western societies are heterogeneous. They contain a majority alongside one or more minorities. Everyone who advocates cultural minority rights must recognize their side-effect; cultural minority rights, by definition, yield a distinctive cultural majority. This is the inevitable outcome of multiculturalism.
In theory, various conceptions of majorities exist. One conception is an ethno-cultural majority; a majority is a group that is larger than other groups in the population, and is defined by one or more common ethno-cultural characteristics: descent, heritage, culture, language, religion, or way of life. Most nation-states have a dominant ethno-cultural group around which the state was founded—Castilians, English, Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Serbs, etc.—alongside one or more minority groups: Basques, Catalans, Frisians, Scots, Tatars, Welsh. Each society has its own subtle features and there is no list of fixed criteria for identifying an ethno-culture majority.
A second conception is a sociological majority; a "majority" is a group whose members have the strongest political, economic, or cultural power in a society. A sociological majority is measured not by the number of people, but by resources, dominance, and power. Hence, there may be cases where a numerical minority is the controlling group. These cases ought not to exist in a democracy because a free election is unlikely to produce such an outcome, yet they exist in autocratic regimes. Sociological majorities may also be composed of groups that, although a numerical minority, are perceived as part of the majority group due to their socioeconomic status.
A third conception is an idea-based majority; a majority is a group whose members share, to a high degree, certain ideas and principles that are the dominant ones in a given society. Put differently, members of the majority are those who do not differ substantively from the existing state’s dominant ideas and principles. Each society stands for something fundamental, whether we call it constitutional essentials, a society’s basic structure, or the general political philosophy. It can be a form of government (democracy, republic, monarchy), character (religious heritage, secularism, language), rights and freedoms (equality, liberty, dignity), or a combination of ideas that, taken together, are unique to a certain country. Some of these ideas are universal; others are more particular. The focus here is not on tastes in food, literature, sport, poetry, and the like; it is rather a statement of the most fundamental beliefs of a political community, its raison d’être.
Each of these three conceptions of majorities has a different emphasis. However, all of them view the majority as a collective with three main characteristics: a collective self-identification of a distinctive group; closeness of the members in terms of ethno-cultural character, socioeconomic character, or ideas; and the position of these characteristics in a given society as the dominant one.
Four Cases of Needy Majorities
When (and why) would the concept of the majority be useful in practice? Immigration policy is such a field where the majority may become "needy." Four paradigmatic cases can be identified.
The first case is diminishing majorities; it relates to a case in which majorities have reached a point where a fundamental cultural feature of society faces a significant challenge due, among other things, to immigration. This challenge is a function of numbers and the capacity to absorb additional immigrants without a reasonable likelihood that their admission would radically affect the "core" of the majority culture (a liberal institution, basic constitutional structure, distinctive vision of the common good, etc.). Under this case, if the state continues to admit immigrants, the majority’s ability to freely define its "self" in a state-based framework will become much weaker.
The second case is regional-minority majorities; it relates to a case in which a fundamental feature of the majority finds itself to be of a regional minority. In the Baltic countries or in the Ukraine, for example, the non-Russian majority lives in countries bordering the powerful Russian Federation. The idea that these countries should admit massive Russian immigration is perceived as dangerous by the majorities. Factors that may be considered here are: the level of the cultural gap and its manifestation; the numerical ratio between the majority and the neighboring countries; the strength of the majority culture; geographical proximity; the scale of immigration from neighboring countries; and the level of integration of newcomers into the majority culture.
The third case is minoritized majorities; it relates to a situation in which a national majority displays a state of mind of a national minority. Will Kymlicka, who has coined this term, defines minoritized majorities as "majorities that continue to think and act as if they are weak and victimized minorities and, therefore, continue to live in existential fear for their survival." These majorities were once national minorities, dominated by a foreign national majority, which is often the present national minority. Kymlicka gives the example of the Slovak majority and Hungarian minority in Slovakia, but other examples exist: the German minority in Poland, the Hungarian minority in Romania, the Russian minority in Ukraine, the Serbian minority in Croatia, and the Turkish minority in Bulgaria. In such cases, further immigration of people sharing the minority background is perceived by the majority as a threat to its territorial integrity and sovereignty.
The fourth case is victimized majorities; it relates to a situation in which the majority has a rich history of being victimized and persecuted. In the paradigmatic case, the history of victimization is comprehensively rooted in a preset group’s collective identity and has become part of its memories, traumas, and ethos (Israel can be an example). And when the threats are persistent and empirically-grounded, more than just bad collective historical memories are at stake.
Some of these cases may justify cultural majority rights in the immigration context. In other circumstances, these cases create, at most, an excuse—a plea to consider existing regional, historical, and psychological circumstances of a group when evaluating its immigration policies. It is a plea for a different legal interpretation of what is just, or for an exception to a general norm.
Majority Rights
Cultural minority rights have paved the way for cultural majority rights. Some of the principles invoked to defend minority cultures may apply, with proper accommodation, to "needy" majority cultures. Liberal theory and human rights law do not contain an explicit body of laws on cultural majority rights, yet this is merely because, so far, the majority culture has been presumed able to take care of itself by virtue of being a majority. However, majorities, like minorities, have an interest in adhering to their culture and preserving its essentials. This interest is based on similar justifications of cultural minority rights—the rights to personal identity and personal autonomy.
What does majority "rights" mean? First and foremost, it entails that the cultural interests of the majority should be protected by law—that is, recognizing that some aspects of the cultural interests of majorities, in some cases and subject to some limitations, are a sufficient reason for granting privileges to the majority and imposing duties on others in order to secure those interests. Majority "rights," in this context, means a plea to consider its needs and circumstances when determining its immigration absorption capacity, either as a justification for a certain policy or as an excuse for a deviation from a general legal norm—a form of mitigating circumstances.
What should be the scope of that protection? My approach provides a narrow defense for the majority culture. First, the focus is culture in the normative, rather than anthropological sense. It centers on normative principles, values, and institutions, instead of actual practices, folkways, lifestyles, and cultural mores. Second, within the normative realm, the focal point is the constitution, rather than sociological concepts of German living conditions, life in the United Kingdom, French communauté, or Dutch society. Put differently, it is the constitutional, rather than national or societal identity. Moreover, the focus is only on core constitutional principles, the basic structure, and, exclusively, on those principles that are essential for citizenship in a given state. Third, there is no plea for moral identification, only for legal acceptance. The notion of acceptance is more demanding than cognitive knowledge—it requires some commitment—but less demanding than identification. Fourth, the majority culture must be just, in light of the state’s circumstances; not every element of it is to be defended. And fifth, the majority is not a temporary political majority, represented by a political body, but a more permanent majority, reflected by the values of the constitution. It is a constitutional, rather than an electoral, majority.
What factors should be considered when determining the scope of majority rights? One factor is the severity of the threat posed to the majority culture, the probability of it occurring, and its consequences. Other factors are the moral value of the culture of the majority (how much of it is worth protecting?) and its centrality in defining the majority’s identity. While the focus of these factors is the majority interest, other factors relate to justice: does the demographic change brought about by immigration bring a more, or less, just society? There are cases where the cultural effects of the demographic change brought about by immigration are perceived to be for the worst, while in others they are perceived to create a more just society. The hard case is when the cultural effects of the change brought about by immigration give rise to just institutions, but different ones; in this case, the majority seeks to restrict migration not in order to prevent harm to liberal-democratic principles and institutions, but to sustain its dominant status and privileged position in determining the particular outcome of those just institutions and their basic structure.
International Constitutional Moment
Never in human history has so much attention been paid to human movement. By 2015, the number of international immigrants soared to 232 million—11 percent of the total population in the developed regions. Global migration yields demographic shifts of historical significance. Still, political theory and international law are ill-equipped to address the challenge. The 2015 European crisis creates an "International Constitutional Moment" for a candid discussion of both the challenge and the legal structure to address it. Some of the issues are national (e.g., defining a constitutional identity), other issues are regional (e.g., balancing between EU jurisdiction and the sovereignty of Member States to protect their constitutional identity),[1] and others are international (e.g., the relations between "majorities," "peoples," and "nations," or the nexus between self-determination of peoples and the cultural interests of majorities). My goal here is to advocate the recognition of a new concept, "majority groups" (mainly, an idea-based majority), to bring to the fore a few cases where majorities may see themselves, or indeed are, culturally needy in the immigration context, and to provide a primary framework for analyzing them. Disregarding the topic of cultural majority rights is not only theoretically wrong, but also politically unwise. With forms of "majority nationalism" rising and a growing popularity of extreme right-wing parties in the West, time has come to liberally address the new challenge. While liberal states should watch over “the tyranny of the majority,” they should not entirely dismiss the legal recognition of a majority group, as well as the moral value of its culture.
[1] Article 4(2) of the TEU (Maastricht, 1992) provides that "The Union shall respect the equality of Member States before the Treaties as well as their national identities, inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional . . . including ensuring the territorial integrity of the State." This "constitutional identity clause" is currently part of the Treaty of Lisbon (Article 4(2)). |
House Speaker John A. Boehner and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner appeared on the political talk shows Sunday at the start of a day of crucial talks, and their comments confirmed that the gap between Republicans and the White House on the debt ceiling remains wide and deep.
Geithner warned that a debt-reduction deal that doesn’t result in raising the nation’s legal borrowing limit through the 2012 elections remains unacceptable to the White House and cannot win enough Democratic votes in Congress to ensure passage.
Boehner (R-Ohio), meanwhile, indicated that Republicans could push forward with a plan this week, even without Democratic support.
“I think the preferable path would be a bipartisan plan that involves all the leaders, but it’s too early to decide whether that’s possible,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “If a bipartisan bill is not possible, I and my Republican colleagues in the House are prepared to move on our own.”
Under proposals floated by Republicans on Saturday, Congress would cut agency spending by as much as $1 trillion over the next 10 years and raise the debt ceiling by an equal amount. That would give the government the borrowing authority to pay its bills, but only through the end of this year.
The deal would then require Congress to work to reduce the debt by as much as $3 trillion by reforming the tax code and entitlement spending.
Geithner said such a two-step process could be acceptable — but not if it requires a second vote by Congress to lift the debt ceiling in the coming months. He insisted that any deal must raise the limit long enough to remove the possibility of a default from the politically heated presidential campaign season.
“There’s nothing wrong with doing this in stages,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But what it cannot do is leave the threat of default hanging over the economy.”
White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley had a similar message on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying a “short-term gimmick” won’t work and that President Obama would veto any plan that didn’t raise the ceiling through the 2012 elections.
On ABC’s “This Week,” Geithner said a deal must be in motion in the House by Monday night to avoid missing the Aug. 2 deadline.
“They need to have a framework that they know with complete confidence will pass both houses of Congress, that is acceptable to the president, and that should happen today,” he said.
Congressional leaders had raced Saturday to develop a new strategy for raising the debt limit that Boehner told his troops would include an ambitious plan to reduce future borrowing by as much as $4 trillion.
Although his talks with President Obama over a “grand bargain” to restrain the national debt collapsed in acrimony Friday, Boehner said he was confident lawmakers would avert a historic U.S. default — a possibility just 10 days off.
“Over this weekend, Congress will forge a responsible path forward,” Boehner said in a statement.
The speaker and other leaders started their Saturday at the White House, where Geithner warned of possible trouble in the markets if policymakers don’t announce a viable plan for raising the debt limit before the Asian exchanges open Sunday evening, according to people familiar with the meeting. Aides said Geithner’s warning lent fresh urgency to the negotiations, which continued throughout the day on Capitol Hill.
By early evening, the outlines of a two-stage strategy were emerging. First, lawmakers would vote on a package to cut agency spending by as much as $1 trillion over the next decade and raise the debt limit, currently set at $14.3 trillion, by the same amount. That would give Geithner enough borrowing authority to cover the nation’s bills through the end of this year.
Then Congress would go to work to produce as much as $3 trillion in additional savings through an overhaul of the tax code and major changes to Social Security and Medicare, the biggest drivers of federal spending. To identify those savings, Congress would create a new bipartisan debt-reduction committee comprising 12 lawmakers from both the House and Senate, an idea offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).
But the two sides were still fighting over how to force Congress to produce the second round of savings. Boehner wants to set another debt-limit vote early next year, while Democrats are insisting on a plan that would postpone another debt-limit showdown until after the 2012 presidential election.
Boehner, Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) met briefly in Boehner’s office Saturday evening to try to break the impasse. They emerged without a fresh approach to the problem, and aides made plans to try again Sunday morning.
After the meeting, Reid issued a statement saying he was “deeply disappointed in the status of negotiations” and urging Republicans “to reconsider their intransigence.”
“Their unwillingness to compromise is pushing us to the brink of a default on the full faith and credit of the United States,” Reid said. “We have run out of time for politics. Now is the time for cooperation.”
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel fired back in a statement that Democrats have long been aware of “our principles to pass a bill that fulfills the President’s request to increase the debt limit beyond the next election. . . . The Democrats who run Washington have refused to offer a plan. Now, as a result, a two-step process is inevitable.”
Obama has repeatedly objected to a short-term debt-limit extension, arguing that it would invite the same high-stakes gridlock that now threatens the sputtering U.S. recovery. The president made that case again Saturday when Boehner, Reid, McConnell and Pelosi gathered at the White house for an hour-long session. Obama called the meeting after Boehner walked out Friday on debt-limit talks for the second time in two weeks — again citing differences over taxes.
“A short-term extension could cause our country’s credit rating to be downgraded, causing harm to our economy and causing every American to pay higher credit card rates and more for home and car loans,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. “As the current situation makes clear, it would be irresponsible to put our country and economy at risk again in just a few short months with another battle over raising the debt ceiling.”
All three major rating agencies have threatened to downgrade the United States if the debt limit is not raised. So far, however, the market for Treasury bonds has shown little distress over the possibility of a U.S. default, despite numerous snags in negotiations.
In a conference call with House Republicans, Boehner ruled out the most likely alternative to a short-term extension: a process proposed by McConnell this month that would authorize Obama to raise the debt limit in installments, without explicit congressional approval.
“The goal of our discussions now with the leaders is not to do something in the Reid-McConnell framework,” Boehner said, according to one participant. “It will be something new.”
A senior GOP aide, meanwhile, accused Obama of trying to shape the debt-limit debate to suit his political needs, saying, “It would be terribly unfortunate if the president was willing to veto a debt-limit increase simply because its timing would not be ideal for his reelection campaign.”
Meanwhile, there were lingering doubts about Boehner’s ability to rally support for a debt-limit increase of any size or duration. Many House Republicans continue to push their plan to sharply cut spending over the next decade and adopt a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to balance the budget. Such a plan passed the House, but failed Friday in the Senate on a party-line vote.
Freshman Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) said Republican leaders remain concerned that even a small increase in the debt limit would fail on the House floor.
“I think their concern about bringing it to the floor is whether they can get 218 [votes] or not,” Farenthold said in an interview. “Everybody wants to only go through this pain once.”
On the conference call, Boehner assured his colleagues that, despite a week of secret talks with Obama, “there was never a deal” to cut spending and raise taxes by $800 billion over the next decade, as Boehner himself suggested in a news conference Friday night. “Any new revenue would have come from tax reform and economic growth,” Boehner said, according to participants — “not a tax hike.”
The terms of the emerging deal changed, however, when Obama “demanded 50 percent more revenue,” Boehner said. “That looked like a tax hike. We said no.”
Rank-and-file Republicans praised Boehner for “standing firm” and “doing the right thing,” participants said. “The American people are on your side,” said Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.).
Administration officials acknowledge that they requested more revenue last Wednesday in response to Boehner’s request for more cuts to federal health programs. But they said the request for an extra $400 billion was never a demand or an ultimatum. It was a negotiating position, to which they expected Boehner to respond.
In a meeting Thursday morning, a Democrat familiar with the talks said Boehner’s top policy aides sat for nearly two hours with White House officials without indicating that the extra taxes were a deal breaker. Then, the Democrat said, the speaker’s office simply stopped calling.
While Boehner and Obama sparred over the extra $400 billion in taxes, some Republicans were focused on the $800 billion that Boehner was ready to give up. One GOP Senate aide called it “a huge concession.” Another said it would open the door to a rewrite of the tax code that would guarantee significant tax hikes for households at all income levels.
The senior Republican on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), has been warning for months against such a move, which has also been championed by Obama’s fiscal commission and a bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Six.
“I am open to looking at eliminating or reducing some tax expenditures as part of comprehensive tax reform, but only if tax rates are lowered enough” to ensure that the government does not collect more tax revenue, Hatch said in a recent speech on the Senate floor. If tax reform raises any more money — much less an extra $800 billion — Hatch said, “that is a tax increase, plain and simple.”
Staff writers Paul Kane, David Fahrenthold, Rosalind S. Helderman, Felicia Sonmez and Zachary A. Goldfarb contributed to this report.
For more news on the debt ceiling debate, visit Post Business. |
An Illinois school district has said sorry to the Freedom From Religion Foundation for a coach's participation in prayer gatherings at school matches.
On Dec. 26, after a game between Vandalia Community High School and Pana High School, Coach Brian Buscher took part in a prayer circle with students of both teams. Buscher reportedly regularly joined in prayers with student athletes.
It is illegal for public school coaches to lead, organize or participate in prayers with their students, FFRF reminded Vandalia Community Unit School District #203.
"Prayers may not be a scheduled part of any school-sponsored activity," FFRF Legal Fellow Ryan Jayne wrote to Vandalia Superintendent Rich Well. "Public school coaches must refrain not only from leading prayers themselves, but also from participating in students' prayers. It is unconstitutional for public school employees to participate in the religious activities of their students."
The Vandalia School District quickly expressed regret after receiving FFRF's communiqué and promised to end the errant behavior.
"Please accept our apology," Well emailed back a few days after receiving FFRF's letter. "Our Varsity Boys Basketball Coach Brian Buscher has been notified that NO COACHES are allowed to participate."
FFRF appreciates the contrition.
"The coach should have known that he can't be a part of his students' prayer circle," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. "However, we appreciate the district's action to uphold the First Amendment in the future."
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national organization dedicated to the separation of state and church, with more than 26,000 members and chapters all over the country, including 800-plus and a Chicago chapter in the state of Illinois. |
The Aviation Herald Last Update: Tuesday, Feb 26th 2019 21:10Z
23843 Articles available
Events from Jun 19th 1999 to Feb 25th 2019 www.avherald.com Incidents and News in Aviation List by: Filter: Incident: Austral E190 at Buenos Aires on Nov 15th 2013, overran runway on landing
By Simon Hradecky, created Friday, Nov 15th 2013 14:13Z, last updated Thursday, Nov 28th 2013 16:57Z An Austral Embraer ERJ-190 on behalf of Aerolineas Argentinas, registration LV-CKZ performing flight AU-2255/AR-2255 from Rio de Janeiro,RJ (Brazil) to Buenos Aires,BA (Argentina) with 96 passengers and 5 crew, landed on Ezeiza Airport's runway 11 at 05:45L (08:45Z) but overran the end of the runway and came to a stop just after the nose of the aircraft had gone through the localizer antenna about 220 meters/730 feet past the runway end. No injuries occurred, the localizer antenna received substantial damage, the aircraft received minor damage.
The airport reported at the time of the incident a cold front passed over the aerodrome.
The airline reported the aircraft went off the runway due to a sudden change in wind direction and speed. No injuries occurred, the passengers disembarked and were taken to the terminal.
On Nov 28th 2013 Argentina's JIAAC rated the occurrence an accident reporting a loss of control of the aircraft and impact with obstacles, however stated the aircraft received minor damage and there were no injuries (which does not warrant an accident rating according to ICAO classification). An investigation into the occurrence has been opened.
Metars:
SAEZ 151000Z 17016KT 140V200 9999 FEW012 OVC060 16/13 Q1005
SAEZ 150932Z 21019G30KT 9999 FEW010 OVC045 17/16 Q1004
SAEZ 150916Z 20017KT 6000 -RA FEW010 BKN035 OVC060 17/16 Q1004
SAEZ 150900Z 19014KT 160V240 3000 RA FEW010 SCT020 OVC050 16/16 Q1004
SAEZ 150846Z 25020G34KT 3000 RA SCT004 BKN010 OVC060 19/18 Q1005
SAEZ 150800Z 11002KT 9000 -RA SCT010 BKN070 19/18 Q1002
SAEZ 150745Z 08005KT 060V120 7000 -RA BKN015 OVC070 18/18 Q1002 RETS
SAEZ 150700Z 20006KT 4000 -TSRA BKN005 FEW045CB OVC060 18/18 Q1003
SAEZ 150600Z 17005KT 160V220 4000 -TSRA BKN007 FEW045CB OVC060 20/19 Q1003
SAEZ 150542Z 34005KT 290V360 3000 TSRA BKN008 BKN013 FEW040CB 20/19 Q1004
SAEZ 150515Z 24010KT 190V250 9000 -TSRA BKN011 FEW045CB BKN060 20/18 Q1004
SAEZ 150500Z 20008KT 9999 VCTS BKN044 FEW045CB OVC100 20/18 Q1002
SAEZ 150425Z 23010KT 200V270 9999 VCTS FEW009 SCT018 FEW040CB BKN060 20/18 Q1002 RETSRA
SAEZ 150400Z 24016G35KT 210V270 8000 TSRA FEW018 FEW040CB BKN070 25/19 Q1002
LV-CKZ stuck in the localizer antenna (Photo: Juan Martín Cornejo):
By Simon Hradecky, created Wednesday, Dec 2nd 2015 19:14Z, last updated Wednesday, Dec 2nd 2015 19:14Z
During the landing phase the aircraft overran the end of the runway and impacted the ILS antenna due to a significant change in the weather conditions in a very short period of time during the most critical phase of the landing. The crew remained unaware of the weather change due to ATC not updating the weather information.
The following factors contributed to the runway excursion:
- a tail wind component of 27 knots above the limits set by the aircraft manufacturer (15 knots on dry runway), rain, reduced visibility and a runway contaminated with water
- ATC did not update the crew on the significant and sudden change of weather, the crew thus remained unaware of the weather conditions
- Ezeiza Airport's Tower did not have an alerting system available to warn of sudden wind changes and changing runway conditions
- the approach destabilized in the transition from disconnecting autopilot to continuing visually
- monitoring and callouts by the pilot monitoring were not in compliance with standard operating procedures
- the crew did not consider a missed approach in a situation of non-stabilized approach during a visual approach with autopilot disconnected
- a long landing combined with the tail wind and the wet runway meant, that it was not possible to stop the aircraft within the runway distance remaining
- the aircraft was not correctly configured for a landing on a contaminated runway, the actual configuration did not match the standard operating procedures for the runway condition present at touch down
The JIAAC reported the first officer (53, ATPL, 5,200 hours total, 606 hours on type) was pilot flying, the captain (39, ATPL, 7,150 hours total, 1,690 hours on type) was pilot monitoring.
The aircraft had deviated around weather in the area near Montevideo, which was also planned as an alternate. The weather information for Ezeiza read visibility 9km, calm winds and rain, upon receiving this weather information the crew decided to continue to Ezeiza. The aircraft joined the instrument approach #2, VOR DME ILS DME approach to runway 11. Establish on final approach, about 4nm from touch down, the crew received landing clearance, wind was reported by tower at 4 knots from 240 degrees.
In the two following minutes, until touch down, the weather changed significantly however, according to special weather report one minutes after the runway excursion the winds had increased to 20 knots gusting 34 knots from 250 degrees, the rain increased in intensity and consequent reduction of visibility. Tower however did not transmit the changing weather conditions to the crew.
The aircraft touched down on runway but was unable to stop before the end of the runway, overran the end of the runway and impacted the localizer antenna about 250 meters past the end of the runway. The aircraft was evacuated through the rear doors at both sides, there were no injuries.
The aircraft sustained substantial damage to the radome and lower part of the fuselage, three pitot tubes and two temperature sensors mainly through impact with the localizer antenna, the nose gear received damage to the doors. The localizer antenna received substantial damage, too.
The JIAAC analysed that there was no technical malfunction prior to the accident.
METARs as well as ATC weather information indicated near calm winds, light rain, visibility of 9000 meters with a cloud ceiling at 7000 feet. Based on that information the crew acted according to their training in planning their approach and landing, there was no hint suggesting that special measures would become necessary.
4nm before touchdown the crew received landing clearance with wind information of 4 knots from 240 degrees. However, in the following two minutes until touchdown the weather changed to an "extreme magnitude" with winds at 20 knots gusting 34 knots from 250 degrees, resulting in a 27 knots tailwind component. Even if the runway had been dry this would have exceeded the tail wind limit of 15 knots. In addition the visibility reduced significantly. There is no evidence that the crew recognized the worsened weather conditions in their night visual approach.
The JIAAC continued analysis stating that the standard operating procedures of the airline required a maximum performance landing configuration for landing on contaminated runways recommending full flaps. The crew however had correctly configured the aircraft to flaps 5 according to the weather information they had received earlier, which now no longer was correct due to the changed weather conditions.
The flight crew's use of automation was according to standard operating procedures based on the reported weather conditions. The approach was stable until the autopilot was disconnected, during the visual transition the flight path was corrected to above the glide path. With the pilot flying focussing on acquiring visual references the deviation above glide path is consistent with increasing tailwind, the parameters of flight control increasingly deteriorated. The JIAAC wrote: "The variations in the parameters of flight control suggest a degree of difficulty in controlling the aircraft consistent with the unexpected operating conditions."
During the transition to visual flight there is further evidence of deteriorating monitoring of the flight progress. The JIAAC wrote: "This is not outrageous considering the sudden increase in workload for the crew, without time to adjust, to manage substantially different conditions than planned. The sudden increase in workload is to be considered a contributing factor to the deterioration of the flight path."
The JIAAC further analysed that the handling of the aircraft by the first officer in manual flight, with autothrottle connected, resulted in frequent pitch changes of up to 5 degrees causing a large response by the autothrust system, substantial speed variations and further aggravated pitch change requirements, overall leading to destabilization of the approach.
The JIAAC analysed that both flight data and cockpit voice recorder made clear that the approach was not stabilized. However, neither pilot called for a missed approach. A realistic assessment of the decision to continue the approach rather than go around can not be made in the abstract and requires the wider consideration of global operating environment including weather in the missed approach path, status of aircraft (fuel) and fundementally the crew's assessment, based on their own experience, of the safety of the approach.
The aircraft crossed the runway threshold at a height of 150 feet AGL and a speed of 147 KIAS resulting in a landing distance needed in excess of the landing distance available resulting in the aircraft coming to a stop 256 meters past the runway threshold.
Visualisation of the approach on crossing the runway threshold (Graphics: JIAAC):
Argentina's JIAAC released their final report in Spanish concluding the probable causes of the accident were:The JIAAC reported the first officer (53, ATPL, 5,200 hours total, 606 hours on type) was pilot flying, the captain (39, ATPL, 7,150 hours total, 1,690 hours on type) was pilot monitoring.The aircraft had deviated around weather in the area near Montevideo, which was also planned as an alternate. The weather information for Ezeiza read visibility 9km, calm winds and rain, upon receiving this weather information the crew decided to continue to Ezeiza. The aircraft joined the instrument approach #2, VOR DME ILS DME approach to runway 11. Establish on final approach, about 4nm from touch down, the crew received landing clearance, wind was reported by tower at 4 knots from 240 degrees.In the two following minutes, until touch down, the weather changed significantly however, according to special weather report one minutes after the runway excursion the winds had increased to 20 knots gusting 34 knots from 250 degrees, the rain increased in intensity and consequent reduction of visibility. Tower however did not transmit the changing weather conditions to the crew.The aircraft touched down on runway but was unable to stop before the end of the runway, overran the end of the runway and impacted the localizer antenna about 250 meters past the end of the runway. The aircraft was evacuated through the rear doors at both sides, there were no injuries.The aircraft sustained substantial damage to the radome and lower part of the fuselage, three pitot tubes and two temperature sensors mainly through impact with the localizer antenna, the nose gear received damage to the doors. The localizer antenna received substantial damage, too.The JIAAC analysed that there was no technical malfunction prior to the accident.METARs as well as ATC weather information indicated near calm winds, light rain, visibility of 9000 meters with a cloud ceiling at 7000 feet. Based on that information the crew acted according to their training in planning their approach and landing, there was no hint suggesting that special measures would become necessary.4nm before touchdown the crew received landing clearance with wind information of 4 knots from 240 degrees. However, in the following two minutes until touchdown the weather changed to an "extreme magnitude" with winds at 20 knots gusting 34 knots from 250 degrees, resulting in a 27 knots tailwind component. Even if the runway had been dry this would have exceeded the tail wind limit of 15 knots. In addition the visibility reduced significantly. There is no evidence that the crew recognized the worsened weather conditions in their night visual approach.The JIAAC continued analysis stating that the standard operating procedures of the airline required a maximum performance landing configuration for landing on contaminated runways recommending full flaps. The crew however had correctly configured the aircraft to flaps 5 according to the weather information they had received earlier, which now no longer was correct due to the changed weather conditions.The flight crew's use of automation was according to standard operating procedures based on the reported weather conditions. The approach was stable until the autopilot was disconnected, during the visual transition the flight path was corrected to above the glide path. With the pilot flying focussing on acquiring visual references the deviation above glide path is consistent with increasing tailwind, the parameters of flight control increasingly deteriorated. The JIAAC wrote: "The variations in the parameters of flight control suggest a degree of difficulty in controlling the aircraft consistent with the unexpected operating conditions."During the transition to visual flight there is further evidence of deteriorating monitoring of the flight progress. The JIAAC wrote: "This is not outrageous considering the sudden increase in workload for the crew, without time to adjust, to manage substantially different conditions than planned. The sudden increase in workload is to be considered a contributing factor to the deterioration of the flight path."The JIAAC further analysed that the handling of the aircraft by the first officer in manual flight, with autothrottle connected, resulted in frequent pitch changes of up to 5 degrees causing a large response by the autothrust system, substantial speed variations and further aggravated pitch change requirements, overall leading to destabilization of the approach.The JIAAC analysed that both flight data and cockpit voice recorder made clear that the approach was not stabilized. However, neither pilot called for a missed approach. A realistic assessment of the decision to continue the approach rather than go around can not be made in the abstract and requires the wider consideration of global operating environment including weather in the missed approach path, status of aircraft (fuel) and fundementally the crew's assessment, based on their own experience, of the safety of the approach.The aircraft crossed the runway threshold at a height of 150 feet AGL and a speed of 147 KIAS resulting in a landing distance needed in excess of the landing distance available resulting in the aircraft coming to a stop 256 meters past the runway threshold.Visualisation of the approach on crossing the runway threshold (Graphics: JIAAC):
By ike on Thursday, Dec 3rd 2015 22:18Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Thursday, Dec 3rd 2015 21:08Z
By Av8tor on Thursday, Dec 3rd 2015 07:22Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Thursday, Dec 3rd 2015 07:03Z
By Av8tor on Wednesday, Dec 2nd 2015 21:01Z
By Mario on Wednesday, Dec 2nd 2015 20:01Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Friday, Mar 7th 2014 04:47Z
By (anonymous) on Friday, Feb 28th 2014 02:46Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Wednesday, Feb 5th 2014 15:56Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Wednesday, Feb 5th 2014 15:50Z
By (anonymous) on Thursday, Dec 19th 2013 01:46Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Tuesday, Dec 10th 2013 04:17Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Tuesday, Dec 10th 2013 04:11Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Tuesday, Dec 10th 2013 03:58Z
By (anonymous) on Monday, Dec 9th 2013 14:27Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Monday, Dec 2nd 2013 22:05Z
By (anonymous) on Sunday, Dec 1st 2013 03:24Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Wednesday, Nov 27th 2013 20:01Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Wednesday, Nov 27th 2013 19:59Z
By Todd on Monday, Nov 25th 2013 13:17Z
By (anonymous) on Friday, Nov 22nd 2013 12:42Z
By (anonymous) on Wednesday, Nov 20th 2013 16:40Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Tuesday, Nov 19th 2013 15:59Z
By Todd on Tuesday, Nov 19th 2013 15:33Z
By Todd on Tuesday, Nov 19th 2013 15:31Z
By Enrique on Monday, Nov 18th 2013 22:15Z
By WhiskeyCobra on Monday, Nov 18th 2013 02:10Z
By (anonymous) on Sunday, Nov 17th 2013 17:29Z
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There’s no “formula” to write a great chorus or hook, but these techniques can spark ideas to write, rework, or critique your own songs.
How do you write a great chorus? You know, something that will really stick in your ear and never get old?
Of course, there’s that certain spark, that creative ingenuity that can hit us every now and then like a bolt of lightning. But what do you do when that creative spark just isn’t there? When you can’t seem to get your thoughts together into a solid hook?
To get your ideas flowing, it can help to take a step back and look at the tried and true music theory techniques that we see at work time after time in just about any new hit that graces the Billboard Hot 100.
These are by no means a “formula” to write a great chorus or hook, but there are techniques you can draw from to spark ideas, rework a chorus you feel might be falling a little flat, or to critique your own hooks.
Use motifs
A motif is just about as basic as you can get in the vast world of music theory, but the power cannot be overstated. Motifs are short musical ideas used to build phrases, melodies, riffs, grooves, and just about anything else foundational to a song. You can create melodic motifs, rhythmic motifs, and even harmonic motifs and string them together and manipulate them in many ways to create a strong, cohesive sound that stays fresh and interesting.
Motifs can be incredibly simple (and a lot of times it’s the simple ones that really stick in our heads). One of my all-time favorite motifs is the guitar part for “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5. It uses only one pitch and the same rhythm for the entire song, but it is one of the strongest guitar parts I’ve ever heard in a pop or dance tune. It creates an incredibly strong rhythmic foundation for just about everything else in the song.
Next time you’re working on a chorus, try to simplify it down and think about the motifs you’re using. Then, try modifying or making small changes to those motifs in a later chorus. This helps create a lot of interest and keeps the song from feeling monotonous while still maintaining that strong hook.
If you’re looking for another example of this, check out “Get Lucky.” Listen for small manipulations in the incredibly simple hook and notice how it keeps the song interesting. We take a deeper look at the music theory at play in “Get Lucky” and nine other hit songs in the Inside the Hits eBook. Download it for free.
Incorporate sequences
Another really useful music theory concept that will help you write a great chorus is the concept of a sequence. Sequences are ways to take a particular motif or set of chords and transpose them up or down in a certain pattern.
Our ears naturally identify patterns in music (even if we don’t have any musical training), so this use of patterns creates a lot of expectation and anticipation as the listener’s ears predict what’s coming next. You can use sequences to create a strong expectation as you lead up to the hook, or you can build it up and thwart that expectation by breaking the pattern to add tension.
There are two main types of sequences: harmonic and motivic. Harmonic sequences are made up of a set of chords that follow a particular interval pattern. Motivic sequences are made up of a motif that is transposed and repeated using a specific interval pattern.
Two great examples of both of these concepts are Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” and Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie.”
“Canon in D” uses a harmonic sequence that follows an interval pattern: down by a 4th, up by a 2nd (D to A, B- to E-, etc.).
“Hips Don’t Lie” uses the same harmonic sequence but in a minor key. In both pieces of music, the motivic sequence follows the harmonic sequence. So every time the harmonic sequence repeats, so does the motif. You can hear this in the violin part in Pachelbel’s “Canon” and in the trumpet part in “Hips Don’t Lie.”
Take a listen for yourself and notice how your ear starts to predict where the music is going.
Take advantage of form and repetition
Once you have built a strong set of motifs and perhaps used harmonic or motivic sequences, the ways you use form and repetition can play a huge role as you write a great chorus.
First, if you want the chorus to stick, you need to make it the focus of your song: many pop songs get to the chorus in 60 seconds or less. It also helps a lot to write the hook (and sometimes the verses) over the same chords and groove as the chorus.
Second, use a song form that repeats the chorus a lot. Repetition (with small variations) is what will get that hook stuck in people’s heads. If you have too many sections other than the chorus, the power you want to the chorus to have may start to disappear.
A common structure for pop song form is:
Intro/Hook
Verse
Pre-chorus
Chorus
Hook
Verse
Pre-chorus
Chorus
Bridge
Chorus
Chorus
Outro/Hook
Analyze the hits
It goes without saying that if you want to write hooks and choruses like the greats, you should study their work. Make a habit to try to really dissect the choruses from your favorite songs to understand what’s going on. What are the motifs at work? Do they use sequences? How much repetition is used? How are repetitions manipulated and varied to keep the listener interested?
Dave Kusek is the founder of New Artist Model. Over the years he’s worked with tens of thousands of musicians around the world across every genre imaginable and in many different markets, and now, along with Daniel Roberts, he’s developed a new approach to reinvent the way music theory is taught. Hit Music Theory is the best and most practical way to learn music theory. Taught in context of modern hits, you learn how top songwriters are applying theory and how you can use it in your own music.
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STORIES OF THE DAY
SPRING PRACTICE BEGINS | It is a rite of spring. Spring football. It is a good thing and after what seems like every other college beginning, Texas Tech gets their start with their new head coach. It feels good to type that. Texas Tech head coach Kliff Kingsbury differs from Tuberville in that Tuberville wanted to start early so that if there were any injuries the player would have more time to recover. Kingsbury wanted to give the players more time with the new strength and conditioning head coach. I'm fine with either philosophy.
Now, Kingsbury gets his chance to start his program. It's his show. This is what he has been working for for his coaching career. It finally begins.
AN AGGRESSIVE DEFENSE | The focus today from the LAJ is on Co-DC and LB coach Mike Smith (I have to figure out a way to abbreviate this) and his passion for the game. I do think that this is going to be a common theme with Smith, Matt Wallerstedt, John Scott, Jr., Kevin Curtis and Trey Haverty. They are all passionate and excitable.
Now, you can expect something totally different:
"Our main thing is we’re going to get after people," said Smith, the former Coronado and Tech linebacker. "Eighty percent of college football’s the same. It’s an over (defensive line) front and they’re playing quarters (coverage) every snap. The old bend, don’t break stuff. Sit back and defend the offense.
"I don’t believe in that. Wally doesn’t believe in that, and where I come from, with Rex (Ryan) and those guys, you’ve got to get after people. I don’t care if you’re Peyton Manning, Tom Brady or the quarterback at Brownfield, they don’t like people in their face. They don’t like you coming after them. They don’t like you disguising."
The only caution is that almost every new defensive coordinator says that they are going to be aggressive and put a lot of pressure on the quarterback, but I think the difference is that Smith and Wallerstedt are going to try things differently. We're going to get into these defensive schemes during the offseason to explain what he means, but this is significant. Make sure and read the whole thing.
ROSTER RELEASED | The other big story from last night is that the spring roster was released and last year's prize recruit, DT Michael Starts, is not on the roster and his situation is not resolved as of right now. I don't really have a lot to add about some of the other things like position changes.
NOTEBOOK
WALK-ON TIGHT END | Welcome to Seminole TE Hunter Weishuhn, who passed up a scholarship to Angelo St. to be a preferred walk-on at Texas Tech (24/7 Sports and Hudl). This is actually really good news as Weishuhn has very good size for being a true freshman at 6-7/235, he's already a pretty big player. He's also a pretty accomplished basketball player and his voice is already significantly deeper than mine. Here's Hunter:
"I was talking to a couple colleges about playing football," Weishuhn said. "I went to Texas Tech on my first visit and liked it a lot, then I went back on my second visit and I got to talk with all of the players and the coaches. I loved it. I was able to relate with all of them. All of the coaches are real young, it was just a fun atmosphere. They’re getting some good things going, and I decided this is what I’ve always wanted to do."
BELL AND MARQUEZ READY | The LAJ reports that both WR's Bradley Marquez and Javon Bell will return and are ready to go.
"They’ve been coming along," Kingsbury said. "I think both should be ready for spring ball, which is should be great, because that’s a lot of speed. They’re two talented players. We’re excited about those two guys getting back in the mix."
Kingsbury also mentions that there are only ten scholarship linemen available due to the injuries to Alfredo Morales and Matt Wilson. Hello opportunity.
QUARTERBACK COMPETITION | The LAJ also has a bit on the quarterback competition and all of the quarterbacks will get equal reps:
"I think it’ll be good," Kingsbury said of the competition. "I think until you get them out there in our system and see how they react to the way we actually do things, you never know who’s going to rise up and take the lead and take it over. We’ll have a competition with equal reps and see how it shakes out." |
A pro-life advocate says pro-abortion Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton is disingenuous for claiming she is pro woman when she supports abortion. The pro-life supporter notes that abortions have killed almost 30 million girls and that Hillary Clinton can hardly call herself a champion for women while supporting that.
Dr. John A. Sparks, the retired dean of arts and letters at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, authored a column taking Clinton’s pro-woman claims to task:
Sparks says Clinton’s support for abortion should disqualify her from becoming president.
“In the name of all that is decent, it is time to end this outrage. What is absolutely clear is that millions of girls have been deprived of their womanhood by the very ones who claim to be their “champion.” What a cruel irony,” he concludes. |
The Scariest Graph I've Seen Recently
Everyone knows Moore's Law: the number of transistors on a chip doubles every couple of years. We can take the process roadmap for Intel, TSMC or GF and pretty much see what the densities we will get will be when 20/22nm, 14nm and 10nm arrive. Yes the numbers are on track.But I have always pointed out that this is not what drives the semiconductor industry. It is much better to look at Moore's Law the other way around, namely that the cost of any given functionality implemented in semiconductors halves every couple of years. It is this which has meant that you can buy (or even your kid can buy) a 3D graphics console that contains graphics way beyond what would have cost you millions of dollars 20 years ago in a state of the art flight simulator.But look at this graph:This shows the cost for a given piece of functionality (namely a million gates) in the current process generation and looking out to 20nm and 14nm. It is flat (actually perhaps getting worse). This might not matter too much for Intel's server business since those have such high margins that they can probably live with a price that doesn't come down as much as it has done historically. And they can make real money by putting more and more onto a chip. But it is terrible for businesses like mobile computing that don't live on the bleeding edge of the maximum number of transistors on a chip. If you are not filling up your 28nm die and a 20nm die costs just the same (and is much harder to design) why bother? Just design a bigger 28nm die (there may be some power savings but even that is dubious since leakage is typically an increasing challenge).If this graph remains the case, then Moore's Law carries on in the technical sense that you can put twice as many transistors on your chip if you can think of something clever to do with them and can find a way to keep enough of them powered on. But it means there is no longer an economic driver to move to a new process unless you have run out of space on the old one.Since EDA mostly makes money on designs in new processes (because they need new tools which can be sold at a premium) this is bad for EDA. It actually doesn't make money on the first few designs coming through a new process because there is so much corresponding engineering to be done. But if the mainstream never moves, the cash-cow aspect of selling EDA tools to the mainstream won't happen. And just like there is no business selling "microprocessor design tools" since there are too few groups who would buy them and their needs are too different, there might never be a big enough market for "14nm design tools" to justify the investment.So that's why this is the scariest graph in EDA. |
No, it’s not the love of explosives . It’s the observation that we have an inordinate number of engineers in our groups. A recent article posted to the geek news website slashdot discussed some reasons for why engineers may be so attracted to terrorism. The whole time I was reading the article and comments I couldn’t help but think of our more benign, and in my opinion, beneficial group of like minded individuals: skeptics. This issue is of relevance to me in particular because I happen to be a skeptic and an engineer.
At local Ottawa Skeptics events, we’ve been averaging around 20 people. Of those 20, I’d say that at least half are an engineer of some type. This may be an anomaly due to the fact that Ottawa has a fairly active high tech industry, but from meeting people at skeptical events in other cities, such as TAM, I think it’s safe to say that we have a lot of skeptic engineers. On the other hand, the creationists also tend to have a lot of outspoken engineers in their group too (check out the Salem hypothesis). Why so many engineers in skepticism, creationism, and even terrorism?
Before I attempt to answer, you may fairly ask if there is even anything to be explained. I’m well aware of Ray Hyman’s “categorical imperative”, the idea that a phenomenon should be confirmed to exist before attempting an explanation. I don’t have data to offer, just an anecdote. When my wife asked me what I was going to write about this week I gave her the title of the article. She quickly shot back: “engineers”. The look on her face when I told her she was right was priceless. That was all the confirmation I needed to spend my time writing this article.
So, what do they all have in common? I don’t have the answer, but I like some of the hypotheses generated in the slashdot comments. One commenter suggested a reason for terrorists being engineers comes down to the observation that engineers view the world in black and white:
Engineers are ALWAYS right. ALWAYS. Even when (especially when?) something is clearly opinion based. Ask a non-eng what their favorite color is, you get a simple answer. Ask an eng the same, you get an answer PLUS reasons why it is superior to other colors.
You won’t find many postmodernist engineers. For many engineers, their solution to a given problem is the correct one, and everyone else’s solution is “stupid”. You also will find this trait amongst skeptics. We will often be very opinionated, and be able to debate our opinion to the bitter end.
Another commenter replied with his view of liberal arts students:
All of them have real trouble in fields like math and science because in those fields there are correct and incorrect answers, and incorrect answers cannot be met by “that’s just, like, your opinion, man”. Of course, xkcd shows it far better than I ever could. Worth mentioning is that the smarter liberal arts types aren’t like this at all. For instance, smart English majors can point out the structures of literature that make it all tick, or exactly how a sentence can be better phrased. Smart history majors can provide all the major sources for a historical event, explain what biases each source had and how that affected their description of the event, piece together what probably actually happened, and are probably some of the best BS detectors out there.
The latter group I recognize from the liberal arts graduates that are in the skeptical community. One common issue that we’re constantly trying to get across to people is that in scientific debates, such as vaccine safety or creationism, there are some opinions that are just plain wrong. People with engineering backgrounds seem to grasp this concept very easily.
LordKazan writes of engineering:
… it doesn’t challenge their religious dogma like the other departments with their more rounded gen ed requirements do. Let alone the departments in Arts and Sciences like Geology, Biology, Paleontology, etc that the findings of openly challenge their dogma.
This might help explain why you find terrorist engineers and creationist engineers. It provides a technical background without the basic science to challenge religious beliefs. This doesn’t explain skeptics, but it doesn’t have to. There’s of course many possible explanations, some more influential than others, but no single explanation.
Timothy Brownawall says it’s all about “rules”:
Engineering is about carefully following an existing set of rules, like building codes and the laws of physics. It can require cleverness, but only in how to best achieve your goals while staying within the rules (“solve this problem, within these constraints”). Maybe there’s a mindset where it just doesn’t really matter where the rules come from, and religious rules are just as good as physical or legal rules? This would be in contrast to science, where the goal is to find the rules and poke at them until you understand them (“find out what the constraints are, and why”).
Maybe engineers are attracted to religious terrorism, creationism (which is religion based) and skepticism because both religion and skepticism offer “rules”. Mainstream religions offer rigid rules codified in the Bible/Koran, while skepticism offers the rigid rules of logic and evidence. Perhaps this may be a possible explanation for why some of the more well known skeptics are, such as Michael Shermer, former religious believers.
One aspect to an engineer’s view of life that I’ve noticed is the belief that every problem has a solution. For a skeptic, this may mean that every strange phenomenon has a rational explanation waiting to be found. For a creationist that may mean that the appearance of design implies a designer. I’ve also noticed this mindset in the world of alternative medicine. I know a few engineers that have fallen for the empty claims of alternative medicine, and I suspect that it’s due to this idea of every problem having a solution. Scientific medicine has not cured all disease, and humans still must face death, which is a problem. Since a solution must exist for every problem, and mainstream medicine doesn’t provide it, then quack medicine must, or so their subconscious thinking may go. I don’t really know, but I suspect this may be influencing some people I know.
As for the mystery laid out in the provocative title, I doubt that I have provided an adequate explanation, but as an engineer, I can’t help but suspect that there is a solution to this problem. |
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Well, it’s happened. The sky has fallen, the enemy has broken through the gates, and the empire’s vast, gritty disintegration has begun: Some dude in some National Guard unit has vowed to leave the service, rather than work alongside the gays. Check out the text of his resignation letter below, after the jump.
According to a story called “The Gaying of America” on World Net Daily—the bastion of right-wing watchdog journalism that gave you birtherism—comes this revelation: “President Obama’s repeal of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy is already damaging the U.S. military.” The evidence? A lieutenant colonel who doesn’t want to be named, serving in an Army National Guard battalion in a state that wasn’t identified, has tendered his resignation over the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And he says he knows of other officers who plan to follow suit. Clearly, all is lost. We might as well roll the tanks out of Baghdad and Afghanistan now and help the Taliban get on with their socialist community organizing or whatever:
The resigning soldier (let’s call him “Braveheart”) writes, without any hint of irony, that he must commit this act of disobedience in order to preserve the great military virtue of obedience:
“When you start trying to attract people who are so self-centered that they put living their lifestyle out in the open above the needs of their country and national defense, then you have a really dangerous combination.”
Huh. You don’t say.
But wait, it’s not ironic enough just yet. Turns out that, as morally outraged as Lt. Colonel Braveheart is, he doesn’t want to leave the service right this minute. “I would like to remain in the XXX Army National Guard until I am eligible for retirement (at 20 years and 0 days), which would be in the late summer of 2012,” he writes, “but on grounds of my religious beliefs, I will not attend sensitivity or behavior modification training consequential to this policy change, even if it means disciplinary action.”
Notwithstanding Braveheart’s brave, principled stand for his retirement pension, he—and WND—would have us believe that the DADT repeal will spur a mass exodus of other righteous vets who can stand enemy fire, desert heat, and working with explosives, but don’t want to catch the gay:
“Very few soldiers are fine with open homosexuals in the service,” said the officer. “I cannot believe the numbers jibe with what was published in the previous survey,” referring to a study commissioned by the Pentagon to assess whether the military could safely repeal DADT. “I did not give up my constitutional rights and freedom of religion when I joined the military. I don’t believe in subjecting myself to all of the behavior modification and sensitivity training. They’re going to try to push the position that this is an acceptable lifestyle.”
I don’t know who this officer is, or if he even exists. But if he does, someone should explain to him how the Uniform Code of Military Justice doesn’t always afford soldiers the same rights civilians enjoy under the Constitution. And if he has sympathizers in the military, perhaps we should be willing to trade their national service for that of Dan Choi, Katie Miller, and Victor Fehrenbach—all top-performing service members of proven character whose military careers are on hold because of their sexual orientation.
“The battlefield has its own values, starting with courage,” one recent war vet wrote in the New York Times in 2009. “Sexual orientation falls somewhere below musical taste.” If Lt. Colonel Braveheart and his ilk want to put their poor taste ahead of their sense of courage, aren’t we better off without them driving our jets, submarines, and battalions?
Judge for yourself. Here’s what the incognito colonel told his superiors: |
That bill never went anywhere, but in a rare move, the Bureau of Prisons issued its policy memo three weeks later.
The new policy came in August after Democratic senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala D. Harris of California, and Dick Durbin of Illinois introduced a bill called the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act in July that would require free hygiene products for women.
Every woman in federal custody is guaranteed tampons, pads, and panty liners free of charge, according to a new policy established Aug. 1, 2017 . But female inmates and advocates tell VICE News that facilities across the country are still not complying.
Two and a half months after guaranteeing free feminine hygiene products for female inmates, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is still making women pay for tampons, pads, and panty liners.
Read more
Two and a half months after guaranteeing free feminine hygiene products for female inmates, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is still making women pay for tampons, pads, and panty liners.
Every woman in federal custody is guaranteed tampons, pads, and panty liners free of charge, according to a new policy established Aug. 1, 2017. But female inmates and advocates tell VICE News that facilities across the country are still not complying.
The new policy came in August after Democratic senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala D. Harris of California, and Dick Durbin of Illinois introduced a bill called the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act in July that would require free hygiene products for women.
That bill never went anywhere, but in a rare move, the Bureau of Prisons issued its policy memo three weeks later.
Read: What it’s like to terminate a pregnancy behind bars
“Wardens will ensure inmates are provided the following products (at no cost to the inmates): tampons (regular and super size), maxi pads with wings (regular and super size), and panty liners (regular),” the memo reads.
But the changes promised in the policy aren’t being implemented in several prisons.
The federal facility in Aliceville, Alabama, that holds nearly 1,500 female inmates is still charging women for panty liners, a female inmate told VICE News on condition of anonymity.
“There are panty liners in our commissary for purchase; however, I have never seen panty liners provided free of charge,” she said.
A federal prison in Waseca, Minnesota, that houses more than 700 inmates is still charging women for tampons and panty liners, according to an inmate who also asked to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals.
“Tampons are available on commissary to buy and I’ve seen people use pads to make [tampons],” she said.
A female federal inmate in downtown Miami and another in Fort Worth, Texas, confirmed to VICE News that those prisons are not complying with the policy either.
Watch: Women Unshackled conference addresses women in U.S. prisons
Inmates at another eight federal prisons in West Virginia, Texas, Florida, Illinois, California, and Arizona reported they are still having to pay for feminine hygiene products, according to the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls and the CAN-DO Foundation.
Amy Povah, director of the CAN-DO Foundation and a former federal inmate herself, said these products are incredibly expensive for inmates who have extremely low-paying prison jobs — around $8 per box.
“Tampons is an unbelievable luxury that most women can’t buy,” she said. “Tampons, pads, panty liners for menstruation cycle — that should be something that’s a basic function that everyone is provided with, like toilet paper.”
The Bureau of Prisons and 11 of the facilities identified as not in compliance did not respond to repeated requests for comment Friday. A spokesperson for the federal prison in Phoenix, Arizona said they have purchased the products and are preparing to make them available.
“This is unacceptable,” said Sen. Booker in a statement to VICE News. “As I said back in August when the Bureau of Prisons issued its memo, these guidelines are simply words on a piece of paper unless they’re followed by concrete action. It seems the Bureau of Prisons is not properly implementing these guidelines across all prisons and I plan to follow up with them directly to get an answer why.” |
Arian Foster's health and transition to a new offense remain question marks for the Houston Texans entering 2014.
So far, the 27-year-old running back grades himself positively on both counts.
Watch "The Top 100 Players of 2014" every week at 9 p.m. ET on NFL Network as we count down to the top player in the NFL. "The Top 100 Players of 2014 Reactions" airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET.
"I'm back," Foster said Wednesday night of his back injury that cost him eight games in 2013, per the Houston Chronicle. "I didn't want it to happen. You can't ever plan for something like that, but it's just part of the game, and you have to deal with it."
Foster underwent back surgery in November.
Health is not the only stumbling block for the starting running back, who will be learning a new offense under coach Bill O'Brien.
"So far, I really like it," Foster said. "It's very versatile. Coach O'Brien has expressed to me how he wants to use me out of the backfield. That's one of my strengths."
Utilizing Foster in the passing game plays to his strengths. Foster sports good hands and, during his breakout seasons in 2010 and 2011, he had 604 and 611 yards receiving respectively. Then the Texans' offense completely bottomed out.
With Ben Tate moving on to the Cleveland Browns, Foster is slated to return to his workhorse ways -- if he can stay healthy. O'Brien's plan to get Foster back into the passing game should increase his value for those fantasy football fanatics.
The latest "Around The League Podcast" breaks down all the big news and begins the search for the new Team of ATL. |
Ottawa police are asking for the public's help to identify the owner of two dogs that were shot and killed by officers in Orléans Saturday morning after they attacked a 25-year-old woman.
Police said the woman — who is not from Ottawa — was still in hospital Monday morning after undergoing surgery Sunday night.
Paramedics said she had severe lacerations to both upper arms, and lacerations on her head, face, back and buttocks.
On Monday, police said investigators are still working to identify the breed of the dogs and who owns them.
"These dogs were on a rampage," said Ottawa Police Service spokesman Const. Marc Soucy.
"We're trying to find out if there are more victims…if you've been a victim of these dogs, please let us know, no matter what [the] nature [of] the bite was, whether it was severe or not. If you were attacked by those dogs, we need to know about it."
The two dogs were shot and killed by police Saturday after they attacked the woman and a 66-year-old man who was trying to help her.
Ottawa paramedics said the man suffered lacerations on his left knee, but was in stable condition.
Police said they were called to the area bordered by 10th Line Road, Tompkins Avenue, Des Epinettes Avenue and Duford Road late Saturday morning where the two large dogs were reportedly loose.
Witnesses used shovels, sticks to pry victims free
"The dogs were going in, they were biting, they were shaking the person. The person on the ground was very bloodied…[The dogs] were just relentless," said witness Steve Outhouse.
"It was very scary. This isn't an individual that you can try and rationalize with. I mean, these dogs were just going at this individual."
Steve Outhouse saw two dogs attack someone at the end of his Orléans street. <a href="https://t.co/8eJ8fG4D1W">https://t.co/8eJ8fG4D1W</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ottnews?src=hash">#ottnews</a> <a href="https://t.co/CN3ioCDNK8">pic.twitter.com/CN3ioCDNK8</a> —@amkfoote
Outhouse said people used brooms, sticks and shovels to pry the victims free. At one point, one of the dogs turned towards a man holding a shovel, he said.
"We all kind of shouted, 'You have to do it.' He took the shovel and took a swing at the dog and hit it," described Outhouse.
Around that point the two dogs split in different directions. Police eventually found them in separate locations and shot them.
Neighbours on edge
On Monday afternoon, some residents in the neighbourhood told CBC News it's "scary" the dogs' owner hasn't been identified, since the area is full of young kids.
Tina Lavoie-Deschamps, who witnessed the attack, said her three young children haven't stopped asking her questions about the incident.
"I'm more nervous about letting [my kids] out," she said.
"My kids are really worried for the lady. They keep asking…'how she's doing, is she really ok?' They're asking me who owns the dogs…This could have happened anywhere, but it's still in the back of my mind…because I saw it."
Police initially reported that a child was also hurt, but they no longer believe that to be true.
Any additional victims are asked to contact police by calling Crime Stoppers toll-free at 1-800-222-8477 or by downloading the Ottawa Police Service app.
Less than a month, ago a 50-year-old woman was rushed to hospital in critical condition after being mauled by a dog in the city's Vanier neighbourhood. |
<p>A new study documents the brain activity underlying our strong tendency to infer a structure of context and rules when learning new tasks (even when a structure isn’t valid). The findings, which revealed individual differences, shows how we try to apply task knowledge to similar situations and could inform future research on learning disabilities.</p>
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In life, many tasks have a context that dictates the right actions, so when people learn to do something new, they’ll often infer cues of context and rules. In a new study, Brown University brain scientists took advantage of that tendency to track the emergence of such rule structures in the frontal cortex — even when such structure was not necessary or even helpful to learn — and to predict from EEG readings how people would apply them to learn new tasks speedily.
Context and rule structures are everywhere. They allow an iPhone user who switches to an Android phone, for example, to reason that dimming the screen would involve finding a “settings” icon that will probably lead to a slider control for “brightness.” But when the context changes, inflexible generalization can lead a person temporarily astray — like a small-town tourist who greets strangers on the streets of New York City. In some developmental learning disabilities, the whole process of inferring abstract structures may be impaired.
“The world tends to be organized, and so we probably develop prior [notions] over time that there is going to be a structure,” said Anne Collins, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown and lead author of the study published March 25 in the Journal of Neuroscience. “When the world is organized, you just reduce the size of what you have to learn about by being able to generalize across situations in which the same things usually happen together. It is efficient to generalize if there is structure, and there usually is structure.”
Imagined rules
To measure how the phenomenon plays out in the brain, Collins and her colleagues used arrays of EEG electrodes to record the frontal cortex activity of 35 volunteers while they learned and performed some seemingly simple tasks. All subjects had to do was look at some shapes of different colors and learn the correct buttons to punch in response. Then they moved on to two similar tasks with new sets of colors or shapes.
The experimental trick was that there was no actual structure of context and rules to the original task: People could have just learned which button to press for each unique combination of color and shape. People were free, however, to assume instead that either the dimension of color or shape would signify a particular context for indicating how to act in response to the other dimension. This invented hierarchical structure would allow them to learn the initial task, but the experiment was designed so that learning it in this way would help make learning subsequent tasks easier in some conditions (those that shared the same structure as seen previously) and harder in others.
On the whole, participants tended to infer a rule structure, with about half of them (18 of 35) imagining rules dictated by the context of color, while the other half assumed rules based on the context of shape.
Tangible signals
With these behavioral results, the researchers could then look at the EEG data recorded at the same time and search for activity related to the formation of these rule structures in regions of the frontal cortex. They informed their investigation with a computational model of cognition that predicted the following pattern: Subjects will first formulate their idea of the task’s structure in the prefrontal cortex (closer to the forehead), and later formulate the movement plan to press the presumed correct button in a part of the brain a little further back (the premotor cortex).
The EEG readings confirmed this prediction with precise correlations between the timing (and less precisely the locations) of the brain activity and behavior.
The researchers were able to determine from the EEG readings – not just from the behavioral results – which context subjects were imagining: shape or color.
Individual variation
Not everyone was the same. People showed significant individual variation. The extent of structure forming activity in the brain correlated with the extent to which people applied the structure they imagined to the subsequent tasks.
“There are predictable signatures in the neural data that showed if their brains seemed to be representing the structure in the way that we would predict from our models and the behavioral experiments, then they were more likely to be able to use that when it’s helpful afterwards in novel environments,” said Michael Frank, associate professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences and the paper’s corresponding author. “There is something to the organization of the prefrontal cortex that facilitates looking for those structures and the ability to generalize them.”
The study offers new information about the basic neuroscience of cognition and learning, but Frank also hypothesizes that the findings could be valuable if applied to the study of learning disabilities.
“So far we’ve only studied young, healthy people, but there is some potential for using the variance across individuals in the tendency to discover structure and for their brains to be looking for that — [the potential] to understand what happens in some disorders where people often won’t think in more abstract ways that allow them to generalize their behaviors,” Frank said.
In addition to Collins and Frank, the paper’s other author is James Cavanaugh, a former Brown postdoctoral researcher who is now a professor at the University of New Mexico.
The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation supported the research. |
Films eligible for two of BAFTA's major categories must show that they have worked to increase representation of minorities.
In an effort to increase diversity in movies and in its membership, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts has announced changes in their eligibility criteria for two of its major film award categories, and removed a rule on how to become a member.
According to the update, films eligible for Outstanding British Film and Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer must show that they have worked to increase representation of minorities, women, people with disabilities, and from lower socio-economic groups in two of four areas: on-screen characters and themes; senior roles and crew; industry training and career progression; and audience access and appeal to under-represented audiences.
“[We believe] they are a flexible and achievable model, which the whole industry can adopt as a shared language for understanding diversity,” BAFTA said in a statement.
According to the BBC, these measures comply with the diversity standards the British Film Institute uses to guide its activities and the projects it funds. These changes will take effect in 2019.
READ MORE: Denzel Washington Talks #OscarsSoWhite and Lack of Diversity at Academy Awards: ‘I’ve Lived It’
As for BAFTA’s membership criteria, for 2017 they removed the requirement that states that a person must be recommended by two existing members in order to join.
“This widens the pool of potential members and ensures that it’s only talent, and not also who you know, that enables BAFTA membership,” the statement said.
Of the 375 BAFTA members joining this year, 43 percent were female, and 18 percent were from minority ethnic groups, with had a median age of 44. By comparison, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ membership is 23 percent female, 6 percent non-white, and the median age is 62.
In 2016, the Academy was dubbed #OscarsSoWhite for its lack of minority representation in the top acting categories. After the criticism, the Academy lifted the lifetime Oscars voting rights to remove members who haven’t been actively working for years and have been trying to recruit more people from underrepresented groups. At this time, the films eligible for Oscar consideration are not held to any criteria regarding diversity.
Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletter here. |
NEW! KanjiDamage Anki Deck
An official KanjiDamage deck is now available for Anki , a popular flashcard program. Many thanks to miwuc, KD user and great coder! This KanjiDamage deck contains all of KD's kanji plus stroke order diagrams. Please check it out here!
Things we have the others don’t:
All words ranked by usefulness. Over 100 bogus JOYO kanji cut!
Every kanji broken down into its components, math stylezzz.
Over 800 hints to tell look-a-like kanji apart
Over 18 ‘tags’ for things like odd spellings, usu. hiragana, formal, rude, etc.
Over 1,700 mnemonics which include the meaning, radicals, AND onyomi.
Particles taught WITH the words.
Nuances of synonyms explained (i.e. 硬い、堅い、and 固い).
Radicals link to all kanji which include them.
Getting started:
Improved Search!
There is a search box in the menu bar (upper right), and here:
Previously, you could look up a kanji by searching on the English meaning, or the original kanji. You can now search kanji by entering the phonetic transliteration, either onyomi or kunyomi. For example, searching on 'sun' will find two kanji which mean 'sun', two with matching kunyomi (suna, sunareru), and one with an onyomi of SUN. The search box also accepts kana; searching on すな will find すな and すなれる.
Support us!
Please help us improve the accuracy, site design, and Yo Mama jokes here. |
A Norm-al family reunion! Jason Sudeikis bonds with his Cheers star uncle George Wendt
While he is one of the most beloved actors from 1980s sitcom Cheers, to Jason Sudeikis he's a cherished family member.
George Wendt, who shot to fame as Norm on the legendary bar room comedy, plays uncle to the SNL star in real life.
The famous duo were spotted grabbing lunch and then an afternoon stroll together on Friday in Beverly Hills.
A family matter: Jason Sudeikis enjoyed a day out with his uncle George Wendt in Beverly Hills on Friday
The 65-year-old comedy legend wore matching shorts and a T-shirt as he stayed comfy in white trainers.
Setting the pace was his healthy nephew, who donned bright laced high tops and cargo shorts as he teamed the relaxing getup with a blue button down shirt.
Wearing a beard and sunglasses the 38-year-old looked pleased as punch to be hanging with his famous uncle.
Gave him his start: The Cheers alum is said to have encouraged his nephew to audition for SNL
Sneaking around: The pair wore comfy trainers on the family outing
The We're The Millers star explained to Playboy in 2011 how his mother's brother inspired him to embark upon his own career path.
He admitted:'He’s always been very encouraging, but there was no Tuesdays With Morrie kind of relationship between him and I.
'He didn’t take me to the park to explain comic timing. There was nothing like that. He was just a good example that being an actor was a viable option.'
Legend: The 65-year-old looked to be in good spirits
The actor added: 'Here’s a guy from the Midwest, in my family, who took the road less travelled and it worked out for him. The advice he gave me, and I say this jokingly, is "Get on one of the best sitcoms of all time and then ride it out."'
Although Wendt did encourage his nephew to audition for Saturday Night Live after attending one of his improv performances.
Meanwhile, Sudeikis is expecting his first child with Olivia Wilde in May. |
WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee is blasting a Texas federal judge nominee’s views as “reprehensible” after revelations that he once described transgender children as evidence of “Satan’s plan.”
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who sits on the judiciary panel with Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, indicated on Thursday that Democrats could hammer District Court nominee Jeff Mateer in confirmation hearings later this year.
“There’s no question these views cast serious doubt on his ability to fairly enforce federal law and treat people impartially,” she said in a statement.
And Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., another Judiciary Committee member, said Mateer's nomination was a new low for judge nominees.
"Republicans have lowered the standard for federal judges to get ones who will pass their ideological test: opposition to sensible gun laws, hostility to women's reproductive rights, commitment to protecting political dark money, and disregard for public health and safety protections," he said. "One even called a Supreme Court Justice a 'judicial prostitute,' but Jeff Mateer, who calls transgender children part of 'Satan's plan,' is a new low. This is just not normal."
Meanwhile, questions remain over whether Mateer, first assistant to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, disclosed his controversial statements to the state’s Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee. |
The Islamic State decapitated Father Boulos Yacoub in Mosul last year
Father Boulos was caught praying at the altar.
Photo- Agenzia di Stampa
Christians in Pakistan reported, via Religion of Peace:
Terror group Islamic State beheads another Christian this time a priest in the conflict-torn Syria. The Catholic priest Father Yacob Boulos, was severely punished for offering prayers in his church. Media has remained silent over this incident as this incident actually took place on February 18.
There are reliable reports are that Father Yacob Boulos, was beheaded by the terror group’ militants after he prayed on the altar of his church. He was punished for his faith. The Italian newspaper said,” “Boulos Yacoub” was a priest who professava his faith in Syria.”
The Italian newspaper whined over the fact that international media had completely overlooked the plight of these Christians, and this incident went unreported. His crime was only being a man of faith. Condemnation has been heaped on the international leader and community for not paying attention quandary of these Christian priests. |
Inevitably, the unexpected happens. A historically low-traffic channel brings in 10x the normal amount of users. Or your user login rate drops by half. In either case, these are important events that are easy to miss in a sea of data.
In this post we’ll cover a few SQL queries for detecting unusually high or low values in a set of data.
Static Thresholds
We’ll start by using a static threshold in the query below to find rows above or below that threshold. This works well for key numbers that behave in predictable ways, and is trivial to implement.
Let’s define a with table of user data and see what it looks like:
with user_count as (
select
date_trunc('day', created_at)::date as day,
count(1) as value
from users
group by 1
)
select * from user_count
Let’s define outliers as any day with more than a thousand new users:
select *
from user_count
where value > 1000
When we plot the outliers on top of the full data we see:
Static thresholds are simple and effective for basic use cases, but run into problems when data varies month to month and the old fixed threshold no longer applies.
Percentage Thresholds
Percentage thresholds work well for data with a growth trend. A thousand new users per day may be unexpected in January, but typical by July.
With percentage thresholds, our alerts will continually adjust to recent trends. Rather than setting a threshold at a thousand new users, we can set one at 2x the current average.
First let’s add another with table to include the percentage difference vs. the mean for each data point:
with user_count as (
select
date_trunc('day', created_at)::date as day,
count(1) as value
from users
group by 1
), user_count_with_pct as (
select
day,
value,
value / (avg(value) over ()) as pct_of_mean
from user_count
order by 1
)
select * from user_count_with_pct
The line value / (avg(value) over ()) uses a window function to divide each row’s value by the average value for the entire table. The results are:
If we limit to outliers:
select *
from user_count_with_pct
where pct >= 2.0
We see the days where we had 200%+ of the average signup rate:
Plotted together:
We could make this more robust by limiting the user_count table to just recent users. This prevents skewing the average with data from several months ago.
Standard Deviation Thresholds
While the percentage thresholds are flexible, they still manually picking the threshold. It would convenient if we had a query that would automatically pick a threshold for rare events.
Fortunately, we can use standard deviations. We can automatically define thresholds appropriate for data with either low variance (30% disk usage +/- 1%) or high variance (30% signup rate +/- 10%).
We then choose how sensitive we want to be to outliers. Do we want to detect events with a 5% chance, or a 0.1% chance? Additionally, we have to choose if we care about both high and low values (a two-tailed test), or just one of the two (a one-tailed test).
First, we need to pick a zscore (number of standard deviations) threshold. This page from Boston University has a good explanation and z-scores for different proabilities.
For example, if we care about high or low values that occur only 5% of the time by random chance, we’d use a zscore threshold of +/- 1.645. If we want a 5% threshold exclusively for high values, we’d pick 1.96.
Here’s the SQL for calculating z-scores for the low variance disk usage data:
with data as (
select
date_trunc('day', created_at)::date as day,
count(1) as value
from disk_usage
group by 1
), data_with_stddev as (
select
day,
value,
(value - avg(value) over ())
/ (stddev(value) over ()) as zscore
from data
order by 1
)
select * from data_with_stddev
This is the same query as the percent threshold, but we calculate zscore instead of percent deviation from the mean. The first part of the calculation is (value - avg(value) over ()) which calculates how much a single datapoint deviates from the mean.
The second part / (stddev(value) over ()) divides the deviation by the standard deviation, to measure how many standard deviations the data point is from the mean.
Here’s the outlier query for a two-tailed 5% threshold:
select *
from data_with_stddev
where abs(zscore) >= 1.645
Plotting the disk usage data and outliers together:
And swapping in the high variance signup rate data:
We’ve applied the same standard deviation threshold to queries with very different data, and can still detect the outliers.
Well that was unexpected
We now have a few techniques for finding unusual results. Enjoy discovering the unpredictable in your data! |
When H. A. Hellyer is out walking with his family, strangers sometimes approach him and declare, “Allahu akbar!”
Many Westerners may find it hard to believe these days, but Mr. Hellyer does not recoil in fear.
“I’ll be walking out with my kids,” he said, “and someone will say: ‘Oh, they’re so cute. Allahu akbar.’ And I’ll joke, ‘Thank you — now stop talking to my kids.’”
The Arabic phrase, which means simply “God is great,” has, it sometimes seems, become intertwined with terrorism.
The driver of a truck that mowed down 20 people on a Manhattan bike path on Tuesday was said to have cried out “Allahu akbar” before he was shot by a police officer. The men who carried out the attack on the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo in 2015 shouted it during their onslaught. And the phrase rang through the air as a British soldier was run down near military barracks in 2013 and then hacked to death. |
A South Carolina sheriff’s deputy has been fired after he was caught on tape repeatedly hitting a handcuffed inmate who had been arrested for possession of marijuana.
The videotape shows Sgt. Oddie Tribble Jr., 50, beating a handcuffed Charles Shelley, 38, with his police baton, breaking the victim’s leg.
The State Law Enforcement Division and the South Carolina Attorney General are now involved in the investigation of the deputy, reports Brad Franko of WIS-TV
Kershaw County Sheriff Steve McCaskill said he fired Sgt. Tribble on Friday, one day after the incident at the Kershaw County Detention Center.
Shelley told TV station WIS by phone on Monday that he and Tribble had “exchanged words,” and then Tribble ordered him to get out of the police van.
“I’m in handcuffs, he tells me to get out of the van and commence to beating me with the pipe he had,” Shelley said.
Sgt. Tribble’s report claimed that he was driving a prisoner transport van to the jail when the victim “became irate and began making threatening comments.”
Tribble’s report said the man threatened to use the Internet to find where he lived, and said “I want to kill your family, your wife, and daughter; anybody that is associated with you in your home,” Tribble claimed.
Once inside the sally port, Tribble claimed he tried to remove the victim from the van when Shelley “jerked away,” and Tribble grabbed the victim by the side. Tribble’s report says Shelley jerked then jerked a second time.
That’s when Tribble’s steel baton came out.
Tribble reported that he “struck SUBY [subject]about his lower extremities” before the man fell.
The man then started listening to “verbal commands,” and Tribble pulled the victim, now with a broken leg, to his feet.
Kershaw County Sheriff’s Lt. Robinson then ordered Tribble to take the man to the emergency room, according to the report.
The South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) announced its involvement in the case in a press release on Monday.
“These are all serious allegations and we appreciate each department’s leadership and prompt notification,” said SLED director Reggie Lloyd. “We also greatly appreciate our continuing, strong partnership with the FBI on these and other major investigations,” he claimed.
“These allegations do not reflect the professional work of thousands of South Carolina law enforcement officers each and every day,” Lloyd claimed. “All subjects of these investigations are presumed innocent of these charges at this time.”
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster’s office picked up the case on Monday and will decide on any charges against Sgt. Tribble.
Shelley is still in jail on outstanding warrants for giving false information to police, driving under suspended license second offense, habitual traffic offender, open container, and possession of marijuana. |
Best Wild Game Cookbooks – Venison, Turkey, Moose, Elk, Fish, and other Wild Game Cookbooks
Cooking wild game after a successful hunt is not always the easiest thing to master. The most common mistake is simply treating wild game like we would beef, chicken, or pork, which are so prevalent in our diets. Wild game needs special care, but when you take a little time to learn how to prepare, the rewards are well worth it.
Wild Game Cookbooks
Buck, Buck, Moose: Recipes and Techniques for Cooking Deer, Elk, Moose, Antelope and Other Antlered Things
This is not your father’s venison cookbook. Buck, Buck, Moose is the first comprehensive, lushly photographed, full-color guide to working with and cooking all forms of venison, including deer, elk, moose, antelope and caribou. Buck, Buck, Moose will take you around the world, from nose to tail. The book features more than 100 recipes ranging from traditional dishes from six continents to original recipes never before seen. You’ll also get thorough instructions on how to butcher, age and store your venison, as well as how to use virtually every part of the animal. Buck, Buck, Moose also includes a lengthy section on curing venison and sausage-making. Peppered throughout are stories of the hunt and essays on why venison holds such a special place in human society. Venison is far more than mere food. It is, in many ways, what made us human.
The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game: Volume 1: Big Game
This invaluable book includes
• recommendations on what equipment you will need—and what you can do without—from clothing to cutlery to camping gear to weapons
• basic and advanced hunting strategies, including spot-and-stalk hunting, ambush hunting, still hunting, drive hunting, and backpack hunting
• how to effectively use decoys and calling for big game
• how to find hunting locations, on both public and private land, and how to locate areas that other hunters aren’t using
• how and when to scout hunting locations for maximum effectiveness
• basic information on procuring hunting tags, including limited-entry “draw” tags
• a species-by-species description of fourteen big-game animals, from their mating rituals and preferred habitats to the best hunting techniques—both firearm and archery—for each species
• how to plan and pack for backcountry hunts
• instructions on how to break down any big-game animal and transport it from your hunting site
• how to butcher your own big-game animals and select the proper cuts for sausages, roasts, and steaks, and how to utilize underappreciated cuts such as ribs and shanks
• cooking techniques and recipes, for both outdoor and indoor preparation of wild game
Fish & Game Cookbook
Whether you’re fishing or hunting deer, elk, rabbit, duck, pheasant or dove, you’ll find recipes and helpful tips in this Fish & Game Cookbook to make your game or fish the centerpiece of a memorable meal. These recipes are easy to prepare and use ingredients you can find right on your pantry shelves or at a nearby store.
Afield: A Chef’s Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish
Afield throws open the doors of field dressing for novice and experienced hunters alike, supplying the know-how for the next logical step in the local, sustainable food movement. Stemming from a commitment to locally grown vegetables and nose-to-tail cooking, Griffiths is an expert guide on this tour of tradition and taste, offering a combination of hunting lessons, butchery methods, recipes, including how to scale, clean, stuff, fillet, skin, braise, fry and more. Fellow hunting enthusiast and food photographer Jody Horton takes you into the field, follows Griffiths step-by-step along the way and then provides you with exquisite plate photograph of the finished feasts. Filled with descriptive stories and photographs, Afield takes the reader along for the hunt, from duck and dove to deer and wild hog.
The Everything Wild Game Cookbook: From Fowl And Fish to Rabbit And Venison–300 Recipes for Home-cooked Meals
Written with the most exotic wild game and fish in mind, this unusual collection features delicious, original recipes designed to please any meat lover’s palate, including:
Deer, wild boar, buffalo, and bear
Pheasant, quail, and partridge
Saltwater and freshwater catch
Rubs, relishes, and marinades
Trimmings and desserts
Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast
From field, forest, and stream to table, award-winning journalist Hank Shaw explores the forgotten art of foraging. If there is a frontier beyond organic, local and seasonal, beyond farmers’ markets and grass-def meat, it’s hunting, fishing and foraging your own food. A lifelong angler and forager who became a hunter late in life, Hank Shaw is dedicated to finding a place on the table for the myriad overlooked and underutilized wild foods that are there for the taking — if you know how to find them.
Eat Like a Wildman: 110 Years of Great Game and Fish Recipes
From a collection of some of the wildest, most delicious wild game and fish recipes that Sports Afield magazine has published over the last 110 years, lifelong food connoisseur and cookbook author Rebecca Gray has selected and infused a collection of wonderful old standards with her own culinary wizardry.
The Ultimate Venison Cookbook for Deer Camp
Hunters will take it up a notch from the usual camp house fare and cook like a pro with more 300 favorite recipes from master hunter Harold Webster THE authority on venison cooking. After more than 50 years collecting recipes, Webster shares his BEST recipes for cooking at Deer Camp. Webster says, Cooking at deer camp is not hard, it does not require long hours in the kitchen, a professional cook, exotic ingredients nor years of cooking experience. But what it does require is: Selectively harvesting game that is suitable for the table. Game that has been properly cared for from the field to the table. A simple menu with a measured level of creativity and variation. And, always enjoyed in the company of good friends. Not a book for the masses, this camp house collection is for that exclusive group of avid sportsmen who live for the deer camp experience. In addition to 300 recipes, hand-picked for preparation at the deer camp, there are stories about hunting and history plus hints, tips, and other helpful information. Recipes like Fajita Venison Salad, Grilled Venison T-Bone Steaks with Bourbon Marinade and Banana Pudding with Banana and Cinnamon Sauce will make ensure everyone s coming to the table… and leftovers will be nonexistent. This is one cookbook that should be on every deer camp shelf.
Deer Burger Cookbook: Recipes for Ground Venison Soups, Stews, Chilies, Casseroles, Jerkies, Sausages
With his trademark down-home sense of humor, Cousin Rick Black shares a wide variety of deer burger recipes, so you’ll never get bored eating the same old chili and jerky. Black even reveals his award-winning family bratwurst recipe. Techniques and flavors borrowed from Mexico and Jamaica spice things up, and the book also includes recipes for large crowds.
Wild Gourmet: Naturally Healthy Game, Fish and Fowl Recipes for Everyday Chefs
Looking for new ways to prepare the wild game you harvested this season? Do you want easy recipes that produce unique and delicious results? Do you need tips for processing your venison that will all but guarantee top-notch flavor?
In Wild Gourmet, America’s most-respected chefs share their favorite recipes covering a menagerie of wild meats and a world of flavors. This scrumptiously illustrated cookbook features easy, step-by-step recipes for everything from salmon to whitetail, wild boar to quail and turkey.
Bonus Recommendations:
Mushrooming without Fear: The Beginner’s Guide to Collecting Safe and Delicious Mushrooms
Novices eager to collect tasty wild mushrooms will find this unique guide invaluable. Unlike others, it focuses only on those types that are both safe to eat and delicious. Most important, it presents the eight rules of mushroom gathering in a straightforward fashion—including “Never, never take a mushroom with gills” and “If a mushroom smells rotten, it is rotten.” Among the many mushrooms covered are the cep; the red-cracked, larch, bay, and birch boletes; hen of the woods, chanterelle, trumpet chanterelle, hedgehog fungus, common puffball, horn of plenty, and cauliflower mushroom. Each is identified with several color photographs and identification checklist, and there’s also information on mushroom season, handling, storage, and cooking, complete with recipes.
The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing, and Sausage Making: How to Harvest Your Livestock & Wild Game (Complete Meat)
Here’s the ideal hands-on guidebook for self-sufficient farmers, ranchers, and hunters with step-by-step instructions on butchering beef, venison, pork, lamb, poultry, and goats. Time-tested advice on how to cure the meat by smoking or salting helps you preserve your harvest. A final section explains how to make sausages. Numerous mouth-watering recipes are included.
We recommend the new Amazon grocery delivery service. Great for cabin owners:
Also published on Medium. |
Poland seeks compensation for Russian ban on fruit
Agriculture Minister Marek Sawicki has appealed to the European Commission to compensate Poland after Russia decided to ban Polish fruit and vegetable imports -- a move Warsaw says was retaliation for EU sanctions against Moscow.The Polish agriculture ministry said the country’s losses could total 500 million euros.Polish media reported that Moscow could also be preparing to ban beef and poultry imports from Poland, after Russian officials claimed they had found dangerous bacteria in such meat.Citing what it said were sanitary reasons, Russia announced its fruit and vegetable ban Wednesday, a day after the EU and United States imposed a range of economic sanctions against Moscow over its role in the Ukraine conflict.Sawicki slammed the Russian embargo, which comes into force on Friday, “as political repression in response to the restrictions imposed by the European Union against Russia."The Polish agriculture ministry said Sawicki would raise the issue of compensation for Poland during talks Friday with European Commission and European Parliament officials.Sawicki "wants to prevent a situation in which Polish vegetable and fruit growers are the main victims of EU and US economic restrictions against Russia,” the Polish agriculture ministry said in a statement.According to the ministry, Poland exported over 804,000 tons of fruit and vegetables worth almost 336 million euros to Russia last year. The Russian market accounts for some 7% of Poland's food exports. Apples account for almost three-quarters of the total volume of fruit produced in Poland. |
This week’s Fixation: Coheed and Cambria’s The Afterman: Ascension/Descension.
Before I can do an even remotely decent job of talking to you about this album, you first have to understand that Coheed and Cambria are about way more than just the music that they play. Their first 5 albums make up a story called The Amory Wars, a sprawling science fiction tale created by Claudio Sanchez (lead singer/guitarist/frontman) which takes place in a world known as Heaven’s Fence. Though the narrative is conveyed primarily through the lyrics of Coheed’s songs, the story is so cohesive that it has spawned several comic books, one full length novel, and an upcoming live-action film.
I would very much love to tell you about the story in great detail, but this, unfortunately, is neither the time nor the place. Suffice to say that it is a fairly standard sci-fi plot — a young man’s family is murdered by a supremely powerful evil dictator and the hero must harness the powers he never knew he had in order to get his revenge and save the galaxy — with heaps of original and really fucking cool aspects that are not at all “standard science fiction”. This deep and detailed story (in which even minor characters have well-developed backgrounds) is conveyed to you via fast-paced and unique alternative-progressive rock.
Calling Coheed and Cambria an “alt-prog rock” band probably doesn’t give you any idea of what they sound like, but they are very difficult to put into a genre as they really don’t sound like anyone else. I’ve seen them play midday at Warped Tour, opened for by Circa Survive, and play a stadium show in between Trivium and Slipknot, and I can tell you they really don’t sound like any of the bands that they play with. Although their music is original and interesting, it is Claudio Sanchez’s voice that makes them so unique. Able to switch seamlessly between crooning and screaming, and possessing the ability to sound one minute like a giggling child and the next minute like a demon from hell, Claudio’s vocal talents are just about impossible to categorize.
Ascension and Descension, Coheed’s 6th and 7th albums, are the two parts (released 4 months apart) of the double album The Afterman. This double album, more of a precursor to The Amory Wars than another part of the saga, tells the story of Sirius Amory’s (after whom The Amory Wars is named) discovery of The Keywork, the system of energy that holds together the 78 worlds of Heaven’s Fence. Although the people of Heaven’s Fence knew that The Keywork existed, it was Sirius who discovered the true nature of the force that makes it up: the energy of The Keywork is composed of the souls of the dead.
Sirius discovers this truth by piloting a ship out into space and making physical contact with the energy of The Keywork. When he touches this energy he is possessed by the souls of people who have died. During these possessions, Sirius experiences the lives these souls once lived. These experiences make up several tracks on the double album: “Key Entity Extractions I-V”.
Each of these Key Entity Extractions reflects the soul of the person whose life Sirius is experiencing. The first three — “Domino the Destitute”, “Holly Wood the Cracked”, and “Vic the Butcher” — are intense, dirty, frightful songs chock full of wailing, both of the musical and lyrical variety. The three people whose stories are told in the songs were morally bankrupt and vicious in life, and in death their souls try their utmost to destroy Sirius.
The first few times I listened to this album I didn’t find these songs, particularly “Holly Wood” and “Vic”, pleasant to listen to. However, upon learning the details of the story I realized that the point is not a pleasant listening experience, it is to feel what Sirius felt as these damned souls attempted to tear him apart. And while it took me several listens to get behind “Holly Wood” and “Vic”, “Domino the Destitute” is just a bangin’ song.
If The Afterman were composed of nothing but twisted, vicious songs like the first three Key Entity Extractions I probably wouldn’t be all that into it, so thank Claudio that this is not the case. Key Entity Extractions IV and V, while still upbeat and hard rocking, have a distinctly powerful and benevolent feel, as the people whose stories they tell — Evagria the Faithful and Sentry the Defiant — were noble, just, and good in life, and in death their souls struggle to save Sirius from the tortures of Domino, Holly, and Vic.
Mixed in with all of these fast-paced, hard rocking songs are sweet, feel-good tunes like “Away We Go”, and “2’s My Favorite 1”, as well as quiet, mournful, beautiful songs like “Subtraction” and, my personal favorite song of the entire double album, the title track “The Afterman”.
I could go on and on about how much I like Coheed and Cambria (named, by the way, after two of the main characters of The Amory Wars), how fascinating I find the story, and how much I wish more bands had a narrative track running through their music the way that Coheed does. However I think I’ve taken up quite enough of your time. Thanks for sticking with me everyone, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
– Zev
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Today is Memorial Day in the US which means its a day to remember those who have died in war. What group has died in war more than any other group? Men, in particular young men, and many young men died as nothing more than cannon fodder.
The modern equivalent of cannon fodder does not involve drafting men to die in wars. The modern equivalent of cannon fodder is attempting to get young men to follow gynocentric scripts for the benefit of women which involves getting married and/or having men’s income transferred to women via taxes and government spending. The tradcons, the feminists, and other groups are all guilty of trying use young men as cannon fodder. It’s not an exaggeration to say that all of these groups want to use young men as cannon fodder. They want young men to do things that in the best case scenario not in their best interests and in the worst case scenario will involve losing your assets and your children, and being thrown in prison.
What groups are trying to draft young men as cannon fodder? Hollenhund describes each group and their respective script:
In online parlance, “MGTOW” basically refers to any man who’s off-script. There are many scripts out there. The tradcon / white nationalist script: bust your ass and remain celibate, then marry some supposedly good and worthy Christian “virgin”, move to some rural area, have lots of kids and homeschool them, grow your own food and brag about your lifestyle on the Internet. The feminist script: bust your ass and have egalitarian relationships with feminist women based on mutual respect, marry an ageing spinster or single mother, have 1 or 2 children and indoctrinate them with feminism, move to the suburbs, pay off your wife’s debts, brag about it all on the Internet and then tearfully claim it’s all your fault when she frivorces you and ruins your life. The MHRA script: bust your ass and do lots of activism on behalf of MRA organizations. Donate money, show up on protests and conferences. Paint a target on your back for tradcons and feminists to shoot at. Whenever attacked, claim that you support “gender equality” and love women. The PUA script: bust your ass, work out like crazy, spend your free time learning all sorts of “valuable” skills, go on a diet, approach 10 women everyday, travel the Third World, brag about it all online, then move to the Philippines or Latvia when you’re tired of it all, then self-publish your memoirs in online format and sell it on Amazon. The people pushing these scripts are all targeting the same demographic, young single betas, so they are in fierce competition. What is making their job even harder is that a growing segment of these betas are refusing to follow any script. This is making more and more people angry and frustrated, as evidenced by increasingly shrill public discourse about MGTOWs and the “Sexodus”. Young men are supposed to be dumb disposable shits, after all, and follow a script. But a growing number of them simply won’t do it.
Each of these groups is trying to draft young men as cannon fodder, and they’re all using the same tactic in trying to draft them, shaming language. However, it is not working. Most of these young men have never heard of MGTOW, yet they have decided to refuse to become cannon fodder for these groups, effectively becoming MGTOW.
Why are young men refusing to become cannon fodder in increasing numbers? First, the attacks on them are become more and more shrill which just steels their resolve to become cannon fodder. Each of the groups that want to use men as cannon fodder are not offering young men any incentives to follow them. There’s a saying that was said in the Soviet Union, “They pretend to pay us. We pretend to work.” Even the Soviets understood somewhat that incentives matter which is more than can be said for any of the groups that Hollenhund listed. Sending young men the equivalent of increasingly insane strong worded letters is not a strategy that will work to convince young men.
Second, young men see just how bad women are becoming. This is a strong disincentive to join any group that wants to use them as cannon fodder. Young men see the behavior of women and are getting more and more fed up with them for good reason. In 6 years of blogging, the most popular page on this blog by far is a page where I documented several comments from The Spearhead where young men were talking about how they are fed up with women. The second most popular page on this blog was a follow up to that page. This is not a coincidence. Those pages represent how growing numbers of young men feel about women due to their experiences with women.
Why should a young man become cannon fodder for the indirect or direct benefit of women they are fed up with? Even if a young man is willing to sacrifice himself as cannon fodder, he isn’t going to sacrifice himself for a group he is fed up with and likely hates him. More and more young men are figuring this out and refuse to become cannon fodder.
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Many of you will be aware of a lineout tactic adopted at the recent Junior World Championship whereby the non-ball-winning team chooses NOT to make physical contact with the players of the ball-winning team, once the ball has been thrown-in and won. This means that no maul is created because only the players of one team are gathered around the ball carrier.
The IRB provided direction on how to referee this circumstance.
In order to provide clarity, please instruct all referees to rule as follows:
If the non-ball-winning team in the line out choose to not engage the line out drive by “leaving the line out as a group”, PENALTY KICK to team in possession.
team in the line out choose to engage the line out drive by “leaving the line out as a group”, to team in possession. If the non-ball-winning team in the line out choose to not engage the line out drive by simply opening up a gap and “creating space” and they remain at the lineout, the following process would be followed: the ball-winning team would need to keep the ball with the front player, if they were to drive down-field (therefore play on, general play – non-ball-winning players could either engage to form a maul, or tackle the ball carrier only). if they immediately hand it back to a player behind the front player, the referee will tell them to “use it” which they must do immediately. if they drive forward and the ball is in possession of a player behind the front player, the referee will award a scrum for “accidental offside” rather than a Penalty Kick for obstruction.
team in the line out choose to engage the line out drive by simply opening up a gap and “creating space” and they remain at the lineout, the following process would be followed:
We believe that teams who are adept at mauling will very quickly make use of their options to their advantage and therefore non-ball-winning teams will be taking a massive risk if they choose not to compete and, therefore, create the initial maul.
The message to referees regarding the ball-winning team formation is:
We need to ensure that the ball is not transferred from the Jumper to the back player before a maul is formed. We need to be FAR MORE vigilant on team-in-possession players “joining the maul ahead of the ball carrier and/or the last player on their own side of the maul” – we need to ensure team-in-possession players join from the back (just as we expect the non-possession team to do).
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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is demanding “mandatory equality training” for bus drivers.
The left-wing politician unveiled a new Labour Party “bus strategy” on April Fools Day, though we are assured that the policy document is actually genuine.
The party leader says he wants to “require all bus drivers and staff at bus terminals to complete approved disability equality and awareness training”.
His other promises include “Wi-Fi enabled buses”, “concessionary fares for 16-19 year olds”, and a “commitment to low emissions vehicles”
Mr Corbyn said: “For too long the bus industry has put profit before passengers. Labour will change that.”
He added: “Labour will create the freedom for councils to run first class bus services which the public are proud of.
“The Tory legacy brought rising fares, plummeting passenger numbers and too many areas where pensioners have a bus pass but no bus.
“Labour wants to see local communities empowered to determine their own priorities and reverse the decline in bus services.”
The equality training pledge comes after a number of incidents on public transport.
In September, a gay couple were allegedly kicked off a London bus after a driver went on a racist and homophobic tirade.
There have also been a string of racist incidents on buses.
One bus driver who is definitely in need of some equality training is the guy currently touring the US on a bus preaching an anti-transgender message.
That bus bears the message: “It’s Biology: Boys are boys…and always will be. Girls are girls…and always will be. You can’t change sex.” |
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The federal civil rights suit filed in October 2010 over a controversial Cleveland police officer's use of a Taser can proceed, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled Wednesday.
The case will return to the federal court in Cleveland and move forward in the midst of a U.S. Justice Department investigation of the Cleveland Police Department's regulations on the use of excessive force and how supervisors monitor it.
Attorneys for retired Patrolman Jim Simone had tried to have the suit thrown out by asserting that Simone was justified in using a stun gun on a suspect who may have had a gun.
The appeals court rejected that argument and ruled that citizens suspected of having a gun "clearly have a right to not be tazed when not resisting arrest," attorney Nick DiCello said. "Had the ruling gone the other way, any person suspected of carrying a gun could be tazed."
DiCello filed the suit on behalf of Rafael Correa, 31, of Cleveland.
Simone and other officers encountered Correa May 15, 2010, near Detroit Avenue and West 28th Street when Simone was responding to a call about an armed man assaulting someone at a nightclub.
Correa was shirtless, had his arms up and was on his knees when Simone used the Taser to shock him, according to the parties and a video from Simone dashboard camera
Two other patrolmen then tackled Correa to the ground and handcuffed him.
"He was unconscious and bleeding from the eye when the officers searched him and did not find a gun," DiCello said. "They knew they had a problem, so they charged him with assault, obstruction and disorderly conduct."
The assault charge was based on a woman's statement that Correa had spit on her at the club. Correa spent the next four days in jail. Prosecutors dropped the charges in September.
The civil suit seeks at least $75,000 in damages and accuses of Simone of battery, using excessive force and making a false arrest.
Simone said in a previous interview that he used the Taser because he was alone and Correa and failed to obey his order to lie down.
Simone, whose nickname was "Super Cop," shot and killed five suspects in the line of duty before he retired in March 2011.
A Plain Dealer analysis in 2011 found that Cleveland police officers used Tasers to subdue suspects 969 times between October 2005 and March 2011. And during that period, Chief Michael McGrath and other supervisors found the Taser use appropriate in all but five of the cases they reviewed. The 99.5 percent clearance rate "strains credibility," said Samuel Walker, a criminal-justice professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who focuses on police accountability. |
The 5th season of Bob’s Burgers has been unleashed on Netflix and I have successfully finished all twenty-one episodes within three days. That kind of love for a show cannot go without some kind of testament to its glory of crude humor, incredible voice acting, and a whole lot of burgers.
I, therefore, give you another one of my series, Bob’s Burgers (SpoonU Version).
Bob – Burger
You are what you eat. In general, burgers can be either simple or complex. Bob definitely embodies both of these traits.
For the most part, Bob is the most monotonous and unchanging person in the show. He just wants to play it safe. On other days though, he strips nude for his health inspector, tries crack with customers, and puts his Thanksgiving turkeys in the toilet. You know, just the everyday stuff with this guy.
Linda – Lots and Lots of Wine
A glass of wine a day is said to have a lot of positive benefits to a person. What about not just one glass of wine, but a buttload of wine going straight down the hatchet without remorse? You would probably turn pretty woozy and silly with that much alcohol in your body.
Linda, being an actual wine enthusiast, can definitely come off as giddy and far from the smartest individual in the show. She also can’t seem to keep any secrets, which is something that drunk people aren’t known for. Linda definitely cannot hang.
Tina – Potato
Potato. Not much to think about. It’s a starchy crop and that’s about it. But is it really? You can turn a potato into many different things (mashed potatoes, potato soup, potato salad). But if not done right, your potato concoction might go from spud to dud.
When you look at Tina, you just think potato. While seemingly dull and ordinary, Tina might say something like, “If you think about it, any box can have vibrators in it.” Her random, witty moments teach us to never underestimate Tina.
Gene – Unlimited Supply of Donuts
Donuts are essentially dough that is covered in sugar. Good stuff without a doubt. However, after three or four of these sweet treats, you might get a little sick. Gene Belcher is one of the few heroes who will gladly keep eating no matter what.
Just like a donut, Gene is a round individual who will eat almost anything. He has a ton of energy all the time, most likely from all that sugar he consumes. He definitely isn’t the smartest human being in the world, proving how an unlimited supply of donuts can possibly hinder brain development.
Louise – Ghost Pepper
Louise is pretty much diabolical all of the time. Think about the time she changed the restaurant into a gambling site to earn a profit and worked with weed suppliers. Don’t let her seemingly innocent nature fool you.
The ghost pepper works in the same way. Ordinary at first, the pepper will precede to make Noah Ark-sized waves come out of your eyes, you attempting to extinguish the fire on your tongue. People still appreciate her twisted humor, just like how people do the ghost pepper challenge knowing it will hurt a lot.
Gayle – Crab
If you’ve ever eaten crab, you know that it’s really a pain in the ass to eat. Don’t get me wrong, I love crab. But the whole process of cracking the shell in order to get the meat makes me rage quit and not want to eat.
Linda’s sister, Gayle, is a caring person. However, in order to reach that good spirited person, you have to peel off her shells of growing anxiety. You have to ignore her strange sleeping rituals, you have to try to forget her crude paintings of butts and breasts, and you have to disregard her cats (oh my god, not her cats).
Teddy – Jar of Cookie Butter
Cookie butter is just one of those things that are super addicting, and we know it’s not super healthy. But I mean, screw it. It’s cookie butter and it’s delicious, despite it having no real nutritional value.
For Teddy, burgers are addicting. One time he paid a guy hundreds of dollars to buy him one so that he could eat it in the bathroom in order to get around Bob’s ban. This man has no chill. Nothing stops him from his burgers, yet we love him for having such a big heart.
Jimmy Pesto Sr. – Stinky Cheese
Stinky cheese is supposedly made into some tasty and brilliant things in some cultures. But c’mon. The word “stinky” is in the name. I ain’t thrilled about it. It’s just here to ruin taste buds and lives.
Jimmy Pesto Sr. does not get the punny satisfaction of being associated with pesto, but rather with stinky cheese. That pungent flavor stays with you just like the stench of Jimmy Pesto Sr. Known as the bitter rival of Bob, all he does is act like a huge d-bag lingering around to ruin Bob’s day whenever he gets the chance.
Jimmy Pesto Jr. – Pesto
I mean one of the Pesto’s had to be represented with actual pesto right? Pesto might be seen as slimy and it’s color is not aesthetically pleasing really, initially making someone think twice before trying it. But pesto always has one characteristic that beats out all the rest — it’s amazing flavor.
Jimmy Pesto, for the most part, is pretty stubborn and cocky in what he can do, making him not that likable at first. But, look at those dance moves below. He knows how to live life, and I suppose that’s what we like about him. Not to mention, his butt is pretty impressive as well (according to Tina, not me).
Ollie and Andy Pesto – Milk and Cereal
Cereal and milk go hand and hand. They are inseparable. If the milk is rotten or if the cereal is stale, one of them will ruin the taste of the other, spoiling the whole meal. But no matter what, the two foods are inseparable.
Ollie and Andy are twin brothers who are meant for one another and cannot be seen without the other, despite being terrible influences on each other. They eat glue, have “fun-cussions,” share tampons, and rub each other’s eyes to get pink eye. But I mean, c’mon, they’re adorably close. That should be all that matters.
Tammy – Corn on a Cob
If you ever have had corn on a cob, you know that it can be tasty but that it is not an ideal food to eat with other people because of how messy it can get. Corn stuck in teeth, no toothpick available, impending picture coming up where you have to smile and show all that corn in the crevice of your gums… No thanks.
Tammy is that one kernel you can’t get our of your teeth. She can be “delectable” when you initially meet her. BUT towards the end of the relationship, you come to realize that she’s pretentious, selfish, and egotistical. Definitely annoying to hang with, exactly like hoW annoying it is to have corn stuck in your teeth.
Mr. Frond – Redbull
Redbull is one hell of a drink, it gives you wings (disclaimer: it does not actually give you wings)! It will get you from 0 to 100 real quick, hyping you up in a moment of seconds. Drinking too much might leave you with a bit too much of enthusiasm unfortunately.
The Belcher kids’ school guidance counselor, Mr. Frond, attempts to help troubled children with the fire of passion and love (maybe a little bit too much love). He really tries his best to make the kids excited for school with his definition of fun, something that however does not translate over to the language of the students.
Mr. Fischoeder – Surströmming
If you have never heard of surströmming, go on Youtube and educate yourself by watching many attempt but fail to swallow this Swedish staple. With an odor that will literally make your eyes well up with tears, surströmming is a strange item that should not be messed with.
Mr. Fischoeder’s name is literally “fish odor.” He also has a creeping presence everywhere in Bob’s life at all the wrong times. He is a very peculiar character with weird habits that puts fear into the hearts of the Belcher family. Spooky. And very hard to swallow. |
By Tony Edwards – San Jose, CA (Mar 3, 2015) US Soccer Players – Not every weekend will you be able to say, ‘come see Raul play in Sacramento (on turf),’ but judging from this gallery in the Sacramento Bee, maybe not all of the 20,000 plus people who came to Saturday’s Sacramento Republic FC game against the Cosmos knew, or cared, who Raul is. The Cosmos won the friendly 3-1, but that wasn’t really the story. Sacramento sold 20,000 tickets for a friendly. Not a friendly against some European or Mexican club; not a friendly boosted by Earthquakes fans driving up I-80 East; no, it was against an NASL club.
Yes, the Cosmos brought and played Raul and Marcos Senna, but these fans were there to see their team and to send a statement to MLS. As one fan said in the article: “The support is there. The funding is there. What more could MLS want?”
It’s a good question: what more does MLS want? Big-time ownership? Check. NFL links? Check. Local government support? Check. Top 20 television market? Check.
The next step in MLS expansion might be a beauty contest between Minnesota and Sacramento. The again, the league doesn’t have to make this Sacramento or Minnesota. There are a couple of easy solutions to ’24 teams in place by 2018’ that would offer the most opportunity for everyone involved.
The underlying question in Sacramento, and in Minnesota, is simple. Why would MLS ignore the opportunities? The underlying threat is, if the MLS answer is ‘give us five more years, you’re in the next round of expansion,’ then the momentum is likely gone along with the big-time ownership. The other question is, what else does MLS want? A chimera in Miami or real cash from Minnesota and Sacramento?
For now, we’ll continue to see Sacramento outdrawing some MLS clubs and all the other NASL clubs. Led by former USMNT player Preki, the Republic will no doubt continue to be successful on the field as players realize their best chance to move to MLS might be to ride the Sacramento train. More broadly, however, we may also be seeing the last opportunity for a community to come out of nowhere, as it were, to make the successful case they belong in MLS.
We don’t often remember how a franchise ended up in Columbus. The city wasn’t on the initial list of potential franchises. With more than 11,000 season-ticket pledges, MLS paid attention back in the mid-1990s. In a league that will remain dependent on local revenue for the time being, a community that will help with a stadium and buy a considerable number of season-tickets is still important. It’s basic that you go where the market exists, now and in the future.
But Tony, Sacramento doesn’t do much for the league’s TV ratings or footprint. Even though Sacramento is a large-ish TV market, the idea that domestic soccer will draw considerable ratings any time soon is problematic in judging expansion markets. Ratings, per se, are nice, but they don’t tell the real story. Who watches is more important than how many. That’s why golf is still on television after all these years.
At this stage of MLS’ existence, there aren’t any more markets without questions. Maybe there never were. Sacramento has offered evidence. Not made up crowd numbers or vague promises by local governments, but evidence. As much as MLS might hope for a miracle in Miami, the real future of the league may well continue to be in places like Portland, Salt Lake, Seattle, Columbus, and sooner than later Sacramento.
Tony Edwards is a soccer writer from the Bay Area.
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Iraq was braced on Friday for a return to a level of sectarian war last seen almost a decade ago as Shia fighters rushed to Samarra to confront Sunni insurgents and the country's leading Shia cleric called on his followers to take up arms to defend "their country, their people and their holy places"
Convoys of fighters were seen early on Friday being escorted north by Iraqi police trucks from Baghdad to Samarra, the central city where insurgents – led by the Sunni militant group the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant (Isis) – were in control after a lightning strike south.
The volunteer Shia fighters were quickly assembled after Iraqi forces abandoned their positions in most of the area, leaving only a small number of troops to guard the Imam al-Askari shrines – the two shrines blown up by insurgents eight years ago, triggering the sectarian war that almost destroyed the country.
Hours later a statement from Iraq's most influential Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, read to his followers at Friday prayers in Kerbala urged them to take up arms against the Sunni insurgents. "People who are capable of carrying arms and fighting the terrorists in defence of their country … should volunteer to join the security forces to achieve this sacred goal," the statement said.
Samarra is the fourth northern city to have all but fallen out of government control. The embattled prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, appears to have drawn battle lines further south in Taiji, hoping to defend Baghdad against insurgents who have occupied the north virtually unopposed.
The fast-moving insurgency has emerged as the biggest threat to Iraq's stability since the US withdrawal at the end of 2011.
The UN human rights spokesman, Rupert Colville, said on Friday that hundreds of people were killed, many of them summarily executed, after Isis overran Mosul on Tuesday.
"We've received reports of the summary execution of Iraqi army soldiers during the capture of Mosul and of 17 civilians in one particular street," Colville said, citing the UN mission to Iraq. "There was also the execution of a court employee in the Dawasa area in central Mosul and the execution of 12 people in Dawasa who were believed to have been serving with the Iraq security services or possibly with members of the police."
He said the UN mission had interviewed some of the 500,000 who fled Mosul. A further 40,000 people are were estimated to have fled Tikrit and Samara, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Barack Obama on Thursday set the stage for renewed US military action in Iraq when he said his national security chiefs were looking at any and every way they could help the Iraqi authorities. White House officials said the president did not envision any circumstances in which ground troops could return to the country. Air strikes, however, are under active consideration.
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, described the crisis as "a real wake-up call" to Iraq's divided political leadership, and urged them to set aside "persistent divisiveness and gridlock".
"We are laser-focused on dealing with the crisis at hand," Kerry said after discussing Iraq with his British counterpart, William Hague, at a conference in London. "Now is the time for Iraq's leaders to come together and to show unity. Political division, fuelled by ethnic or sectarian differences simply cannot be allowed to steal from the Iraqi people what so many have given so much for over the course of these last years."
Describing Isis as "the enemy of decency", Kerry said he did not believe Iran or any other regional power felt it would benefit from the current situation in Iraq.
Military capability within Iraq's government forces was not the issue, he argued: "What has been lacking in Iraq in these last weeks and months has not been a capacity for a trained military to respond, not a lack of numbers to stand up to the 7,000 Isil, but a lack of political will."
He added: "Prime Minister Maliki and all Iraqi leaders need to do more to put sectarian differences aside and to come together in unity and begin being more representative and inclusive."
However, Kerry added, Washington has invested too many troops' lives and too much time and money to back away: "I don't think anybody in the region or in this administration truly believes that it's in the interests of the United States to turn our backs on Iraq."
Heavy clashes had broken out by late Friday morning on the outskirts of Samarra between the Shia volunteers and Sunni insurgents who had been trying to win over residents, some of whom appear to view the new arrivals as liberators.
Witnesses said the shrines remained undamaged so far and that the insurgents had not been menacing residents. "Some of them have long hair and they are carrying black flags," said one man. "They are Arabs from other countries."
The Samarra shrines were twice reduced to rubble in February and April 2006 in attacks that sparked a brutal two-year sectarian war across Iraq. Since then, Shia Islamic sites have remained key targets as Isis-led insurgent groups try to draw the Shia-led government back into the fight.
Meanwhile, Iraqi officials who remained in the northern city of Kirkuk, which was seized by Kurdish peshmerga forces on Thursday, said the Kurds were consolidating their presence.
"They came to stay," said one police captain on Friday. "They're not going anywhere."
The Kurdish control of Kirkuk, a city coveted by them for centuries, is one of the biggest shifts in a week that has starkly exposed the impotence of the government and the frailty of Iraq's borders.
Officials in Baghdad have conceded that the country is at increasing risk of crumbling along ethnic sectarian lines.
Isis has been handing out flyers in the towns it has seized assuring residents who have remained that it is there to protect their interests. The campaign for hearts and minds is gaining some traction, with some residents railing against perceived injustices at the hands of the Shia majority government. But on Thursday it said it would introduce sharia law in Mosul and other towns, warning women to stay indoors and threatening to cut off the hands of thieves. "People, you have tried secular regimes … This is now the era of the Islamic state," it proclaimed.
Iraqi officials estimate the total number of Isis forces in Iraq at around 6,000. |
Description
About the Rapid Fat Loss Handbook
The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook offers a scientifically based approach to quick weight and fat loss. Recognizing that people need or simply want to lose weight and fat rapidly, I set out to develop the safest, most effective way of accomplishing that goal.
I based the program around the idea of creating a diet that would provide the fewest calories possible while still providing all of the essential nutrients required by the body: protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. This provides simply the safest and sanest way to lose fat quickly without sacrificing health (or muscle mass).
Every aspect about how to set up the diet is laid out in a step by step form and the diet is based around whole foods that can be found at any market. With purchase of the book, you’ll also receive instructions for how to access an online calculator that will set up the diet and provide food recommendations.
As well, the diet also incorporates concepts I’ve discussed on this site: free meals, refeeds and full diet breaks to help with both adherence and the body’s tendency to fight back when dieting. Guidelines are provided for when to take them, how to use them, etc.
In addition, guidelines for moving back to maintenance, as well as for using the program to transition into a more moderate fat loss diet are provided in detail.
Specific training guidelines are also provided in order to provide the best results with the least time investment. Massive amounts of exercise aren’t needed; quite in fact, too much exercise while on the rapid fat loss program can hinder results. Quite in fact, for the extremely overweight, no exercise is actually required to reap the benefits of the program.
The book provides specific recommendations (for everyone from beginners to advanced trainees) for both resistance training and aerobic activity in terms of how often and how much will provide the best results.
As well, realizing that most people can’t or won’t join a gym, I developed a small home-exercise handbook outlining a basic routine that can be followed with no or minimal equipment. This is included with your purchase as a digital download.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Just how quickly?
Chapter 2: When is a crash diet appropriate?
Chapter 3: Basic nutrition overview
Chapter 4: Nutrient Metabolism Overview
Chapter 5: An Overview of the Diet
Chapter 6: Estimating body fat percentage
Chapter 7: Exercise
Chapter 8: Setting up the diet
Chapter 9: Metabolic slowdown and what to do about it
Chapter 10: Free meals, refeeds and diet breaks
Chapter 11: Ending the Diet – Introduction
Chapter 12: Moving to Maintenance: Non-counting Method Part 1
Chapter 13: Moving to Maintenance: Non-counting Method Part 2
Chapter 14: Moving to Maintenance: Calculation method
Chapter 15: Back To Dieting
Appendix 1: BMI and Body fat charts
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 1: Just How Quickly?
What can you expect?
On average, caloric intakes on this diet will come out to between 400 to 1200 calories per day coming almost exclusively from protein. For those of you familiar with ketogenic (low- carbohydrate, high-fat) diets, a PSMF is essentially a ketogenic diet without the dietary fat. Obviously, this will represent a fairly large caloric deficit; how large depending on your starting body weight and activity levels.
So with all of that in mind, you may still be wondering what you can expect in terms of true fat loss per week. A lot of it, actually, will depend on where you’re starting out body weight wise (activity also factors in), as that determines your maintenance caloric level.
A 165-pound male with normal activity patterns may have a maintenance requirement of about 2700 calories per day. At 800 calories per day on this diet, that’s almost a 2000 calorie per day deficit, 14,000 calories over a week, 28,000 calories over 2 weeks (note there is a slowing of metabolic rat that reduces these values somewhat). Assuming all of the true (non-water) weight lost was fat (it won’t be), that should be an 8-pound fat loss in 2 weeks (28,000 / 3,500 = 8 pounds) or approximately 2/3rd of a pound of fat lost per day. The true fat loss will be lower because of various inefficiencies and the slowdown of metabolic rate (which can start after only 3-4 days of severe caloric restriction).
A larger individual, say 250 pounds, may have a maintenance caloric requirement near 3,750 calories per day. At 800 cal per day on this diet, that’s a 3,000-calorie per day
deficit. Over 2 weeks, that’s a 42,000-calorie deficit, divided by 3,500 calories per pound of fat equals 12 pounds of fat. That’s on top of the 10 or more pounds of water that may be lost.
Females or lighter individuals with their generally lower maintenance caloric requirements will lose less. True fat losses of 1/2 pound per day or slightly less may be all that they get: that still amounts to a considerable fat loss (6-7 pounds true fat loss over 2 weeks) along with the extra water weight loss.
Customer Feedback
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Jay’s before and after pictures here should tell you everything you need to know.
“I purchased Lyle McDonald’s Rapid Fat Loss Handbook in hopes of losing a few pounds quickly. The diet did not disappoint, in just 10 days I lost 7.8 lbs, going from 133 to 125 pounds!”
– Mary Ellen, South Carolina
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In addition, and more importantly, after just one month on the diet, markers of health…blood pressure, resting heart rate, cholesterol, triglycerides, among others…all went from really REALLY horrid to just about perfect. Truly amazing.”
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“I put a world class BJJ (brown belt) athlete on a modified RFL diet about 3 weeks before the Pan American games 30 March in Los Angeles. He’s my coach’s son. I synopsized the diet for him so it was easy-to-read, is all. He called in a panic 3 weeks out because the Pan American games were approaching and he was still 4# over weight and hadn’t been able to lose it on his own. The guy was very lean already so it’s a tricky situation but he pulled it off. March 30th he won the gold medal in his weight class. He weighed in 1# below weight, he looked and felt great and fought like a freak.
Back to the kid, now his own BJJ coach (who also competes and also won gold 30 March in the Masters black belt division) sent word that in observing how well Zak performed on the diet and going on to win the Pan Ams that he wants to do it as well to drop a little weight for the upcoming BJJ World’s tournament the first week of June.
Attached is a photo when he won the finals. You can see the shape he’s in. He’s a BJJ phenom. He’s just beaten the guy who’s been an arch rival for years. Very tough match.”
“I am amazed at how this program worked for me. Knowing that a refeed/free meal was right around the corner gave me the willpower to be STRICT with the low calorie days. Unlike most programs that tell you how to lose weight, RFH also devotes several chapters about how to maintain your weight. The book is very concise and I couldn’t be happier about my results!”
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“Your Rapid Fat Loss e-book really put me on the right course. I have gone from 305 to 279 in 74 days. Your no nonsense plan is extremely easy to follow and the best part is……. IT WORKS!!!!! Thank you for this fantastic information that WILL help me achieve the body of my dreams.”
Forever Grateful,
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“Looking for a fast and easy way to lose weight? There are plenty of so-called crash diets, but only one diet rooted in science and physiology allows you to do so safely without losing precious muscle mass and slowing down your metabolism – the Protein Sparing Modified Fast (PSMF). In The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook, Lyle McDonald has distilled this method with decades of research behind it into practical guidelines, with easy-to-understand categories depending on your starting point in bodyfat, weight and fitness level.
You will learn how to set up the diet, implement free meals and refeeds to not only maintain metabolism but also make the diet easier to follow. Follow the guidelines in this book, where Lyle even provides you with free online resources on how to set up meal plans and an exercise program, and you will lose a lot of fat in a very short time while preserving muscle mass and strength.”
Borge (aka Blade) – Norway
MyoRevolution
“Thank you so much for writing your book. I’ve done low carb dieting and intense exercise in the past and lost 42 pounds in 58 days only to gain it all back and more over the last two years. Like many others I took things to the extreme and could not maintain. I completed banned all carbs, even some good ones. I started low carbing again about a week before I ordered your book online to lose excess water by banning carbs and I didn’t think to incorporate some really healthy high fiber carbs in portion controlled amounts into my prior weight loss as I do with my two free meals. Thanks to your advice I have successfully lost 22 pounds in 2 weeks. My water retention, high blood pressure is down and my glucose is in balance. I feel great, I’m not hungry, the fish oil is amazing and this really doesn’t feel like a diet. The two regular meals on Sat and Tuesday with exercise a few times a week really help keep me on track. I make sensible choices and I don’t feel deprived. I feel this is a lifestyle I can enjoy permanently.”
D. McGruder – Florida
“Muata over at mrlowbodyfat.com suggested I send you an email. I found your RFL diet on his blog, and between his inspirational posts and your easy to follow diet, I’ve just completed an 8 week run of RFL starting as a 255 lb cat 3 and ending as a 224 cat 2. I’m going to take a 2 week break, which actually falls at a great time with Memorial day, my birthday, and my daughter’s birthday, and resume as a cat 2 dieter. I just want to say thanks for developing this diet, and staying active with it with the blog and following the forums. Most diet author types might write the book, but then there is no more contact. You, on the other hand, are available and helpful. thanks.”
Scott C – Jupiter, Florida
Book Format Information
The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook comes in a variety of formats which has caused some confusion. All versions of the product come with digital downloads of the Home Exercise Handbook and the Calculator instructions.
The PDF only version comes with the PDF version of the The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook along with the additional files.
The Kindle only version comes with a single Kindle file containing all three files.
The Hardcopy bundle comes with a physical copy of the book and the two digital files.
The Hardcopy + PDF bundle comes with a physical copy of the book along with the PDF version of the main book and the two digital files.
The Hardcopy + Kindle bundle comes with a physical copy of the book along with the Kindle version of the main book (which includes the Home Exercise Handbook and Calculator instructions).
The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook can also be purchased as part of a Complete Rapid Fat Loss Program (link will take you to an external site) including The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook itself, A Guide to Flexible Dieting, The Home Exercise Handbook, a Home Exercise Handbook Video library, and the Calculator instructions.
If you are confused over which version to order, please feel free to email me directly. |
MEPs have revealed they want boys to learn about traditionally ‘female’ activities and should be taught domestic work and care at school.
The Brussels politicians said they want to stand against ‘sexist’ education by encouraging children to take an equal interest in all subjects ‘beyond gendered stereotypes’.
They hope that girls will take up scientific and technical subjects while boys could take up activities such as cleaning the home.
MEPs have revealed they want boys to learn about traditionally ‘female’ activities and should be taught domestic work and care at school
Textbooks showing old-fashioned stereotypes about male and female roles would also be thrown out of schools, under the European Parliament’ proposals.
The suggestions were made in the report on Empowering Girls Through Education from the Parliament’s FEMM Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, with MEPs approving the proposals by 408 to 236.
The report says it 'encourages girls and boys in the education process to take an equal interest in all subjects, beyond gendered stereotypes, in particular as regards scientific and technical subjects, including boys’ learning about activities regarded as female, in areas such as domestic work and care’.
The Brussels politicians said they want to stand against ‘sexist’ education by encouraging children to take an equal interest in all subjects ‘beyond gendered stereotypes’
Another point says that schools should be guided ‘to embrace a gender perspective and gender equality, and to ensure the elimination of stereotypes and sexist distortions that textbooks and teaching materials may include in their content.'
It added: '[This will then] encourage them also to combat this sexism in literature, film, music, games, media, advertising and other areas that can contribute decisively to changing the attitudes, behaviour and identity of girls and boys’.
Portuguese socialist MEP Liliana Rodrigues, who spearheaded the proposals, said: ‘We are still living in an unequal Europe…women continue to be a prime target for discrimination and violence. I believe that school plays a fundamental role in changing this.
‘[We want to] create a school culture of gender equality, critically oversee the curricula and educational materials, ensure gender equality with regard to personal and professional decisions and improve the percentage of women in positions of responsibility.’
But Leading Labour Eurosceptic MP Kate Hoey told The Daily Express: ‘I have confidence in our nation’s ability to deal with educating our own children. It is time for the EU to stop wasting money on interfering in matters that are none of their business.’ |
This is the text of a lecture from the German Glider Pilot Symposium held November 21, 2000 in Stuttgart as well as Febr. 3rd 2001 in Unterwössen for members of the German National Contest Groupn.
Dear Glider pilots – as most of us are.
It has been seven years since I founded DG Flugzeugbau and began our first Internet appearance. Via the Internet, I received an e-mail with a lapidary text from the representative of a US competitor who wrote:
“Friedel, you are learning a very important thing: Safety does not sell.”
Being new to the business, and full of energy, I thought I really wanted to prove them wrong!
Yes, and four years later, I am addressing a lecture on this very topic. I have drawn on my personal experience and can’t help but ponder if it is worthwhile for a glider manufacturer to produce safety devices like, for example the automobile industry. They have been doing it for years, it has become second nature.
We begin therefore with a little trip into a neighboring industry:
No automaker can take the liberty today to not equip their vehicles with the latest safety equipment, following engineering tests. If a Norwegian auto tester performs one completely non-practical test and the new car almost flips over, the whole world laughs at the “moose test” and a new buzzword of the year is born.
It wasn’t always like that. In the 1970, all cars came equipped with seatbelts, but almost no one used them. Then the law enabled penalties for those not wearing seatbelts, and the following year there were 1500 fewer deaths! This safety consciousness in the car industry has steadily increased, with fewer accidents despite the rising number of vehicles on the road. Can such a shift of consciousness occur with us?
Another example: Everyone knows that driving a motorcycle is dangerous. And each motorcyclist wears a protective helmet and special clothes. In addition modern machines have an aerodynamic design giving wind protection, also the shin guards of today are much better designed to protect more than in former times. A motorcyclist acknowledges the fact that his hobby is dangerous and therefore voluntarily buys very expensive protective clothing. And us? It is nevertheless actually possible to develop mechanisms to increase security in the glider and to market them. There would just have to actually be a demand for it .
If we want to examine this topic a little closer, ask yourself these questions:
What is this really about?
Is it a valid statement?
What are the reasons?
What can and should we do?
First let’s take a glance at some of DG’s safety developments of the past seven years. Some of these will even be new to you:
Emergency egress assistance. Many of the visitors to our website have already downloaded the spectacular video-clip of one of our apprentices at the time being thrown out of the cockpit of a DG-808.
he idea is actually quite simple. In case of emergency, a pilot can egress quickly and reliably from the cockpit by way of an inflatable air cushion. The system will only function if the canopy has been released – thus during normal flight, it is blocked. Pulling the release will release the seat and shoulder belts, after which the air pillow inflates, lifting the pilot to the edge of the cockpit. Actual “stepping out” is then limited to a lateral rollout by the pilot.
Also a parachute jump would have to actually be possible at airfield traffic circuit height – and in still lower heights neither collisions with other gliders nor other reasons for an emergency exit are probable.
In the meantime, we could gain knowledge in the inconceivable case that the NOAH system would release unintentionally. Would it break all the pilot’s ribs? What would happen if he remained seated with the belts buckled?
Someone in the plant made the seat buckle nonfunctional, and a visitor wanted to try out the NOAH……..
So, we are in the fortunate position of being able to interview the “dummy” after the test. He said that he was pressed into the belts no more harshly than when pulling negative G’s in a loop. There is a secondary capillary opening allowing the pillow to deflate within about 30 seconds. Therefore, in the “impossible case” of a malfunction, nothing bad happens at all.
When the NOAH system came out 7 years ago, Glaser-Dirks (our predecessor company) received 5 orders, one of them from me. Since then we sold about 20 systems, and with about 45 new single-seaters per year, the NOAH system wasn’t exactly a “sales hit”.
By the way, the NOAH system could in itself fill an entire lecture. If you’re interested, please see our website.
The Consummate Safety Cockpit
The safety conscious surely know the investigations of Martin Sperber of the TUEV Rheinland crash tests with glider cockpits. He had asked the different manufacturers for a test cockpit and my predecessor had at that time been ready to supply one. The results were simply terrible!
That is also the reason, why Martin Sperber only showed the high-speed film of the crash to us and does not publicize it. Naturally such pictures can be business damaging.
Really?
He said it to us and I repeat it here: What occurred with a cockpit of the DG-800 in the case of the impact at 70 km/h, would have occurred also with every other single-seater cockpit offered today. Professor Roeger of Aachen University of Applied Sciences determined similar results: It let a fuselage fall from a rack and strike at a speed of 6 m/sec. That should simulate the impact that occurs with “landing” with a well-designed total rescue system. The fuselage – a quantity production of a competitor – bore the impact.
Then Professor Roeger repeated the test with a falling speed of 8 m/sec. ! It is the opinion that with the parachute sizes, the following impact would occur. The result was such that one shows no pictures of it. So what’s 8 m/sec? Only 29 km/hour! The cockpit would never survive a real crash.
So, what is to be done? Martin Sperber suggested a set of measures, in order to make a fuselage clearly more crash resistant: Two very strong stringers from the front to the rear transverse force pipe are to direct the collision forces around the pilot – just like a sturdy cage around the passenger space in the automobile.
There is additional reinforcements to prevent bursting of the fuselage and an additional frame in the back of the fuselage against indenting. A fuselage so equipped passed the same test and bored itself “only” deeply into the container. Due to these tests we developed a “consistently safe cockpit” and we offer exactly these additional reinforcements as an option.
This is the most expensive of our developments in addition, the most important, because a cockpit always breaks open in a crash. It uses up an additional 2 cm of space in the workstation in the shoulder width, because somewhere the strong stringers must be fixed to the workstation. And then some pilots say to me, that it’s already tight without the reinforcement. My standard response then always is: “True, but the fit is closer still in the coffin!” – well, I believe so anyway! Possibly these are the same people squeezing themselves into so-called “competition cockpits” from other manufacturers, which are still smaller. However, perhaps 0.2 points of lift/drag ratio less resistance the result!
How many safety cockpits did we sell so far? I fly in in one. Other than that, sales have been non-existent
Piggott-Hook
The Piggott Hook is now something completely new however one cannot buy it at all: It is included in all our new glider series.
In Albuquerque in spring 2000 the well-known Glider Instructor, Derek Piggott from England addressed me and explained the idea:
“An inadvertently unlocked air brake can work it’s way open during takeoff and bring the pilots into serious danger even resulting in a crash.”
That can be prevented by metal flange on the inside wall of the cockpit with several teeth and an appropriate hook at the linkage. The hook intervenes in a tooth and cannot run any longer automatically to the rear. The pilot needs only to grasp the handle and turn only a little and the hooks is released. That is ingeniously easy – to build and develop at low cost and is a reliable means to eliminate a frequent cause of accidents.
It personally annoyed me that we had not come up with the idea!
I accelerated the development, after I found myself taking off while on vacation with an unlocked air brake. My glider launched nevertheless, and nothing serious happened.
Is it not depressing that Derek Piggott said to me, he brought this suggestion via the different SSA Conventions to all German manufacturers described and nobody so far has taken up the suggestion!?
Why not?
Why don’t glider pilots demand safety-increasing developments with their gliders?
Canopy safety lock pin – Roeger Hook
You are surely familiar with the functioning of the Roeger Hook: If the pilot must leave an airplane by parachute, it will generally be falling downward in a completely uncontrollable flight attitude. The wind pressure against the canopy makes it difficult to eject. If however the canopy is to be thrown off, there is a great danger that it will strike the pilot in the side of the head if there is any lateral motion. Only about 50% of all attempted parachute jumps succeed. The other half ends deadly and often is due to the fact that the pilot is temporarily knocked out by a contact with at least the canopy framework and was therefore not able to exit. The Roeger Hook holds the canopy in the back, so that it can open only in front and fly in a high arc over the pilot’s head before rotating away. This is such an elementary safety device that the Roeger Hook is now logical with all newly certified airplanes with forward opening canopies. But what about the many older gliders and those, which are built still with old certifications? Unfortunately there was an accident in the United States, in which exactly the operational sequence described above occurred:
From the pilot’s head wounds it could be proven clearly that he had gotten the canopy framework to release and was knocked out by it. The American Federal Office of Aviation inquired therefore with us whether there would be a re-tooling possibility for a Roeger Hook or something similar. And in such a way we developed the canopy safety lock pin and by way of a Technical Note to all owners of older DG gliders we advise them of the optional retrofitting. In order to promote the sales of this important safety device, we established also quite a cheap price – 50 Euro for the complete set. And now guess how many canopy safety lock pins we sold in one year after the publication? Of a possible 1,400 airplanes concerned: 28 canopy safety lock pins were sold within two years – That‘s 2 % of owners. Is it because it‘s not fun?
Or: Safety does NOT sell! There are probably many ways to increase the safety of gliders. As a glider manufacturer, however, the development of such mechanisms has not been worthwhile so far. In order to describe it in monetary terms, we spent about 250,000 Euro on development costs of the described mechanisms.
Perhaps you work at Airbus Industries and are of the opinion, that this is not very much. But these 250,000 Euro are from my own pocket. I felt a certain responsibility to do what was possible and I am sour now, because it was obviously to a considerable degree futile! What is the situation? 1. Are these safety options perhaps too expensive? Well, this cannot be the case, as proven by the story of the canopy safety lock pin. But Martin Volck had a much better and more general response in glider symposium in Stuttgart with his lecture: “How much is a glider pilot’s life worth?” Many will have read that it delivered the costs of a set of measures added and the estimate that the number of deaths could be reduced by 40%, if all airplanes were provided with these mechanisms. Since we with the Noah and the Piggott hook offer still more, I estimate a survival or an accident avoidance chance of even 50%. The remainder is then mathematics:
The number of deaths with gliders over ten years in Germany is as well known as the life span of the airplanes and its number. Hence it follows that each airplane would be involved, on the average each 600 years in a deadly accident. That sounds like a lot, it means that in a thirty-year life span with each 20 airplanes one crash with a fatal outcome occurs. All DG measures cost together about 9,000 Euro. With 19 of the 20 aircraft, an unnecessary investment – however with the twentieth, a 50% probability life-saving. Thus it costs about 360,000 Euro to save a glider pilot’s life (9,000 X 20 / 0.5).
We won‘t even talk about the reduction in injuries up to wheelchair results. Dear pilots – there is hardly a life-saving measure, which would be cheaper in the world. Or perhaps: A pilot buys the machine of his dreams and pays all together easily more than 120,000 Euro. However it does not even estimate his own life to be three times as valuable as the value of his toy. Tell me, are we glider pilots collectively crazy? 2. Do we perhaps displace safety questions unconsciously? Now I am not a psychologist, but much speaks for the fact that it is like that. If a pilot thinks about safety questions, he must also admit that gliding it is not harmless – that perhaps the car ride to the airfield is not the most dangerous part. I cannot express it better than the well-known Bruno Gantenbrink in his lecture “Safety comes first”, which you should really re-read on our web page. Obviously many pilots are subject to the internal conflict, over safety questions and – to not want to think of mechanisms, because that confession results in the knowledge of partaking in a dangerous sport. A “cognitive dissonance” for you – a contradiction between own conviction and the reality. Each pilot knows not to take any unnecessary risks. Additionally one “knows” that certain errors simply don’t happen and that accidents only happen to other people. On the other hand he knows that this cannot actually be correct. Even experienced and careful pilots sometimes make “such stupid” mistakes. But can he/she admit that? My friend was a surgeon and chief doctor at an ophthalmologic clinic. By his occupation, he was an extremely meticulous person. And so were also his pre-flight checks. I always said: ” Jens, you are my life insurance. If you checked my airplane, it is completely safe.” And that’s how he flew too. From him I first heard the advice of what to do in an aborted launch, “Think down! Stuff the nose down!” And that’s exactly what happened to him at an altitude of 90 meters, after releasing the launch cable. He did not stuff the nose down, and he probably did not think. When he hung quietly in the air, he rolled and spun, four seconds into a black hole. Why exactly did I tell you this? It is a small psychological experiment:
Perhaps you are now feeling a little annoyed, and are thinking, why is Friedel Weber telling us that? What does it have to do with the Lecture? What concerns of ours is his friend? Does he always have to come back to this topic? Or do you feel a little uncomfortable? Nevertheless, we are all alone with our answers. “I do not want to hear this! ” See when we say “cognitive dissonance”?: You know very well that this could happen to you, but you do not want to admit that because it doesn’t fit into your idea of the world order. And such a conflict overcomes all humans simply by us ignoring reality. And in such a way safety consciousness is something to ponder in the distance. 3. Is it perhaps also because of the fact that we do not have a lobby, which worries about safety questions? So, what is to be done? I can point out three solutions to you. Two would not be feasible. One is feasible however will not be successful. And if you are of the opinion that this result is depressing, then consider this: 1. Are we to make all available safety devices simply the standard in each series?
That would add approximately 9,000 Euro to the cost of each airplane! And there my personal commitment now unfortunately stops: If we would make this strategic decision alone, our airplanes would be more expensive, by the amount mentioned above, than the competitors, and we could not absorb that. It would save human lives however at the cost of the existence of our company. In order for all manufacturers to offer together these technically and economically feasible safety components, they must be convinced only of the fact that the development is also worthwhile itself.
And I do not have the impression that it will be worthwhile itself in foreseeable time. 2. Are we to call after the state and request the Federal Office of Aviation to make these safety components obligatory?
I personally would not like to see that either. The state already regulates far too much, and has its hands everywhere, that I would rather leave! 3. Or are we to continue as before and trust in our customers?
Now, you must be the one to request the glider manufacturer of your choice to initiate the appropriate developments. Then you would have all safety devices that you want at your request. We manufacturers always make exactly what the market demands, that’s how this tough business works. Therefore, there is only one real solution.
The extent of the safety developments in the German glider manufacturing industry rests certainly only with the customer! It‘s all in your hands. Always, happy landings!
This article was a lead article taken from the pilots’ magazine “Luftsport”
by Holger Back Safety does not sell Friedel Weber (DG-Flugzeugbau) chose this provocative but unmistakable thesis as the subject of the speech he held during a glider pilots’ symposium in Stuttgart (Germany) in November, and also at a meeting of the German national team in Unterwössen.
“Safety does not sell” – and he proved this with some facts from the day-to-day life of a glider manufacturer. Whether it’s the comparatively simple fitting of the Röger hook, the rescue system “Noah” or the safety cockpit – the customers haven’t recognized the factory’s efforts. The financial effort of developing and certifying these safety features did not turn out to be profitable for the company. Fitting the Röger hook to older gliders for example only costs the customer 150 Euro and is proven to be a critical safety feature in the case of the pilot having to bale out – but only very few people have bought it so far. And this is not only a problem of one specific glider manufacturer.
The investments other glider manufacturers make in safety features are often ignored or, even worse, rejected. Even leading pilots are no exception. For purely aerodynamic reasons some pilots wedge themselves into the narrow cockpit – knowing that an emergency bailout will take just as long as getting in the glider. Or important safety details like for example a bigger undercarriage are rejected for weight reasons. The “leisure pilot” is no exception to this rule either. His main concern is whether the glide angle might decrease by one or two points. Safety however will not be an item on his list of priorities when buying a glider. The interest in rescue systems has clearly decreased in the past two years. A lot of people will argue that the slow development of these systems is the main reason for this. This is probably true as nobody could have foreseen how time-consuming the development and testing of the rescue systems would turn out to be. Therefore it is all the more important to show the manufacturers that pilots are indeed still interested in these systems. We have often accused the manufacturers of a lack of interest in the safety of their gliders. Times have changed, though. Glider manufacturers have done their homework. Now pilots and customers have to do their part and change their attitudes towards safety. Holger Back … and here are some reactions: betreff: Safety classification in gliders received: Sonntag, 13. Juli 2014, 15:56:40 (Sun, 13 Jul 2014 15:56:40 +0200) Dear Sirs, I have been thinking about safety issues in gliding and reading your safety related documents in your web site. Specially the one called “safety does not sell “. On my personal view, safety would be the first criteria for choosing a new glider.
However I understand that people might not want to think about that. There is a similar successful experience with energy consumptions in home appliances. People might be driven by price to buy a new washing machine but with the introduction of the Energy Efficiency classification with colours and letters in the EU. People tend to buy the most efficient. A similar system could be created in gliding, a standard classification about safety in all gliders. This could include active and passive safety. Customers might be aware that a high performance glider might not stall as nicely as a beginners glider. It could be made in a simple and transparent way, with ranking of clear things like: Hard landing absorption:
Parachute:
Ballistic parachute:
FLARM:
Piggott-Hook:
NOAH:
Stall warning indicator:
Tip stall and general stall friendly:
Spin out friendly:
Sustainer:
Instantaneous Electrical sustainer:
GPS/orientation maps:
Artificial horizon:
Cloud flying instruments:
Cabine crash cell (as Formula 1 cells):
Side string:
Rigging easiness:
::::
::::
:::: The list may go on with many more features… Many or them are optional in the purchase or upgrade of a glider. The inclusion of this features increase the safety classification of the glider and boost its sales. The same glider might have different classification depending on the equipment. This should be a readily available classification for all gliders in the market. Where the person purchasing the glider can easily compare: price, claim performance, claim safety and overall brand prestige, delivery times. I believe the adoption of this would benefit all of us in the future. You said in your web site that safety is in the hands of the customers when we buy a glider. Well, lets create a transparent and easy to use tool to compare the actual gliders with the safety devices on from different manufacturers. It would be great if you could forward this to relevant people. I imagine this idea is in the mind of many people around. This could be a practical way to boost safety in gliding and a way to increase the sales of your company, as I understand DG is in the forefront of safety devices. Kind regards.
Dr. Gonzalo Garcia-Atance.
PhD. Aeronautical Engineer. Betreff: Safety
Datum: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 09:41:00 -0700
Von: Pete Williams Dear K.F. I sincerely appreciate your quest for safety devices in sailplanes. You are making a contribution to the sport that may not appear to be bearing fruit now but will in the future. Having been a military (Navy) pilot for 21 years, I can attest to the problems of making pilots aware of safety. Most of the time our safety programs fell on dead ears. Pilots continued to be killed doing dumb things…yours truly almost several times. Yes there were plenty of safety devices installed including a wing fold lever that looked like a wing and actuated in the proper direction. Still one pilot tried to takeoff with the wings folded!! After being an instructor for several years I discovered that I could not convince my students to be safe, so told them they were free to kill themselves if they desired and then told them how to kill themselves. Maybe this worked because some came to me in later years to say thanks. So what to do? My recommendation is to install in all production gliders a strong cockpit including the hard cushion and the Roger hook as standard. These items are basic to surviving a crash and bailing out. The other items can be options. Pilots are no more crazy than car drivers. Both have in common haste, pride and it will never happen to me syndrome. Its normal. Of course you are not responsible to save their lives…THEY are. Keep on keeping on and recognize your time and your employees time plus your money has not been invested in vain. Pete Williams Betreff: Emergency Egress
Datum: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 11:07:42 +1000
Von: LARCEY, PAT I was interested to see your article on the inflatable cushion to assist emergency egress from the cockpit. When I was test flying RAF V Bombers in the 1960’s, in particular the Victor, the rear crew had assister cushions to assist overcoming G forces and speed the egress in the event it was necessary. Sounds a great idea to me, a consideration, probably, is to have a means of deflating it if it deploys inadvertently. I suppose that although safety might not sell, the lack of safety is an even greater deterrent, so on balance safety must sell ???? Safe flying Patrick Larcey Betreff: Re: My New DG-808B
Datum: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 10:07:36 -0500
Von: Gary Flandro Dear Friedel: I read your recent article on soaring safety with great interest and considerable concern. You should be recognized and praised for the effort you have made to improve the safety of your gliders. It should be mentioned that you have already made a very significant impact on the soaring community in terms of awareness of key safety issues. I understand your frustration with the customers for not responding more favorably to your obvious hard work in implementing important safety features in the DG sailplane designs. Please understand though that we all very much admire and appreciate your efforts. Hopefully this will pay off for your economically in the long run. I guess that I am one of the offending parties since I chose not to purchase some of the key safety devices you have developed for installation in DG-808B # 236/B150. I must tell you that I have worried about this considerably since placing the order a year ago. I think I must be typical of most buyers in that the economics played a major role in my decision. For many of us a purchase of this magnitude greatly stretches our economic limits. In other words, I had to sacrifice some safety in order to buy the glider. I hope to be able to add the DSI indicator later. I can’t give you good reasons for not purchasing the NOAH system or the special safety cockpit design. In the latter regard, I was impressed that your standard cockpit design is very good in application of Kevlar materials to improve safety. I think many pilots feel that additional crash resistance is only useful up to a certain point. In the event of a heavy impact, one wonders if there is anything that can be done to prevent serious injury. You are to be complimented for your implementation of the Piggott Hook. I hope this important step will soon be recognized by the world soaring community. You should receive an FAI award. With kindest regards,
Gary A. Flandro (DG-808B #236)
Betreff: Safety does not sell
Datum: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 05:46:12 -0400
Von: “David Noyes” You may not win the battle to sell every pilot safety devices,
but you win the hearts of all pilots and sleep with a good conscience.
Betreff: Safety does not sell
Datum: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 08:56:52
Von: Peter Redshaw Hello Friedel I would like to congratulate you on your article on safety. I believe the biggest problem is that most pilots believe it will not happen to them, in particular those that have the experience and money to be flying new gliders. To be buying expensive new kit means that they should be able to afford the marginal extra cost. On the other hand the vast majority of gliders being flown are second hand, handed down from the pilots with the money to buy new and with the alleged wisdom and experience to know that is right. They obviously do not value safety highly and are setting a bad example to the next generation of pilots. To be fair it is also true that glider manufacturers seem to be more concerned with performance than safety, as you say safety does not sell. The one exception is the barbed canopy wire deflector which sells well in Holland, but why? Has it to do with the Dutch Gliding Association? I have only ever bought one brand new glider and had every possible extra added, except for the wire deflector extra safety features were not on offer. Most of the time I have bought the best second hand machine I could afford related to my ability, they did not have safety features built in. An Oly 2B, Club Libelle, Kestrel 19, Nimbus 3, Super Falke, LS6c, DG-800B (G-BYEC) and for real fun an old Slingsby Capstan T49. The safety features you describe generally cannot be retro-fitted to any of these machines. I have had one accident in 41 years of gliding, which is close enough to your statistics. I was 26 years of age and at the stage of total self confidence. I came in nose first from about 50ft having cart-wheeled over a tree attempting a field landing. It was in the Oly 2B, the entire cockpit became match-wood back to the leading edge of the wings. What saved me was pulling myself into a ball instead of bracing myself. It in effect allowed a crush zone. I don’t remember thinking it out when it happened and I don’t know if I would have the presence of mind to repeat the trick if it happened again. In fact I couldn’t do it in most glass ships as I cannot get my legs back past the instrument panel! I have about 4000hrs gliding, instructed for 26 years, was CFI for 5 years and have 3 diamonds. I get more cautious as I get older so I appreciate your efforts. My greatest concern is having a mid air collision and it is probably true to say I believe (like most pilots) it will be the other persons fault. I therefore now ensure I have a good serviceable parachute. I have been following the development of glider recovery systems and would like to see more of this coupled with better cockpit design and crash tests.
I know a crumple zone works and you only have to look at Formula One motor racing to see the benefits of cockpits designed to withstand serious crashes. Our gliding movement is caught in a catch 22 situation, unless new machines have safety features built in then the majority of us with our second hand gliders will be flying without safety features forever. I only see one way to break this circle. Is there any chance of ALL glider manufacturers together with All National Gliding Associations, agreeing a set of safety standards/features that MUST be incorporated into ALL future designs? A long process but it might get there if ALL manufacturers include specific safety designs. Isn’t this what essentially happened on a smaller scale in Holland with the canopy wire deflector? Cheers and keep trying Peter Betreff: Glider Safety
Datum: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 23:42:09 +0100
Von: Brian Dear Sir, thank you for another excellent article on your web site about the strange situation that safety apparently does not sell. I have only been a glider pilot for about three years. At first the excitement of the sport and the challenge of learning overcame most other thoughts. After going solo the challenge of building my basic competences and gaining the Bronze badge / cross-country endorsement were uppermost in my thoughts. I told friends and family how wonderful it all was. But I found it strange how they thought I was taking a big risk with my new hobby. It is only in the last year that the risks of the sport have become my main concern. At first when I heard of a serious or fatal accident elsewhere, I assumed the people involved must have taken silly risks, or simply been very unlucky, and it couldn’t happen to me. Then I saw a couple of incidents at my airfield that could have been very serious, and was able to talk to the people involved. I realized that (of course) it could happen to me. I found out more about accidents from others at the club and by reading the published reports. Suddenly I realized that gliding was much more dangerous that I had thought. And it seemed that in many cases, the victims of accidents would have been saved if the glider had basic warning equipment like stall warning, airbrake warning on take-off. Or if the machine was easier to escape from when subjected to g-forces, or much more able to survive an impact. With about 8,500 pilots in the UK and about 8 or 9 fatal or serious accidents a year, it looks like you have a one in a thousand chance of being another statistic. Most people would not take part in anything with such a high risk. Last year, after being worried by road safety and the chances of injury in my ten year old VW Golf, I bought a nearly-new car with many modern safety devices like airbags, seat belt pre-tensioners, side impact bars, very good crumple zones, etc. Then when flying in an old glider like the PZL-SZD Junior I really started to feel exposed to physical danger, like I was sitting in a fast-moving cardboard box. This has had a bad effect on me, as I have started making excuses not to fly, and I feel I am in danger of giving up my hobby due to the risks. To overcome this I simply cannot afford a new glider with new safety devices. The club gliders that I rely on will not be replaced soon, and even if they are replaced I doubt if they will include any of the safety features that you provide in DG machines. But like the car industry in the 1970’s, it can only be a matter of time until we demand better safety. It might just take 20 years. I therefore applaud your efforts and wish you every success in making other glider pilots see the reality of the danger of their sport and demand safer aircraft. You are already well known for your stance against the safety complacency that pervades gliding. I am sure that in years to come you will be recognized as one of the most important innovators in the history of gliding. Please do not be discouraged by the poor response you get when marketing a new safety feature. There are many people like me who are increasingly worried about the lack of built-in safety in gliders. We cannot expect training alone to prevent the risks! When I win the lottery, if I am still flying, I will be sure to purchase one of your fine aircraft with all the available safety options you can build in. Many thanks,
Brian Rogers Betreff: Re: DG Flugzeugbau – Newsletter No. 34
Datum: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 14:22:34 -0400
Von: Thomas Knauff Dear Mr. Weber, Regarding your article “Safety Does no Sell.” Before seat belts were required equipment, Ford motor Co offered them as an option. Something less than 10% ordered them even though Ford priced them at no profit. Even after they were required, it took a law to force people to use them, and even now, a very high percentage do not wear them while driving. As for motor cycle helmets, they are not required everywhere, so you will see many people driving motorcycles without a helmet in those areas where the law does not require there use. Safety does not sell, and the result in our case makes flying gliders more dangerous than all other activities. Smart people choose to act dumb. Tom Knauff Betreff: Safety does not sell.
Datum: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 12:48:05 +0000 (GMT)
Von: Bernt Hustad Hembre Hi. I read your article “Safety does not sell” with great interest. I do agree with you on many of your thoughts, but there is one thing I’d like to comment. Safety does sell, it just takes a long long time.
Just remember how many years it took from it was prohibited to drive a car without wearing a seatbelt until people started to put their seatbelts on
because it was safer. In the beginning people just took them on to avoid being fined for not wearing them. I’d like to use your article as a base for a discussion on a club-evening in our glider club. I will have my focus on what can be done to increase safety, reduce the chances for damage and reduce our annual repair budget. As a conclusion I will strongly urge you to keep up the good work and continue to find new improvements regarding safety. And articles on the
subject are probably the best way of starting discussions in clubs around the world.
Bernie |
Some people think that Hillary Clinton, for all her corruption, is at least smarter than Barack Obama. Others observe her ruthlessness toward political opponents and infer that, unlike Obama, she will be a tough defender of American interests. No: for goodness’ sake, the woman has a four-year history as Secretary of State! If there is one thing we know for certain about Hillary, it is that as president she would preside over an inept and America-destructive foreign policy.
And, to put the most charitable construction on her words, the woman is an idiot. Andy McCarthy records, and places in context, Hillary’s first comment on the latest terrorist attack in France:
Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.
We simply cannot afford another four years of such mind-numbing stupidity in the White House. Donald Trump has many faults as a presidential candidate. You don’t need me to list them for you. But he is not Hillary Clinton, he is not committed to a view of the world’s dangers that is almost literally insane, and he will not give us a third Obama term in either domestic or foreign policy. He also won’t appoint people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court. Our next president will be either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton; we desperately need for it to be Trump. He deserves, and badly needs, our financial support. |
Vivian Howard sits, her legs crossed, her feet propped on pots and pans under a stainless-steel countertop. “I have a lot of anxiety nowadays. I, for so long, identified myself as a working chef,” she says, her arms whirling as she speaks.
“I don’t do that anymore. And I feel uncomfortable with it. I don’t want to be a phony. I don’t want my cooks to see me as a phony. I don’t want to be the person who just shows up with her entourage and her cameras. But all of that is part of what’s happening. And I literally have nightmares at night about it, trying to figure out what it is I am now.
“So I don’t know. What am I?”
Then she breaks. “I’m Vivian, and I’m a chef,” she says as she bursts out laughing, and slaps the countertop. “I’m a doofus, is what I am. Lord.”
“That’s good,” says Cynthia Hill, who’s holding the boom mike. “And sorta like ending it, ‘Am I still a chef? Can we still call it A Chef’s Life?’ ”
Vivian looks back into the camera. Take two: “So I really am trying to figure out what I am,” she says.
“You want to do that again?” Cynthia asks. “You’re sort of soft-spoken.” She brings the audio level up.
Take three: “I want to be able to do it all. … But that just ain’t gonna happen, I don’t think.”
Cynthia asks Vivian to be a little more reflective. Take four: “To what degree does what I do every day define who I am? I don’t know. What do I want to do?” Vivian says. “I don’t know, Cynthia, come on! This is not healthy, talking about yourself so much.”
Vivian would much rather talk about the time when Scott Avett, who sings the show’s theme song, came to her restaurant, Chef & the Farmer. She wants to talk about how cute he is, and how she’s kinda embarrassed for fangirling over him. So she does several takes about that. It relieves some tension. Afterward, though, Vivian and the crew are spent.
“That was good, Vivian,” Cynthia says. “I know that was painful.”
Then they stop for lunch.
Over tacos, guacamole, and salsa brought from nearby Olvera Street Taqueria, Vivian and Cynthia explain how an episode of A Chef’s Life comes together. First, a camera crew goes out and follows Vivian around Kinston. They visit a farm that she uses as a supplier. Later, an editor cuts the video into scenes. Then Cynthia, the director and producer, takes the scenes; groups them based on a specific ingredient, like sweet corn, turnips, oysters, or moonshine; and assembles them into a crude episode. She figures out what’s missing, and finally it’s up to Vivian to fill in the gaps with “confessionals,” where she looks straight ahead into the camera and narrates. They tried scripts at first, but Vivian sounded too stiff. So Cynthia will prompt Vivian with a topic or idea, and she’ll speak.
During a break, someone asks who she’s talking to. “I’m talking to America,” Vivian says, and she and everybody else belly laugh.
But seriously. “I never really think about that. I do talk, and then I look at Cynthia for approval.”
Today, they have to get through confessionals for the final five episodes of A Chef’s Life’s third season. The kitchen in a condo, which used to be the back corner of a tire warehouse in downtown Kinston, has been turned into a set. Pots and pans are arranged on shelves, where they will appear, out of focus, behind Vivian — noticeable, but not too noticeable. The air conditioner is off. So is the refrigerator. They make too much noise. Sheets taped over the tall plate-glass windows soften the light. There are only a few crew members here, all from North Carolina. The two camera guys drove down this morning from Durham. A makeup woman came over from Deep Gap. Cynthia is simultaneously directing, producing, and wielding a boom mike with such precision that she can use it to knock down flyaway hairs on Vivian’s head. They purposely travel light. “One, because we don’t have any money,” Cynthia says. “And two, because we don’t have any money.”
Vivian, now in a different shirt for a different episode, sits down inside a cocoon of reflectors, lights, and blankets around the countertop, which muffle the echoes from the tall ceilings.
“I think that we can talk about the beef tongue a little bit,” Cynthia says.
“If you had told me nine years ago that I would be drinking beer brewed in Kinston, serving beef tongue tacos at a gallery in downtown,” Vivian says, right into the camera, “I would have laughed in your face.”
It doesn’t land with the right punch, so Vivian does a more playful take: “That’s some good tongue. That’s some luscious, fatty tongue.”
“I wonder if that’s going to make us PG,” says Cynthia.
Next take: “These Kinstonians are loving my tongue.” Laughter follows.
“And the art,” says Cynthia.
“And the art,” Vivian tacks on to the end of the next take.
“Good with me,” Cynthia says, putting down the boom mike.
The TV show was Vivian’s idea. She’d been a volunteer at WRAL in Raleigh during college and had interned at CBS Sunday Morning in New York. She originally wanted to be a broadcast journalist, but shifted to advertising and then to food writing, and figured she would need to learn about food by working in kitchens. Over time, cooking, not journalism, became her career.
Chef & the Farmer opened nine years ago, in 2006. Anyone who’s watched the beginning of A Chef’s Life knows the story. Vivian and her husband, Ben Knight, were working at restaurants in New York City. Her parents offered to help her open a restaurant, but the catch was that the restaurant would have to be in eastern North Carolina, a place where Vivian grew up, but swore never to return.
It’s a little more complex than that. It was really Vivian’s sister and brother-in-law who wanted to have a little niche grocery store with a sandwich shop in it. That idea morphed into the concept for a high-end restaurant in Kinston. Local leaders, thirsty for any kind of new business downtown, helped make a building at the corner of Herritage and Gordon streets more affordable. Vivian’s parents, who had been prominent tobacco farmers in the area, pitched in. They all renovated a century-old boxy brick building, once a mule stable and more recently a print shop, into Chef & the Farmer.
The restaurant got off to a slow start. The food wasn’t Southern, and people in Kinston didn’t connect with it. Vivian called some dishes, like smoked goat cheese ravioli with tomato petals, bad versions of the food she was cooking in New York. A year in, she had her breakthrough moment with a breakthrough dish: barbecued chicken with a blueberry eastern-style sauce. Over the next few years, Chef & the Farmer started to turn into a word-of-mouth destination for people around Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill who were looking for an alternative to restaurants there. A 2009 Raleigh News & Observer review brought more interest. Still, Vivian was restless, and turned back to writing as an outlet. She became obsessed with old traditions.
Most of them already know the whole backstory. They want to see if real life matches up with what they watch on TV.
Some elderly neighbors invited her over to make collard kraut. She wrote a blog post about it. “Nobody read it,” she says.
But the idea stuck with her. Ben suggested Vivian call Cynthia Hill, a documentary filmmaker in Durham. Cynthia was between projects, and agreed to come down to Kinston to experiment under one condition: Vivian wouldn’t be merely the narrator for the show. She would be its main character.
Vivian explains what happened next over a glass of white wine at Buy Local, an art gallery and wine tasting room a block away from her restaurant. For the pilot episode, cameras followed Vivian and Ben around the restaurant. To a parade. To a farm, where she talked about sweet corn, and how to cook it. The first show ended with the fire that destroyed the restaurant’s kitchen in 2012. The cliffhanger: How would Ben and Vivian rebuild?
Cynthia sent Vivian a rough cut of the episode, but Vivian couldn’t bring herself to look at it for weeks. “If you want to do this,” Cynthia told her, “you have to be able to watch it.”
At first, nobody else seemed to want to watch the show, either. UNC-TV and other networks originally passed, before South Carolina’s ETV agreed to help distribute it to PBS stations nationwide. The show’s first episode aired in September 2013. And with that, Chef & the Farmer went from a regional destination to a national one. People started to look up Vivian Howard en masse on Google. Who is she? Where is Kinston? How can I get there? Where do I stay? What else can I eat while I’m there?
“I think we were really surprised at how much of an impact it had,” Vivian says, “because we didn’t really think anyone was going to watch it.”
Here’s what that impact looks like: While Vivian sits in the gallery drinking wine, three sisters are traipsing around town. First they took an Amtrak train to Wilson, then they took a Greyhound bus to Kinston. The sisters — Kathleen Bradford and Denny Galarza from Pennsylvania, and Jeanie Cavanagh from Denver, Colorado — planned to stay for four days. With no car. Kinston has no taxi service. They’ve eaten for two nights at the Boiler Room Oyster Bar, and tonight they’re finishing up dessert at Chef & the Farmer, which is packed with a diverse crowd, young and old. The restaurant’s marketing director caught wind that the sisters were in town, and, in the pouring rain, carted them out to Warren Brothers’s farm in La Grange, which is featured prominently on the TV show. She took them to a local barbecue place, where they learned why people in these parts drink Pepsi and not Coke. At one point, when they passed by the condo, Vivian herself came outside and surprised them.
Chef & the Farmer has been a spark, creating an industry nobody ever envisioned for downtown Kinston: tourism.
“We’ve seen a lot,” says Kathleen. They’d had no idea what to expect. They brought books and a deck of cards to pass the time. They haven’t touched them.
Jeanie says this isn’t a vacation. It’s a bucket-list destination. “I have such respect for Vivian,” she says. “I don’t know her, but it’s obvious from the show that she’s so clear about what she wants to achieve.”
It takes planning to eat at Chef & the Farmer now. Reservations book up weeks in advance. As the sisters finish dessert, empty tables fill up again. Plates of Cornish game hens, tomato pies, pork belly skewers, and wood-roasted halibut fly out of the kitchen. Waiters hustle. Before the TV show, people would walk in, and you could see a certain look on their faces. One that said, I drove a long way to be here. This had better be as good as everyone says it is. Now, expectations are even higher. It has to be good, because they put it on television, right? Chef & the Farmer is more than a restaurant now. It’s a voyage. People don’t wander in and discover the menu anymore. Most of them already know the whole backstory. They want to see if real life matches up with what they watch on TV.
Vivian sits in the art gallery, contemplating this. “It’s, like, larger than life,” she says of Chef & the Farmer. “It’s like they somehow expect that it’s going to change their lives.”
“That’s good,” says Ben Harper, Buy Local’s owner.
“Except that it’s just a restaurant,” Vivian says. “If I were to do what I used to do, which is stand at the end of that pass, we would never get a plate of food out. I did it for a while. There were layers of people waiting to come up to talk to me.”
That’s part of the reason why Vivian no longer hangs out in her restaurant every night. The show reflects that. If A Chef’s Life doesn’t show Vivian going from table to table, that expectation is no longer there, and people won’t feel as disappointed if they don’t meet her. There are autographed menus in the back for visitors who want a totem to take home. But a selfie, the current currency of closeness to celebrity, is increasingly hard to come by, because Vivian no longer needs to have as active a role in the day-to-day running of her restaurant. She, like most of us, wants to be at home in the evening with her 4-year-old twins, Florence and Theodore.
Out on the sidewalk in front of Buy Local,
a woman and her kids walk up to the gallery’s windows and peer inside. They’ve been searching for Vivian, who puts down her wine and walks out.
“Lila wanted to meet you,” says Lila’s stepmom, Missy Aldridge.
“You want to take a picture?” Vivian asks, before crowding between Lila, 11, and her brother Trey, 10.
Missy explains that Lila keeps changing her mind about what she wants to do when she grows up. She’s shifting between wanting to be a chef, a baker, or an artist.
“You can be all three of those,” Vivian tells her.
Missy raises her smartphone. “We watch you on the show all the time,” she tells Vivian. “When we watched y’all, I said ‘I really do know her.’ ”
Missy’s visiting from Clayton. “None of this was here!” she says, a bit wide-eyed. “I never thought this one restaurant would have started all this.”
After Chef & the Farmer, next came Mother Earth Brewing, which opened downtown in October 2009. The taproom opened five months later. Then, starting in late 2011, a slew of new restaurants opened: Queen Street Deli & Bakery, Irie Eat’s Café. Ginger 108. The Red Room. Sweetiepies Cupcakery. The Boiler Room Oyster Bar (opened by Ben and Vivian. And, most recently, Olvera Street Taqueria. All of those restaurants feed off of Chef & the Farmer, which is only open for dinner. Last year, the O’Neil Hotel opened in a long-dormant five-story bank building, and now offers seven rooms for people who want to be within walking distance of it all. The place is often full, even on weekdays.
“I think we were really surprised at how much of an impact it had,” Vivian says, “because we didn’t really think anyone was going to watch it.”
Businesses that have been mainstays in downtown Kinston for decades are happily adjusting to the cameras and the people they bring. In one episode, Vivian buys some chicks from Parrott’s General Store, which has been open for 71 years. You can buy live rabbits, too, but tourists can’t figure out a way to take animals home, so the store started selling gifts. Business has been so good that Parrott’s expanded five years ago. “I’m not used to cameras,” says owner Tommy Jones, smiling. “I didn’t run and hide. But I wanted to.”
Another time, Vivian interviewed J.C. Reynolds of Reynolds Seafood, which has flounder, speckled trout, and spot on ice in a display case. “It was OK,” J.C. says of the experience, but the response to the show was intense. He had Harper print up T-shirts for out-of-towners who wanted to buy something, but weren’t prepared to drive home with a whole sea mullet.
Some people are coming here to live, lured by a growing art and restaurant scene, $300-a-month apartments, and $600-a-month mortgages. Harper, a young, bearded, family man, used to be a T-shirt printer in Carrboro, where he paid high rent on his shop. But after eating at Chef & the Farmer in 2013, he was intrigued by what he saw in town. Last year, he moved his business and his family to Kinston. He bought a storefront on West North Street downtown. He bought a house for a song. And he’s happy. He’s betting on Kinston’s future, as a small town that’s big on food and culture. “There are progressive things happening here that gave me the confidence that this would be an interesting place to be,” he says.
Even with all this — the new restaurants, the pioneers, and the buzz — a walk from the O’Neil Hotel at night is a surprisingly solitary affair. Walk inward, toward the Chef & the Farmer down Gordon or North streets, and you pass restaurants that are open, or about to open. There’s a spa. There’s a butcher shop. There are people, dressed like out-of-towners — Hawaiian shirts, big necklaces, and shorts with belts — maybe heading to The Red Room for a drink. Windows in empty storefronts now display framed walls waiting for Sheetrock.
Walk in the other direction, down Queen Street, and you see old Kinston, the one still unaffected by the rising tide coming from Vivian and her TV show. There’s the abandoned Paramount theater, a karate studio, a thrift shop, a shoe store, and a used-book seller. This town, built on tobacco farms, wounded by Hurricane Floyd, and left fallow by the loss of lumber and cotton mills, has been steadily losing people since 1990. “It’s a town in transition,” says Adrian King, executive director of Pride of Kinston, a group trying to revitalize old buildings downtown and to get new businesses to move in. Chef & the Farmer has been a spark, creating an industry nobody ever envisioned for downtown Kinston: tourism. “It basically set that end of town on fire,” he says.
But despite the show’s success — its third season debuted on PBS in September — the struggle for funding is constant. PBS doesn’t pay production costs; they merely provide distribution. So it’s up to Vivian and Cynthia to go out and find underwriters who will get very limited exposure during each episode (PBS doesn’t allow product placement, so one sponsor, a cookware company, isn’t allowed to have its products featured on A Chef’s Life). Vivian is branching out, with cookbooks and a short series of sponsored online videos for Yahoo.com, where the advertising rules aren’t as strict. The constant hustle is proof that being this kind of a TV star doesn’t bring an automatic paycheck. What it does bring is fame. Which brings tourists. Which brings hope. In Kinston, Vivian Howard has created her own ecosystem, where hungry diners are the raw material for aspiring chefs, entrepreneurs, and artists. Chef & the Farmer remains at the top of the food chain. No matter where you go, you eventually end up there. That’s the power of Vivian’s story. A story well told.
“For a long time, it was the Ben and Vivian show in downtown Kinston,” Vivian says, her eyes focused into the camera lens. She’s back at the confessional, trying to provide some context for an episode late in the third season. “But in the last few years, a lot of other people are looking at our downtown as a place to open businesses. I mean, to think that we have this cool gallery. We have several restaurants. It’s very, very exciting.” Vivian nails the first take, but she still looks away from the camera and over to Cynthia for approval.
“That’s fine,” Cynthia says, and they move on to the next scene. |
Veteran Adelaide Strikers batsman Brad Hodge has thrown his hat in the ring to be part of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) in Qatar next February.
Hodge, 40, enjoyed a productive stint in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) this year with Guyana, finishing as the tournament’s seventh-highest runs-scorer, and will again line up for the Strikers in his dual role of batsman and assistant coach in BBL|05.
The PSL, set to be staged in the Qatar capital of Doha, has already attracted the likes of West Indian T20 superstars Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard, and Hodge has confirmed that he has applied to play in the tournament.
Quick Single: BBL|05 ins and outs so far
“I’ve put my name down to be a part of it – fingers crossed, you never know what can happen,” he told cricket.com.au. “My name just gets put into a draft, and hopefully someone picks me up and I can contribute.
“There’s a lot of good players out there that I assume want to be involved, so we’ll see.
“I feel a little bit for the Pakistan cricket side, how they’ve had to play away and they’ve had no home cricket for a long time.
“They’re such an exciting team, their supporter base is really good, so I reckon this will be a good tournament to lift their spirits.
“It could be a landmark moment where people get back on board the Pakistan cricket cause.”
The inaugural season of the PSL is set to include five teams from the provincial capitals – Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta – and include 24 matches between February 4-24.
Quick Single: Stars name new captain, vice-captain
Hodge, who has plied his trade in various domestic Twenty20 competitions around the world and is hoping to again play in next year’s CPL, said he was eagerly anticipating another season of the Big Bash, during which he will turn 41.
“I’ve probably got a little bit left in me, which is nice,” he said. “I think if my performances drop off, I’ll know, but that hasn’t happened yet.
“The breaks actually really help your motivation. You get excited in the build-up to each tournament, whereas sometimes, when you’ve been in the game for this long and continue training Monday to Friday, you just drift in and out.
“I don’t have that anymore in my life – cricket season just comes, I get into the action and away I go.”
Hodge broke his arm during last year’s Big Bash season, his first with Adelaide, and missed much of the tournament before returning for the home final at which 52,000 Strikers fans watched their team lose to the Sydney Sixers.
Quick Single: Pattinson needs more time: Smith
“I sort of feel like a new recruit this year,” he said. “But when I played at the new Adelaide Oval in front of a full crowd, as a Victorian, I had to actually question which venue was better out of the MCG or Adelaide – it was a tough call.
“It was quite a spectacle really. They’ve got a really good fan base there now and we played a good, exciting brand of cricket which they loved as well.”
Though he was lured to South Australia by former coach Darren Berry, Hodge is looking forward to the prospect of linking up with new mentor Jason Gillespie.
“Jason’s done well in the four-day comp over there (with Yorkshire in England) and hopefully he can bring some of that success to the Strikers,” he said.
“He’ll have his own ideas and the way he wants to do it, so I’ll fit in and work with Jason, find out the game plan and try to help those young kids that we have as best I possibly can.
“That’s the idea of having that experience in the side – you have to try to pass that knowledge on as well as you can.
“We saw some really good glimpses of that last year where it paid off. Travis Head went really well, Alex Ross came in and had a few cameos, which was something I’d spoken about with him after my own experiences with Rajasthan Royals.” |
Nintendo's Wii U may not have gotten off to a hot start, but you shouldn't bet against the platform, according to GameStop president Tony Bartel. Speaking with investors today during an earnings call, Bartel laid out the reasons why he thinks the Wii U can be a hit.
"We've been very consistent every time we're asked about the Wii U," he said. "Really what they needed was two things: they needed strong first-party titles, which we think that they are getting; and they also needed to do a better job of explaining exactly what the connected tablet--as we like to call it--how you actually use that. I think they are going to do a great job on both of those."
Some major first-party Wii U games on the way include Super Smash Bros. (fall 2014), Hyrule Warriors (September), and a brand new, open-world Legend of Zelda game for 2015.
GameStop executive vice president Mike Hogan also chimed in, saying Mario Kart 8's record-setting release in May helped drive Wii U sales substantially. The game has sold nearly 3 million copies worldwide to date. In addition, GameStop management referenced the data released this week from Amazon (via MCV) that showed Wii U game preorders spiked by a major margin after Gamescom last week. "So we're very excited about that," Bartel said.
Finally, Bartel teased that Nintendo's upcoming toy line, amiibo, could be a big hit. "I would also not sell amiibo short, either," he said. Amiibo launches this fall with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, and will also work with Mario Kart 8, Yoshi's Woolly World, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, and Mario Party 10. Nintendo will also sell an adapter that will allow the toys to work with the 3DS.
GameStop today reported earnings for its latest quarter, and the results were strong across the board. The company posted year-over-year gains for revenue and profit, and also saw hardware and software post positive growth compared to last year. |
‘This Is Our Signature’: iOS 7
No one has questioned whether Jony Ive can lead a hardware design team. Whether he could lead a software design team, however, has been the biggest question facing Apple over the last eight months. In fact, it might be the biggest question facing Apple, ever, because it’s another way of asking whether the company could produce innovative software without you-know-who at the helm of the ship.
Today, we have our answer, and it is a resounding yes. Jony Ive can lead a software team.
The key, I think, is that his approach, and Apple’s as a whole under its post-Forstall organizational structure, is not to view this as two different things, hardware and software, but rather as a single thing: design.
There is a deep intellectual rigor to the design of iOS 7, and it’s hard not to see it as being profoundly informed by Ive’s background in hardware. In hardware, design is limited by physics: weight, density, size, connections, seams. Software doesn’t face those design limits. The old design of iOS 6 took advantage of that lack of limits, to its detriment. In iOS 6, you open a folder on the home screen, and linen is something you see underneath. You pull down Notification Center, and linen is something you see over. It’s both over and under. Hardware doesn’t work like that, but software can, because software can show you anything, conceptual logic be damned.
The design of iOS 7 is based on rules. There’s an intricate system at work, a Z-axis of layers organized in a logical way. There is a profound reduction in the use of faux-3D visual effects and textures, but iOS 7 is anything but flat. It is three dimensional not just visually but logically. It uses translucency not to show off, but to provide you with a sense of place. When you pull the new Control Center panel up from the bottom of the screen, its translucency lets you know that you haven’t gone somewhere new, you’re just looking at something over where you were.
There’s a sense of place, depth, and spatiality in iOS 7 that makes it feel like hardware. A real thing, not pixels rendered on glass. It’s as though Ive has brought the same design goals that have always informed Apple’s hardware to software. And here, his team isn’t limited by physics. Planes can have zero thickness. But it’s a system, in the truest sense of the word.
iOS 7 is not perfect; this new design framework will evolve and improve over time, just like iOS’s original aesthetic did. But it’s a conceptual foundation that corrects all of the excesses of the original iOS aesthetic. It’s radically different but not disorienting. Less flashy, less bling, more subtle, more refined.
This is the first product of the post-Jobs Apple. The result shows that in some ways Apple’s software design has gotten better, because it was Jobs (and Forstall) who had a penchant for exuberant textures and gimmickry. Jobs’s taste in hardware was nearly perfect, but his taste in software had a weakness for the saccharine. Wood grain, linen, Rich Corinthian leather, etc. It was all just sugar for the eyes. This is a weakness Jony Ive’s software taste clearly does not suffer.
The software is now of a piece with the hardware. Two sides of the same coin. Not hardware design and software design. Just design. |
Sports betting picks and handicapping information for your Saturday card. Sports betting aid once again brings to you the latest stats , trends, and handicapping situations to help you in all of your sports handicapping ventures. And if sports capping isn’t really your thing no worries we have also included some free sports picks from some of the best known pro sports handicappers and services on the web. We hope this information will aid you in all of your sports predictions today and best of luck !
NBA Stats and Trends for Saturday
Hot Teams
— Thunder won/covered last four games (6-4 AF).
— Bulls won four of their last five games (3-8 last 11 HF).
— Toronto won ten of its last twelve games (3-1 last four AU).
— Clippers won their last three games (7-3 last ten HF).
Cold Teams
— Hornets lost last three games, by 8-1-28 points (4-6-1 HU).
— Miami lost six of last nine games (2-8-1 last 11 HF). Pelicans lost their last four games (8-0 last eight AU).
— Suns lost six of their last seven games (1-3 last four AU).
— Rockets lost three of last four games (6-2-1 last nine HF).
— Kings lost five of their last seven games (3-8 last 11 AU).
Series Records
— Thunder won their last eight games with Charlotte.
— Pelicans won last two games with Miami, after losing previous five.
— Bulls won six of last eight games with Phoenix.
— Home side won last 12 Toronto-Houston games.
— Clippers won ten of last twelve games with Sacramento.
Totals
— Eight of last nine Charlotte home games stayed under.
— Six of last eight New Orleans games went over.
— Six of last seven Chicago games stayed under total.
— Five of last seven Houston home games went over.
— Four of last five Sacramento road games stayed under.
Back-to-Backs
— Pelicans are 10-2 vs spread if they played night before. Heat is 6-4-2.
— Suns are 4-6 vs spread if they played night before; Bulls are 7-6.
— Raptors are 8-2 vs spread if they played night before; Rockets are 8-5.
— Sacramento is 3-4 vs spread on road if it played night before.
NBA > (505) PHOENIX@ (506) CHICAGO | 02/21/2015 – 08:05 PM
Play AGAINST CHICAGO using the money line in Home games after a division game
The record is 8 Wins and 12 Losses for the last three seasons (-26.3 units)
NBA > (503) NEW ORLEANS@ (504) MIAMI | 02/21/2015 – 07:35 PM
Play ON NEW ORLEANS using the money line in All games after scoring 85 points or less
The record is 15 Wins and 9 Losses for the last three seasons (+18.2 units)
NBA > (505) PHOENIX@ (506) CHICAGO | 02/21/2015 – 08:05 PM
Play ON PHOENIX using the against the spread in Road games in non-conference games
The record is 19 Wins and 5 Losses for the last two seasons (+13.5 units)
NBA > (505) PHOENIX@ (506) CHICAGO | 02/21/2015 – 08:05 PM
Play UNDER CHICAGO on the total in Home games on Saturday games
The record is 6 Overs and 22 Unders for the last three seasons (+15.4 units)
NBA > (503) NEW ORLEANS@ (504) MIAMI | 02/21/2015 – 07:35 PM
Play OVER NEW ORLEANS on the total in All games when playing against a team with a losing record
The record is 61 Overs and 29 Unders for the last three seasons (+29.1 units)
NBA > (507) TORONTO@ (508) HOUSTON | 02/21/2015 – 08:05 PM
Play OVER TORONTO on the total in Road games versus good offensive teams – scoring 99+ points/game
The record is 32 Overs and 12 Unders for the last three seasons (+18.8 units)
NBA > (509) SACRAMENTO@ (510) LA CLIPPERS | 02/21/2015 – 10:05 PM
Play UNDER SACRAMENTO on the total in All games versus good offensive teams – scoring 99+ points/game – 2nd half of the season
The record is 9 Overs and 25 Unders for the last two seasons (+15.1 units)
NBA > (509) SACRAMENTO@ (510) LA CLIPPERS | 02/21/2015 – 10:05 PM
Play AGAINST SACRAMENTO in the first half in Road games after a non-conference game
The record is 6 Wins and 20 Losses for the last two seasons (-16 units)
NBA > (501) OKLAHOMA CITY@ (502) CHARLOTTE | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play UNDER CHARLOTTE on the total in All games on Saturday games
The record is 1 Overs and 10 Unders for the this season (+8.9 units)
College Basketball Stats and Trends for Saturday
CBB > (709) N DAKOTA@ (710) SACRAMENTO ST | 02/21/2015 – 10:00 PM
Play ON SACRAMENTO ST using the money line in All games as a favorite
The record is 16 Wins and 1 Losses for the last two seasons (+14.6 units)
CBB > (551) DAYTON@ (552) DUQUESNE | 02/21/2015 – 02:00 PM
Play AGAINST DUQUESNE using the money line in All games in February games
The record is 33 Wins and 76 Losses for the since 1992 (-72.05 units)
CBB > (613) COLUMBIA@ (614) YALE | 02/21/2015 – 07:00 PM
Play ON YALE using the money line in All games versus good defensive teams – allowing <=64 points/game after 15+ games
The record is 11 Wins and 4 Losses for the last three seasons (+17 units)
CBB > (563) NEVADA@ (564) BOISE ST | 02/21/2015 – 03:00 PM
Play AGAINST NEVADA using the money line in All games in February games
The record is 5 Wins and 13 Losses for the last three seasons (-20.1 units)
CBB > (681) IDAHO ST@ (682) MONTANA ST | 02/21/2015 – 04:30 PM
Play AGAINST IDAHO ST using the money line in All games when playing against a team with a losing record
The record is 3 Wins and 17 Losses for the last two seasons (-16.75 units)
CBB > (657) HAWAII@ (658) CAL DAVIS | 02/21/2015 – 10:00 PM
Play ON CAL DAVIS using the money line in All games off a win against a conference rival
The record is 8 Wins and 1 Losses for the this season (+10.2 units)
CBB > (515) PITTSBURGH@ (516) SYRACUSE | 02/21/2015 – 12:00 PM
Play AGAINST PITTSBURGH using the money line in Road games versus good defensive teams – allowing <=64 points/game
The record is 5 Wins and 14 Losses for the last three seasons (-20 units)
CBB > (607) COLL OF CHARLESTON@ (608) JAMES MADISON | 02/21/2015 – 07:00 PM
Play ON JAMES MADISON in the first half in All games when playing against a team with a losing record
The record is 19 Wins and 3 Losses for the last two seasons (+15.7 units)
CBB > (587) SOUTHERN MISS@ (588) CHARLOTTE | 02/21/2015 – 05:30 PM
Play AGAINST CHARLOTTE using the money line in All games when playing with one or less days rest
The record is 21 Wins and 27 Losses for the since 1992 (-43.25 units)
CBB > (655) SAN DIEGO ST@ (656) SAN JOSE ST | 02/21/2015 – 10:00 PM
Play ON SAN DIEGO ST using the money line in All games in all games
The record is 37 Wins and 11 Losses for the last two seasons (+25.95 units)
CBB > (527) ELON@ (528) DELAWARE | 02/21/2015 – 12:30 PM
Play ON DELAWARE using the money line in All games when playing against a team with a losing record
The record is 15 Wins and 2 Losses for the last two seasons (+13 units)
CBB > (577) CLEMSON@ (578) DUKE | 02/21/2015 – 04:00 PM
Play ON CLEMSON using the money line in All games after scoring 60 points or less
The record is 8 Wins and 1 Losses for the this season (+10.05 units)
CBB > (511) S FLORIDA@ (512) E CAROLINA | 02/21/2015 – 11:00 AM
Play ON E CAROLINA using the money line in Home games in February games
The record is 8 Wins and 2 Losses for the last three seasons (+13.3 units)
CBB > (655) SAN DIEGO ST@ (656) SAN JOSE ST | 02/21/2015 – 10:00 PM
Play AGAINST SAN JOSE ST using the against the spread in All games when playing against a team with a winning record after 15 or more games
The record is 4 Wins and 22 Losses for the last three seasons (-20.2 units)
CBB > (665) COLORADO@ (666) OREGON ST | 02/21/2015 – 11:00 PM
Play UNDER COLORADO on the total in Road games on Saturday games
The record is 0 Overs and 10 Unders for the last three seasons (+10 units)
CBB > (691) MERCER@ (692) SAMFORD | 02/21/2015 – 07:00 PM
Play OVER SAMFORD on the total in All games off a loss against a conference rival
The record is 15 Overs and 2 Unders for the last two seasons (+12.8 units)
CBB > (675) IUPUI@ (676) S DAKOTA | 02/21/2015 – 03:00 PM
Play UNDER IUPUI on the total in All games after a conference game
The record is 1 Overs and 11 Unders for the this season (+9.9 units)
CBB > (649) UCLA@ (650) ARIZONA | 02/21/2015 – 09:00 PM
Play UNDER UCLA on the total in Road games when playing against a team with a winning record
The record is 1 Overs and 11 Unders for the this season (+9.9 units)
CBB > (597) AIR FORCE@ (598) COLORADO ST | 02/21/2015 – 06:00 PM
Play UNDER AIR FORCE on the total in Road games after a conference game
The record is 2 Overs and 16 Unders for the last three seasons (+13.8 units)
CBB > (531) S ILLINOIS@ (532) INDIANA ST | 02/21/2015 – 01:00 PM
Play UNDER INDIANA ST on the total in All games when playing against a team with a losing record after 15 or more games
The record is 1 Overs and 12 Unders for the last two seasons (+10.9 units)
CBB > (707) N COLORADO@ (708) PORTLAND ST | 02/21/2015 – 10:00 PM
Play AGAINST N COLORADO in the first half in All games in February games
The record is 1 Wins and 12 Losses for the last two seasons (-12.2 units)
CBB > (681) IDAHO ST@ (682) MONTANA ST | 02/21/2015 – 04:30 PM
Play AGAINST MONTANA ST using the against the spread in All games on Saturday games
The record is 3 Wins and 17 Losses for the last two seasons (-15.7 units)
CBB > (577) CLEMSON@ (578) DUKE | 02/21/2015 – 04:00 PM
Play ON CLEMSON in the first half in Road games when playing against a team with a winning record
The record is 8 Wins and 0 Losses for the this season (+8 units)
CBB > (671) ST PETERS@ (672) FAIRFIELD | 02/21/2015 – 02:00 PM
Play AGAINST FAIRFIELD in the first half in Home games after a conference game
The record is 0 Wins and 8 Losses for the this season (-8.8 units)
CBB > (527) ELON@ (528) DELAWARE | 02/21/2015 – 12:30 PM
Play AGAINST DELAWARE in the first half in Home games against conference opponents
The record is 0 Wins and 8 Losses for the this season (-8.8 units)
CBB > (521) OKLAHOMA@ (522) TEXAS TECH | 02/21/2015 – 12:00 PM
Play UNDER TEXAS TECH on the total in All games versus good defensive teams – allowing <=64 points/game after 15+ games
The record is 0 Overs and 8 Unders for the this season (+8 units)
CBB > (709) N DAKOTA@ (710) SACRAMENTO ST | 02/21/2015 – 10:00 PM
Play OVER N DAKOTA on the total in All games when playing with one or less days rest
The record is 8 Overs and 0 Unders for the this season (+8 units)
CBB > (633) WRIGHT ST@ (634) VALPARAISO | 02/21/2015 – 08:00 PM
Play AGAINST WRIGHT ST using the against the spread in All games versus good defensive teams – allowing <=64 points/game
The record is 0 Wins and 8 Losses for the this season (-8.8 units)
CBB > (637) UC-SANTA BARBARA@ (638) CS-FULLERTON | 02/21/2015 – 08:00 PM
Play AGAINST UC-SANTA BARBARA in the first half in All games versus the first half line in all games
The record is 3 Wins and 15 Losses for the this season (-13.5 units)
CBB > (565) SAN FRANCISCO@ (566) PEPPERDINE | 02/21/2015 – 04:00 PM
Play ON SAN FRANCISCO using the against the spread in Road games in February games
The record is 45 Wins and 13 Losses for the since 1992 (+30.7 units)
CBB > (619) FORDHAM@ (620) DAVIDSON | 02/21/2015 – 07:00 PM
Play ON DAVIDSON in the first half in All games versus the first half line in all games
The record is 17 Wins and 4 Losses for the this season (+12.6 units)
CBB > (519) GEORGIA TECH@ (520) N CAROLINA | 02/21/2015 – 12:00 PM
Play ON GEORGIA TECH in the first half in Road games after a conference game
The record is 14 Wins and 2 Losses for the last two seasons (+11.8 units)
CBB > (677) IUPU-FT WAYNE@ (678) N DAKOTA ST | 02/21/2015 – 03:00 PM
Play ON IUPU-FT WAYNE in the first half in All games in February games
The record is 15 Wins and 2 Losses for the last three seasons (+12.8 units)
CBB > (655) SAN DIEGO ST@ (656) SAN JOSE ST | 02/21/2015 – 10:00 PM
Play AGAINST SAN JOSE ST in the first half in All games versus good defensive teams – allowing <=64 points/game after 15+ games
The record is 2 Wins and 15 Losses for the last three seasons (-14.5 units)
CBB > (593) SANTA CLARA@ (594) LOYOLA-MARYMOUNT | 02/21/2015 – 06:00 PM
Play AGAINST LOYOLA-MARYMOUNT in the first half in Home games off a loss against a conference rival
The record is 2 Wins and 15 Losses for the last three seasons (-14.5 units)
CBB > (641) MARSHALL@ (642) UAB | 02/21/2015 – 08:00 PM
Play AGAINST MARSHALL using the against the spread in Road games on Saturday games
The record is 2 Wins and 15 Losses for the last three seasons (-14.5 units)
CBB > (571) DREXEL@ (572) NORTHEASTERN | 02/21/2015 – 04:00 PM
Play AGAINST NORTHEASTERN using the against the spread in Home games off a win against a conference rival
The record is 2 Wins and 15 Losses for the last three seasons (-14.5 units)
CBB > (677) IUPU-FT WAYNE@ (678) N DAKOTA ST | 02/21/2015 – 03:00 PM
Play ON IUPU-FT WAYNE using the against the spread in All games as an underdog
The record is 32 Wins and 9 Losses for the last three seasons (+22.1 units)
CBB > (601) VIRGINIA TECH@ (602) NC STATE | 02/21/2015 – 06:00 PM
Play AGAINST NC STATE using the against the spread in Home games when playing with 5 or 6 days rest
The record is 3 Wins and 18 Losses for the since 1992 (-16.8 units)
CBB > (539) BUFFALO@ (540) BOWLING GREEN | 02/21/2015 – 02:00 PM
Play ON BOWLING GREEN using the against the spread in All games in all games
The record is 16 Wins and 4 Losses for the this season (+11.6 units)
CBB > (669) NIAGARA@ (670) RIDER | 02/21/2015 – 02:00 PM
Play AGAINST RIDER using the against the spread in Home games when playing against a team with a losing record
The record is 0 Wins and 8 Losses for the last two seasons (-8.8 units)
CBB > (523) TEXAS A&M@ (524) S CAROLINA | 02/21/2015 – 12:00 PM
Play AGAINST S CAROLINA using the against the spread in All games versus good defensive teams – allowing <=64 points/game after 15+ games
The record is 3 Wins and 16 Losses for the last three seasons (-14.6 units)
CBB > (661) CS-NORTHRIDGE@ (662) UC-IRVINE | 02/21/2015 – 10:00 PM
Play AGAINST CS-NORTHRIDGE using the against the spread in All games in all games
The record is 5 Wins and 17 Losses for the this season (-13.7 units)
CBB > (563) NEVADA@ (564) BOISE ST | 02/21/2015 – 03:00 PM
Play ON NEVADA using the teaser in Road games off a loss against a conference rival
The record is 41 Wins and 4 Losses for the since 1992 (+36.6 units)
CBB > (573) TCU@ (574) KANSAS | 02/21/2015 – 04:00 PM
Play ON KANSAS using the teaser in Home games against conference opponents
The record is 23 Wins and 1 Losses for the last three seasons (+21.9 units)
NHL Stats and Trends for Saturday
Hot teams
— Islanders won five of their last six games; Washington won seven of last nine.
— Predators won six of their last seven games.
— Blue Jackets won three of their last four games.
— Panthers won last two games, are 5-4 in their last nine.
— Carolina won three of its last five road games. Devils won last two games, allowing three goals.
— Blues won four of their last five games.
— Dallas Stars won four of last six games.
— Kings won their last six games, allowing 12 goals.
Cold teams
— Flyers lost four of their last five games.
— Toronto is 4-22-2 in its last 28 games. Jets lost six of their last seven road games.
— Montreal lost three of its last five games.
— Ottawa is 0-7 in game following its last seven wins.
— Ducks lost five of their last seven games. Edmonton lost three of last four.
— Penguins lost last three games: 2-1/3-1/2-1.
— Red Wings lost three of their last four games.
— Lightning is 4-5 in its last nine games. Arizona lost last four games, outscored 16-6.
— Sharks lost five of their last seven games.
Series records
— Islanders lost three of last four visits to Washington.
— Predators lost three of last four visits to Philly.
— Jets won their last five games with Toronto.
— Canadiens won three of last four games with Columbus.
— Panthers won three of last four games with Ottawa.
— Devils won three of last four games with Carolina.
— Ducks won 19 of last 23 games with Edmonton.
— Blues are 4-3 in last seven with Pittsburgh, winning 2-1/1-0 in last two.
— Red Wings won eight of last ten games with Dallas.
— Lightning is 5-4 in its last nine games with Arizona.
— LA-SJ game is outdoors at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara; Kings won five of last seven in series. .
Totals
— Seven of last nine Washington home games stayed under.
— Nine of last thirteen Nashville road games went over.
— Six of last eight Winnipeg road games went over total.
— Seven of last eight Columbus road games stayed under.
— Six of last eight Ottawa home games went over total.
— Six of last seven New Jersey home games stayed under.
— Four of last five Edmonton home games stayed under.
— Nine of last eleven Penguin road games stayed under.
— Eight of last ten Detroit road games stayed under.
—
— Seven of last ten LA road games stayed under total.
Back-to-back
— Carolina is 2-7 if it played the night before; New Jersey is 4-8. .
— Ducks are 3-2 on road if they played night before; Oilers are 1-6 overall.
— NHL home teams are 6-10 if they also played at home the night before.
NHL > (3) NASHVILLE@ (4) PHILADELPHIA | 02/21/2015 – 01:05 PM
Play ON NASHVILLE using the money line in All games
The record is 29 Wins and 6 Losses for the this season (+20.8 units)
NHL > (13) ANAHEIM@ (14) EDMONTON | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play ON ANAHEIM using the money line in Road games on Saturday games
The record is 17 Wins and 4 Losses for the last three seasons (+15.1 units)
NHL > (13) ANAHEIM@ (14) EDMONTON | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play ON ANAHEIM using the in Road games on Saturday games
The record is 17 Wins and 4 Losses for the last three seasons (+15.1 units)
NHL > (19) DETROIT@ (20) DALLAS | 02/21/2015 – 08:05 PM
Play AGAINST DALLAS using the in Home games revenging a loss versus opponent
The record is 4 Wins and 13 Losses for the this season (-12.9 units)
NHL > (19) DETROIT@ (20) DALLAS | 02/21/2015 – 08:05 PM
Play AGAINST DALLAS using the money line in Home games revenging a loss versus opponent
The record is 4 Wins and 13 Losses for the this season (-12.9 units)
NHL > (5) COLUMBUS@ (6) MONTREAL | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play ON COLUMBUS using the money line in All games revenging a home loss versus opponent
The record is 21 Wins and 11 Losses for the last two seasons (+17.05 units)
NHL > (5) COLUMBUS@ (6) MONTREAL | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play ON COLUMBUS using the in All games revenging a home loss versus opponent
The record is 21 Wins and 11 Losses for the last two seasons (+17.05 units)
NHL > (5) COLUMBUS@ (6) MONTREAL | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play OVER COLUMBUS on the total in Road games after playing 3 consecutive road games
The record is 8 Overs and 0 Unders for the last three seasons (+8.45 units)
NHL > (1) NY ISLANDERS@ (2) WASHINGTON | 02/21/2015 – 12:35 PM
Play AGAINST WASHINGTON using the money line in All games after a 3 game unbeaten streak
The record is 0 Wins and 6 Losses for the this season (-8.3 units)
NHL > (1) NY ISLANDERS@ (2) WASHINGTON | 02/21/2015 – 12:35 PM
Play AGAINST WASHINGTON using the in All games after a 3 game unbeaten streak
The record is 0 Wins and 6 Losses for the this season (-8.3 units)
NHL > (7) WINNIPEG@ (8) TORONTO | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play AGAINST TORONTO using the money line in All games revenging a loss versus opponent
The record is 8 Wins and 24 Losses for the this season (-19 units)
NHL > (7) WINNIPEG@ (8) TORONTO | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play AGAINST TORONTO using the in All games revenging a loss versus opponent
The record is 8 Wins and 24 Losses for the this season (-19 units)
NHL > (11) CAROLINA@ (12) NEW JERSEY | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play UNDER NEW JERSEY on the total in Home games when playing against a team with a losing record
The record is 6 Overs and 21 Unders for the last three seasons (+14.7 units)
NHL > (11) CAROLINA@ (12) NEW JERSEY | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play ON CAROLINA using the money line in All games when playing against a team with a losing record in the second half of the season
The record is 6 Wins and 0 Losses for the this season (+7.05 units)
NHL > (11) CAROLINA@ (12) NEW JERSEY | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play ON CAROLINA using the in All games when playing against a team with a losing record in the second half of the season
The record is 6 Wins and 0 Losses for the this season (+7.05 units)
NHL > (17) PITTSBURGH@ (18) ST LOUIS | 02/21/2015 – 08:05 PM
Play UNDER PITTSBURGH on the total in All games after a division game
The record is 5 Overs and 15 Unders for the this season (+10.1 units)
NHL > (7) WINNIPEG@ (8) TORONTO | 02/21/2015 – 07:05 PM
Play OVER WINNIPEG on the total in All games in a road game where where the total is 5.5
The record is 12 Overs and 4 Unders for the this season (+9.05 units)
NHL > (3) NASHVILLE@ (4) PHILADELPHIA | 02/21/2015 – 01:05 PM
Play OVER PHILADELPHIA on the total in All games on Saturday games
The record is 26 Overs and 10 Unders for the last three seasons (+16.6 units)
NHL > (1) NY ISLANDERS@ (2) WASHINGTON | 02/21/2015 – 12:35 PM
Play OVER NY ISLANDERS on the total in All games after scoring 4 goals or more in their previous game
The record is 29 Overs and 13 Unders for the last two seasons (+15.3 units)
Sports picks from the Pro’s
StatFox Super Situations
NBA | OKLAHOMA CITY at CHARLOTTE
Play On – Any team (CHARLOTTE) revenging a road blowout loss vs opponent of 20 points or more, off an upset loss by 15 points or more as a home favorite
29-8 since 1997. ( 78.4% | 20.2 units )
1-0 this year. ( 100.0% | 1.0 units )
NBA | OKLAHOMA CITY at CHARLOTTE
Play On – Home underdogs vs. the 1rst half line (CHARLOTTE) a marginal losing team (40% to 49%) playing a winning team, on Saturday games
96-50 since 1997. ( 65.8% | 41.0 units )
3-2 this year. ( 60.0% | 0.8 units )
StatFox Super Situations
CBB | IUPU-FT WAYNE at N DAKOTA ST
Play Against – Home favorites of 3.5 to 9.5 points (N DAKOTA ST) after allowing 25 points or less in the first half last game against opponent after 2 straight wins by 15 points or more
46-18 over the last 5 seasons. ( 71.9% | 26.2 units )
6-5 this year. ( 54.5% | 0.5 units )
CBB | GONZAGA at ST MARYS-CA
Play Against – Home underdogs of +145 to +350 vs. the money line (ST MARYS-CA) off a home win by 10 points or more, in February games
150-38 since 1997. ( 79.8% | 62.5 units )
2-3 this year. ( 40.0% | -5.9 units )
CBB | CALIFORNIA at STANFORD
Play Against – A home team vs. the 1rst half line (STANFORD) after failing to cover the spread in 5 or more consecutive games, a good team (60% to 80%) playing a team with a winning record
41-15 over the last 5 seasons. ( 73.2% | 24.5 units )
7-5 this year. ( 58.3% | 1.5 units )
Basketball Crusher
Houston +7.5
EZWINNERS
All 1st Half Plays
3* Pittsburgh +2
3* Georgia Tech +6.5
3* Texas Tech +5.5
3* UMass +5.5
3* Oklahoma St -2.5
3* Texas -1.5
3* Marquette +5.5
3* Virginia Tech +7.5
3* Georgia +1.5
3* UCLA +8.5
3* St. Mary’s +3.5
3* Colorado +2
Stephen Nover
3* marshall +10.5
2* central mich -12
1* austin peay +19
MADDUX SPORTS
Fresno St +6
Niagra +11
North Dakota St -4
South Alabama +10
ARLON SPORTS
N Carolina -11.5
Kansas St +9
Xavier -4.5
Geo Wash +5
Detroit pk
Pacific +4
The Rainman
3*North Carolina -11′
3*Vanderbilt -12
3*Old Dominion -1
1*Mississippi St. +8 over Arkansas
1*Western Michigan +1′ over Toledo
1*Arkansas St. +2′ over LA Monroe
1*Pacific +4 over Portland
1*Virginia Tech +13′ over N.C. St.
River City Sharps
Utah -7.5
Al DeMarco
15 dme – Davidson
5 dime – Jams Madison
BigAL
3* Texas -2 (rotation #554)
3* Nevada +13.5 (rotation #563)
3* N. Dakota St. -4 (rotation #678)
Jason Sample
2U:
Pepperdine -2.5
Richmond -1/James Madison -1
1U:
ODU -1.5
Marc Lawrence
duquesne
st marys cal
Gaberial Dupont
150 dimes – pepperdine
Platinum Plays
500K Pac12 Lock/Month – Oregon St Beavers -3½
500K College Blowout/Year – Xavier Muskateers -4
Premier Pick – Houston Rockets -3
Premier Pick – Texas Longhorns -2
Hockey Crusher
San Jose Sharks +101
VERNON CROY
Florida Panthers-118
Soccer Crusher
Kortrijk + Westerlo OVER 2.5 |
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