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There's something creepily totalitarian about Orange Coast College's handling of the now nationally known incident involving 19-year-old Caleb O'Neil, who was suspended from the college for two semesters for secretly videotaping one of his instructors engaging in an anti-Trump rant. The suspension was bad enough, but the college also insisted that O'Neil apologize to the professor and hand in an apologetic essay about his transgressions. Fortunately, after a groundswell of public support for the student—and academic freedom generally—the college backed down and rescinded the suspension and other sanctions.
For those who have missed the Register articles, human sexuality instructor Olga Perez Stable Cox was caught on video telling her class that Donald Trump's presidential victory was "an act of terrorism." The most frightening thing, she said, "is that the people who are leading the assault are among us." O'Neil eventually posted the video after being unsatisfied with the college's response. It went viral. As someone who campaigned for Trump, O'Neil had reason to fear the instructor's views could have repercussions on his grades. After all, he's one of those "among us."
O'Neil's supporters, including some local Republican leaders, blasted the professor for using her teaching position to shame students. The union representing faculty there criticized O'Neil for not engaging in an "open dialogue." The school administration said it would investigate the complaint filed against the teacher, but the only obvious repercussions so far are the harshly punitive sanctions it tried to impose against the student.
The college's letter to O'Neil, published on a website, understandably drew a backlash. It said that O'Neil's essay should, among other things, discuss his "thoughts and analyses on the impact of the video going 'viral' and the ensuing damage to Orange Coast College students, faculty and staff." So he was going to be required to write an essay—and the school was telling him the basic view he had to express in it.
Cox says she has received angry emails and messages and now feels "paranoid" and like she's been "attacked by a mob of people all across the country." Any threats and intimidation are wrong, of course. But this whole situation could have been avoided had the college administration acted in an even-handed manner in the beginning. We don't want a world where college professors are afraid to speak forthrightly to their classes, but students are at least owed an apology when subjected to an inappropriate rant.
O'Neil was being disciplined for violating the school's prohibition on unauthorized recording, which is a picayune point, given that this is a taxpayer-funded school. The First Amendment should still apply there. The punishment was outsized compared to the transgression. And even such a punishment would have been more tolerable if one could have any confidence the college treated with any seriousness Cox's in-classroom transgression.
This scene has sparked anger because it confirms the worst fears conservatives have about liberal intolerance in academia. In a sane world, a few apologies would suffice. "Hey, I was distraught about the election and was unfair in my comments." "OK, I was upset by your remarks and believed that a video was my only recourse." The administration would step in and everyone would sing "Kumbaya." Instead, lawyers got involved, and there was even a threatened recall of college board members. It's the result of a college that decided to dig in its heels rather than pursue fairness. The punitive response suggests the problem at Orange Coast goes a lot deeper than one professor's lack of a filter.
Ironically, Coast Colleges, the community college district that includes Orange Coast, has an entire Office of Equity, Inclusion and Compliance. One document posted on its website details the evils of "microaggressions"—"common, subtle messages that communicate racial indignations." Such indignations typically are "unconscious in nature," but they "have an integral influence on students' perceptions of campus climates as hostile, alienating and isolating."
The controversy isn't racial, although Cox reportedly referred to white supremacy and evoked the Civil War. But if a college system is so worried about unconscious, little aggressions that create a hostile and alienating classroom environment, shouldn't it also be worried about instructors who make loud, conscious and aggressive statements that are alienating to students with a minority political viewpoint? The hypocrisy here is almost too rich for words.
I admire O'Neil's willingness to fight back. It seems likely he's not the only student to endure such things, so this is a worthy fight. But perhaps he should find a school that values his temerity. Americans—and academics, in particular—need a healthy reminder of why free expression is the foundation of a free society. And why petty, unjust bureaucrats remain its enemy. |
Help FIF Make the Album of your Dreams!
We need your support now more than ever. The inspiration and energy to create an amazing record is there but this time we will be working without the support of a label. This gives us incredible artistic freedom, but it also means we need to raise our own financing. Our hope is to release an album in 2013, ten years after our initial final show.
We are shooting for the financial goal of $30,000.Your pledges will be used to pay for demoing new material, recording, mixing, mastering, and associated travel expenses.Keep in mind, this budget covers making the album only. Every dollar we raise over $30,000 will be used for such things as promotion of the album once it's released because we think it would be great to have this album reach as many people as possible! Additional funds could also enable us to play some shows, because yes, we would love to play shows!
Thank you so much, every one of you for all the love, kindness, support, humor, prayers and friendship you have shown us since 1995. To our absolute joy this band continues to be more than just a band to many of you....and you are more than just folks at a show to us. If the past is any indication of the future we may all be in for a very wild ride.
We will keep you posted every step of the way.
Sincerely yours, Five Iron Frenzy
PS) If you aren't familiar with our band and would like to donate, thank you very much! We hail from the land of ice and snow; Denver. You can ask some cool people about us and keep up with our ventures at www.FiveIronFrenzy.com and www.facebook.com/5ironFrenzy
We can not thank you enough for making this happen. I got a little teared up when I saw the goal reached so fast. Our fans are incredible. |
JERUSALEM — Israel on Monday set aside a warning it issued the previous day that foreign journalists aboard a flotilla planning to challenge its naval blockade of Gaza risked being barred from the country for up to a decade and having their equipment impounded.
Also, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Monday that he had instructed the relevant authorities to devise a special procedure for journalists covering the flotilla bound for Gaza, on the assumption that they would end up in Israel. In contrast to the activists on board, it said that the journalists would not be subject to the “regular policy against infiltrators and those who enter Israel illegally.”
Officials said the earlier decision had been made by staff members without Mr. Netanyahu’s knowledge. The Foreign Press Association in Israel issued a statement welcoming the turnabout, saying it was pleased to see that Israel “understands that journalists should be treated differently from political activists.”
On Sunday, Oren Helman, the director of the Government Press Office, sent a letter to accredited foreign correspondents here saying that journalists who participated in the flotilla would face draconian sanctions. Mr. Helman described the planned flotilla as “a dangerous provocation that is being organized by Western and Islamic extremist elements to aid Hamas,” the Islamic group that controls Gaza and that is defined by Israel, the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization.
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The press association said the letter raised “serious questions about Israel’s commitment to freedom of the press.” |
JNS.org – Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon blasted the denial of Israel’s Jewish character in textbooks used by UN-operated Palestinian schools.
According to a new report from Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, textbooks used in schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) removed references to Jewish municipalities in Israel, described Zionism as a foreign “colonial movement” and denied the historical and religious connections between Jews and Israel.
The new revelation of a UN agency’s connection with anti-Zionism came on the heels of the controversial UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. The resolution stated that eastern Jerusalem — including Jewish holy sites such as the Western Wall — is “occupied Palestinian territory.”
“This is just the latest example of anti-Israel incitement under the auspices of the United Nations,” Danon said of the UNRWA development. “These textbooks refer to Tel Aviv as ‘Tel al-Rabia’ and the holy Western Wall and the Cave of the Patriarchs are portrayed as Muslim sites that the Jewish people are seeking to take control of. This is not how you make peace in the Middle East. This is how you raise another generation full of hatred and ready to use violence.”
The Israeli government and pro-Israel activists have long accused UNRWA of anti-Israel bias. |
According to prosecutors, two brothers in Easton, PA, had to be rushed to the hospital in September after taking liquid LSD that they found in a bottle of breath mint drops on their way to elementary school. John Morganelli, District Attorney for Northampton County, says that investigators have determined that the boys had the hallucinogenic drug in their systems.
The boys, ages 7 and 10, were reportedly foaming at the mouth when they arrived at Bangor Elementary School on September 24. They were immediately taken to the hospital, and released the following day. Morganelli says that investigators were unable to get fingerprints from the bottle, and that the children's mother and live-in boyfriend both tested negative for drugs.
RELATED: The Most Ratchet Stories of March, April, May, June, July, August and September.
[via The Huffington Post]
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The 49-year-old woman was saved along with her husband and two teenage sons by the Italian coastguard off the coast of Siracusa in Sicily on August 28th.
The family had reportedly fled from Damascus and were planning to travel to Sweden from Italy.
The woman was transferred to the Umberto I in Siracusa but doctors were unable to save her. Her husband then gave his consent for the woman’s organs to be donated to Italy.
Thanks to his decision, three life-saving operations have now been carried out: one liver transplant on a 66-year-old Sicilian man, one kidney transplant on a 60-year-old Calabrian woman and another kidney transplant on a 41-year-old man also from Sicily.
'Touching experience'
“It was a very touching experience that shows what real solidarity is,” Maurillo Carpinteri, a doctor who treated the woman told La Repubblica, “The father and two teenage boys overcame all mistrust and trusted completely. In a moment of great desperation they gave all that they had with a dignity that is truly exemplary.”
Health minister Beatrice Lorenzin offered her “profound thanks” to the family, describing the incident as “an example of how even in dramatic situations of great need, when refugees arrive on our coasts, there are people who manage to make loving gestures towards their neighbour that silently benefit from others.”
According to the paper, the woman worked as a nurse in Syria and her husband was a businessman. The family said they intended to travel to Sweden where the woman’s eldest son works.
The woman’s body will now be buried in Malta where her mother and two brothers live.
This family story is just one of the many tragedies which have dominated Italian headlines in the past month.
On Monday AFP reported that a 52-year-old Palestinian woman who was a resident in Syria died while crossing to Italy with her two sons and her husband, who suffered a leg injury.
Last week, a Syrian refugee was even forced to give birth at sea on her way to Italy.
AFP reports that thousands of migrants arriving on Italian shores in the past few weeks are Syrian and Egyptian refugees, many of them children and some as young as three.
On Monday Italy's Prime Minister Enrico Letta warned that the European Union lacks an adequate approach for the refugee problem that will worsen in the case of an international intervention in Syria. |
Earlier this week we reported on the court case between Apple and PsyStar, stating they went into settlement negotiations. Details, however, were sparse. The law firm representing PsyStar has now replied to the matter, and there’s good news for those of us who hope to see crazy EULA clauses tested in court.
It’s a “non-story”, a lawyer for PsyStar said. The fact that both parties are entering negotiations doesn’t really say anything. “The Northern District [of California] requires you to go through ADR. It’s standard practice, not for all courts, but the practice is growing. Quite frankly, all the talk about entering negotiations is really a non-story.” He reiterates that the case is still “very much alive”.
The lawyer explains that according to him, the real story is PsyStar’s reply to Apple’s motion to dismiss. Apple claims that “Neither the federal nor the state antitrust laws require competitors to stop competing with, and instead to start helping, each other.”
“Apple is nothing if not tenacious,” PsyStar argues, “Having previously asserted this very same argument in attempts to dismiss antitrust claims related to Apple’s iPod, iTunes Music Store, and iPhone ending in the Northern District of California.” PsyStar claims all those attempts to dismiss antitrust claims were denied too, and cited several rulings to support this claim. |
Prime Minister John Key says the country's electronic spy agency operates within the law, following new revelations by American whistleblower Edward Snowden indicating that New Zealand spies are sharing metadata with a US spy agency.
The revelations detail a National Security Agency search engine, known as ICREACH, which contains more 850 billion records of metadata on phone calls and email.
Photo: PHOTO NZ
The classified documents from a range of intelligence agencies suggest that the metadata from the search engine is then shared among Five Eyes partners - New Zealand, Australia, Britain, the US and Canada.
One from 2008 states that New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau agreed that metadata it collects may be shared with the US Intelligence Community - but it is not clear if that metadata is domestic or foreign.
Mr Key has consistently denied that there is any mass surveillance of New Zealanders.
Photo: RNZ
But Greens' co-leader Russel Norman said today that Mr Key needs to rule out the sharing of New Zealanders' data under that arrangement.
"Why these documents say that when the Prime Minister himself has said that they're not doing this. I mean, this isn't small amounts of information about a handful of people - this is billions of pieces of information. This is a truly massive database.
"Once again, we're seeing evidence that directly links New Zealand spies to a global mass surveillance network. Changes made to the GCSB's powers last year mean they can now spy on New Zealanders and have the ability to access our communications via our telecommunication providers."
"This new evidence puts the GCSB at the heart of the mass surveillance network and contradicts what Prime Minister John Key has been claiming all along - that New Zealand doesn't supply information to outside organisations."
Dr Norman says New Zealanders deserve to know the truth about whether their personal information is being collected and possibly shared offshore.
He said the Prime Minister and the GCSB have no choice but to start answering questions about what it means for New Zealand to be a member of the Five Eyes network.
"Over and over again we're seeing these types of documents trickling out into the public sphere, which fly in the face of claims by the National Government that New Zealand is not tied up with the global spying network."
But the Prime Minister said New Zealanders' data is safe and that the GCSB is operating within the law. John Key said any metadata that is used, would be used appropriately and within the law. |
B R Udaya Kumar By
The water that Bangalore was depending on to tide over the shortage till the South-West monsoon is almost gone. The live storage at Hemavathy reservoir has been wiped out.
Some water is being released to the big cities of Bangalore and Mysore from the dead storage. But Hassan has been largely denied its share.
Barely 48 hours after Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said water supply in all cities in the Cauvery basin will be normal, an official source told Express: “Pumping of water from the dead storage at Hemavathy Reservoir will be stopped from Tuesday keeping in view the supply of drinking water to Hassan city. The authorities were pumping water at the rate of 5,000 cusecs daily to be supplied to Bangalore city from the Krishnaraja Sagar Reservoir.’’
A source said around three tmc ft of water is still available at Hemavathy Reservoir. Since the level has gone beyond the dead storage, it is very difficult to draw water, the source pointed out.
Last week, officials had dispelled fears of a crisis, saying they would draw water from the Hemavathy in case the KRS dried up.
The silver lining is that the situation at KRS appears to be slightly better. Though the live storage is still less than one tmcft, the inflow is at the rate of 2,500 cusecs through the day due to some rain in K R Nagar and surrounding areas. Following this, officials at KRS have increased the speed of outflow towards Bangalore from the rate of 750 cusecs to 1,000 cusecs.
Expressing unhappiness over the release of water to KRS from Hemavathy to meet the needs of Bangalore, Hassan MLA H S Prakash said: “Instead, the government should at least give permission to install one more jack well near the dead storage to lift water for Hassan city.’’
Two of the existing three jack wells on the Hemavathy backwaters installed by Hassan municipality have gone dry. Officials are a worried lot, as they have no alternative to provide drinking water, if the third jack well goes dry. Residents have been getting water once in two days from the third jackwell. |
'Dirty hack' restores Cluster mission from near loss
Cluster satellites study the effects of solar wind
Using ingenuity and an unorthodox 'dirty hack', ESA has recovered the four-satellite Cluster mission from near loss. The drama began in March, when a crucial science package stopped responding to commands – one of a mission controller's worst fears.
Since a pair of spectacular dual launches in 2000, the four Cluster satellites have been orbiting Earth in tightly controlled formation. Each of the 550 kg satellites carries an identical payload to investigate Earth's space environment and its interaction with the solar wind – the stream of charged particles pouring out from the Sun.
Among each satellite's 11 instruments, five comprise the Wave Experiment Consortium (WEC), which makes important measurements of electrical and magnetic fields. All four sensors must work together to make carefully orchestrated observations – the loss of any one could seriously affect the unique 'four-satellite science' delivered by the mission. |
Protesters stood in sharp contrast to the festivities taking place at Super Bowl City on Wednesday as they took to the streets to bring attention to the plight of homelessness in San Francisco.
Organizers and supporters met at the San Francisco Ferry Building, where they chanted, performed songs and held signs with messages like, “Hey Mayor Lee, no penalties for poverty.”
More than 80 helmet-donning police stood facing the equally large crowd of protesters.
Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director for the Coalition on Homelessness, which coordinated the “Tackle Homelessness” action, said with the global audience focused on The City this week, there was no better time to highlight the thousands of people in San Francisco without a place to live.
“We’ve been getting a lot of feedback from people in San Francisco, people who are homeless, people that are really pissed off that we can construct a Super Bowl City, give away $5 million dollars to a huge corporation like the NFL, while there’s thousands of people on the street,” Friedenbach said.
Julianna Cheng, a San Francisco resident who attended the event, said she was living on the streets in 2012, while she was pregnant with her daughter. Cheng said it was eye-opening to see how dehumanizing San Franciscans treated the homeless population.
“People don’t realize that they are one paycheck, one heart attack, one eviction away from homelessness,” Cheng said.
Among the organizers’ demands were that Mayor Lee pay back the $5 million spent to host Super Bowl 50 in the form of an investment in affordable housing. The demands also included using unclaimed space in The City to create a safe space for the homeless to sleep, providing hygienic bathrooms and healing services, and ending the criminalization of poor and homeless people.
“The thing that I would say to Mayor Ed Lee, the solution to homeless is housing, and it’s a win-win for everyone,” Friedenbach said.
The protest came just days after homeless began setting up tent encampments under Highway 101, between SoMa and the Mission, to make way for the Super Bowl City, as previously reported by the San Francisco Examiner.
The mayor came under fire in August when he said he wanted to remove homeless persons in the area around The Embarcadero where the Super Bowl 50 celebration would occur. Last week, he said those living on the streets are “human beings who deserve our compassion.”
Just hours before the protest Wednesday, San Francisco’s Human Services Agency gave members of the press a tour of a new shelter for homeless who have no dry place to sleep as El Niño storms draw closer. City officials said that it was a coincidence that they were touting new homeless facilities just hours before planned protests over treatment of homeless in The City during Super Bowl week.
The shelter, at Pier 80 in the Dogpatch neighborhood, could open as soon as Thursday. It will be equipped with 150 beds when operating at full capacity, a total of eight showers and multiple toilets, according to Human Services Agency Director Trent Rohrer, who added the shelter cost roughly $1.5 million to set up.
“What this is hoping to do is address the health concerns that arise when it’s windy and wet,” Rohrer said.
Drawing people out of the streets and into homeless shelters comes with a number of problems Rohrer said, including people who are weary of leaving their regular spots, carrying their belongings to a shelter, complying with curfew hours or not being able to bring in their pets.
The new shelter hopes to squash many of those issues by loosening restrictions, such as allowing homeless people to stay at the shelter for several days instead of just one night, allowing people who have pets and accepting both women and men into the shelter.
A bigger issue for the Pier 80 shelter will be transporting homeless to the Dogpatch neighborhood, Rohrer said.
“The idea is to have a multifold transportation team,” Rohrer said, explaining that the shelter will utilize shuttles to drive homeless people to and from the shelter as well as provide them with tokens to use public transportation.
For now, the shelter is set up to operate for the next few months while the El Niño storms clear out, according to Sam Dodge, director of the Housing Opportunity, Partnerships and Engagement, which works to improve city-sponsored housing.
Dodge and Rohrer both said that the timing of the Super Bowl City protest and the opening of the shelter was nothing more than a coincidence and that both groups were working toward the same goal.
“We have a long way to go from where we are and I appreciate the care and pressure coming from protesters,” Dodge said. |
The key documents Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash claims prevented any conflict of interest for a junk food lobbyist working in her office "do not exist'', according to government agencies.
Labor has called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to sack the beleaguered senator over the food star-ratings scandal, which erupted when a website that allowed companies to voluntarily sign up to a healthy food star-rating system was taken down at the insistence of Alastair Furnival, a junk food lobbyist who was working as Senator Nash's chief of staff.
Ministers to discuss food star-rating system next week: Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Next week, state and territory food ministers will discuss the food star-rating system. It is understood it is likely the website will be re-instated, more than five months after it was taken down, despite having already been agreed to by the states.
Fairfax Media has been attempting to get hold of a letter Senator Nash said Mr Furnival wrote outlining how he would ensure his co-ownership of the lobbying company Australian Public Affairs would not interfere with his role in creating healthy food policy. |
About
As kids, me and my little brother would talk about building a ship and sailing off to live out our dreams. We decided to make this dream an actual idea and now a life goal. After talking about it for over 2 decades we have decided we want to go into business for ourselves as a charter service offering personalized cruises.
We grew up in the age before everyone had computers and gadgets. We spent most of our time in the woods building tree houses and on the beach building rafts and boats to get us into some pretty sketchy situations we can look back at now and laugh. My little brother loves to fish and me, well, I like to adventure and explore.
Along the way we have picked up more interested people as well; my fiancée and soon to be mother of our first child has a passion for cooking, she also has a culinary degree and experience to back it up. She is going to be our chef for the vessel.
My little brother has been schooled in culinary as well, but his heart is set on being our on board fisherman. I believe they both go hand and hand a bit when it comes down to filleting and preparing food for meals and his skill set at both are truly astounding.
As for me, I've served some time in the military. But, I felt it was time for a new direction in my life. Somehow in those 8 years of traveling to the furthest reaches of this planet I feel like I found my true calling and I knew what I needed to do. So, now I've returned home to start school and make this project my mission and my life. I am attending Kingsborogh College for the Maritime technology program, I will be doing an internship with a few ship yards and ferry services while in the program. I will graduate in about 2 years with a degree and my captains license, then it will be time to begin a third degree in Engineering. My first degree, from the military, is in restaurant, hotel and fitness management which I also have a lot of experience to back. I also take classes in sailing.
We have the passion, ambition and drive to make this project happen. We have the knowledge, the know how and experience in what we are trying to do. We know this project will turn into an amazing investment
with an extremely fruitful return. But we don't exactly have the funds to start the project ourselves at this moment. So we have turned to Kickstarter to see if we can get this ball rolling and make the dreams of our childhood into the reality we live everyday.
~Thank you for reading this even if you can not donate anything. Please pass this along to anyone you think may help in our cause.
~Cyrus Blades |
Sound Transit Proposition 1 is a high-stakes, three-decade commitment. Here are some answers to questions that could help you decide how to vote by Tuesday.
With the state of Washington solidly on the blue side in the presidential race, Sound Transit Proposition 1 looms as the most suspenseful decision that more than a million Puget Sound-area voters will make.
A simple majority for the $54 billion measure would trigger a three-decade commitment to a record tax increase, paying for 10 rail extensions and three bus-rapid transit corridors in urban Snohomish, King and Pierce counties by 2041.
Vote counts will go down to the wire, campaigners for both sides said this week.
Sound Transit 3 Sound Transit Proposition 1 promises to add 62 miles of light-rail extensions to the 54 miles already approved, along with bus-rapid transit lines and more Sounder train capacity. The $54 billion, 25-year program includes existing taxes, federal grants, bond debt and these tax increases: • Sales tax increase of 0.5 percent, or 50 cents per $100 purchase. • Car-tab tax increase of 0.8 percent, or $80 a year per $10,000 vehicle value. • A new property tax of $25 annually per $100,000 of value.
Proposition 1, also known as Sound Transit 3, appears at the bottom of mail-in ballots. They must be postmarked or placed in an official dropbox by Tuesday.
Here’s a last-minute look at the proposition to help you decide:
Q: Would ST3 reduce congestion?
A: It would not.
What the plan offers is an escape from traffic misery, for people who can reach the stations on foot, on a feeder bus, or via park-and-ride. Commuters to central Seattle, to the airport from Tacoma, and from south Snohomish County to the University of Washington or downtown should save time.
Even if the network outperforms official estimates of 700,000 daily passengers, that’s a fraction of 19 million regional trips by 2040.
The yearning to escape gridlock might push demand higher, and light-rail capacity seems up to the task.
Leading proponents don’t promise that traffic will improve.
“We’re building additional capacity to give people options to get out of traffic. With 1 million people coming, I don’t know how anybody can realistically say we have a way to reduce congestion,” said Shefali Ranganathan, executive director of the Transportation Choices Coalition.
Pro-ST3 ads often show clogged freeways and lamentations. “They’re not able to get away with saying they’re going to solve congestion in this one, but they’ve implied it through visuals,” contends opponent Maggie Fimia.
Congestion is influenced by how much agony drivers can endure, the effect of future highway lanes lawmakers approved last year, how soon collisions are cleared, and parking.
Q:The plan takes 25 years. Can I get relief sooner?
A: A total $227 million would pay for “early deliverables” in the first eight years.
Madison Street bus-rapid transit could open by 2019, with ST3 supplementing city and federal funds.
Unspecified improvements are promised for the RapidRide D bus line in Ballard and C Line in West Seattle. Shoulders of Interstate 5, Interstate 405, Highways 518 and 167 would be strengthened, so express buses can bypass traffic jams. Other items include a Sammamish park-and-ride and more stalls at Edmonds and Mukilteo stations, where ferries and Sounder trains meet.
That finite $227 million pot, along with design, outreach and permits, plus the alchemy of budgets by multiple governments, mean projects will take a few years to deliver.
Bus-rapid transit routes on Highway 522 and I-405, including park-and-ride garages, are due in 2024, along with trains to Redmond and Federal Way.
Rail-extension targets include West Seattle and Tacoma in 2030, Ballard in 2035, Everett and Joint Base Lewis-McChord in 2036, and Issaquah to south Kirkland in 2041.
Q: Is this the biggest local transit measure ever?
A: You could say that.
The highest total is this fall’s Los Angeles Measure M, a 40-year plan that reserves at least $81 billion for transit, of the total $121 billion.
ST3 weighs in at $54 billion including inflation and federal grants. Increased property, sales and car-tab tax would yield $795 million next year, compared with $860 million from a proposed half-cent sales tax hike in Los Angeles.
But Sound Transit serves a smaller region, so the cost per household would far exceed L.A Metro.
Formerly, the FasTracks measure in Denver held the record at $4.7 billion when it passed in 2004. Phoenix voters passed $31 billion for rail and bus last year, while San Diego County is sending $18 billion to the ballot.
Q: Do they have to follow the plan?
A: A ballot win would place enormous trust in the agency, and really local politics in general, to manage the future.
In the event of overruns or a recession — both of which strained earlier Sound Transit funding measures — state court rulings affirm the Sound Transit board may delay or scrap projects, and there is no cost cap.
In the event of a surplus, the ballot ordinance says taxes would be reduced after ST3 projects are funded, in the board’s judgment. Another clause allows the board to spend leftover ST3 dollars to improve previous projects.
What the board can’t do is tack on extensions, such as tracks to Marysville, Burien or Renton, without a public vote.
Two-thirds of the 18 board seats have turned over since the last measure in 2008, so the politicians who wrote this year’s plan are not necessarily the same people who will oversee it.
There are no direct transit-board elections, while current and future bond contracts effectively shield the projects and revenues.
If voters ever become dissatisfied, their recourse is to defeat the Pierce, King and Snohomish County executives, who pick the transit board; or vote against any ST4.
Q: What if ST3 loses?
A: Taxpayers would keep money in their pockets rather than spend an additional $169 per median adult, to vary by wealth and lifestyle.
Lynnwood Station, Highline College and Bellevue-Overlake will get rail service in 2023 that voters already approved — a point opponents make to say there’s no rush to approve ST3.
Stations for downtown Redmond and Federal Way under ST3 would be delayed past the 2024 goal.
“We would have to go back to the drawing board,” says Ranganathan, with the next prime opportunity in 2020.
A political movement might emerge for Seattle city taxes to underwrite big projects there — as voters two years ago approved a $60 car-tab fee to buy King County Metro Transit bus hours.
That scenario seems unlikely, said Ranganathan, because any Sound Transit restructure must pass the Legislature. And she sees no appetite from political leaders, like Mayor Ed Murray, to Balkanize the region. |
US auto workers face historic struggle
8 September 2011
On September 14 the four-year labor agreements covering 114,000 US auto workers at GM, Ford and Chrysler expire. Although the companies have raked in more than $7 billion in profits this year, they have made it clear that workers—who have not had a raise since 2003—will see no improvements in wages or working conditions.
On the contrary, with the full backing of the Obama administration and the United Auto Workers (UAW), the auto executives are pressing ahead with plans to drive out the remaining better-paid workers and create a low-paid, casualized workforce.
If this is to be stopped, workers must find a new road of struggle, independent of the UAW. They must begin with the realization that workers face a political struggle against the Obama administration’s cuts, which are supported by the UAW.
The Obama administration’s 2009 restructuring of GM and Chrysler was the culmination of a three-decade-long assault on auto workers. With the complicity of the UAW, the White House used the threat of liquidation to slash wages in half for new-hires, dump hundreds of thousands of retirees and their families into an underfunded health insurance scheme run by the UAW, and eliminate annual wage increases, cost-of-living adjustments and unemployment protections.
The rollback has been used by corporate America to launch a wage-cutting campaign against every section of the working class. This has fueled an explosion of profits, even as mass unemployment continues and the economy slides into a deeper recession.
The low-wage benchmark set by the UAW has already set off a competitive struggle in the global auto industry, with Fiat-Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne telling Italian workers they must accept American-style concessions or he will move production to North America for cheaper labor.
Once the highest paid industrial workers in the US, a newly hired UAW worker now earns a “tier two” wage of $14 an hour. This is the equivalent, once inflation and union dues are taken into account, to the 92 cents an hour their counterparts made in 1931—four years before the UAW was established. As for “tier one” workers, they have seen their wages’ purchasing power fall to the level of nearly a half-century ago.
Inside the factories workers face 10-12 hour days, speedup on the assembly line, shorter breaks and vacation time and the constant threat of job loss. Laid-off workers are forced to uproot their families and move hundreds of miles to take work at other plants. The UAW has also given up the right to strike at GM and Chrysler and agreed to binding arbitration, essentially stripping workers of any vote on the final contract.
The reason for this policy is not a lack of money, but the arrogance and parasitism of the auto bosses and the entire financial aristocracy. As a recent article in Automotive News noted, a four percent pay increase and the restoration of annual cost of living adjustments for Ford’s 41,000 workers would cost the company around $95.5 million—“just a tad less than the combined $98 million in pretax stock awards made in March to Ford CEO Alan Mulally and Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr.”
Nevertheless, the industry publication wrote, corporate executives and union officials all agree that raises are “out of the question.”
Auto workers can struggle to defend their living standards only if they break with the union bureaucracy, which openly proclaims its support for deep attacks on the working class.
Thus, in his remarks to the Detroit Economic Club last month, UAW President Bob King pledged the union would not burden the companies with higher “fixed costs,” i.e., higher hourly wages. He added that the UAW was committed to maintaining the profits of the auto bosses. “We just want to make sure we come out of this negotiation over the next four years structuring our companies to succeed,” he told his audience of executives. “If you add fixed costs, they won’t be able to do that.”
Seventy-five years ago auto workers, led by socialists and left-wing militants, spearheaded the industrial organization of the American working class in the 1936 Flint sit-down strike against GM. However, the leaders of the newly organized UAW and CIO, including Walter Reuther, subordinated the working class to the Democratic Party and its promotion of anti-communism.
The implications of this historic betrayal did not become fully apparent until the late 1970s. Faced with militant workers’ struggles of the 1960s and 1970s and the rise of Asian and European competitors, US auto bosses began shutting down plants and waging a massive offensive against the workforce. In the ensuing years, workers in auto and other critical industries saw their living conditions slashed and their plants shut down, even as the wealthy enriched themselves massively with the union bureaucracy’s support.
The elevation of Bob King—the son of a Ford industrial relations manager—to the highest position in the UAW is symbolic of the going over of this organization to the side of the bosses, the bankers and the state.
The UAW is not a “union” in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead, it is a multi-billion-dollar business dedicated to the defense of corporate profits and the affluent lifestyles of the executives that run it. The main concern of the UAW apparatus is gaining seats on corporate boards and enticing the companies to bring back more production to the US, so it can collect more union dues from workers making poverty-level wages.
The only way auto workers can defeat this conspiracy is to break with the UAW and organize independently of it. This begins with the formation of rank-and-file committees to unite every section of auto workers.
These committees, democratically controlled by workers themselves, must spearhead the fight to abolish the hated two-tier wage system, restore the right to strike and mobilize the full industrial and political strength of the working class. All closed plants must be reopened and employer-paid benefits restored in order to guarantee the right to secure employment for all workers.
At the same time, auto workers must be politically armed against the bosses and the Obama administration, who will argue—while they hand over trillions of dollars in bank bailouts for Wall Street—that there is no money for the workers. This is a lie. The wealth exists, but it has been taken by the capitalists.
This means a break with the anti-communism and nationalism of the union bureaucracy and a turn by the working class to socialism. Auto workers must revive the socialist traditions of workers of an earlier generation, who consciously fought the corporations, the capitalist system and the two big business parties that defend it.
The struggle of auto workers must be linked up with the fight of the whole working class against the destruction of jobs, social programs and the transfer of wealth into the pockets of the richest one percent of society. The auto industry must be turned into a public utility, under the democratic control of the working class, as part of socialist transformation of the US and the world economy.
Jerry White
Jerry White |
× Gun battle erupts in west side apartment complex parking lot; 2 wounded
INDIANAPOLIS — Two suspects were shot and wounded in what Indianapolis Metropolitan Police are calling a gunfight in the parking lot of Westlake Apartments.
The gun play erupted shortly after 1:30 a.m. in the 6000 block of West Lake North Dr. Two patrolling IMPD officers heard the gunfire and arrived to find a male victim with a gunshot wound to the leg, still inside of a car. The vehicle had numerous bullet holes, according to police investigators.
A second gunshot victim who police say was involved in the gun battle was found in the 4500 block of N. Mission Dr. He had been shot in the groin.
Both gunshot victims were transported to Eskenazi Hospital with what police say are non-life-threatening injuries.
Police confiscated two vehicles and four firearms in what they say was a drug-related gunfight. Investigators believe as many as 30 shots were fired as the two suspects fired at each other.
IMPD working 2 people shot in the 600 block of Beachway Dr. Both victims are expected to survive. Narcotics believed to be involved. pic.twitter.com/ghK4cjGhWY — IMPD (@IMPDnews) July 4, 2017 |
Japan Airlines Flight 123 was a scheduled domestic Japan Airlines passenger flight from Tokyo's Haneda Airport to Osaka International Airport, Japan. On August 12, 1985, a Boeing 747SR operating this route suffered a sudden decompression twelve minutes into the flight and crashed in the area of Mount Takamagahara, Ueno, Gunma Prefecture, 100 kilometres (62 miles) from Tokyo thirty-two minutes later. The crash site was on Osutaka Ridge, near Mount Osutaka.
Japan's Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission officially concluded that the rapid decompression was caused by a faulty repair by Boeing technicians after a tailstrike incident during a landing at Osaka Airport seven years earlier (1978). A doubler plate on the rear bulkhead of the plane had been improperly repaired, compromising the plane's airworthiness. Cabin pressurization continued to expand and contract the improperly repaired bulkhead until the day of the accident, when the faulty repair finally failed, causing the rapid decompression that ripped off a large portion of the tail and caused the loss of hydraulic controls to the entire plane.
The aircraft, configured with increased economy class seating, was carrying 524 people. Casualties of the crash included all 15 crew members and 505 of the 509 passengers. Among the dead passengers some survived the initial crash but subsequently died of their injuries hours later, mostly due to the Japan Self-Defense Forces’s decision to wait until the next day to go to the crash site, after declining an offer from a nearby United States Air Force base to start an immediate rescue operation. It remains the deadliest single-aircraft accident in aviation history.[1]
Aircraft and crew [ edit ]
The accident aircraft was registered JA8119 and was a Boeing 747-146SR (Short Range). Its first flight was on January 28, 1974. It had more than 25,000 airframe hours and more than 18,800 cycles (one cycle equals one takeoff and landing).[1]
At the time of the accident the aircraft was on the fifth of its six planned flights of the day.[2] There were fifteen crew members, including three cockpit crew and 12 flight attendants.
The cockpit crew consisted of the following:
Captain Masami Takahama ( 高浜 雅己 , Takahama Masami ) from Akita, Japan, served as a training instructor for First Officer Yutaka Sasaki on the flight, supervising him while handling the radio communications. [3] [4] [5] A veteran pilot, having logged approximately 12,400 total flight hours, roughly 4,850 of which were accumulated flying 747s, Masami Takahama was aged 49 at the time of the accident.
from Akita, Japan, served as a training instructor for First Officer Yutaka Sasaki on the flight, supervising him while handling the radio communications. A veteran pilot, having logged approximately 12,400 total flight hours, roughly 4,850 of which were accumulated flying 747s, Masami Takahama was aged 49 at the time of the accident. First Officer Yutaka Sasaki ( 佐々木 祐 , Sasaki Yutaka ) from Kobe was in line for promotion to the rank of Captain and flew Flight 123 as one of his training flights. Sasaki, who was 39 years old at the time of the incident, had approximately 4,000 total flight hours to his credit and he had logged roughly 2,650 hours in the 747.
from Kobe was in line for promotion to the rank of Captain and flew Flight 123 as one of his training flights. Sasaki, who was 39 years old at the time of the incident, had approximately 4,000 total flight hours to his credit and he had logged roughly 2,650 hours in the 747. Flight Engineer Hiroshi Fukuda ( 福田 博 , Fukuda Hiroshi) from Kyoto, the 46-year-old veteran flight engineer of the flight who had approximately 9,800 total flight hours, of which roughly 3,850 were accrued flying 747s.[6]
Passengers [ edit ]
The flight was around the Obon holiday period in Japan, when many Japanese people make yearly trips to their hometowns or resorts.[7] Around twenty-one non-Japanese boarded the flight.[8] By August 13, 1985, Geoffrey Tudor, a spokesman for Japan Airlines, stated that the list included four residents of Hong Kong, two each from Italy and the United States, and one each from West Germany and the United Kingdom.[9] Some foreigners had dual nationalities, and some of them were residents of Japan.[7]
The four survivors, all female, were seated on the left side and toward the middle of seat rows 54–60, in the rear of the aircraft.[10] The four survivors were:
Yumi Ochiai ( 落合 由美 , Ochiai Yumi ) , a 26-year-old off-duty JAL flight attendant who was jammed between seats;
, a 26-year-old off-duty JAL flight attendant who was jammed between seats; Hiroko Yoshizaki ( 吉崎 博子 , Yoshizaki Hiroko ) , a 34-year-old woman;
, a 34-year-old woman; Mikiko Yoshizaki ( 吉崎 美紀子 , Yoshizaki Mikiko ) , Hiroko's 8-year-old daughter--Hiroko and Mikiko were both trapped in an intact section of the fuselage; and
, Hiroko's 8-year-old daughter--Hiroko and Mikiko were both trapped in an intact section of the fuselage; and Keiko Kawakami ( 川上 慶子 , Kawakami Keiko) , a 12-year-old girl who was rescued from under the wreckage.[11] Air Disaster Volume 2 stated that she was wedged between branches in a tree.[12] Kawakami's parents and younger sister died in the crash, and she was the last survivor to be released from the hospital. She was treated at the Matsue Red Cross Hospital in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture before her release on Friday, November 22, 1985.[13]
Among the dead was singer Kyu Sakamoto, who was famous for the hit song known in the United States under the title "Sukiyaki."
Sequence of events [ edit ]
Route of Japan Airlines Flight 123
The aircraft landed at Haneda from New Chitose Airport at 4:50PM as JL514. After more than an hour on the ramp, Flight 123 pushed back from gate 18 at 6:04 p.m.[6] and took off from Runway 15L[2] at Haneda Airport in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, at 6:12 p.m., twelve minutes behind schedule.[14] About 12 minutes after takeoff, at near cruising altitude over Sagami Bay, the aircraft's aft pressure bulkhead burst open due to a pre-existing defect stemming from a panel that had been incorrectly repaired after a tailstrike accident 7 years earlier. This caused a rapid decompression[15] of the aircraft, bringing down the ceiling around the rear lavatories, damaging the unpressurized fuselage aft of the bulkhead, unseating the vertical stabilizer, and severing all four hydraulic lines. A photograph taken from the ground confirmed that the vertical stabilizer was missing.[16]
The pilots set their transponder to broadcast a distress signal. Afterwards, Captain Takahama contacted Tokyo Area Control Center to declare an emergency, and to request to return back to Haneda Airport, descending and following emergency landing vectors to Oshima. Tokyo Control approved a right-hand turn to a heading of 90° east back towards Oshima, however the plane did not follow the directions and continued to fly a westerly course. It was at this point that the pilots became aware that the aircraft had become uncontrollable, and the Flight Engineer reported that the hydraulic pressure was dropping. Seeing that the aircraft was still flying west away from Haneda, Tokyo Control contacted the aircraft again. After confirming that the pilots were declaring an emergency, the controller requested as to the nature of the emergency, which the pilots did not respond to. Only after Tokyo Control repeated the direction to descend and turn to a 90° heading to Oshima did the Captain report that the aircraft had become uncontrollable. Heading over the Izu Peninsula, the pilots managed to turn towards the Pacific Ocean, then back towards the shore; Captain Takahama declined Tokyo Control's suggestion to divert to Nagoya Airport 72 miles away, instead preferring to land at Haneda.
Hydraulic fluid completely drained away through the rupture. With total loss of hydraulic control and non-functional control surfaces, the aircraft began up and down oscillations in phugoid cycles lasting about 90 seconds each. The lack of stabilizing influence from the vertical stabilizer and the rudder removed the only means to dampen yaw. Consequently, the aircraft also began to exhibit Dutch roll, simultaneously yawing right and banking right, before yawing back left and banking left, with the banks in large arcs of approximately 50° back and forth in cycles of 12 seconds. [12] In response, the pilots exerted efforts to establish stability using differential engine thrust, and they managed to slowly turn the plane back towards Haneda.
Shortly after 6:40 PM, the landing gear was lowered in an attempt to dampen the phugoid cycles and Dutch rolls. This was somewhat successful, as the phugoid cycles were dampened. However, lowering the gear also interfered with control by throttle, and the aircrew's ability to control the aircraft deteriorated.[12] Shortly after lowering the gear, the plane began a right-hand descending turn from 22,400 feet to 17,000 feet, then continued north while still descending. Upon descending to 13,500 feet (4100 m) at 6:45 PM, the pilots again reported an uncontrollable aircraft. Moments later, the aircraft began to turn to the left, despite efforts by the crew to get the plane to continue to turn right and avoid the mountains.
The aircraft after rapid decompression, with its vertical stabilizer missing
As the aircraft continued west, they descended below 7,000 feet (2100 m), then entered a rapid climb and nearly stalled the plane at 8,000 feet, before returning to an unsteady climb. At 6:51 PM, the Captain lowered the flaps 5 units via an alternate electrical system as an additional attempt to exert control over the stricken jet.[12][2] The aircraft reached 13,000 feet (4000 m) at 6:53 PM, at which point the pilots reported an uncontrollable plane for the third time. At approximately 6:54 PM, the crew lowered flaps to 10 units, but this began to cause the plane to bank increasingly to the right. One minute later, the flaps were extended to 25 units, which caused the aircraft to bank further to the right beyond 60°, and the nose began to drop.[2] Captain Takahama immediately ordered the flaps to be retracted, and was heard on the cockpit voice recorder desperately requesting for more power to be applied in a last-ditch effort to raise the nose. [17] However the plane continued to enter an uncontrollable right-hand descent into the mountains and disappearing from radar at 6:56 p.m. at 6,800 feet (2100 m). In the final moments, the wing clipped a mountain ridge. During a subsequent rapid plunge, the plane then slammed into a second ridge, then flipped and landed on its back.[2]
The aircraft's crash point, at an elevation of 1,565 metres (5,135 ft), is located in Sector 76, State Forest, 3577 Aza Hontani, Ouaza Narahara, Ueno Village, Tano District, Gunma Prefecture. The east-west ridge is about 2.5 kilometres (8,200 ft) north north west of Mount Mikuni.[18] Ed Magnuson of Time magazine said that the area where the aircraft crashed was referred to as the "Tibet" of Gunma Prefecture.[4] The elapsed time from the bulkhead failure to the crash was 32 minutes.[19][2](pp123,127)
Delayed rescue operation [ edit ]
United States Air Force controllers at Yokota Air Base situated near the flight path of Flight 123 had been monitoring the distressed aircraft's calls for help. They maintained contact throughout the ordeal with Japanese flight control officials and made their landing strip available to the aeroplane. The Atsugi Naval Base also cleared their runway for JAL 123 after being alerted of the ordeal. After losing track on radar, a U.S. Air Force C-130 from the 345th TAS was asked to search for the missing plane. The C-130 crew was the first to spot the crash site 20 minutes after impact, while it was still daylight. The crew sent the location to Japanese authorities and radioed Yokota Air Base to alert them and directed a Huey helicopter from Yokota to the crash site. Rescue teams were assembled in preparation to lower Marines down for rescues by helicopter tow line. Despite American offers of assistance in locating and recovering the crashed plane, an order arrived, saying that U.S. personnel were to stand down and announcing that the Japan Self-Defense Forces were going to take care of it themselves and outside help was not necessary. To this day, it is unclear why U.S. forces were denied permission to begin their intended search and rescue missions.[citation needed]
Although a JSDF helicopter eventually spotted the wreck during the night, poor visibility and the difficult mountainous terrain prevented it from landing at the site. The pilot reported from the air that there were no signs of survivors. Based on this report, JSDF personnel on the ground did not set out to the site the night of the crash. Instead, they were dispatched to spend the night at a makeshift village erecting tents, constructing helicopter landing ramps and engaging in other preparations, 63 kilometers (39.1 miles) from the wreck. Rescue teams did not set out for the crash site until the following morning. Medical staff later found bodies with injuries suggesting that individuals had survived the crash only to die from shock, exposure overnight in the mountains, or from injuries that, if tended to earlier, would not have been fatal.[12] One doctor said "If the discovery had come ten hours earlier, we could have found more survivors."[20]
Off-duty flight attendant Yumi Ochiai, one of the four survivors out of 524 passengers and crew, recounted from her hospital bed that she recalled bright lights and the sound of helicopter rotors shortly after she awoke amid the wreckage, and while she could hear screaming and moaning from other survivors, these sounds gradually died away during the night.[12]
Cause [ edit ]
The official cause of the crash according to the report published by Japan's Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission is as follows:
Correct (top) and incorrect splice plate installations
The aircraft was involved in a tailstrike incident at Osaka International Airport seven years earlier as JAL Flight 115, which damaged the aircraft's rear pressure bulkhead. The subsequent repair of the bulkhead did not conform to Boeing's approved repair methods. For reinforcing a damaged bulkhead, Boeing's repair procedure calls for one continuous splice plate with three rows of rivets.[21] However, the Boeing technicians carrying out the repair had used two splice plates parallel to the stress crack.[22][23] Cutting the plate in this manner negated the effectiveness of one of the rows of rivets, reducing the part's resistance to fatigue cracking to about 70% of that for a correct repair. During the investigation, the Accident Investigation Commission calculated that this incorrect installation would fail after approximately 10,000 pressurization cycles; the aircraft accomplished 12,318 successful flights from the time that the faulty repair was made to when the crash happened.[24] Consequently, after repeated pressurization cycles during normal flight, the bulkhead gradually started to crack near one of the two rows of rivets holding it together. When it finally failed, the resulting rapid decompression ruptured the lines of all four hydraulic systems and ejected the vertical stabilizer. With many of the aircraft's flight controls disabled, the aircraft became uncontrollable.[25]
Aftermath and legacy [ edit ]
Flight 123 accident monument in Fujioka
The Japanese public's confidence in Japan Airlines took a dramatic downturn in the wake of the disaster, with passenger numbers on domestic routes dropping by one third. Rumors persisted that Boeing had admitted fault to cover up shortcomings in the airline's inspection procedures, thus protecting the reputation of a major customer.[12] In the months after the crash, domestic traffic decreased by as much as 25%. In 1986, for the first time in a decade, fewer passengers boarded JAL's overseas flights during the New Year period than the previous year. Some of them considered switching to All Nippon Airways as a safer alternative.[26]
JAL paid ¥780 million (US$7.6 million) to the victims' relatives in the form of "condolence money" without admitting liability. JAL president, Yasumoto Takagi (高木 養根), resigned.[12] In the aftermath of the incident, Hiroo Tominaga, a JAL maintenance manager, killed himself to atone for the incident,[27] while Susumu Tajima, an engineer who had inspected and cleared the aircraft as flightworthy, committed suicide due to difficulties at work.[28]
In compliance with standard procedures, Japan Airlines dropped the flight number 123 for their Haneda-Itami routes, changing it to Flight 121 and Flight 127 on September 1, 1985. While Boeing 747s were still used on the same route operating with the new flight numbers in the years following the crash, they were replaced by the Boeing 767 or Boeing 777 in the mid-1990s. The 747s continued serving JAL until their 2011 retirement. March 2 of the same year saw the retirement of the airline's final two 747s, which were -400 series.
In 2009, stairs with a handrail were installed to facilitate visitors' access to the crash site. Japan Transport Minister Seiji Maehara visited the site on August 12, 2010, to pray for the victims.[29] Families of the victims, together with local volunteer groups, hold an annual memorial gathering every August 12 near the crash site in Gunma Prefecture.[30]
The crash led to the 2006 opening of the Safety Promotion Center,[31][32] which is located in the Daini Sogo Building in the grounds of Haneda Airport.[33] This center was created for training purposes to alert employees to the importance of airline safety and their personal responsibility to ensure safety. The center has displays regarding aviation safety, the history of the crash, and selected pieces of the aircraft and passenger effects (including handwritten farewell notes). It is open to the public by appointment made two months prior to the visit.[34]
The captain's daughter, Yoko Takahama, who was a high school student at the time of the crash, went on to become a flight attendant for Japan Airlines.[35]
Diana Yukawa, who was born after the crash, and her older sister Cassie, were the daughters of English ballet dancer Susanne Bayly and married Japanese banker Akihisa Yukawa. Yukawa died in the crash, and Bayly received a £340,000 settlement to sign papers effectively disinheriting her daughters and to remain silent, preventing embarrassment to Yukawa’s family. The sisters received an undisclosed payout from the airline in 2002.[36]
In popular culture [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
Similar accidents involving loss of flight controls:
United Airlines Flight 232 – caused by a catastrophic engine failure, 1989
Baghdad DHL attempted shootdown incident – caused by a surface-to-air missile striking the left wing, 2003 |
The U.S. Department of Agriculture fails at regulation of organic food as fraudulent products overwhelm the agency’s conflicted, compromised system, a NerdWallet investigation has found.
The USDA’s National Organic Program has not kept up with the explosive growth of organic food production and sales — either in staffing or enforcement, NerdWallet found.
Since the program began two decades ago, organic food sales in the U.S. have soared to a record $43 billion a year and currently account for 5% of the U.S. food market, according to the Organic Trade Association.
The system today enables high-dollar fraud, as swindlers exploit high premiums charged by honest players for the risks, expense and hard work of producing genuine organics.
The USDA’s failings undermine authentic producers and tarnish the agency’s organic seal, jeopardizing its promise as an emblem of trust.
“The National Organic Program just isn’t getting the job done,” says Richard Mathews, a former senior organic-program official who now directs the Western Organic Dairy Producers Alliance. “If USDA officials are not willing to enforce the regulations that are on the books, and do it aggressively, then they need to get out of the organic sector altogether.”
Among NerdWallet’s findings:
The USDA creates conflicts of interest by allowing cozy relationships between growers/processors and the companies that certify their operations as organic. The USDA accredits 80 certifiers worldwide. However, those certifiers are paid not by the agency, but by the growers and processors they certify. And the growers and processors get to choose their certifiers from the list.
It does not require certifiers to be neutral arbiters. Instead, certifiers are allowed to advocate on behalf of the companies they certify, harass critics and lobby for changes in rules governing the organics industry.
The agency often asks and trusts certifiers to look into alleged violations by their customers, instead of investigating independently.
It fails to investigate allegations that its certifiers have engaged in fraud or collusion.
The USDA badly understaffs its National Organic Program. To investigate certification irregularities and fraud, the division has just five compliance officers, one for every $9 billion in certified-organic food sales, says Mathews, the former agency official. He estimated that compliance officers had a backlog of as many as 500 cases; they closed hundreds of them this year in a drive to reduce the backlog.
It hires compliance officers who lack law enforcement and investigative experience. The director of organic compliance and enforcement is a former USDA policy advisor, marketing specialist and grants manager with a background in university administration.
Enforcement actions are cloaked in secrecy. Watchdog organizations, commercial ventures and the media must file public-records requests to get basic information concerning investigations and outcomes. One organization, the Cornucopia Institute, has filed 10 lawsuits alleging illegal delays, overuse of exemptions to freedom of information rules requiring release of public records, and other tactics.
The USDA caps penalties at $11,000 per violation, a minuscule sum compared with the multimillion-dollar profits a dishonest producer gets from selling a single ship full of conventionally grown produce as organic.
It rarely goes to court and instead often settles fines for pennies on the dollar in unannounced agreements, even after proving willful violations.
The agency buries its form for reporting allegations concerning certifiers on an obscure website page and imposes restrictive requirements on filing complaints.
It doesn’t require importers to produce organic certificates for each incoming shipping container. By contrast, in the European Union, authorities are switching to electronic certification documents at borders to track shipments and prevent forgery.
It doesn’t require certification of importers, traders or brokers and fails to create a chain of custody from farms to stores, as the EU does. Importers can accept forged certificates, passing along fake organics using paperwork from companies that didn’t produce the food.
It coordinates poorly with other agencies. The USDA Inspector General reported last year that U.S. Customs officials order some organic imports to be fumigated for insects, using chemicals not approved by the National Organic Program, but then return the food to the organic distribution channel.
The agency lacks access to a Customs database and therefore the ability to track or intercept incoming ships from abroad, let alone from regions known for fraud. Massive shiploads of falsely labeled organic corn and soybeans from known fraud centers have depressed prices, causing U.S. growers to lose nearly $250 million in sales in two years, says John Bobbe, executive director of Ofarm, a group of U.S. organic grain and livestock producers.
It fails to focus on vulnerable points in the supply chain, such as by performing unannounced inspections, chemical testing and checks to ensure that purchases of organic supplies match amounts of products sold.
It fumbles coordination with certifiers’ foreign offices, lacking contacts abroad.
The agency touts a faulty online database. Presented as a comprehensive list of businesses and certifiers, the Organic Integrity Database is riddled with errors and omissions that bedevil agency officers as well as the public. A review of the list found that various names of companies, suspensions and violations were missing.
It refuses to explain its organic program to the media or publicly address fraud allegations. NerdWallet was not allowed to interview agency employees despite repeated requests to its public information office over three months. The agency’s accredited certifiers were even less responsive.
Read more from NerdWallet’s investigation |
The case of a former Commonwealth Bank employee provides a chilling insight into how the bank’s insurance arm delays and dodges paying legitimate mental health claims – even one from one of its own.
M
atthew Attwater’s voice cracks as he recalls the day his world shattered. What began as a disagreement with a family member quickly got out of hand.
The relative, who had a history of violence, went on a rampage, beating Attwater and decapitating the miniature fox terrier that he’d loved since he was 11.
“It was something my coping mechanism wasn’t able to process,” Attwater says.
It was an event that would send his life spiralling - and the safety net he had spent years paying for would provide little protection.
The day after the attack, Attwater showed up to work at Commonwealth Bank covered in bruises.
He loved his customer service job and was one of the bank’s best. Customers wrote letters of thanks to him and managers showered him with praise.
In 2010, the bank even flew him and a friend to Hobart for the “Best of the Best” gala award night where he took out a top honour, chosen from amongst the bank’s 44,000 workers.
Ralph Norris, then chief executive, personally praised the young man.
Attwater was looking forward to a bright future. Instead, a year later, his world started falling apart as he struggled to cope with the aftermath of the violent attack in 2011.
At about the same time, police raided his house, finding an illicit party drug, GBL. He would be eventually sentenced to 400 hours of community service with the court finding that mental illness contributed to the offence.
Matthew Attwater “I NEEDED SUPPORT FROM MY EMPLOYER”
At work, things were going downhill. Attwater started on anti-depression medication but it made him tired and he began to lose concentration.
Colleagues noticed that after tense calls with customers he would slam down the phone and rant. Managers started micro-managing his work.
Attwater, now 32, didn’t know it at the time but he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“That job was the last thing that I had in my life that was any type of link to my past. It was the last little bit of independence that I had,” he says.
“It was the last thing that I had control of. And it was systematically broken down by management that were not interested.”
The bank organised for him to see a forensic psychiatrist.
He went to the appointment in the belief the bank wanted to help get him back on track, to be “that best of the best, to be that employee that made them smile, that made them lots of money”.
It wasn’t to be.
The psychiatrist’s report questioned whether Attwater would be able to function in the bank or the general workforce “at any foreseeable time in the future or in any ongoing manner”.
It found that his symptoms were “severe” including that Attwater “presents as a severely disabled person who is markedly affected by a cluster of psychiatric symptoms which would fall under the broad heading of PTSD. In addition there were strong elements of social phobia.”
In 2013, he advised that Attwater be medically retired from the bank and the workforce in general – an assessment backed by the bank’s chief medical adviser.
There was a silver lining. As a Commonwealth employee, Attwater was insured for total and permanent disability by the bank’s own insurance arm, CommInsure, through Commonwealth Bank Group Super.
Having been deemed incapable of working by the bank, it seemed clear he would be entitled to a payout.
But even for a once-lauded former employee, getting a payout from CommInsure wasn’t to be so simple.
Mental health
issues ... ... account for 21% of claims made to CommInsure and 24% of claims paid by dollar value.
F
or the $44 billion life insurance industry, mental health is proving to be one of its greatest challenges. One in five Australians will experience at least one bout of mental illness and, according to the World Health Organisation, by 2030 depression will be the biggest health burden, economically and sociologically.
It is understood that mental health claims against CommInsure represent 21 per cent of claims by volume and a whopping 24 per cent of claims paid by dollar value.
It is clear that the life insurance industry is scrambling to cope with Australia’s burgeoning mental health crisis.
And there is evidence that insurers, in trying to reel in mental health-related costs, are unfairly denying people coverage or rejecting claims – often on the basis of flimsy diagnoses or outdated beliefs about mental illness.
Our joint Fairfax-Four Corners investigation has unearthed how CommInsure insurance underwriters are told to be on the look out for long lists of risk factors or markers in customers that might foreshadow future mental health problems, even in people with no history of such issues.
These include perfectionism, working excessive hours, having financial problems, being new in business and being older than 50. These are then used as a pretext to amend or deny insurance coverage.
It is understood that CommInsure underwriters are instructed to refuse applications from asylum-seekers and refugees until they have been in the country for two years.
When considering a new life insurance policy, underwriters are told to be aware of any of the following symptoms in new mothers: a persistently low mood, feelings of inadequacy, confusion, poor self care, insomnia, guilt or fear of being rejected by partner.
The problem is that insurance underwriters have no formal qualifications to assess mental health disorders, says Beyond Blue chief executive Georgie Harman. She says CommInsure is using outdated mental health stereotypes to risk - assess policyholders.
“To have people without formal qualifications assessing risk in this way would be like assuming somebody has cancer because they have lost weight,” she says. “Symptoms like sleeping difficulties, or personal traits such as perfectionism, are widespread in the community and not necessarily indicative of any underlying mental health conditions.”
Insurance is one of the few sectors that is allowed to discriminate under law but this discrimination must be justified with rigorous actuarial data.
Since 2002, Beyond Blue has tried to work with the industry to get the statistical data that backs up how it discriminates against the mentally ill. But the industry has so far failed to hand it over.
It is understood that CommInsure paid out more than $70 million on suicide claims in the five years to 2012, most of which came from its “wholesale” insurance business – the insurance policies provided to industry super fund members.
In June 2012, CommInsure is believed to have considered imposing a 13 month exclusion period on suicide claims from industry super fund members, in a bid to reel in costs. Concerned about a backlash at such a move, it proposed offering instead a $20,000 funeral benefit.
Jeff Kennett Beyond Blue
chairman “It’s a David and Goliath job.”
Matthew Attwater thought he was on safe ground with his forensic psychiatrist’s report confirming he could no longer work.
“I was retired from the workforce,” he says. “It was a blanket statement which stipulated that I could no longer work in any industry doing anything.”
But his claim with CommInsure for total and permanent disability was rejected.
From Commonwealth Bank Group Super To Matthew Attwater “You are not totally and permanently disabled in terms of the definition in the policy of insurance.” Read full letter here
CommInsure deployed its own interpretation of the forensic psychiatrist report used to discharge Attwater from employment to justify its argument that he had a chance of re-entering the workforce at some point.
The report said should medical retirement be considered it would be "appropriate" for Attwater to receive psychiatric treatment to help through the adjustment. CommInsure argued this meant he could recover with the help of treatment.
Attwater was trapped in a bureaucratic vicious cycle. Without an insurance payout, he had no means of paying for a psychiatrist.
“They knew that I was unable to pay $500 an hour to get to see a psychiatrist. They declined me on a technicality.”
Attwater’s lawyer, William Barsby from Shine Lawyers, says Attwater’s claim was straightforward and lawyers should never have needed to be involved.
“The bank made that decision and they even obtained their own expert evidence to support that… then faced with that evidence CommInsure and the CBA super scheme attempt to deny his claim.”
Barsby said the bank had tried to “hide under the corporate veil” by arguing that its divisions involved in the case – the bank, which Attwater worked for, the CBA super fund and CommInsure – each operated as separate bodies.
“But the reality is they’re all under one veil and they all come down to the same information and to hide behind that corporate veil is just absurd in my view.”
The delays and denials added to Attwater's mental and financial stresses, which, at times, included him being forced to sleep in his car.
Attwater’s dismissal shocked Beyond Blue chairman Jeff Kennett, who describes it as “disgraceful” and totally wrong.
“You don’t go and dismiss someone because they’ve got mental illness. There are programs internally and programs externally to help,” he says.
“If you’re saying to an individual you’re no good or your illness can’t be treated, you’re doing great psychological damage to that individual.”
Matthew Attwater “It was like a slap in the face.”
D
elays in processing claims can place people under enormous mental pressure.
“There’s three key things that they do. They deny the case, they’ll delay it and they’ll defend it and in Matthew’s case they delayed it from the very outset,” Barsby says.
Kennett agrees. “And please remember, these companies are taking premiums every year and then they deny a person that claims,” he says.
“They don’t offer to pay the premiums back but they will, invariably as seems to be the case here, delay the process, they weaken the individual so these cashed-up organisations literally trample over the individual rights of so many citizens. And it is wrong.”
Commonwealth chief executive Ian Narev says he accepts that the bank has “much more work to do to bring our understanding of mental illness up to the level it ought to be at.”
Ian Narev CEO of CBA “We have got a long way to go.” Watch the full interview here
Asked about Mr Attwater's situation, Mr Narev said, “I understand from what you said how he must be feeling, and again I reiterate, I think from the employment perspective, from the insurance perspective, from all different ways in which we participate in the community, we have got a long way to go on mental illness.”
According to the Financial Ombudsman Service, complaints about delays in handling total and permanent disability (TPD) claims contributed to a surge in disputes between insurers and customers last year. The service handled 188 TPD disputes in 2014-15, up sharply from 133 the year before.
Since Attwater was “ill-health retired” from the bank, his lawyers have arranged for seven different psychiatrist and other medical reports, all supporting his claim.
During the joint investigation, CommInsure finally decided to settle Attwater’s case.
It took him three years and pushed him to the brink.
“I have thought of taking my own life,” he says.
“There are multiple times where I’ve sat there and thought... how could a company that I was so passionate about, that I was so proud to work for, how could that company systematically destroy my life?
“Words can’t explain just how negative the experience has been with CommInsure. It’s horrible.”
For support or information, call Lifeline 131 114 or BeyondBlue 1300 224 636
Do you know more? Email Adele Ferguson [email protected] Financial Ombudsman Service 1800 367 287 • CommInsure 1800 106 133 Senate inquiry into financial advice [email protected] |
An attempt by the British Medical Association to avoid misgendering transgender maternity patients has backfired, with critics and tabloids lampooning the organization’s new glossary of gender-neutral terms, according to reports.
Doctors have been told to avoid calling their patients who are pregnant “expectant mothers,” so as to not offend intersex and transgender patients. The guidance suggests they be called “pregnant people.”
“Gender inequality is reflected in traditional ideas about the roles of women and men. Though they have shifted over time, the assumptions and stereotypes that underpin those ideas are often deeply-rooted. A large majority of people that have been pregnant or have given birth identify as women,” the guidelines say. “We can include intersex men and transmen who may get pregnant by saying ‘pregnant people’ instead of ‘expectant mothers’.”
The guidelines also state that someone who is “biologically male or female” should be called “assigned male or female,” that “the elderly” should be referred to as “older people,” and that the word used to refer to elevators reserved for the “disabled” should be “accessible.” ‘
Also, the words “mankind” and “manpower” should be avoided because it is a masculine word that erases women.
The guidelines recommend the term “Christian name” also should be avoided for patients’ first names, out of respect for those who are not Christian, and that medical staff should say, “last name” and not “family name.”
The British tabloid, The Sun, Fox News and others have mocked the BMA for these changes, announced late last year, as political correctness.
If you can’t call a pregnant woman an expectant mother, then what is the world coming to?? — David Adeola (@DavidAdeola) January 29, 2017
@DavidAdeola Seriously. No man has ever given birth. Never once in the history of the mankind #facts — Chris B Go Utes (@Pac12_UtahUtes) January 30, 2017
Those who claim no man has ever given birth have apparently not read about the first pregnant British man, Hayden Cross, who made headlines earlier this month with the announcement that he is four months pregnant. Cross is a transgender man.
And in the U.S., Thomas Beatie made headlines in 2008 for giving birth to his first child. The trans man had two more children by 2008.
Feminists and others hailed the new lingo.
The word "mother" is loaded and it's an identity that some people–cis women included–may not want thrust on them. — Another Angry Woman (@stavvers) January 30, 2017
So oh my goodness, I totally support dropping the hideously archaic "expectant mother" — Another Angry Woman (@stavvers) January 30, 2017
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How To Install OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 On Ubuntu 8.04
Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
This guide shows how you can install the new OpenOffice 3.0.0 office suite on your Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. Your current OpenOffice installation will not be removed unless you uninstall it with Synaptic or on the command line, so you can run both versions in parallel if you like.
I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!
1 Installing OpenOffice 3.0.0
Visit http://www.openoffice.org/ and go to the download section; select the Linux DEB download for your language...
... and save it to your hard drive (e.g. on the desktop):
After the download has finished, open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)...
... and go to the directory where you've saved OpenOffice 3.0 (I've saved it on my desktop, /home/falko/Desktop/):
cd /home/falko/Desktop/
Uncompress the archive...
tar xvfz OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz
... and go to the directory that contains all the .deb packages...
cd OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358/DEBS/
... and install them with one single command:
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
If you have decided to uninstall Ubuntu's OpenOffice package (using Synaptic or the command line), you can also install the OpenOffice 3.0.0 desktop integration package (it contains launchers, etc.) as follows:
cd desktop-integration/
sudo dpkg -i openoffice.org3.0-debian-menus_3.0-9354_all.deb
This works only if you have previously uninstalled Ubuntu's OpenOffice package (don't do this if you want to run Ubuntu's OpenOffice and OpenOffice 3.0.0 in parallel)! If you have not, you will see the following error:
[email protected]:~/Desktop/OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358/DEBS/desktop-integration$ sudo dpkg -i openoffice.org3.0-debian-menus_3.0-9354_all.deb
[sudo] password for falko:
Selecting previously deselected package openoffice.org-debian-menus.
dpkg: regarding openoffice.org3.0-debian-menus_3.0-9354_all.deb containing openoffice.org-debian-menus:
openoffice.org-core conflicts with openoffice.org-unbundled
openoffice.org-debian-menus provides openoffice.org-unbundled and is to be installed.
dpkg: error processing openoffice.org3.0-debian-menus_3.0-9354_all.deb (--install):
conflicting packages - not installing openoffice.org-debian-menus
Errors were encountered while processing:
openoffice.org3.0-debian-menus_3.0-9354_all.deb
[email protected]:~/Desktop/OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358/DEBS/desktop-integration$
After you've successfully installed the desktop integration package, you can find OpenOffice 3.0.0 launchers under Applications > Office:
After the installation has finished, you can delete the downloaded archive and the OpenOffice directory:
cd ../../
rm -fr OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358 OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz
2 Creating A Launcher
(This is necessary only if you want to run Ubuntu's OpenOffice package and OpenOffice 3.0.0 in parallel and therefore could not install the OpenOffice desktop integration package!)
Unfortunately, the installation hasn't created a launcher for OpenOffice 3.0.0 in our menus (the launcher that you see under Applications > Office is still for your old OpenOffice version), therefore we have to create it manually. Right-click on Applications and select Edit Menus:
Select the Office category and click on New Item:
Fill in a name for the launcher (e.g. OpenOffice 3.0.0 Writer) and then click on the Browse button to find the OpenOffice 3.0.0 executable: |
As other manufacturers unveil smaller, thinner, lighter laptops, Samsung is thinking big. On Thursday, the company released its 17-inch Series 7 Chronos, a hopeful desktop killer and the latest addition to its Series 7 lineup.
Compared to ultrabooks, the 17-inch Series 7 Chronos is a monster. It features a 1920x1080, 17.3-inch display, and measures just under an inch thick and weighs a whopping 6.26 pounds – quite heavy but still lighter than the 6.6-pound, 17-inch MacBook Pro. The whole Samsung shebang is encased in brushed aluminum.
Samsung's new gargantuan isn't made for always-scrambling road warriors – even thinking about carrying around this heavyweight for a full day might make your back ache. But Samsung says that the large screen will appeal to users who need a portable desktop replacement.
The laptop comes packed with Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i7 CPU, 8GB of flash memory, and Nvidia's latest graphics processor, the GeForce GT 650M. You'll get up to 8 hours of battery life, and retain 80 percent of the battery's original capacity even after 1,500 charges, according to Samsung.
The company wants to satisfy its multimedia power users, too. The 17-inch Series 7 Chronos comes with JBL stereo speakers, a built-in subwoofer, and HD audio processing. And with Intel's Wireless Display (WiDi) and built-in adapter, you can wirelessly beam your laptop's images and videos to a TV. As for storage capacity, 1TB of space is perfect for people who collect tons of music and video. The notebook also comes with plenty of ports: HDMI, two USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, VGA, and a card reader slot.
It seems anachronistic that Samsung would release such a large laptop in our current age of ultrabooks, but, hey, there must still be a market for unapologetically decked-out desktop replacements. If you want to get your hands on one of these big-screened bad boys, they're available for $1,500 starting May 10. |
All parking meters will cost $2.30 an hour. In premium parking zones, that means an increase of 30 cents an hour; in normal demand areas, it's more than a 200 percent jump.
WASHINGTON — It is seldom easy to find a metered parking space in D.C., and as of Wednesday, it will cost more to park too: Beginning June 1, parking meter rates will go up across the city.
Related Stories DC parking meter rates set to increase in June Transportation News
All parking meters will cost $2.30 an hour. In premium parking zones, that means an increase of 30 cents an hour; in normal demand areas, it’s more than a 200 percent jump from the current meter rate of 75 cents per hour.
“This does not increase one parking meter space in the city,” said John Townsend, manager of public and government affairs at AAA Mid-Atlantic. “They are exploiting motorists. There’s a finite number of parking meters in the city.”
There are about 18,000 parking meters in D.C., and the auto club accused the city of overly aggressive ticket writing.
“The District has such an impressive dragnet that it issued over 1.6 million parking tickets last year,” Townsend said, calculating that the revenue produced by those parking tickets reached nearly $88 million.
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© 2016 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. |
The oldest drinkable beer was found off the coast of Finland in 2010 according to the Technical Research Centre of Finland in a statement on February 8, 2011. Divers retrieved in 2010 well-preserved bottles of champagne and five bottles of beer from the wreck of a ship that likely sank during the first half of the 19th century in the Aland island chain. On February 8, 2011, Technical Research Centre of Finland will begin to determine what kind of a recipe was used in the brewing of the beer to perhaps brew the historic beverage again. (Editorial Use Only) UPI/VTT/Antonin Halas | License Photo
The oldest drinkable beer was found off the coast of Finland in 2010 according to the Technical Research Centre of Finland in a statement on February 8, 2011. Divers retrieved in 2010 well-preserved bottles of champagne and five bottles of beer from the wreck of a ship that likely sank during the first half of the 19th century in the Aland island chain. On February 8, 2011, Technical Research Centre of Finland will begin to determine what kind of a recipe was used in the brewing of the beer to perhaps brew the historic beverage again. (Editorial Use Only) UPI/VTT/Antonin Halas | License Photo
HELSINKI, Finland, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Samples of the world's oldest beer have been examined in Finland to determine its recipe, with plans to brew the historic beverage again, researchers say.
A Baltic Sea shipwreck from between 1800 and 1830 was discovered in July 2010 and yielded many bottles of champagne and five bottles of what proved to be the oldest drinkable beer yet found.
The local government of the Aland island chain where the wreck was found has commissioned a scientific study to unlock the secret of the beer's original recipe, the BBC reported Tuesday.
Four professional beer tasters have already sampled the brew.
"They said that it did taste very old, which is no surprise, with some burnt notes," Annika Wilhelmson of the Technical Research Centre of Finland said.
"But it was quite acidic -- which could mean there's been some fermenting going on in the bottle and with time it's become acid," she said.
The research center has been commissioned to tease out the details of the sunken beer's recipe.
RELATED Moderate beer drinking said health benefit
"So far we have seen under microscopes that there are yeast and bacterial cells, but we don't know if they're dead or alive yet," Wilhelmson said.
"If we can't find living microbes, we will look at the DNA and try to compare it to brewing yeasts that we know today."
Determining which hops have been used may be harder, Wilhelmson said, so reviving the 200-year-old brew for modern drinkers may prove difficult.
"Whatever we analyze, we're going to have to do a lot of interpreting," she said. "We need to analyze what it is today and start thinking about what it was like when it was made -- when it was fresh, because it clearly isn't fresh now." |
Slideshow: Government shutdown Evan Vucci / AP Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, pumps his fist as he walks past reporters after a meeting with House Republicans on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. Launch slideshow
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, acknowledged Wednesday that he would allow a vote in the House on a newly-minted Senate deal on debt and spending.
"We fought the good fight. We just didn't win," he said on WLW radio in Ohio.
Boehner additionally confirmed that he would "absolutely" allow the whole House to vote on a plan introduced on Wednesday in the Senate. That bipartisan plan, unveiled by Senate leaders, would fund the government through mid-January and raise the debt ceiling until early February.
The speaker conducted the interview shortly before heading into a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans, who might be reluctant to support the deal because it extracts few concessions from Democrats and does very little to undo Obamacare.
But Boehner said he'd encourage his colleagues to vote in favor of the agreement, which he said would reopen the government as soon as Thursday.
"There's no good reason for our members to vote 'no,'" Boehner told talk radio host Bill Cunningham.
This story was originally published on |
Ajay Bhatt is seen with his new fence. Bhatt was fined by Montgomery County for rebuilding his back fence near the Capital Crescent Trail, seen at left. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
The $500 fine that Montgomery County levied against Ajay Bhatt for building his backyard fence on county property might have drawn little notice, except that Bhatt isn’t just a homeowner, and it isn’t just any public land.
The one-year-old fence is 14 feet beyond Bhatt’s property line, on the shoulder of a wooded recreational trail between Bethesda and Silver Spring that’s part of the planned route for a 16-mile Purple Line transitway.
Bhatt, who lives in Chevy Chase, is the outspoken president of a citizens group fighting the plan to run trains along the trail. The person who complained about the fence, which prompted the county’s investigation, is a longtime Purple Line advocate who Bhatt says singled him out because he opposes the transitway route.
Yes, the decades-long debate over where to build a rail line in the Maryland suburbs has gotten personal, and it’s come down to a six-foot-high wooden fence.
“It seems awfully coincidental that I’m the president of Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail and I’m the only one who got a complaint,” Bhatt said.
Bhatt is appealing the county citation and the fine. His trial in Montgomery County Circuit Court is scheduled for June.
The trail alignment has always been the most controversial part of the plan to connect Maryland’s inner suburbs with east-west trains. Montgomery bought the trail land, an abandoned freight rail corridor, from B&O Railroad in 1988 to preserve it for a transitway and trail. A Purple Line would run light-rail trains between Montgomery and Prince George’s County, from Bethesda to New Carrollton.
Bhatt’s fence isn’t unusual along the trail. Longtime residents say the B&O Railroad didn’t mind them building fences and sheds in the right of way, and county officials say they don’t routinely investigate right-of-way violations unless they receive a complaint. Maryland Transit Administration officials planning the Purple Line say there are about 25 “encroachments” on the trail land, including sheds, garages, retaining walls and decks. MTA officials say they have not counted fences in the right of way, but a walk along the trail show many as close as Bhatt’s, some of them appearing relatively new.
The Purple Line’s construction is scheduled to begin next summer, pending federal funding. Any structures remaining in the right of way could face the bulldozers.
Bhatt, who owns a construction firm, said his $7,000 fence was built on the same spot where fences have stood behind his house for years. He said he showed the county permitting official a 1977 land survey of his home that included a fence beyond his property line, and he said he told the official that he planned to build his new fence there, too. The permitting official didn’t object, he said.
“I didn’t expect to prevent a Purple Line with a fence,” Bhatt said one recent afternoon from his back yard in the Coquelin Run neighborhood . “I know that’s not going to happen. But it doesn’t make sense for me to have to move my fence before” the Purple Line construction begins, he added.
County officials, however, note that Bhatt’s building permit has an “N” next to “Right of Way,” meaning he didn’t have permission to build on public land, and a “Y” next to “Owner’s Land,” meaning the permit covered only his private property.
Wayne Phyillaier, the Purple Line advocate and retired engineer who reported Bhatt’s fence, said he noticed it while riding his bike on the trail last May. He said he suspected that the fence was Bhatt’s and confirmed it using online real estate records.
Phyillaier said he was concerned that the county might be mistakenly issuing building permits for the Purple Line land, which he said would have encouraged other residents to build there. Bhatt’s fence, he said, was the “most egregious” example he’d seen of a homeowner building in the trail right of way, particularly after the publicly circulated Purple Line plans showed that a retaining wall would be built along Bhatt’s yard.
Phyillaier, who wrote about the case on his Silver Spring Trails blog, said the fence shows that Bhatt has a “deep, personal interest in blocking public use to that corridor.”
“He’s basically trying to grab a big chunk of public right of way enclosed behind a fence for his own personal use,” Phyillaier said. “How does he justify that, especially when he leads an organization that says it’s trying to preserve the trail for the enjoyment of the public?”
Montgomery officials have promised to rebuild and extend the trail along the Purple Line, plans that some cycling advocates praise as necessary to fill a critical gap in the region’s off-road trail network. Bhatt and other opponents say the construction of a a transitway would destroy the trail’s peaceful green space by cutting hundreds of mature trees and leaving runners and cyclists alongside noisy trains.
Diane Schwartz Jones, director of the county’s Department of Permitting Services, said she didn’t know of Bhatt’s or Phyillaier’s Purple Line views when she asked her staff to investigate the complaint.
She said the law against building on public land helps protect the county from liability if someone is hurt on the public property and from the cost of having to remove fences and other structures when the land is needed. Jones said the county fined and cited Bhatt only after he ignored a notice of violation.
“It’s not his property to put a fence on,” Jones said.
The county also cited Bhatt’s next-door neighbor for having a fence in the right of way. She tore it down before the fine would have taken effect, Bhatt said.
Bhatt said he knows he faces an uphill legal battle. In January, District Court Judge Patricia Mitchell found him guilty of installing a fence beyond private property. The judge suspended the $500 fine and gave him 30 days to remove the fence. Instead, Bhatt appealed to Circuit Court.
Mitchell rejected Bhatt’s arguments that others had built fences along the trail and that the land he’d fenced in would be readily available for public use once Purple Line construction started, according to an audio recording of the 20-minute trial. But the judge told Bhatt that the only fact relevant to the legal case was whether he built a fence on public property — a point Bhatt conceded was true.
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David Cameron has announced plans to help protect children from adult content online, by insisting all new computers ask whether there are children in the household when they are turned on for the first time.
The prime minister described the plans in an article for the Daily Mail as "radical" and insisted that they will help parents protect children from internet pornography, violence and other unsuitable websites, adding that such content is "a silent attack on innocence" and that childhood should be "untainted by the worries and complexities of adulthood."
If the plan is backed by manufacturers, it would mean that owners of every brand new computer would be asked if there are children in the household when they are first turned on. If the user answers positively, they will be prompted to adjust their internet filters accordingly.
If parents repeatedly click OK to get through the process more quickly, the computer would automatically block access by any user to sites containing pornography and self-harm. Internet service providers (ISPs) would also be required to verify the age of the person setting the controls, so that a child can't do it.
The technology will also show parents how to limit access to social networks like Facebook and Twitter after a time of their choice, so children can't view social media on their own at night, and block access to certain websites altogether.
The PM announced that Conservative MP Claire Perry will be appointed as his advisor on reversing the commercialisation and sexulisation of children, and she will be in charge of implementing the new web filters; Perry has also led a campaign for broader, automatic blocking of adult content online.
Critics
Despite claims from critics that MPs were putting ISP's profits ahead of protecting what children see online by vetoing an opt-in system for users to view all adult content with one click, Cameron insisted it is clear that a "more sophisticated system" will be more effective, arguing that on/off filters are not used because they are so wide-ranging that parents turn them off through frustration.
"The point is we need a more sophisticated system than this," Cameron said. "One that allows parents to tailor exactly what their children can see. This is what child safety experts recommend."
The PM added: "With our new system, every parent will be prompted to protect their child online. If they don't make choices, protection will be automatically on. No other government has taken such radical steps before.
"And once all this is in place, Britain will have the most robust internet child protection measures of any country in the world - bar none."
In his Daily Mail article the Conservative leader went on: "All this comes back to something really important. It's not just about the internet, or modern technology - it's about childhood.
"These should be distinct and precious years, full of security and love, untainted by the worries and complexities of adulthood. From one parent to another, I pledge to do whatever I can to preserve that innocence and protect our children. Nothing matters more." |
An unexploded bomb kills one and injures 13 others in Germany
Frank Augstein / AP Police forces examine the scene of a World War II bomb explosion during construction works of a digger in Euskirchen, Germany, Friday, Jan. 3, 2014
An unexploded bomb detonated in Germany Friday, resulting in one more World War II casualty, sixty-eight years after fighting ended.
A driver of a bulldozer was killed by the explosion after accidentally striking the bomb in the German town of Euskirchen, the Associated Press reports. Thirteen other people were injured, two critically. The explosion damaged homes within a 400-meter radius of the detonation.
Undiscovered bombs still litter Germany almost 70 years after the war. About 2,000 have been found in Berlin alone, according to National Geographic. In November, 20,000 people had to be evacuated from Dortmund when police found a 4,000-pound Allied bomb. They defused the bomb before anyone was hurt. “Here in Berlin, it is a fact of daily life to defuse bombs,” a Berlin police spokeswoman told CNN, after authorities defused a Russian bomb found less than six feet from train tracks in the city center.
The threat of leftover bombs is so common that companies often hire private bomb disposal companies to check if sites are safe before construction, according to CNN.
[AP] |
THE PHILIPPINE PRESIDENT-elect has encouraged the public to help him in his war against crime, urging citizens with guns to shoot and kill drug dealers who resist arrest and fight back in their neighborhoods.
In a nationally televised speech late last night, Rodrigo Duterte told a huge crowd in the southern city of Davao celebrating last month’s presidential victory that Filipinos who help him battle crime will be rewarded.
“Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun — you have my support,” Duterte said, warning of an extensive illegal drug trade that involves even the country’s police.
If a drug dealer resists arrest or refuses to be brought to a police station and threatens a citizen with a gun or a knife, “you can kill him,” Duterte said.
Shoot him and I’ll give you a medal.
The 71-year-old Duterte won the 9 May presidential election on a bold promise to end crime and corruption within six months of his presidency.
That vow resonated among crime-weary Filipinos, though police officials considered it campaign rhetoric that was impossible to accomplish.
Human rights watchdogs have expressed alarm that his anti-crime drive may lead to widespread rights violations.
Duterte has been suspected of playing a role in many killings of suspected criminals in his city by motorcycle-riding assassins known as the “Davao death squads,” but human rights watchdogs say he has not been criminally charged because nobody has dared to testify against him in court.
Source: Bullit Marquez
In his speech yesterday, Duterte also asked three police generals based in the main national police camp in the capital to resign for involvement in crimes that he did not specify.
He threatened to humiliate them in public if they did not quit and said he would order a review of dismissed criminal cases of active policemen, suggesting some may have bribed their way back onto the force.
“They go back again crucifying the Filipino,” he said.
I won’t agree to that.
“If you’re still into drugs, I will kill you, don’t take this as a joke,” he said to loud jeers and applause.
I’m not trying to make you laugh, son of a bitch, I will really kill you.
Bounties
The foul-mouthed longtime Davao mayor and former government prosecutor said crimes were committed by law enforcers because of “extreme greed and extreme need.”
He said that he would provide a small amount to an officer who was tempted because his wife has cancer or a mother died, but that those who would break the law because of extreme greed “will also be dealt with by me. I’ll have you killed.”
Duterte, who starts his six-year presidential term on 30 June, repeated a plan to offer huge bounties to those who can turn in drug lords, dead or alive.
While it remains to be seen what will happen to his threats when he takes office, some policemen have heeded his call for a tougher anti-crime approach.
In suburban Las Pinas city in the Manila metropolis, police have apprehended more than 100 minors who defied a night curfew, and men who were either having drinking sprees in public or roaming around shirtless in violation of a local ordinance.
The crackdown was dubbed “Oplan Rody” – after Duterte’s nickname – or “Rid the Streets of Drinkers and Youth.” |
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Brendan Rodgers has admitted Liverpool “cannot even entertain talk” of mounting a title challenge again until they recover their poise, with last season’s runners-up having endured a third damaging defeat in their first five games for only the second time since the top flight was revamped as the Premier League
The visitors were overrun by two early goals from a vibrant West Ham United early on at the Boleyn Ground and, once they had gathered some late momentum, were caught on the break by Morgan Amalfitano’s third. The loss was suffered with six senior players – most notably Daniel Sturridge and Glen Johnson – currently injured, but Rodgers admitted his players had fallen below the standards set last term in slipping to a second successive league defeat.
“We were nowhere near the standard,” he said. “Lots of elements of our game have been very good in the last few seasons, but it’s not quite happening for us at the moment. We have a lot of work to do, but that was disappointing. We showed our potential in the Tottenham Hotspur game [won 3-0] when we had key players fit, and showed the quality and intensity of the team. But, even with those guys out, we should still be better than we were today.
Steven Gerrard leads his Liverpool team off the field after the game. Photograph: Michael Zemanek/BPI/REX
“We’ve set a new expectancy at the club and we have to deal with that now. It’s a club people want to beat, but we’re even more so now we’re in the Champions League. It’s something we need to deal with. I’ve always said we’re a work in progress – we probably arrived early last year – and people will look at Chelsea and Manchester City as the two squads set up for the title race, but there are no limits to what we want to achieve at Liverpool.
“We just want to keep moving forward. But we’ve lost three of our last five, so we can’t even entertain talk of that until we get some sort of consistency. We have to get back to what we were doing in the Spurs game.”
Brendan Rodgers watches his side at Upton Park. Photograph: Mike Hewitt/Getty
Rodgers has made no secret of the difficulties in integrating a clutch of new signings – bought with Luis Suárez sold to Barcelona and with the extra demands of the Champions League in mind – with seven new arrivals playing some part here. They are still striving to adjust to new surroundings, though there is little time available for them to find their feet. “We have to deal with the expectation,” said the Liverpool manager, who will welcome Everton to Anfield on Saturday “We can’t run away from it. It wasn’t anywhere near what I’d expect, and that intensity just wasn’t there in our game. So we’ll have to try and get better.” |
The unrest roiling through the Middle East and North Africa has now spread to the tiny nation of Djibouti, where thousands of people have gathered on the streets to demand the immediate resignation of President Ismael Omar Guelleh.
Reportedly, security forces in riot gear kept a close eye on the demonstrators.
Other reports claim that police have opened fire on demonstrators.
“The police are confronting demonstrators,” Mohamed Daoud Chehem, head of the opposition Djibouti Party for Development, told reporters by phone. “They have opened fire.”
Djibouti, which gained independence from France in 1977, is located on the Horn of Africa, surrounded by Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. It also lies across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, where anti-government rallies have raged for days.
In addition, the U.S. has a military base in Djibouti, which is important strategically for its access to the Red Sea. France, which used Djibouti as a base of operations during the Gulf War, has thousands of soldiers stationed there.
Guelleh succeeded his uncle as the country’s boss in 1999. Last year, the constitution was amended to allow Guelleh to run for a third time (he “won” the election in 2005 when he ran unopposed).
Agence France Presse reported that protesters held up placards which read IOG out and No to a third mandate.”
Djibouti will hold its next elections in April, but the current unrest may change that.
The country is largely barren with less than 1-million people. The population comprises two primary ethnic groups: the Issa (of Somali origin) and the Afar (of Ethiopian origin). |
Parliament voted to order the nation’s pension fund to shift holdings out of billions of dollars of stock in companies that rely at least 30 percent on coal.
Norway’s $890 billion government-pension fund, considered the largest sovereign-wealth fund in the world, will sell off many of its investments related to coal, making it the biggest institution to join a growing international movement to abandon at least some fossil-fuel stocks.
Parliament voted Friday to order the fund to shift its holdings out of billions of dollars of stock in companies whose businesses rely at least 30 percent on coal.
The decision — which could seem paradoxical, given that Norway is a major producer of oil and gas — is certain to add momentum to a push to divest fossil-fuel stocks that emerged three years ago on college campuses.
The Church of England said last month that it would drop companies involved with coal or oil sands from its $14 billion investment fund, and the French insurer AXA said it would cut some $560 million in coal-related investments from its portfolio. Members of the Rockefeller family, whose fortune derives from Standard Oil, also pledged last year to remove fossil-fuel investments, beginning with coal, from their philanthropic Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
There is no question that the decision by various funds to sell fossil-fuel stocks has little or no impact on the vast market capitalization of most companies. For that reason, the divestment movement has long been dismissed by many institutions as symbolic.
But divestment decisions from funds like Norway’s are important because they require, as a first step, discussions that once seemed taboo, said Bob Massie, a longtime climate activist.
Many institutions have pushed back against the divestment movement. Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard, has said the university can address climate change through research, education and its own practices, and that dropping fossil-fuel investments is not “warranted or wise.” |
Wearable tech will be big this year, with dozens of gadgets to clip on your clothing, wear on your wrist, strap to your head (or helmet), and even slip on your feet.
Wearable tech was big at CES this year, where we saw dozens of gadgets to clip on to clothing, wear on a wrist, strap to our heads (or helmets), and even slip on your feet. Many of these wearables are evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, but they have the potential to change the way we will interact with and use technology every day.
Smartwatches: Getting elegant & multipurpose
Wellograph
Dozens of companies are getting in on the booming smartwatch trend. Some focused on design and others on fitness.
On the design side, the Pebble watch company, a veteran of the game, has a more elegant version of its already popular Pebble smartwatch, featuring more memory and a new steel case and band. The Wellograph, a combo smartwatch and fitness tracker, also impressed us with its elegant design, simple and easy to read interface, and sapphire crystal display. In the back of the watch is a heart rate sensor and built-in is a 9-axis motion sensor to track your activity throughout the day.
Most of the fitness-focused smartwatches have impressive activity tracking capabilities. Many try to do too many things and end up not doing any of them well, but there are a few smartwatches that get the balance right.
LifeTrak
One such smartwatch is the LifeTrak Zone R415. On the fitness tracking side it counts steps, automatically determining activity (walking, running, etc.) and eliminating non-step activities like driving in a car. It includes heart rate monitoring as well as calorie counting based partly on that data. The Zone will also track your sleep and wake you up when it detects you’re in a light sleep phase so you won’t be groggy.
On the smartwatch side, it alerts for incoming and missed calls, text messages, and email. You can’t take a call or read the full message on the watch. For a combo device that’s main focus is fitness, that bit of functionality feels like enough. All this and it will last a year on the small, replaceable battery inside. The R415 will be available this summer.
Kreyos
Kreyos Meteor also sports a long list of useful features, but manages to make it all work. The smartwatch comes with a speaker and mic built-in for taking calls and for voice commands. You can also control smartphone functions with simple hand gestures. The screen shows full notifications, such as the text of emails and SMS, and for some apps you can respond back from the watch.
As a fitness tracker, the smartwatch counts steps and other activity, though there’s no heart rate monitor. The Meteor can connect to an ANT+ or Bluetooth-enabled heart rate monitor to utilize that information to calculate calories burned. All this plus you don’t have to strap it on as a watch–with accessories you can wear around your neck or clip on to clothing.
Life Tracking: One wearable to rule them all
Another big trend in wearable is lifelogging, which most often involves hooking a camera to you from dawn ’til dusk or when you’re doing something cool, such as base jumping from the world’s tallest building. Capturing every single moment on film doesn’t appeal to everyone, but what about a device that constantly monitors what you’re doing and saying in order to enhance your life and store key data?
That’s the promise of the Kiwi, a clip on device that’s still in development. If the Kiwi does everything it’s supposed to do, it will be one of the most sophisticated trackers available. The Kiwi senses motion, temperature and sound (including your voice) like other devices, but the paired smartphone app doesn’t just collect information The app also interacts with the Kiwi and the wearer. You can wear it anywhere on the body from your collar to your wrist to your shoe, and it’s capable of different functions, collecting different information depending on where you wear it.
If you wear the Kiwi on your arm or wrist during a workout, the Kiwi can track reps for almost any activity from weight lifting to cardio machines. Keep it on your collar or mid-chest while cooking and it can record you speaking a recipe aloud. The Kiwi will calculate the nutritional value of the meal and update your grocery list. Wear it on your wrist to initiate actions, like making a call or turning the temperature up on your connected thermostat, with simple gestures.
You can build all of these interactions via the smartphone app. The interface looks similar to If This Then That (IFTTT.com) and the recipes seem just as easy to set up as they are on IFTTT’s service. The number of actions and trackers are in the dozens, and each can stand alone or be grouped together as part of profiles based on time of day, location, or activity.
Again, if it fulfills its promise, the Kiwi could be the most sophisticated tracker available when it launches this summer.
Kid Wearables: Always keep them in sight
Protecht
Sophisticated tracking devices aren’t just for adults. A number of new clip-ons are designed specifically to help parents keep kids safe.
The Protecht electronic guardian lets caregivers track eight kids or items up to 150 feet away with a master controller. The master unit gets an alert if a child wearing a tag gets too far away, is exposed to extreme temperatures or if someone presses the panic button.
That works for close proximity monitoring but isn’t useful if your child is at school and you’re across town at the office. Trax is a GPS device that parents can track from a smartphone app or the web. You can see where the tracker is on a map at all times and get alerts if your kid exits a pre-set safety boundary, such as the area around their school, day care, or friend’s house. Trax also alerts you if the device gets dropped (or removed) and if it exceeds a certain speed limit.
What’s Next?
Advances in textile-based sensors point toward a future where trackers will be articles of clothing just as often as they are accessories. We’ve already seen the beginning of this in the Sensoria Smart Socks, one of our Best of CES winners. Can a touchscreen sleeve that alerts you to calls and other notifications be far behind?
And why stop at clothes? Google Glasses and other head gear that provide heads-up displays or eye-level images and video seem futuristic now, but a new Google project to create a smart contact lens is already in the works. Its original purpose is to collect blood glucose levels from tears for diabetic patients. We highly doubt that will be the only trick it can do when it’s ready for a wider audience.
Biometrics, images, video, activity data, location, messages, mood—there’s no limit to what you’ll be able to track with your watch or shirt or eyewear or accessories in the next few years.
This article was written by K.T. Bradford and originally appeared on Techlicious.
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DJ Premier: “That was just amazing because it happened in this room. Actually, anything from ‘92 and on, we did it here. It was just amazing watching him work because I was already a fan of him when he did ‘Back to the Grill,’ ‘Halftime,’ ‘It Ain't Hard to Tell,’ and ‘Live at the Barbeque.’ So when I heard him on those records I was like, ‘Yo, I got to do something that’s on the same level.’ So I came in here, and flipped the ill, gutter, Joe Chambers sample (‘Mind Rain’). I can tell you because it’s cleared. [Laughs.] Nas watched me build the beat from scratch. And he wrote the verse in the studio. If you listen to ‘N.Y. State of Mind’ you’ll hear him going, ‘I don’t know how to start this shit,’ because he literally just wrote it. Before he started the verse, I was signaling him going, ‘One, two, three,’ and he just goes in like, ‘Rappers I monkey flip’em, in the funky rhythm." He did that in one take. After he did that first verse, he goes, ‘How was that? Did that sound all right?’ And we were just like, ‘Oh, my God! The streets are going to go crazy when they hear this!’
“It was one take, but he would format it before. He’ll sit at the front, cover his mouth when the beat’s playing, and would mumble it. So we can’t hear what he’s saying. He was real quiet, but he would bring his whole army. Rest in peace to Drawz, by the way. He just died not too long ago. I remember [Nas] bringing Slate, Wallet Head, basically, all the people he was shouting out. They would be like, ‘Can we go in [the booth] too?’ They just wanted to feel it, you know? It was just funny to watch them all in the booth doing ‘Represent,’ and yelling in the background.” |
Who knows what evil lurks in corporations outside the IT department? Only the shadow knows.
The term “shadow IT” is gaining in popularity, but the concept is not new. It refers to hardware and software used by company departments, outside of the hardware and software controlled by the company IT team. Whether departments do this because they don’t want IT to know what they’re up to, or because they find IT controls too arduous, shadow IT is becoming pervasive.
According to a recent study by Frost & Sullivan, “The Hidden Truth Behind Shadow IT,” 80 percent of employees surveyed admitted that they used unapproved software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications in their jobs. And not just one or two, either. “The average company utilizes around 20 SaaS applications; of these, more than 7 are non-approved,” the study says. “That means you can expect that upwards of 35 percent of all SaaS apps in your company are purchased and used without oversight.”
To a certain extent, this is all tying into the whole CMO/CIO debate we’ve been following for a while, where marketing organizations set up their own parallel IT structure because they complain that IT is not as responsive as they’d like.
So what’s wrong with shadow IT, anyway? Isn’t it just a way to get around those overly paranoid control freaks in IT? In a word, no. Here are some of the problems with shadow IT:
It duplicates efforts: Organizations with multiple IT structures are likely buying hardware and software they don’t need, whether it’s two half-used servers where one would do, or two licenses for software instead of one larger one that’s more economical. It also means that IT doesn’t have a clear view of the hardware and software needs of the organization, making it more difficult to plan future purchases. Not to mention, how much time does it take away from the non-techies’ work to set all this stuff up? Moreover, unauthorized software could put the company at risk for an audit, writes ComputerWeekly.
It makes it harder for corporate IT to evolve: If individual departments are buying the new hardware and software instead of the IT department, it means that IT as a whole can’t evolve, and the other departments don’t get to share the value of the newer technology.
That said, if harnessed properly, shadow IT can end up being used as a “skunk works” for corporate IT. The Frost & Sullivan study equates the shadow IT (which it limited to employees using “software as a service” applications) issue to that of “bring your own device” policies and how they were spawned by the number of people bringing their own smartphones and tablets to the office. (And, going back even further, the PC itself was often brought into companies on a departmental level.) A similar revolution could be in store for applications, the company writes. In fact, Gartner Inc. is suggesting that organizations look at shadow IT as an opportunity to test out new technology.
It makes security more difficult: Typically, we’d like to think, the people in IT are the experts. They’re the ones who know about security issues, how to protect systems, how to apply patches, and so on. If there are additional systems in the company that these IT people don’t know about, then the systems may be more vulnerable to hacking and other issues, putting company data at risk.
It makes information governance more difficult: If people are, for example, clandestinely copying company files to a cloud service so they’ll have access to them outside work—bypassing the corporate VPN, let’s say, because they find the performance unacceptable—this creates vulnerabilities and versioning problems. If you end up with multiple copies of the database, how do you know which is the right one? If you have a system for deleting all company files after a certain period of time, but it turns out there’s extra copies on a cloud somewhere, it could put the company at risk during a legal situation.
Maybe It Is Your Fault After All
On the other hand, sometimes shadow IT is just a matter of those overly paranoid control freaks in IT. An IT organization that sees too many people setting up shadow IT might want to take a look at its own procedures to see how they could be simplified, rather than just becoming known as the Department of No.
It tells you something that, according to the Frost & Sullivan study, IT staff are more likely than non-IT staff to use unapproved applications—a case of “Don’t do what I do, do what I say.” But an organization where even the IT staff doesn’t follow the rules doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on when expecting non-IT employees to follow the rules.
The one thing you can’t do? Expect shadow IT to go away just on your say-so. Instead, monitor your networks so you have a better idea of what sort of shadow IT use is going on, writes CIO. And, like parenting teenagers, pick your battles, focusing on the shadow IT uses that most put the company at risk, such as personal cloud services.
In the meantime, remember: “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay… The Shadow knows!” |
A music critic once argued that Vladimir Putin-inspired songs are the worst thing Russia’s president has done to Russia. As a matter of fact, Putin songs could be regarded as an entire genre of music in their own right. From belligerent war tunes to maudlin love ballads to lavishly produced videos to amateur clips on YouTube, music of all permutations has been created to heap praise to the butch power of the Kremlin leader.
Some Putin song warblers are motivated by political or financial incentives, others by sincere passion for the president.
Here is a selection of your correspondent’s seven favorite Putin songs. A point of order: by no means is the list comprehensive and it omits some classics, such as electronic disco hit A Man Like Putin.
7. When We Are Together, Masha Rasputina
You’re browser does not support HTML5 video. You may download this video instead. Rasputina performs her hit at a concert in 2015.
All the power and pain of the Russian state is packed in this jingoistic tour de force performed by Masha Rasputina, a pop diva better known for her raunchy, erotic oeuvre. Famous songwriters Ilya Reznik and Kay Metov wrote this one in the best traditions of World War II-era Russian crowd rousers. Rasputina, brimming with patriotism and collagen, strikes a feisty pose on stage and belts out in her husky voice: “In this historic moment of worries, hopes and trials, our friend/president, please accept the gratitude of the nation.” Russia’s tricolor flags wave across giant screens behind her. Putin appears signing decrees, dispensing awards, stealing a peninsula from Ukraine, hanging out with senior citizens and hockey players. Rasputina goes on to proclaim that God sent Putin to Russia to help reclaim its destiny as a great nation. A choir of children, mostly girls in bleach-white dresses and bows, kicks in at the chorus: “Russia is praying for you and you pray for Russia.”
6. My Best Friend, Sasha Chest ft. Timati
You’re browser does not support HTML5 video. You may download this video instead. Since it premiered in October 2015, the music video was viewed more than 11 million times on Youtube.
Putin is a total bro, according to Sasha Chest and Timati. In this sleek video, the pair of hip-hop artists take a smooth, groovy beat to Red Square to profess their respect for the president. “My best friend is President Putin,” Timati chants rhythmically in a sonorous, doubled-tracked vocal. Through flashes, Putin’s graffiti portrait menacingly appears on a black wall. Sasha goes on to spell out the many feats of his homeboy Putin, as a fast medley of images shows skateboarders, cyclists, water scooter riders and a DJ all wearing Putin masks. “He is a cool superhero and you know it… girls go crazy about him.” The party hits the roof in a club. Babes shake in slo-mo. The performers take a moment to do a little patriotic product placement: “Russian make is back in demand: Lada sedan, salute Avtovaz!”
The song does get you in a dance mood, but there something particularly off about rap, a genre largely devoted to dissing the system, being used to glorify a national leader that Sasha calls “the White Lord.”
5. Come on Girls, Let’s Help Putin!, Yuliya Vinokurova
You’re browser does not support HTML5 video. You may download this video instead. At one point the music video compares images of a shirtless Putin and Obama.
Everyone out there spoiling for a fight with Putin will have to go through Yuliya Vinokurova, an obscure singer from Samara. In 2015 she produced a folksy, ebullient march calling for Russian women — fellow “babas” as she puts it — to rise-up for Putin.
She holds a vigil with her arms akimbo, snapping her fingers at Putin’s ill-wishers out there in the West. “Enemies are ganging up on Russia again. Once more, they have surrounded the homeland,” Vinokurova goes in her zesty, piercing voice. “Come on babas, let’s help Putin or else Obama will peck him to death,” she sings as both presidents are shown with or without their shirts on in the YouTube video.
But don’t turn away. Stick with the song, it gets better:
“Countries of NATO are marching on us. They want to disturb our peace. Their babas have no breasts and have beards, while our babas have, oh, what great breasts.”
This last bit is refrained twice. Then, after a key change, she continues: “Come on babas, let’s give the enemy some whooping our baba-way. Come on babas, let’s help Putin. He is the one muzhik [real man] left in all of the world.”
4. Song about Putin, Alexey Smirnov ft. Putin
You’re browser does not support HTML5 video. You may download this video instead. “A great song about Putin for a simple nation,” reads the caption below Smirnov’s video on Youtube.
In this DYI-Putin song, a certain Alexey Smirnov is pretty much jamming in duo with his favorite president. Smirnov, a concerned citizen apparently, could not take any more Putin-bashing and recorded a homemade response to remind an ungrateful nation of the great things Putin has done for Russia.
The president’s words are taken from public statements and inserted in the parts of the song where they fit musically and thematically. “Many are not content with our country, with the constitution, lives, jobs, fate. ‘Change the laws,’ they go brandishing posters,” Smirnov sings. Putin appears responding: “You need to change your brains.” And so the president and the citizen go offering rhyme and reason together:
Smirnov: “Of course it is easier to blame the state for everything. We don’t want to work, we rather pour some vodka,” which is poison.
Putin: “And you have got to know that.”
Smirnov: “Why accomplish anything yourself? Let the state provide us with everything.
Putin: “You are angry and that means you are wrong.”
Smirnov: “They say we chose a wrong path.”
Putin: “I disagree.”
The video is punctuated by a montage of footage showing Russia’s military and industrial might. It ends with Putin saying, “thank you for your attention.”
3. Attaboy, Vladimir Putin!, Oleg Likhachev
You’re browser does not support HTML5 video. You may download this video instead. Ordinary Russians young and old appear throughout Likhachev’s Youtube music video, reminding viewers that Putin is a fine fellow.
The 80s are alive and well in these four minutes of syncopated bootlicking for the Russian leader. This and many of his other pro-Kremlin music videos have failed, somehow, to deliver the bush-league singer and actor Oleg Likhachev to the stardom that he aspires, but he sure keeps trying.
The video opens with Putin making his inaugural walk through clapping crowds and grand halls of the Kremlin on his way to his latest, third term as president. After a synthesizer pop-style intro, the video takes you down memory lane, rehashing Russia’s recent history. After mentioning how the USSR crumbled around Russia and a “bloodthirsty bird” flew into the country (a star-spangled American eagle appears for those slow on the pick up) amid economic turmoil, Likhachev gets on with his cheery, feel-good refrain. “Vladimir Putin is a fine fellow — a politician, leader and fighter. Our president has put the county on its feet.”
2. VVP (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin), Tolinjon Kurbanhanov.
You’re browser does not support HTML5 video. You may download this video instead. VVP reached over a million and a half views on Youtube alone.
An ode to Putin by a man from Tajikistan is the biggest non-sequitur of the genre. This internet video sensation was found to be so bizarrely bad that Kremlin critics have called it the best anti-Putin video ever. But Tolinjon Kurbanhanov was serious about his unsolicited attempt in 2012 to help get Putin re-elected, where he gushes about his idol in accented Russian: “The country was in crisis, people were suffering and then God sent him to us. Did you notice how he happened to come to power in the beginning of a century and a millennium?”
Kurbanhanov’s phlegmatic expression hardly changes as he elaborates in tedious detail about the Russian economy. The chorus:
VVP saved the nation
VVP is protecting
VVP lifted up Russia and is developing it more and more.
One of many unfortunate things about the video is that it exposed Tajiks — often targets of intolerance and derision in Russia — to even more mockery. But this was just a beginning for Kurbanhanov. He has since made two more Putin music videos.
1. My Putin, Mashany
You’re browser does not support HTML5 video. You may download this video instead. Mashany leafs through a scrapbook of Putin portraits in her viral music video.
Here, we have a love song that in 2015 pretty much broke the Russian internet. Mariya Osintseva, a Siberian woman who goes by the name Mashany, sings an ecstatic valentine for the Russian leader. Many viewers watched the fiercely tacky production in disbelief as the young performer, variably dressed in the colors of the Russian or Ukrainian flags, declared her love for Putin and relished in his annexation of Crimea. “I’m smitten, I am under your spell, can’t get you out of my head,” Mashany warbles as she traipses through a sun-drenched field. She then appears to portray Ukraine locked in a dungeon, waiting for its saviour. “Who that might be?” a voice asks and she bursts into the refrain:
You are Putin, you are so Putin.
I want to be with you. I’m screaming after you.
Putin, my dear Putin.
Take me away with you, I want to be with you.
Internet users on either side of the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation roasted Mashany but she could not be stopped and has since dropped more musical bombs online. She even offered fiscal advice to Putin in her Dollar-Ruble song to help curb depreciation of Russian currency. “After discussing this with colleagues we came up with a proposal about [pegging the exchange rate at] one dollar for one ruble,” She sings in front of approving hay stacks. The rest of the song is an enthusiastic gibberish evincing little regard for rhyme, grammar and sound monetary policy. No mention of Crimea this time, but she does remind Putin that reclaiming Alaska from the United States is long overdue. |
A proposed city law about driveways turned into a full-throated debate on abortion Monday night at Spokane City Hall.
As 62 people spoke about an ordinance that added 11 words to the city’s rule books, Spokane City Council members generally listened quietly over the two and a half hours of testimony.
Very few people focused on the section of the city’s municipal code, which makes it illegal to block traffic on public roads. The new section debated at the meeting added: “or in a driveway located in the public right-of-way.”
Instead, abortion foes and advocates of abortion rights tried to persuade the council to vote according to their own, very different beliefs.
It’s the third City Council meeting in a row that drew large crowds on controversial issues. Before the council took a break for the holidays, Council President Ben Stuckart’s proposal to create an apprenticeship program on large city projects was met with almost 200 people. Most of those who testified that night sided with Stuckart.
Last week, a rowdy crowd almost derailed the meeting as it protested the council’s vote backing the Spokane Police Department policy to not ask people about their immigration status.
On Monday night, 250 people jammed into the council chambers and in the adjoining Chase Gallery to get a chance at the lectern.
Anti-abortion activists said they were respectful when protesting outside of Planned Parenthood, which became the focus of debate. Most said they were polite to people entering the clinic, and only spoke when someone seemed ready to listen.
One man, however, said he had been “proclaiming Scripture at premeditated infanticide for 14 years.”
On the other side, abortion rights advocates accused protesters of dressing like clinic employees and tricking people to roll their windows down, when they’d get a prayer, denunciation or sermon.
At the end less than half of those who spoke supported the ordinance. The council voted 6-1 to add the new section.
Councilman Jon Snyder said the night’s testimony was “making it more complicated than it needs to be.”
He said he supported “a woman’s right to choose,” but argued that this ordinance simply barred people from blocking a business driveway, regardless of the business.
“Why is this business any different?” Snyder asked about Planned Parenthood. “It isn’t. It isn’t.”
Councilman Mike Fagan was the sole member to vote against it, but not before giving an impassioned, 15-minute plea to his colleagues to strike the proposal down.
Fagan argued that the law was unconstitutional and violated free speech rights, but it had personal implications as well.
“I am pro-life,” he said, noting that when he was a teen, he and his girlfriend terminated a pregnancy. “I am Christian.”
Councilwoman Karen Stratton said she was raised Catholic and had been schooled by the religion for 12 years. She said she learned to be “courteous, respectful of others and to speak my mind.”
“I’m all about the protest,” Stratton said. “Just don’t do it in a driveway.” |
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This week again, Nintendo published a blog post about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the official blog of the Legend of Zelda portal in Japan. This time, the post was written by Mitsuhiro Hikino, who was in charge of Sound Design.
If you’ve played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you’ve probably noticed that the sound effects are quite simply marvelous. That’s one aspect the development team put a lot effort into, so that players could really immerse themselves in the world of Hyrule. This new blog post explains how some of the sound effects were created, more specifically those for Link’s footsteps and equipment clanking.
The development team worked with Sound Racer, a studio specialised in sound effects (who also worked on Xenoblade Chronicles X). In total, they recorded more than 10 000 different sounds for the game.
The first picture shows the recording of sound effects for footsteps on the ice, while the second one shows the school bag they used to simulate the sound of rubbing leather.
For the sound of “normal” footsteps, they mixed various kinds of sands. As for the sounds effects of equipment, they had to search for various materials and find ways to use them. It looks like creating sound effects requires one to be quite the creative type!
Of course, the recording process wasn’t withot issues. Take the block of ice from the picture above: it always ended up melting, or getting cracks when the staff had to walk on it during recording. And you can probably imagine the stinky smell of grass they had to step on…
Mitsuhiro Hikino also points out that Link’s footsteps were made by a woman (first picture).
In-game, depending on Link’s actions and the equipment he’s using/wearing, the recorded sounds can be separated pretty finely, and volume is changed as needed to make a particular sound stand out.
Next, Mitsuhiro Hikino shares an example, with footsteps. You may not be aware of that while playing, but if you go listen to the sound samples on the blog, you can definitely picture grassland and a snowy field with just the sound effects.
And that’s how sound effects with various subtleties are created. As you can imagine, those sound effects will not sound the same if you hear them through the speakers of your TV than if you’re using headphones.
Previous blog posts:
Source: Nintendo |
From VASSAL
Publisher Fantasy Flight Games Era Fantasy Year 2012 Topic Science Fiction Players 1-6 Scale Miniatures Length varies
Files and Module Information
Filename Filetype Size Date Compatibility Developer Other Contributors 8.4.1 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-8.4.1.vmod module 61.58 MB 3.2.17 8.4.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-8.4.0.vmod module 61.57 MB 3.2.17 8.3.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-8.3.0.vmod module 61.51 MB 3.2.17 8.2.5 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-8.2.5.vmod module 57.9 MB 3.2.17 8.2.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-8.2.0.vmod module 47.97 MB 3.2.17 8.1.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-8.1.0.vmod module 75.88 MB 3.2.17 8.0.9 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-8.0.9.vmod module 75.77 MB 3.2.17 8.0.8 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-8.0.8.vmod module 75.68 MB 3.2.17 8.0.5 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-8.0.5.vmod module 88.13 MB 3.2.17 8.0.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-8.0.0.vmod module 87.19 MB 3.2.17 7.7.1 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.7.1.vmod module 67.93 MB 3.2.17 7.7.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.7.0.vmod module 81.64 MB 3.2.17 7.5.2 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.5.2.vmod module 65.41 MB 3.2.17 7.5.1 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.5.1.vmod module 72.14 MB 3.2.17 7.5.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.5.0.vmod module 65.4 MB 3.2.17 7.4.3 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.4.3.vmod module 63.79 MB 3.2.17 7.4.1 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.4.1.vmod module 62.13 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 7.1.2 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.1.2.vmod module 75.62 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 7.1.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.1.0.vmod module 75.34 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 7.0.8 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.0.8.vmod module 74.65 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 7.0.7 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.0.7.vmod module 73.72 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 7.0.5 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.0.5.vmod module 73.23 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 7.0.3 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.0.3.vmod module 72.4 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 7.0.1 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-7.0.1.vmod module 71.96 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 6.5.3 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.5.3.vmod module 71.59 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 6.5.2 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.5.2.vmod module 71.56 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 6.5.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.5.0.vmod module 71.34 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 6.4.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.4.0.vmod module 71.33 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.17 6.3.2 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.3.2.vmod module 67.89 MB 3.2.17 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.16 6.3.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.3.0.vmod module 64.33 MB 3.2.16 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.16 6.2.6 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.2.6.vmod module 64.03 MB 3.2.16 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.16 Imperial_Ships_Update_6-2-6.zip vlog 573 KB 3.2.16 Rebel_Ships_Update_6-2-6.zip vlog 573 KB 3.2.16 6.2.4 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.2.4.vmod module 62.4 MB 3.2.16 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.16 Scum_and_Villiany_Ships_Update_6-2-4.zip vlog 532 KB 3.2.16 6.2.3 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.2.3.vmod module 62.08 MB 3.2.16 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.16 6.2.2 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.2.2.vmod module 61.43 MB 3.2.16 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.16 Scum_and_Villainy_Ships_Update_6-2-2.zip vlog 1.06 MB 3.2.16 Imperial_Ships_Correction.zip vlog 872 KB 3.2.16 6.2.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.2.0.vmod module 60.55 MB 3.2.16 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.16 Rebel_Ships_Update_6-2-0.zip vlog 2.23 MB 3.2.16 Scum_and_Villainy_Update_6-2-0.zip vlog 567 KB 3.2.16 HotAC_Vassal_2.1.vmdx Heroes of the Aturi Cluster campaign 23.59 MB 3.2.16 6.1.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.1.0.vmod module 59.64 MB 3.2.16 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.16 Imperial_Ships_Update_6-1-0.zip vlog 511 KB 3.2.16 Rebel_Ships_Update_6-1-0.zip vlog 3.7 MB 3.2.16 Scum_and_Villainy_Ships_Update_6-1-0.zip vlog 6.14 MB 3.2.16 HotAC_Vassal_v2.vmdx Heroes of the Aturi Cluster campaign 23.34 MB 3.2.16 6.0.2 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.0.2.vmod module 49.42 MB 3.2.16 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.16 Rebel_Ships_6-0-0.zip vlog 9.07 MB 3.2.16 Scum_And_Villiany_6-0-0.zip vlog 6.36 MB 3.2.16 6.0.0 Star_Wars_X-Wing_Miniatures_Game-6.0.0.vmod module 49 MB 3.2.16 Universal_Map_Pack_1.0.vmdx MapExtension 16.22 MB 3.2.16 Starting_Layout_6-0-0.vlog vlog 110 KB 3.2.16 Imperial_Ships_6-0-0.zip vlog 10.13 MB 3.2.16 Rebel_Ships_6-0-0.zip vlog 9.07 MB 3.2.16 Scum_And_Villiany_6-0-0.zip vlog 6.36 MB 3.2.16
For Older files and version history see the modules' archives here
If you want some help getting started with the module, go here
If you're looking for the critical damage card text and effect (standard and huge ships), go here
IMPORTANT v8.0.0 and future versions can't play with prior versions because of a totally revamped filename system.
IMPORTANT - since v5.0.0, only the main module file is needed to play. In addition, you may get the map pack (Universal map pack v1.0) if you are tired of seeing black backgrounds and the basic 3x3 starfield map. Getting the single ship module extensions (e.g. X-Wing, TIE Interceptor, etc.) is NO LONGER NECESSARY. Also optional, the faction files that lets you get logfiles of ships set up with stats, cards and dials, 1 ship type per logfile.
Version 8.4.1
Escrow Squad feature showstopping bug fixed
Squad Points upon spawning
Version 8.4.0
Escrow Squad feature
New mouse interface. ctrl-left click on a ship while it's on the map to activate AND interact with the buttons. This is only a very rough, very early demo
Version 8.3.0
Brand New Dial (2.0 style)
Reveal+automove
Version 8.2.5
Massive optimization of the launching process with the content self-check
Autospawn squads with URLs again
Say 'set' button in player windows
Tons of fixes
Version 8.2.0
The Full 2nd edition is now playable with this module
Backward compatibility with 1st edition is fully maintained as well
The 1st edition art assets were stripped out to save space. To get them back, go to the Content Checker and download it all back
Version 8.1.0
2 new playable 2.0 lists (autospawned) from some Worlds 2018 demo games, featuring Vader + 3x Black Ace and Boba Fett + Joy Rekkoff + Zealous Recruit
Version 8.0.9
Autospawn bug fixed - you can now give it a squad URL again
Version 8.0.8
Playable 2.0 lists (autospawned) from the team covenant demo game, featuring Captain Feroph + 3x Black Ace + Maarek vs Edrio + Benthic + Jek + Gray Sq Bomber
Tallon Roll 1 uses a new shortcut to avoid a conflict with +1 hull
More work continued on the 2.0 elements
Version 8.0.5
Autospawn bug fixes (dual cards possible again; U-Wings can flip again; stats alteration due to cards again; ordnance + illicit tokens again, etc.)
S-Foils work the same way (ALT-U) and alters the gfx of the x-wing a bit
Content Checker is now the only way to get new content and flashes red when stuff is available
Some work started on the 2.0 elements
Version 8.0.0
New automated update system; no need to download a new module every time a few cards or ships come out (unless there's a brand new mechanism or new tokens)
Barrel roll and decloak templates now appear for all players and observers if spawned in open space, instead of just the initiator.
Version 7.7.1
Sheathipede-class now shows correctly rotated ship action (shift-a, etc.)
Many ships which can have the forward launch ability can now launch these bombs with the CTRL-SHIFT-B frontal bomb spawner
Chopper astromech is now correctly counted as 1 squad point during autospawn
Some issues with illicit and extra munitions token in the same list during autospawn is now resolved
TIE Silencer maneuver ref card now shows bank 3 as green instead of white.
Version 7.7.0
M12-L Kimogila Fighter (wave 12) is now fully playable
Sheathipede-class Shuttle (wave 12) is now fully playable
TIE Silencer (wave 13) is now fully playable
B/SF-17 Resistance Bomber (wave 13) is now fully playable
Autorange is now possible for all types of arcs, adding front aux arc, mobile turret arc and bullseye arc + bug fixes for older autoranges
Autorange toggled on will now be visible to all players and observers
Bombs can now use the Forward 5 maneuver template for Bomb Launching
Cargo Debris will now be involved correctly in an overlap event even if it's rotated
Version 7.5.2
The Lancer-class Pursuit Craft arc graphics will now rotate with the ship's orientation
Version 7.5.1
Barrel rolling into empty space no longer only works for the player performing the roll
Alpha-class Star Wing now has side action icons
Lancer-Class now has better options for firing arc toggling
Version 7.5.0
Alpha-class Star Wing (wave 12) is now fully playable
In-Arc (front and back) autorange finder is now available, toggled with CTRL-SHIFT-F and CTRL-SHIFT-V respectively
Illicit, Extra Munitions tokens spawn on their respected cards during autospawn.
Nastah Pup can autospawn with the right pilot skill if Hound's Tooth title is equipped
Lancer-Class Pursuit Craft has a simpler arc toggle graphic shortcut (CTRL-F used for all 4 directions)
Overlap events now display the red flash for both players
Version 7.4.3
Cards from wave 12 and 13 preview articles
Bomb Spawner now deletes for every player when used to deploy bombs, not just for the owner
Deathrain style front bombing now has all the same options regular bombing has
3 new maps from the vassal league s5 sponsors
Version 7.4.1
Templates and ships can self-detect an overlap with obstacles/ships with 'c' for templates and 'alt-c' for ships
Repositioning with barrel rolls and decloaks, as well as weird versions of these (with banks or fwd 2) can self detect an obstacle
Bomb spawner once more completed with hard turn 1 and bomblet token
Autorange finder with CTRl-SHIFT-L with turrets or target locks, with obstruction detection
Version 7.1.2
New StarViper pilots, illicit and condition cards
TIE Aggressor can have side actions, dial no longer has fwd 5
Anti-cheat dial message is now less trigger happy
Version 7.1.0
TIE Aggressor fully playable, wave XI complete
TIE Aggressor can now Tallon Roll
Anti-cheat measures makes this update mandatory
Version 7.0.8
Scurrg H-6 Bomber fully playable
A few more tokens appear with autospawn with certain cards (ie ps12)
Version 7.0.7
Auzituck Gunship fully playable
Bug affecting 7.0.5 ships moving in a map with pre-7.0.5 obstacles is now fixed
Version 7.0.5
C-Roc cruiser is now fully playable
Bug affecting certain ships who no longer triggered the overlap (like they did in 7.0.1 but no longer could in 7.0.3) event has been fixed
Flipped obstacles (CTRL-S) now work with overlaps
Version 7.0.3
Cards from TIE Aggressor and Guns for Hire previews
Popup informing you of new version to download, with clickable link
No more reports of ship movement/overlap in your player hand
Lorrir + StarViper Mk.II style barrel roll now work for StarVipers, changed shortcuts (see "How To & Shortcut" in the module under Weird Ships #1, or right click on the ship)
Version 7.0.1
Overlap detection: ship on ship, ship on obstacle/mines, ship fleeing the map, template on obstacles/mines
Cards from wave 11 and Jabba previews
Maneuvers redone in java - must update
News about tournaments/leagues upon logging
Version 6.5.3
AutoSpawn bug fix for 6 cards from "Hit and Run" preview article
U-Wings now spawn with a focus token
Version 6.5.2
AutoSpawn moved to player window, restricts usage to player # owning the window
AutoSpawn layout changed to regroup ships up top
6 new cards added from Hit and Run preview article (scyk pilots, etc)
AutoBump bugs fixed: straights no longer leave gaps, range rulers no longer crash it
Dual cards spawned with autospawn now warn user of decision to make
Version 6.5.0
Autobumping with the 'c' shortcut
Autospawn improved
Sabine's TIE Fighter can drop bombs
Version 6.4.0
Squad AutoSpawn from web
TIE Striker can now segnor's loop
Modified OpenDial graphics for TIE Advanced and TIE/fo fighter (missing 5 forward move)
Version 6.3.2
Upsilon shuttle is now playable
All cards up to C-ROC announcement are now added, Wave 10 100% in
Sabine's TIE Fighter can now drop bombs
Graphic helpers to let you use or anticipate BoShek crew's effect
Version 6.3.0
U-Wing and TIE Striker now 100% complete and bug free
4 dials were changed (for BoShek functionality): Aggressor, JumpMaster5000, StarViper and Quadjumper. Please respawn
Custom S&V pilot card, custom upgrade card and Full Dial revised under Pieces/Missions
Version 6.2.6
U-Wing now playable
TIE Striker now playable
Revised helper graphics in "How To & Shortcuts"
Version 6.2.4
Draw a specific card is done via the Observer player window instead. Bring your cards to it and select-draw a card there.
Basic maneuever helper reference image has been updated with the newer moves
Version 6.2.3
Quadjumper is now playable
New added cards from the Fly Backward article
Heroes of the Resistance cards (last 3) are now fully added
Ability to draw a specific card from the main damage deck
Version 6.2.2
New added cards from the Suppressive Fire and Fanatical Devotion articles
YV-666 aux arc (CTRL-N) has been slightly fixed
Version 6.2.0
Heroes of the Resistance is now fully in
New added dice results are complete, can be set to other faces manually, can be rerolled
Shadow Caster has a cyan hue instead of red for its mobile turret, also has visible right click shortcut for orientation changes
Version 6.1.0
Protectorate Starfighter is now playable
Lancer-Class Pursuit Craft is now playable
ARC-170 is now playable
Cards from first wave 10 preview
Special Forces TIE Fighter can now do a segnor's loop (bug fix)
Version 6.0.2
Special Forces TIE Fighter is now playable
Cards from wave SF T/F preview
Huge ships no longer have crippling lag as time progresses
CR90 and Raider even have an ultra fast no-stats versions for their ship tokens
Version 6.0.0
Complete overhaul of ship (small, large) arcs
Cards from wave 9 preview and ARC-170 preview
Screen Shots
Players
AidenDouglass
hendersondayton
littlebull76
Parakitor
KickinAces
TrevorGoodchild
18thAngel
Azrael909
Tortello
Pieter |
The FA have charged Arsene Wenger with misconduct after he clashed with fourth official Anthony Taylor during stoppage time of Arsenal’s 2-1 win over Burnley on Saturday.
The Frenchman, already seething about the red card shown to Granit Xhaka on 65 minutes, went apoplectic on the touchline when referee Jon Moss awarded the visitors a 94th-minute penalty. As Andre Gray celebrated his equaliser from the spot, Wenger was ushered down the tunnel at which point he appeared to push Taylor.
The boss had to make do with watching the dying seconds of the match from the bowels of the Emirates as Alexis Sanchez snatched a win in the eighth minute of stoppage with a penalty of his own.
The boss apologised for his behaviour in his post-match comments, however, despite being contrite it’s not a surprise that he’s facing the potential of both a touchline ban and a hefty fine.
A statement from the FA reads:
“Arsene Wenger has been charged for misconduct following Arsenal’s game against Burnley on Sunday [22 January 2017].
“It is alleged that in or around the 92nd minute, he used abusive and/or insulting words towards the fourth official. It is further alleged that following his dismissal from the technical area, his behaviour in remaining in the tunnel area and making physical contact with the fourth official amounted to improper conduct.
“He has until 6pm on 26 January 2017 to respond to the charge.” |
A fear and misunderstanding of how to date online is keeping Japanese singles from connecting. Flickr/takasuii For a country that excels in technology, Japan hasn't mastered "swiping right."
In the face of a serious population decline, the country hasn't got a clue when it comes to online dating.
According to a 2012 report by Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, the number of Japanese people will fall from 127 million to around 87 million by 2060.
To add to that, a 2014 survey by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 49% of all respondents had not had sex in the past month, and 18% of men said they had no interest in sex at all. "The Japanese are legitimately worried about running out of Japanese people," comedian Aziz Ansari writes in his new book, "Modern Romance," co-authored by sociologist Eric Klinenberg.
Ansari notes that Japanese culture and the fear of being perceived as "charai" (or "a sleazy player") may explain why online dating hasn't exploded in Japan.
He also cites a problem with profile photos: "In Japan, posting any pictures of yourself, especially selfie-style photos, comes off as really douchey."
"The Japanese feel like [selfies are] so narcissistic," a 29-year-old Japanese woman named Kana told the comedian-turned-author. So instead, they use photos with two or more people, or no people at all. Kana mentioned that a lot of people just post photos of their cats, or, oddly, a rice cooker.
According to one Japanese woman, it's not uncommon to see a photo of a rice cooker on someone's online dating profile. Flickr/micropig
But peculiar profile pictures aren't the only reason online dating is floundering in Japan.
As a recent Fast Company article points out, many Japanese still view online dating as a scam. That perception dates back to the '90s, when pseudo dating sites required men to pay per message and had their employees pose as female subscribers.
And in present day, scam sites prevail. This past June, The Daily Mail reported that eight executives were arrested in Japan after allegedly fake dating sites they created in 2004 were exposed. As in the '90s, the executives allegedly paid their male employees to act as women and required subscribers to pay money to talk to the "girls."
Out of the 2.7 million members on the site, only one was female, and the sites generated over £34 million (approximately $53 million), The Daily Mail reported.
From the '90s to today, the stigma toward online dating lingers.
Almost 50% of participants in a 2014 survey by the Japan Family Planning Association said they hadn't had sex in the past month. Flickr/jamesjustin
One bright spot for online dating in Japan is the rise of social media.
In the aftermath of 2011's Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, LinkedIn's then-managing director, Arvind Rajan, told Bloomberg that social sites like Facebook assisted parents and children to post and look up personal information about missing persons. Over the next year, Facebook users increased from 6 million in 2011 to 13.5 million by February 2012.
Many dating apps now require a Facebook login, which helps reassure users that the person they're speaking with is real. But even if more people are using online dating in Japan, they'll need to do better than a group photo or a picture of their cat to find love. |
The more I watch the attempted UFC 159 promo spot that aired during this past Saturday’s TUF 17 Finale event, the more uncomfortable it gets.
There’s UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, looking like it physically hurts him to stand still for the two minutes it takes to talk his upcoming fight. There’s Chael Sonnen, reciting the prepared material you couldn’t help but picture him practicing in the hotel bathroom mirror earlier that day. Between them is UFC play-by-play man Jon Anik, who might have had an easier time trying to interview a couple of Buicks.
And this, at least theoretically, was supposed to convince fans that a title fight months in the making – a title fight clearly chosen for its marketability and convenience rather than its logical mandate – will be worth the pay-per-view price tag on April 27. As Jones bolted from the interview while Sonnen stuck around as if expecting Anik to ask him to run down this week’s five-day forecast, you couldn’t feel the heat so much as the painful awkwardness of it all.
Speaking to John Morgan of MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) at Monday’s tryouts for “The Ultimate Fighter 18,” UFC President Dana White tried to refocus the hype by putting some words in the champ’s mouth.
“Chael and Jon Jones didn’t really talk too much smack during the season,” White said. “Now that it’s off, Jon Jones said to me the other night, ‘I’ve never actually wanted to hurt another guy that I’ve fought. I want to hurt Chael Sonnen.’ So even though they didn’t talk trash during the season, Jon Jones does not like Chael Sonnen at all.”
This rhetoric ought to be familiar to anyone who recalls that time when Georges St-Pierre totally told White that he wanted to put the worst beating we’d ever seen on Nick Diaz, as well as the time Anthony Pettis totally texted White to plead for a fight with featherweight champ Jose Aldo. Either the UFC president is not the man you want to secretly gossip about coworkers with, or else he has no problem filling in the gaps when his fighters aren’t pulling their weight in the hype department. As a fight promoter, that kind of thing is in his job description, if not his DNA.
We know that Sonnen understands how that game is played. If anything, he’s a little too eager to demonstrate just how completely he gets it, which makes him seem like a parody of himself at times. You watch that clip of him stylin’ and profilin’ next to Anik and Jones, and you start to feel like he could seamlessly transition into selling you a used car and a ticket to his traveling circus, all in the very next breath.
Jones doesn’t do that. Maybe that’s because, as the world’s greatest light heavyweight and one of the sport’s pound-for-pound best, he doesn’t have to. And, whether he’s doing it intentionally or not, his refusal to play along sort of makes Sonnen’s schtick seem even more ridiculous in contrast.
Jones is the champion, and the champion doesn’t have to hype fights to maintain relevancy. All he has to do is stay the champ. Now the UFC wants him to fight the guy whose whole thing is hype and headlines? Fine. Let him talk. Let him fulfill the duties of his office. Then when it’s time to fight, the champion can do what he does well, which is beat up professional fighters and make it look easy.
Like Jones wrote on his Twitter: “I could care less about promoting my game is winning.” It’s such a succinct explanation you can even forgive him for messing up a commonly messed up phrase (for the last time, if you could care less about something, that means you do care about it; couldn’t care less means the other thing).
By doing nothing, Jones makes Sonnen’s efforts seem even more absurd. By refusing to engage, he leaves Sonnen arguing with himself until he’s ultimately standing there alone, looking like a man who went for a high five and got left hanging.
Is Jones doing any of that on purpose? That’s a tougher one to answer, especially since it involves trying to get inside the head of an uncommonly gifted fighter who comes off as more inscrutable every time he tries to explain himself. All we know is what we can see, and from the looks of things, it sure doesn’t seem like Jones cares whether anyone is buying the stuff that comes out of Sonnen’s mouth.
Maybe that’s his way of rebelling against the culture that rewards fighters like Sonnen with more title shots than they’ve earned, but without ticking off the boss all over again. Maybe it’s all just a pleasant accident, as useful for Jones as it is uncomfortable for us to watch.
Still, if you know you’re the one who more consistently excels at the fighting part of the business, why not let the other guy do all the shouting? The nice thing about this sport is that whoever remains conscious at the end usually gets the last word.
For more on UFC 159, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site. |
Rebel fighters retreated on Sunday as advancing Syrian troops threatened to split them in two
Signs that the dogged resistance to the Syrian Army and Russian airforce in eastern Aleppo may be crumbling have started to appear as thousands of people fled to areas under government control, either due to starvation, the continued air assault or the advance of Syrian troops.
The rebel troops retreated on Sunday, faced by the risk of being split into two due to Syrian army advances.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights initially said about 400 people from the Masaken Hanano neighbourhood sought refuge after it was captured by pro-government forces on Saturday, and that an additional 30 families fled to Sheikh Maqsoud, which is under Kurdish control.
However, the numbers fleeing the Syrian government advance has risen sharply, as up to 3,000 fled through the day.
Syrian army recaptures part of rebel-held east Aleppo Read more
TV reports from Masaken Hanano on Sunday morning showed workers and soldiers clearing debris against a backdrop of bombed-out buildings on both sides of a wide avenue. Masaken Hanano was the first district the rebels took in the summer of 2012, leading to the division of the city into a rebel-held east and a government-controlled west.
It was also reported that the Syrian army had retaken Jabal Badro, suggesting it was on course to divide the Syrian rebel enclave at its narrowest point of Sakhour. Damascus claimed the rebel forces in the north of eastern Aleppo were in mass retreat to avoid being split and as many as 2,000 civilians had reached government-held territory in western Aleppo.
The Observatory said those fleeing had come from al-Haidariya, al-Shaar and Jabal Badro. It claimed the offensive, in its 13th day, had seen 219 civilians killed, but these numbers may well be a big underestimate due to the number of bodies trapped in rubble, and the lack of functioning hospitals.
Reuters quoted Yasser al-Yousef, from the Nour al-Din al-Zinki rebel group, as saying: “The revolutionary forces are reinforcing their defence lines on the edges of Hanano, steadfast in the defence of our people in Aleppo … But the planes have destroyed everything, stones, trees and people, in a systematic policy of destruction.”
It appears that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is planning to take Aleppo beforethe inauguration of president-elect Donald Trump in January, taking advantage of the political vacuum in the US and outgoing President Barack Obama’s refusal to become directly involved.
Trump is appointing national security advisers who are more willing to work with Russia to keep Bashar al-Assad as Syria’s president, focusing instead on driving out Islamic State.
The likely election of François Fillon as the leading rightwing French presidential candidate will also strengthen the diplomatic hand of Moscow since he is regarded as willing to work with Putin to reduce economic sanctions against Moscow.
Last-ditch diplomatic efforts by the UN peace envoy, Staffan de Mistura, in Aleppo have failed, and the UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland admitted last Thursday that food supplies were running low, with no plan B. He said rebel groups had accepted the terms for delivery of humanitarian aid, but no parallel agreement had come from Russia or Syrian officials.
The Russian defence ministry said the UN “did not have reliable information on alleged agreement of the ‘armed opposition’ to delivery of humanitarian aid. There are no names, evidence or documents, apart from Mr Egeland’s words”.
An estimated 250,000 people have been trapped in appalling conditions in Aleppo’s eastern districts since the government sealed its siege in late August. Many are now spending their days underground, as hospitals, schools and homes remain vulnerable to bombardment.
On the diplomatic front, a planned meeting in Paris called by the French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, has not been confirmed and there was near silence from the US Department of State.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, discussed with Putin the loss of four Turkish soldiers killed in northern Syria in a Syrian airforce strike, as well as the humanitarian crisis.
In the UK, 120 MPs including Michael Gove and Andrew Mitchell urged the government to air-drop humanitarian aid into Aleppo. |
When Cyclone Aila hit the coast of Bangladesh in May 2009, water swelled over embankments along the Kholpetua river.
The home Sirajul Islam (pictured) shared with his wife and four children in Kolbari village was flooded, along with the single acre he used to raise shrimp.
They left for Shyamnagar town, 15km away, where for four months he made 300-400 taka a day ($4-5) driving a rented motorbike.
When the floodwater subsided, his field was too salty for shrimp. Village buildings were flattened and there was no fresh water to drink. So in 2011, the family went to seek their fortune in the capital Dhaka.
“The cyclone had broken my economical backbone by destroying everything,” says Islam. “If there had not been such a big cyclone, I would not have moved to Dhaka.”
Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina has told the UN that a one-metre rise in sea level – a plausible scenario this century – would submerge a fifth of the country and turn 30 million people into “climate migrants”.
Islam shows off a set of deer antlers, a trophy from hunting in the Sundarbans, across the river. Most of the household income is from selling fish, crab and honey gathered in the mangroves – supplemented from his eldest daughter’s wages at a garment factory in Chittagong.
If there were to be another cyclone, Islam says “I would fight” to stay. It is not likely to get any easier, though. Sea levels are set to rise, compounding the problem of salt intrusion into groundwater. Tropical cyclones are expected to get more intense and destructive with global warming. In combination, they raise the risk of another devastating storm surge.
Over the past two decades, Bangladesh’s rural population has been pouring into its cities. A 2014 slum census found the number of people living on the margins of cities had doubled to 2.2 million since 1997. Meanwhile, the population in southwestern coastal regions is stagnating.
A smaller, but significant, number of displaced people cross borders, which is where it becomes a matter of at least regional, if not international concern. Up to 20 million Bangladeshis are said to be living illegally in neighbouring India. A militarised fence along 70% of the 4,000 kilometre frontier sends an unwelcoming signal. Still, people find ways to evade the patrols, typically by boat across the rivers.
Zainab Begum (pictured), a 40-year old woman collecting water from Gabura village pond, across the river from Kolbari, has two younger sisters working as waste pickers in Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state.
With their families, they have crossed the border illegally several times. It is a risky business: one got caught and was badly beaten by Indian border guards, detained for a week before she could bribe her way out.
There was little to keep them in Gabura, one of the worst hit areas by Aila. Not a single house was left standing, says Begum, a fierce note in her voice. The levee that was supposed to keep the river out trapped a layer of sludgy, salty water on the land for three whole years. She lived in a makeshift house on the embankment; others with more resources left permanently.
Eventually, the government helped them rebuild. A three-storey cyclone shelter stands proud at the heart of the village. But land that was previously good for one rice crop a year became too salty: now it is all shrimp.
In this battered economy, Ziaur Rahman is trying to make a living teaching English and maths to private students. With a degree from Khulna University, he shows more awareness than most about the global trends affecting his country. He tells Climate Home in English: “I know about climate change. When climate change in this place, we are not happy.”
The outlook is not all bleak. Just as farmers adapted to fattening shrimp, now some have turned to crab, which can tolerate higher salinity. They do not eat it round here: it is “haram” (forbidden) for the Muslim majority and at 250 taka ($3) apiece in the market, beyond most budgets. But there is strong demand from China and Malaysia. A small plant in Kolbari packs the shellfish for export.
The scale of migration from vulnerable areas will depend on the success of these adaptations, as well as the severity of climate change impacts. |
Good aim is essential to having fun and improving your results in CoD.
I have seen this question asked numerous times “How do I get a better aim in Call of Duty” and today we are going to go over exactly that. This will be very in-depth and we will go through every aspect in order for you to be the best you can be. However, there’s a common misconception that things will change overnight although that is not the case, these things take time and if you’re willing to put in the time then great things will happen to your gameplay and you will notice drastic improvements.
Vibration – Good Or Bad?
By default on Call of Duty, your controller is set to vibrate when you shoot and get shot. This adds a whole element to the game as it allows you to virtually feel everything your character does. However, because you get so used to it you are unable to play without it.
If you are using vibration, I would recommend turning it off immediately because the rumble from the vibrations will throw your shot off and make it harder to control your aim. It is only a minor change but it can make all the difference to your game and elevate it to that next level.
Addons – Kontrol Freeks
If you haven’t heard of Kontrol Freeks already, they are an extension that sits on top of your analogue sticks. You may now be asking yourself “Why would I want this?” Well, they are much taller than regular analogue sticks, it means you don’t need to move your thumbs as much whilst aiming. This will allow you to make much more precise movements, thus making it easier to play on higher sensitivities, although not many professional players do play at a higher sensitivity, however, we will get onto that topic shortly.
They are used by a lot of professional Call of Duty players.They are one of the most notorious companies when it comes to the gaming accessory industry and has a great reputation. Not only is the quality of the product exceptional, but also because they are considerably cheap. A pair of Kontrol Freeks will only cost you a mere $10-20 so they are definitely worth trying out. The best part is, if you don’t like them, they have a 30-day money back guarantee, so there is no risk to be had.
Sensitivity Levels – Very Controversial
There is no such thing as a ‘best sensitivity level’ at all. Some players play on 3, others play on 15, it’s all about what makes you feel comfortable and if you feel comfortable then it doesn’t matter at all. However, I cannot stress how important it is to find what is the best sensitivity level for yourself. If you play on a level that you don’t feel comfortable, no matter what tips and tricks you’re told, you will NOT be accurate.
Where should I aim?
Where else would you aim? At enemies, that’s the answer the majority of us would give, however, it really does matter where you shoot at your enemy because that will be the decider of winning gunfights with players at the same level of competition as yourself.Some of you may say aim for the head, now if you have the best aim in Call of Duty then, by all means, go for it, but for the majority of us, we will struggle to connect our shots particularly with SMG’s.If you aim for the head each time you fire at the enemy, it is likely you will miss your first shots, if they are returning shots, more than likely you are dead already. Also, if they hit you when you are aiming at their head, your gun will flinch and your aim will lift upwards.To conclude this, I would highly recommend aiming at the torso for all gunfights as it’s much easier to hit your targets, kills enemies faster than shooting at legs and if you flinch you’ll more than likely hit their head as a result of doing so.
Some of you may say aim for the head, now if you have the best aim in Call of Duty then, by all means, go for it, but for the majority of us, we will struggle to connect our shots particularly with SMG’s. If you aim for the head each time you fire at the enemy, it is likely you will miss your first shots, if they are returning shots, more than likely you are dead already. Also, if they hit you when you are aiming at their head, your gun will flinch and your aim will lift upwards.To conclude this, I would highly recommend aiming at the torso for all gunfights as it’s much easier to hit your targets, kills enemies faster than shooting at legs and if you flinch you’ll more than likely hit their head as a result of doing so. To conclude this, I would highly recommend aiming at the torso for all gunfights as it’s much easier to hit your targets, kills enemies faster than shooting at legs and if you flinch you’ll more than likely hit their head as a result of doing so.
Are there attachments that will help me with my aim?
There is, most certainly. Depending on which Call of Duty you play, there are different names for this specific attachment. I will go through what they are mostly known as and you’ll get the general gist.
Attachment – Foregrip
There is one you really need to have equipped which is the grip attachment, more known as the foregrip. I am sure you’ll know the effects of this attachment, if not this attachment reduces recoil and it used by almost 80% of players. This attachment is particularly useful with SMG’s and Assault Rifles which is good for striving competitors as this is what you will use most. These weapons tend to have a lot of recoil but with having the attachment it will be able to leverage it, making it a lot easier to aim.
Is it worth purchasing an upgraded controller?
If you do not play claw, which is the art of holding your controller differently so you don’t need to use your fingers as much then yes, you will be left behind using the standard controller. All the best players play claw or have some sort of modification on their controller with the exception of one professional Call of Duty player Matthew “Skrapz” Marshall. Now you may be wondering if these controllers are legal in a competitive setting, the majority of them are legal, however, you can purchase ones that are illegal which have rapid fire mods installed. The best websites to purchase legal controllers from is Scuf Gaming and
Now you may be wondering if these controllers are legal in a competitive setting, the majority of them are legal, however, you can purchase ones that are illegal which have rapid fire mods installed. The best websites to purchase legal controllers from is Scuf Gaming and SharQ. The good thing about these modded controllers is you can build them from scratch, everything from what buttons the paddles are assigned to and what decal you have on your controller.There is one downside, they are expensive but they really are considerably more fun to play with and will really improve all aspects of your game. There is one downside, they are expensive but they really are considerably more fun to play with and will really improve all aspects of your game.
There is one downside, they are expensive but they really are considerably more fun to play with and will really improve all aspects of your game. SharQ is the cheaper of the two, seem to have better customer support and are more reliable. If you were going to buy one, I would highly recommend SharQ.
Final Tip – Become a harder target!
Once you apply all these tips in this article I have written, you will see drastic improvements. However, you will also notice you will concentrate on your accuracy too much and this will cause you to be static and not moving much during the gunfight. The easiest opponents to take out are the ones standing still, the same applies to you.
This is where I shall introduce you to the art of ‘strafing’. Strafing is when you aim down sights, you move side to side in order to become a harder target to hit. With the attachment stock, you will be able to strafe faster making it incredibly difficult to hit, as long as you can control it. You can make the argument it would make it harder for you to hit your shots, but this is not the case. As I said, as long as you can control it, it will prove to be very beneficial.
Summary
To conclude this article, we will just go over main points. There will also be a link to my Twitter, my organisations Twitter and a link to SharQ controllers at the end.
Turn controller vibration off
Controller attachments
How to find the right sensitivity level for you
Where to aim when shooting
Attachments to help
Thank you for reading my article, any constructive criticism is very welcome!
My Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/Beluzahh
Organisations Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/LazyLagGaming
SharQ Controllers – https://sharqcontrollers.com/
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By SHARON CHURCHER
Last updated at 17:37 31 March 2008
The mother of the Russian-born British media magnate who vanished amid fears of a KGB plot last night tearfully claimed he was murdered as a result of his commitment to exposing levels of corruption in the government of Vladimir Putin.
Jet-setting billionaire financier and film producer Leonid Rozhetskin, 41, disappeared two weeks ago from his £1million holiday home just outside the Latvian capital Riga.
Traces of blood were found in the study and later in an abandoned Porsche 4x4 belonging to Mr Rozhetskin, one of the co-founders and major shareholders in British business newspaper City AM.
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Oligarch Leonid Rozhetskin and his wife Natalya had been together for six years when he disappeared
Days earlier, the tycoon had moved his wife Natalya Belova, a glamorous blonde former model, and three-year-old son into a £3million apartment in London which he intended to be the family's main home.
Yesterday, in an emotional interview with The Mail on Sunday, his mother Elvira revealed that he repeatedly warned her that his life was in danger.
Speaking in New York, where she has lived since emigrating from Russia, Mrs Rozhetskin said that at the time of his disappearance her son was trying to expose corruption.
Mrs Rozhetskin insists her son was a victim of Russian agents.
She said: "My son isn't missing. My son is dead and the reason he is dead is that he spoke out about corruption in the Russian government.
"There was so much blood (at the Latvian villa), too much blood for my son to have survived.
"Leonid was very scared. That is why he constantly travelled from place to place. He was a very rich man. A highly qualified lawyer. A very successful man.
"But he was also a very outspoken man. Leonid said he could never be safe in any country where Moscow had connections.
"He told me he was determined to expose the level of corruption in the Russian government. He said that corruption in the Russian government had cost hundreds and hundreds of millions.
"He was even making a movie about the Russian mafia. My son hated corruption and that is why he was killed. Robbery was not the motive. This was a professional hit by hired Russian agents."
The Latvian police say they have approached Scotland Yard for help because of its experience in investigating the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer turned dissident.
Litvinenko died from radiation poisoning in London in 2006 and his father has accused Putin of ordering his murder.
He also said the Russians tried to blacken his son's name with trumped-up charges.
In what might seem a similarity between the two cases, Moscow prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against Mr Rozhetskin several years ago.
This culminated in a warrant briefly being issued for his arrest for an alleged fraud.
"They said my son stole $40million," his mother recalled.
"He told me he was guilty of nothing."
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'So happy' Leonid Rozhetskin and Natalya in St Bart's in 2005
Following Mr Rozhetskin's disappearance in the early hours of March 16, stories in the Russian Press attempted to depict him as a closet homosexual.
One report claimed that before he went missing, the tycoon partied at a gay nightclub.
"My son gay? No, no," said Mrs Rozhetskin.
"That is a completely bogus smear. My son and Natasha were very happy," she added, referring to her daughter-in-law Natalya by her pet name.
"You only have to look at these photos," she adds, producing dozens of pictures of the couple.
The snaps include shots taken over Christmas 2005, when Natalya and Mr Rozhetskin flew in the oligarch's wood-panelled private jet to the Caribbean island of St. Bart's.
In some of the pictures, they cuddle their one-year-old son.
In others, Natalya, wearing a swimsuit designed by Domenico Dolce of Dolce & Gabbana – one of the couple's glamorous friends – snuggles against her husband.
"Natasha wasn't my first choice for my son," Mrs Rozhetskin said.
"He was 17 years older than her. But they have been together for six years and my son loved her very much.
"The last time I saw him, he seemed in a good mood, though maybe that was because he didn't want to scare me.
He had many homes [in Los Angeles, the South of France and Moscow] but he finally decided to settle down in England because he wanted his son to go to a good British private school and he had bought a three-bedroom home in London.
"My grandson moved in there three months ago. He had a nanny, a tutor teaching him English, and his aunt came over from St Petersburg to watch over him while Natalya closed up the flat in Moscow.
"She was due to meet my son at the new place in London on March 13. Leonid spent a couple of hours with me on Wednesday, March 12, before leaving to catch the plane to London.
"The nanny called and told me he and Natalya had both arrived. But then Leonid suddenly flew to Latvia.
"The only thing I can think is that someone warned him someone was trying to get to him in London and he was in great danger and he fled.
"He had security that was very, very tight at the villa. But somehow the killers got into the house."
Mr Rozhetskin was born in the Soviet Union in 1966. He emigrated to New York with his mother in 1980 after she left his father, Boris.
As a single mother, she struggled to make ends meet and the tiny flat where she now lives still looks oddly spartan for the mother of one of the world's richest men.
The living area is furnished with a table draped with a plastic cloth and a cheap settee.
The only luxury on display is an elegant fur-rimmed hat.
"I brought that with me from Russia," Elvira said.
"It was a very tough life, starting again in America, but I came here because I wanted more opportunities for Leonid."
The boy won scholarships to two of America's top universities, Columbia and Harvard, graduating in applied maths and law.
After the collapse of communism, he moved back to Russia, where he founded his venture capital firm, LV Finance.
But, like many oligarchs, he fell foul of the Putin regime and found himself accused of corruption.
In a complaint filed in September 2006 in the New York federal court, Mr Rozhetskin countered that the criminal charges against him were cooked up after he tried to thwart a plot by high-profile individuals to secretly take over MegaFon, a huge Russian mobile phone company.
Mr Rozhetskin, whose company owned 25 per cent of MegaFon, claimed that figures connected to MegaFon tried to intimidate him into transferring his shares
to an investment fund accumulating MegaFon shares.
"The message was clear: transfer ownership...or suffer the consequences of physical violence or incarceration, or both," he said in the complaint.
Mr Rozhetskin's writ and a follow-up were dismissed on technical grounds, but the judge granted Mr Rozhetskin leave to resubmit his claims, and last December he filed the amended complaint with the court.
It claimed that figures connected to MegaFon had summoned Mr Rozhetskin to a meeting in Moscow in 2001.
It was "demanded that Rozhetskin turn over the ...interest in MegaFon" and it claimed that "what can only be described as a death threat" was issued.
The complaint alleges that in 2002 in New York, a second threat was issued to Mr Rozhetskin.
He was told that he "should not think that his highly-placed friends would keep him safe" and reminded that "he would not be secure in Russia, the United States, or elsewhere unless he followed instructions".
While Latvian police continue their investigations, the tycoon's mother is convinced, however, that her son's worst fears have been realised.
During her final conversations with her son, he told her that he had written his will, asking that Natalya bring up his son in England if anything happened to him.
Mrs Rozhetskin said: "Now I am afraid for the rest of our family and there is nothing anyone can do to protect us. You can only hide for so long." |
BEIRUT, May 2 (Reuters) - The death toll from an air strike by U.S.-led forces on the northern Syrian province of Aleppo on Friday has risen to 52 including seven children, a group monitoring the conflict said on Saturday.
U.S. and Arab forces have been carrying out almost daily air raids against hardline Islamist militant groups in Syria such as Islamic State since last September, and U.S.-led forces are also targeting the group in Iraq.
The British-based Observatory for Human Rights said the air raid on Friday had mistakenly struck civilians in a village on the eastern banks of the Euphrates River in Aleppo, killing members of at least six families.
The group said at least 13 people remain missing.
The United States has previously said it takes reports of civilian casualties from the U.S.-led strikes seriously and says it has a process to investigate each allegation. (Reporting by Mariam Karouny; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. |
CLOSE Here's a quick look at the sentences in the Craig Rideout case. Scott Norris
Laura Rideout listens during her sentencing. (Photo11: Pool)
A woman and her two sons were sentenced to maximum terms on Friday for their convictions in the July 2016 murder of their father and husband, Craig Rideout.
Rideout's estranged wife, Laura Rideout and the couple's son Colin Rideout were each sentenced to 25 years to life on second-degree murder charges. Laura Rideout also received 15 years for second-degree burglary. Both, along with the couple's other son Alexander Rideout, received and 1 and 1/3 to 4 years for tampering.
All three received the maximum sentences on every charge they faced, as Judge Thomas Moran rejected their attorney's pleas for leniency.
It brings to a close — pending appeal — what Moran called "one of the ugliest things I've ever seen." Laura and Colin Rideout were convicted of strangling the victim with a homemade garrote, disfiguring his face with acid and dumping the body in a field, with Alexander Rideout participating in the cover-up.
Paul "P.J." Tucci, Laura Rideout, Colin Ridout, Alexander Rideout (Photo11: Staff photographs)
Before the sentence was announced, Craig Rideout's sister, Robbyn Drew, said it had been her brother's greatest wish to repair his relationships with his children, an opportunity that was eliminated with his killing. She asked the three defendants — her nephews and sister-in-law — receive the maximum sentences.
"There’s nothing to be done to bring my brother back," she said. "My hope is that he is be remembered as the kind, loving man he was."
CLOSE Robbyn Drew talks about her brother and the impact his murder has had on her and the family of Craig Rideout. Pool video
The defense attorneys for both Rideout brothers sought before sentencing to portray them as victims of their upbringing — Colin, the eldest, forced into the role of protector and parent, and Alex, eager to please.
"Colin Rideout never got to be a kid; he never had that benefit," Matt Parrinello said about his client. "He was forced to grow up way before any 22-year-old kid should have to grow up."
Laura Rideout's lawyer, Michael DiPrima, listed various extenuating factors from her past: her Roman Catholic faith and anti-abortion belief; her husband's alleged mental illness, and her migraines; an allegation that two of her children were conceived after Craig Rideout raped her.
"I don't believe that ... her inner person, her inner self, was capable of taking a life," he said. "Her ultimate judgment will be decided by God Almighty."
Alex Rideout listens during sentencing. (Photo11: Pool)
He also said Laura Rideout had agreed to a plea deal, ultimately rejected, that would have spared her children of murder charges.
Before the sentences were handed down, each of the defendants presented motions asking that the jury's guilty verdicts be set aside. Judge Moran denied each of those motions.
Each of the defendants was led out of the courtroom and taken to the Monroe County Jail, where they have been held since their conviction. Each will be transferred to the custody of the state prison system sometime later this month.
Craig Rideout's body was found along a rural roadside in Yates County, New York, in the early morning hours of July 20, 2016. His beaten and bloodied body was wrapped in a tarp, and investigators said some type of acid had been used in an attempt to disfigure the victim's face and hands. A shovel was found nearby, amid signs of a failed attempt to dig a hole.
Colin Rideout arrives in court prior to his sentencing. (Photo11: TINA MACINTYRE-YEE staff photogrpaher)
The following day, two of Craig Rideout's sons were arrested near a park. In the trunk of Colin and Alexander Rideout's car was a garbage bag filled with bloody clothes. Forensics experts would later conclude that the blood on those items belonged to Craig Rideout. DNA samples would later tie the items to Colin and Alexander, along with their mother Laura Rideout and her boyfriend, Paul "P.J." Tucci.
All four were eventually charged with second-degree murder and tampering with evidence for their botched attempt to clean up the crime scene and to hide the body.
Tucci was found not guilty of the murdering and tampering charges.
Prosecutors say that Craig and Laura were embroiled in a bitter divorce and a custody fight over the youngest of the couple's seven children. They theorized that Laura's desire to move to North Carolina with Tucci created a sense of urgency, and that the desire to gain custody of those children was what set the murder plot into motion.
At trial, jurors say surveillance videos of Laura, Colin, and Tucci on shopping trips to WalMart locations in the days and hours before the murder took place. Those videos showed them purchasing a tarp, bungee cords, drain cleaner, a shovel, and work gloves — items which investigators say were later found at one of the three crime scenes.
In his closing argument, Prosecutor Timothy Prosperi said that these videos were evidence of a plan for murder.
"If you are pre-planning the cleanup of a murder, you have the intent for (committing) the murder," Prosperi argued.
Jurors also saw a pair of jeans linked to Colin Rideout that were soaked in blood, which an expert testified put him in close proximity to the murder. The same conclusion was offered about jeans which contained Laura Rideout's DNA.
In all, prosecutors called more than 50 witnesses and introduced nearly 700 pieces of evidence during a trial that lasted four weeks.
The defense lawyers for each of the four defendants rested their cases without calling any witnesses.
The jury of 8 men and 4 women deliberated for five days before returning verdicts on all of the counts.
Monroe County Sheriff Patrick O'Flynn, whose office led the investigation, called it a horrendous crime. "This was definitely one of the most heinous cases I’ve seen in my more than 30 years in law enforcement," he said moments after the verdicts were delivered.
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An article by Alba Muñoz that appeared in PlayGround a few days back examines the Troika Fiscal Disobedience Consultancy project (translation mine):
A Tax Haven For All: The Decisive Rebellion?
Disobedience.eu is born, a consultancy designed to resist the Troika
An old guy on my block used to say: “If you’re going to steal, steal big. Because if you stay small, you’re just a thief, but if you steal big you’ll be a millionaire. All it takes to be rich is to skim a little from everybody.”
“You make a lot of sense!” I thought. But the old guy never stole, at least not on a grand scale, and to me, frankly, the proof is in the pudding. The world is an unfair place, sir, and what are you going to do?
He who has the most pays the least, and this, at least when it comes to taxes, goes without saying: all of the companies in the IBEX 35 — those that are publicly traded and have the most liquidity in Spain — are located in tax havens and pay minuscule amounts to the Treasury in comparison to their earnings. Citizens, small- and medium-sized businesses, aren’t so fortunate with the tax collector.
It’s unfair, but legal. They bask in the sun on a private beach, and to the rest of us they leave only a miserable puddle to splash around in. Is there really nothing that can be done?
Beyond complaining, there’s a new plan — a yet untried option: drag our towels and camping chairs onto the private beach to say, “Hello, buenos días, good morning, guten morgen, we are also in the club.”
Just a week ago, last January 14th , Disobedience.eu , the first tax rebellion consultancy meant for the common people, was launched.
It all began when the artist Núria Güell contacted Enric Duran, the activist known as the “Robin Hood of the banks” for swindling — or expropriating, you might say — some half a million euros from various financial institutions in 2008 , with the motive of finding a way to buck the Troika. From there a small tax advisor emerged, the Troika Fiscal Disobedience Consultancy.
A score of European activists, and Duran from the underground, launched what may come to be the largest hack of the financial system in Europe, at least on the part of the citizenry.
“It starts by resisting the Troika through financial strategies, by playing with the law in the same ways as the neoliberal corporations,” says Güell.
The idea is to imitate Apple, Google, and Banco Santander — not for personal gain, but “to stop paying an illegitimate debt and to start financing the common good.”
“The Troika is dedicated to commandeering and privatizing the commons, it has a colonizing nature: all the countries that are subjected to it, like Spain, Ireland, or Greece, lose their sovereignty. We must create a parallel financial system.”
Fiji, the Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, your home
If we were to do a math problem, it might go as follows: Say that John has a balance last trimester that comes to 2,000 euros VAT . John sends an email to Disobedience.eu with the amount he wants to resist (2,000 euros) and they will supply him with an invoice for that amount.
John will pay 8% for the service: management fees (1%) and a contribution to a common fund (7%). “The rest (92%), although recorded as paid, will not actually be charged. As far as I know, to forgive a debt is not a crime,” says Güell.
So John has an invoice that states that he has made a tax payment in Spain, although in reality no such thing happened.
“In the EU there is free trade, but in practice there is no common fiscal policy, and the justice system is not coordinated. The countries as a result have trouble obtaining information from one another. The big companies benefit from this, and now the little guy can do so as well. It would be very difficult for the administration of the country where he is consulting to know who has not claimed the income.”
John has evaded taxes, mimicking the techniques of the big multinationals, but for another purpose.
“92% of the money is yours. The idea is that you can dedicate it to projects for the common good, which are increasingly privatized or abandoned by the state.” For example, a support network for refugees or school libraries.
Desobedience.eu was inspired by the Coperativa Integran Catalana and the Right of Rebellion Collective, and will be linked to the international Fair Coöp collective. For this reason, Güell expects there will be a rapid increase of clients, projects, and affinity groups: “The assignment of the funds is up to each client. Nobody will be monitoring or checking on where it is going.”
Isn’t this a do-gooder form of tax evasion? How can you prevent “dishonest” evaders from using this tool?
Activists will sift the clients: “If a capitalist business wants to use this service to evade taxes, it will be turned down. On the other hand, a group of lawyers with a social focus have already been accepted.”
Gandhi versus Starbucks
The tax disobedience initiative has sparked interest, but also an understandable fear of possible legal problems. Güell asserts that the activists involved have everything sorted out: “The only people who run a real risk are those who put in their names to form the company, but they are insolvent and that protects them.”
Throughout history there are numerous examples of economic disobedience. “From the Boston Tea Party in 1773 to the Salt March of Mahatma Gandhi in 1930 .” Though there are also much more recent examples:
In 2015 the residents of Crickhowell, a town in Wales, grew tired of paying much more in taxes than Starbucks and decided to declare themselves a tax-free town and to create a company in the Cayman Islands: “They initiated a collective action of tax resistance, and since then the State has not done anything.”
With the activists of Disobedience.eu there is more resolution to attack the core of the system than fear of the possible repercussions. Furthermore, for Güell, economic disobedience is better politics than voting in democratic elections.
“If we do not have autonomy with respect to the Troika and the markets, there is no way to advance the many initiatives that we put forward. They are the obstacle, because they are above democracy. The dictator is only a dictator if he has subjects; disobedience is the only way remaining to us. Furthermore, disobedience is intrinsic to democracy.”
The real hurdle is to go beyond the environmental activists and the more politicized minorities and to extend the initiative across the whole population.
“Workplace exploitation; inability to make ends meet; a rainbow assortment of pills for depression; daily suicides from eviction, foreclosure, or meaninglessness; and murderous barbed-wire over some fictitious dividing lines. Why dedicate your life to feed this machinery that only benefits a minority?” asks Güell.
“You just need to open your eyes to notice that Europe is at a dead-end, caught between the technocrats of the Troika and the anti-immigration nationalists. The European Union is no more than a financial plan for plundering social wealth and impoverishing the workers, a set of legalized financial crimes that act to transfer the income of citizens to the banks and large corporations.” And as such, the response should be collective and in the financial sphere.
As Aristotle told us, politics does not manage the public sphere, rather our everyday actions are what create policy. |
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Jan Vertonghen has backed Vincent Janssen to turn around his Tottenham career after he played a crucial role in the win at Swansea.
After coming on as a second-half substitute, Janssen produced a brilliant back-heel in stoppage time that sent Heung-min Son clear to score the second goal in Tottenham’s 3-1 win.
Janssen has still to score in open play in the Premier League for Spurs following his £18million move from AZ Alkmaar last summer, and has only five goals in all competitions. In 2015-16, he was top scorer in the Dutch top flight with 27.
Vertonghen joined Spurs from Ajax in 2012, so he understands the challenges of swapping the Eredivisie for the Premier League.
He said: “You get a lot more space. Every team in Holland wants to attack and they don’t really think about defending.
“That’s the philosophy - just play 4-3-3 and play good football in possession, and don’t think too much about defending. That’s why I think strikers get so many chances and goals in Holland, and obviously it’s different here.
“I think the tactics are less naïve. Swansea defended for 90 minutes but they were very close to beating us. But Vincent is adapting very well now. He understands the way the gaffer wants him to play. He’s so strong, he just needs that goal and then he’ll be on fire.
“I’m so happy for him. Vincent’s working very hard. Obviously it wasn’t the start he wanted but he’s showing now what he’s capable of. He made a big difference when he came on against Swansea.
“Can he succeed in the Premier League? Definitely, yes. I am convinced of it.” |
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mr Galloway is already a published author, but this will be his first foray into children's books
Former MP George Galloway has signed a deal to write a series of children's books.
He made the announcement on Twitter, saying they would be about an "ethical pirate".
The title of the series is Red Molucca and the Good Pirate and is due to be published later this year.
Mr Galloway has already written a number of novels for adults, including the Fidel Castro Handbook and Mr Galloway goes to Washington.
Image copyright Twitter
"I will shortly have four children under ten years old and I have four young grandchildren too, ranging from three to 14," he told the BBC.
"They read and I've bought (and read to them) a lot of children's books. All have been fascinated by pirates. Judging by the success of Pirates of the Caribbean so are many adults!"
But Mr Galloway said the rum-drinking, cut-throat, walking the plank-type characters were not the right role models.
"Enter an ethical pirate, Red Molucca," he said. "A husband and father whose family (and dog) pirate alongside him. A kind of Robin Hood of the high seas."
'Top secret'
The new stories are set amongst the Spice islands of Indonesia during colonial rule.
Illustrator Joe Cook said the final style of the books is "top secret".
"I got involved because George represents an under-reported and undervalued perspective on the world," he told the BBC. "The project is great fun too!"
Mr Galloway, a former Labour and Respect MP, did not reveal who the publishers were but said the books would be released in English, Dutch and Indonesian. |
Major John Buttrick (July 20, 1731— May 16, 1791, Concord, Massachusetts) was one of the leaders of the Concord militia during the Battle of Concord on April 19, 1775.[1] Given the usual interpretation of the first stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous poem "Concord Hymn," Buttrick is the man who ordered "the shot heard around the world."
Battle of Concord [ edit ]
Buttrick played two notably critical roles in the Battle of Concord. Prior to the battle, the Concord militia and neighboring towns—then outnumbered by about 700 to 250—retreated to a ridge overlooking Concord as its command discussed immediate strategy. Colonel James Barrett surrendered the town of Concord and led the men across its Old North Bridge to a hill about a mile north of town, where they could continue to watch the troop movements of the British and the activities in the center of town. (This step proved fortuitous, as the ranks of troops continued to grow as Minuteman companies and additional militia arriving from the western towns joined them there.)
British Companies from the 4th and 10th Regiments, led by relatively inexperienced commander Captain Walter Laurie, had been stationed to guard their return route of the British troops; one company from the 43rd Regiment remained guarding the bridge itself. Upon seeing smoke rising from the village square, and seeing only a few companies directly below them, Colonel Barrett decided to march back toward the town from their vantage point on Punkatasset Hill to a lower, closer flat hilltop about 300 yards (274 m) from the North Bridge. Five full companies of Minutemen and five more of militia from Acton, Concord, Bedford and Lincoln occupied this hill as more groups of men streamed in, totaling at least 400 against Captain Laurie's light infantry companies, a force totaling 90–95 men.
As the militia advanced, the by now outnumbered British troops retreated from their position near the road to the bridge, yielding the hill to Barrett's men.[2] Barrett ordered the Massachusetts men to form one long line two abreast on the highway leading down to the bridge. At around 10:30 a.m., after further consultation with his fellow officers, Barrett told the men to load their weapons but not to fire unless fired upon, and then ordered them to advance to the bridge. The militia troops approached the bridge in a column of two men abreast, they were led by their officers: Captain Isaac Davis, Major Buttrick of Concord, and Lt. Col. John Robinson of Westford.[3]
The column of Minutemen and militia advanced on the light infantry in formation, keeping to the road, since it was surrounded by the spring floodwaters of the Concord River.[4] Laurie ordered the British companies guarding the bridge to retreat across it. One officer then tried to pull up the loose planks of the bridge to impede the colonial advance, but Major Buttrick began to yell at the regulars to stop harming the bridge, preserving the militiamen's ability to continue to pursue their aims.
When the provincials were within about 75 yards of the bridge, the Regulars fired a few warning shots, wounding one. The British then fired a disorganized volley. Captain Davis was shot through the heart, becoming the first officer to die in the American Revolutionary War.[5] At the same moment, Private Abner Hosmer of Acton became the first non-commissioned soldier to die. Seeing these casualties, Buttrick commanded, "Fire, fellow soldiers, for God's sake fire!"[6]
The provincials returned fire, causing the British to abandon their wounded and immediately raced towards the advancing companies of British grenadiers approaching from Concord. This left isolated the companies that had been searching fruitlessly for the colonists' munitions at Barrett's farm. Buttrick and his militiamen then crossed the bridge to assume a defensive posture behind a stone wall.
As the detachment of regulars sent to Barrett's farm marched back, they passed through the now mostly-deserted battlefield and saw dead and wounded comrades lying on the bridge. One who had been killed by a hatchet to the head looked to them as if he had been scalped, angering and shocking them. They crossed the bridge and returned to the town by 11:30 AM, under the watchful eyes of the colonists, who continued to maintain defensive positions. The regulars continued to search for and destroy colonial military supplies in the town, ate lunch, reassembled for marching, and left Concord after noon. This delay in departure gave colonial militiamen from outlying towns additional time to reach the road back to Boston—on which they would inflict upon the British their worst casualties of the day.
Legacy [ edit ]
Inscribed at the base of the statue called "The Minute Man," placed on the approximate site of Davis's death, is the first stanza of his "Concord Hymn," written in 1836:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
While the first shots of the exchange, like all shots that had found their targets earlier that morning at the skirmish in Lexington, had come from the British, it was the colonists' retort that Emerson had intended to memorialize. That first ever wartime attach by the colonial forces of the American Revolutionary War came at the order of the Major marching at the head of their advancing line, John Buttrick.
Notes [ edit ] |
The city of Moncton is warning the public about a potentially aggressive coyote roaming along the North West Trail.
A wildlife control officer has been hired to track the animal down, based on a recent encounter by a woman, said Dan Hicks, the city's supervisor of parks and grounds.
The way the coyote acted is cause for concern, said Hicks.
"It wasn't easily frightened off," he said. "Basically, she threw some material at the coyote to have it leave the area. That's very inconsistent with your typical behaviour."
"Usually when an animal like that is bold or emboldened, it means they could be suffering from an injury or an illness and may not be in its typical state of mind," he said.
"Therefore there is a little bit more risk to humans and animals and pets as they take more risks to be able to survive."
Hicks says people walking on the city's trails should always keep their pets on a leash, be aware of their surroundings and if they see a coyote, they should leave it alone.
"It's good to know someone is looking for it," said Alisha Roberge, who walks the North West Trail about once a week and was there with her young daughter on Thursday.
Roberge says she has never seen a wild animal in the area, but says it's not shocking a coyote would be there, given it was wilderness until recently.
"Our house is only four years old. That's how long we've been living here for, so it's a fairly new area," she said. "They are doing a lot of building."
Hicks agrees wildlife sightings are bound to increase as the city expands into rural areas, but says this coyote sighting stands out because of its unusual behaviour. |
I am delighted to publish a guest post from Frances Wilson, who blogs as The Cross-Eyed Pianist
Much has been written about the young French pianist Lucas Debargue, a finalist in the 2015 edition of the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition. The concept of him being “self-taught” (until relatively recently) has been debated across a number of articles, together with his rather unusual technique (“Scales played with only the thumb and index finger and his pinkie sticking up as daintily as Hyacinth Bucket’s” – The Spectator, 18/7/15) and glorious sound. He’s not out of the traditional mold of the international competition winner (commences piano studies at a young age, undertakes rigorous study with a master teacher and progresses to the “Three C’s” of Conservatoire, Competition and Concerto) – and he didn’t even wear a tie during the final!
In an honest and touching interview with Ismene Brown of The Arts Desk, Debargue comes across as a sensitive and intellectual young man for whom music is profoundly important, not just in terms of beautiful sound, but also as a “a place to live in. It’s about real emotions, real sensations”.
Let’s just clear up a few inaccuracies. In ‘The Spectator’ article quoted above, he is described as “the man who came last”. He didn’t come last. He achieved what most can only dream of: he reached the final of the most prestigious piano competition in the world. That he did this following only four years professional study with a Russian master teacher (Rena Shereshevskaya) is remarkable. (And by the way, it doesn’t really matter that his scale fingering is unusual: there is no “one size fits all” fingering scheme, because hands and fingers come in different sizes.) Now everyone is asking what next for this extraordinary young man?
It is at this point that I start to worry for a talented and obviously sensitive young man like Lucas Debargue. He is not the first, and certainly won’t be the last, young artist to be thrust into the limelight before he is ready. Unlike the other competition finalists, he has not undergone the long and rigorous traditional professional training which would prepare him for the concert platform: he still needs to hone his stagecraft and, more importantly, learn how to deal with the journalists, agents, promoters, and fans who besieged him as the competition progressed – and continue to. The classical music industry is not a particularly pleasant place, and the world of international pianism is highly competitive, almost ruthlessly so. At the big competitions, representatives from the big artist agencies are waiting to scoop up the winners and runners up, offering tempting contracts, a slew of international engagements, recording deals and more (look how much Martin James Bartlett, winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year 2014, has done since his win, including several performances at the Proms, and he’s only just 19; he has, however, undergone a professional training in specialist music school and conservatoire). It’s true that success in an international competition can make an artist – but it can break one too. From the moment one chooses the life of the international concert pianist, one lives in the public eye: every performance and recording is held up for scrutiny, and one is under almost continual pressure to meet the expectations of agents, promoters, fickle audiences, critics and fans.
The life of the concert pianist is tough, restrictive and lonely. In addition to the many hours of solitary practise, there is the travelling, nights spent in faceless hotels, fine historic cities viewed through a fog of fatigue, never having the option to be less than perfect, even if one is ill or tired, knowing that one is judged on one’s last performance (here I recall the unpleasant hoopla surrounding Ivo Pogorelich’s London concert in February). The pressure can be unbearable if one is not equipped to handle it. (Read Charles Beauclerk’s excellent and sympathetic biography of John Ogdon for some brutal insights into the life of the international concert pianist. For Ogdon, the piano was his saviour and his tormentor, and there is no question that the pressure of so much traveling to perform around the world contributed to his breakdown.)
Add to this that peculiarly British fascination with the maverick, the eccentric, the tortured genius with the unconventional “backstory”. We risk endangering Debargue further by holding him up as curiosity, instead of allowing him to develop and mature in his own time. There is something very authentic about his playing, his particular soundworld and his special and personal connection to the music which has clearly touched people.
Lucas Debargue plays Ravel – ‘Gaspard de la Nuit’
In his interview with Ismene Brown, Debargue talks of having few friends and little support from his family. His teacher was his mentor and supporter, encouraging him to take a tilt at the Tchaikovsky Competition and saying when he got through the first round “It doesn’t matter when you pass or not, it’s really good that you are here to play and I am grateful and proud of you.” He has yet to develop the necessarily resilience, thick skin and artistic temperament to survive the “wild west” of the international concert circuit, and I only hope that whoever he chooses to manage him, should he decide to go down that route, is sympathetic and puts his well-being before all else. Otherwise, I dread to think what might happen….
So please let’s allow him – and others like him – to develop at his own pace to emerge onto the international circuit, should he choose that path, when he is truly ready. To conclude this article, I think it is worth quoting a comment on Peter Donohoe’s piece for Slipped Disc about the competition (Peter was a juror this year):
Aside from all of this, what happens to each of these young artists remains to be seen. How will they carry on with their studies as musicians? Which repertoire will they cultivate? Will they develop chamber music careers, teaching, new works, recordings? This is what is most important as they begin to soul search and decipher how and what they will contribute to the world of music outside of the usual parameters. (Jeffrey Biegel)
Read Peter Donohoe’s thoughtful and intelligent article here.
View clips of Lucas Debargue’s performances in the International Tchaikovsky Competition
Frances Wilson is a pianist, piano teacher, concert reviewer and blogger on classical music and pianism as The Cross-Eyed Pianist. In addition to her blog, she writes a regular column on aspects of piano playing for Pianist magazine’s online content, and is also a writer for Hello Stage and InterludeHK.
www.crosseyedpianist.com
Twitter @CrossEyedPiano |
Sporting Lisbon striker Islam Slimani is attracting interest from a string of Premier League clubs, including two that will play in the Champions League this season, Sky sources understand.
The 28-year-old Algeria international has scored 56 goals in 107 appearances for Sporting, including 32 in 44 last season.
A number of Premier League clubs want to sign a top quality centre-forward this summer and, with options limited, they have turned their attentions to a player who would cost upwards of £20m.
Sporting want to keep Slimani and, aware of interest from England, they have offered him a new contract to stay in Portugal.
But Sky Sports News HQ has been told that Slimani feels it is the right time to move on and wants to play in the Premier League.
It is understood the player recently had a meeting with Sporting president Bruno de Carvalho in which he was assured a move away was on the table after he scored so prolifically in the Portuguese Primeira last term.
Slimani recently impressed in a pre-season friendly against German club Wolfsburg, after which their centre-back Dante heaped praise on his opponent.
He said: "Marking Slimani was very difficult because he is a player who always looks to come deep.
"He's a big-club player. The coach's philosophy is for a lot of ball movement, and William Carvalho and Slimani are two excellent players." |
Donald Trump and his aides are expressing skepticism at how quickly the FBI was able to review hundreds of thousands of emails in the latest probe in the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
The FBI revealed Sunday that it had found nothing new in the emails from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were found on the laptop belonging to her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner. In a letter to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Comey said he was not changing his recommendation from July that no charges should be brought against Clinton.
During a rally Sunday, however, Trump said it’s not possible that the FBI was able to review so many emails in just nine days.
“You can’t review 650,000 new emails in eight days,” He continued. “You can’t do it, folks.”
A report from Wired, however, said that Trump is wrong and that the FBI can review that amount in just a week, if not sooner.
“This is not rocket science,” Jonathan Zdziarski, a forensics expert who’s consulted for law enforcement, told Wired. “Eight days is more than enough time to pull this off in a responsible way.”
The technology news outlet also interviewed an anonymous former FBI forensics experts who said the agent reviewed larger collections of data even faster than the current case.
“You can triage a dataset like this in a much shorter amount of time,” the agent told Wired, according to the report. “We’d routinely collect terabytes of data in a search. I’d know what was important before I left the guy’s house.”
The former agent also said that the FBI has tools that can sift out classified documents, which the agent said is similar to software used to detect plagiarism.
Both sources told Wired that investigations can filter out emails by targeting “to” and “from” as well as filtering out duplicates.
The review of the emails found in the new batch found that most were duplicates, CBS News confirmed Sunday.
“The Department of Justice and the FBI dedicated all necessary resources to conduct this review expeditiously,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.
Even NSA leaker Edward Snowden proposed his own method on Twitter of sifting through such a large batch after a journalism professor asked him how it could be done. |
No. in
series No. in
season Title Directed by Written by Original air date Villain(s)
A mysterious bat-like creature terrorizes Gotham City, causing the police force to pursue Batman. The Dark Knight must find the real perpetrator to clear his name.
After escaping Arkham Asylum on Christmas Eve, the Joker takes over Gotham's airwaves and terrorizes the city for a crime. He challenges Batman and Robin to find his hidden TV studio and free his hostages – Commissioner Gordon, Detective Bullock and Summer Gleeson – before midnight.
Batman encounters the Scarecrow and attempts to foil his scheme to burn down Gotham University, but in the process is exposed to the Scarecrow's fear gas, and is forced to face his own guilt over the death of his parents. Note: This episode introduced the popular line "I am vengeance. I am the night. I am Batman!"[1]
4 4 "The Last Laugh" Kevin Altieri Carl Swenson September 22, 1992 ( ) The Joker
The Joker covers Gotham City in a cloud of laughing gas and begins plundering the crazed city. But after Alfred is infected with the toxin, Batman has added incentive to stop the Joker and acquire an antidote from him before all of Gotham dies with a smile.
When District Attorney Harvey Dent collapses after a meal with his fiancée Pamela Isley and friend Bruce Wayne, doctors discover that he has been poisoned. Batman must find the culprit and the antidote before the DA's time runs out.
6 6 "The Underdwellers" Frank Paur Story by : Tom Ruegger
Teleplay by : Jules Dennis and Richard Mueller October 21, 1992 ( ) Sewer King
Batman traces a series of bizarre robberies on the streets of Gotham back to a band of homeless children, who have been raised to do the bidding of their master, the Sewer King.
7 7 "P.O.V." Kevin Altieri Story by : Mitch Brian
Teleplay by : Sean Catherine Derek and Laren Bright September 18, 1992 ( ) The Drug Lord
and his Gangsters
A botched police operation results in the suspension of those involved: Officer Wilkes, Officer Montoya, and Detective Bullock. Confronted by their superiors, each of them is forced to tell their tale of what happened that night. The episode is similar in structure to Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon.
8 8 "The Forgotten" Boyd Kirkland Jules Dennis, Richard Mueller and Sean Catherine Derek October 8, 1992 ( ) Boss Biggis
and his henchmen
While investigating the disappearances of Gotham's homeless in an undercover disguise, Bruce Wayne is kidnapped and imprisoned in a chain gang mining camp, suffering from amnesia. Alfred must thus track him down, help him escape, and free the rest of the prisoners.
9 9 "Be a Clown" Frank Paur Ted Pedersen and Steve Hayes September 16, 1992 ( ) The Joker
Mayor Hamilton Hill's miserable son, Jordan, becomes even sadder when his father uses his birthday party as a political gathering rather than a normal celebration, and ends up stowing away in the truck of the party clown hired by Hill for the party, whom he doesn't know is actually the Joker in disguise. It is now up to Batman, whom Mayor Hill distrusts, to rescue the boy before it is too late.
10 10 "Two-Face: Part 1" Kevin Altieri Story by : Alan Burnett
Teleplay by : Randy Rogel September 25, 1992 ( ) Rupert Thorne
Mobster Rupert Thorne attempts to use Harvey Dent's secret split personality to blackmail him. But when Dent meets with Thorne at a chemical plant, "Big Bad Harv" takes over, and the resulting confrontation leads to an explosion that horribly scars half of Dent's face.
11 11 "Two-Face: Part 2" Kevin Altieri Randy Rogel September 28, 1992 ( ) Rupert Thorne
and Two-Face
Harvey Dent, now calling himself Two-Face, resurfaces and starts robbing Rupert Thorne's illegal businesses, preparing for a final confrontation with the crime boss, and Batman must stop his former friend before he and Thorne kill each other. Note: Batman's method of defeating Two-Face in this episode (using a case of coins) was later used in the climax of Batman Forever.
12 12 "It's Never Too Late" Boyd Kirkland Story by : Tom Ruegger
Teleplay by : Garin Wolf September 10, 1992 ( ) (weekday)
January 17, 1993 ( ) (primetime) Rupert Thorne
and Arnold Stromwell
A mob war between crime bosses Rupert Thorne and Arnold Stromwell is nearing its end, and comes to a climax when Stromwell is set up to be killed in an exploding restaurant by Thorne. Batman saves him at the last moment, and aided by Stromwell's brother (now a priest who lost his leg years before, an accident for which Stromwell carries a secret guilt), tries to persuade him to give up his life of crime and help the police bring Thorne down by testifying against him.
13 13 "I've Got Batman in My Basement" Frank Paur Sam Graham and Chris Hubbell September 30, 1992 ( ) The Penguin
During a fight with Batman over a stolen Fabergé egg, the Penguin incapacitates Batman with poison gas. The Dark Knight is rescued by a teenage amateur detective named Sherman Grant and his friend Roberta, who hide Batman in Sherman's basement long enough for him to recover before the Penguin finds them.
Bitter scientist Victor Fries, as Mr. Freeze, attacks several divisions of GothCorp, each time stealing a piece for a secret weapon he intends to build. Batman investigates the connections, and discovers that the start of Freeze's vendetta against GothCorp was a bitter falling out between Fries and GothCorp's CEO, Ferris Boyle (Mark Hamill), during which Boyle almost killed Fries (mutating him into Freeze) and presumably killed Fries' terminally ill wife, Nora. Batman must find a way to bring Boyle to justice before Freeze carries out his revenge. Note: This episode won the series a 1993 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program.[2]
15 15 "The Cat and the Claw: Part 1" Kevin Altieri Story by : Sean Catherine Derek and Laren Bright
Teleplay by : Jules Dennis and Richard Mueller September 5, 1992 ( ) Catwoman and Red Claw
Batman encounters a new cat burglar calling herself Catwoman, and around the same time, meets a woman named Selina Kyle (as Bruce Wayne), to whom he is visibly attracted. When Selina runs into trouble with a terrorist group known as The Red Claw, who want the mountain lion sanctuary she was trying to protect, she decides to take matters into her own hands and investigate.
16 16 "The Cat and the Claw: Part 2" Dick Sebast Story by : Sean Catherine Derek and Laren Bright
Teleplay by : Jules Dennis and Richard Mueller September 12, 1992 ( ) Red Claw
The leader of the Red Claw group (known herself only as Red Claw) attacks a military train and steals a viral plague, which she intends to release in Gotham if she isn't paid a ransom, and Batman and Catwoman must put aside their differences and work together to stop Red Claw before it is too late.
17 17 "See No Evil" Dan Riba Martin Pasko February 24, 1993 ( ) Lloyd Ventrix
Lloyd "Eddie" Ventrix is on the verge of losing his daughter, Kimberly, to his ex-wife, Helen, due to his past as a con artist. Determined not to lose Kimberly, Ventrix dons a suit, stolen from where he used to work while on parole, which grants the user invisibility but also becomes highly toxic, and poses as Kimberly's imaginary friend, Mojo, while stealing jewellery for her. Batman must solve the mystery crimes and stop Ventrix, despite the fact that he cannot even see him. Note: Michael Gross, who provided the voice of Ventrix, later voiced Warren McGinnis in Batman Beyond.
18 18 "Beware the Gray Ghost" Boyd Kirkland Story by : Dennis O'Flaherty and Tom Ruegger
Teleplay by : Garin Wolf and Tom Ruegger November 4, 1992 ( ) The Mad Bomber
Simon Trent, an actor best known for his past role as "The Gray Ghost", is on the verge of bankruptcy thanks to his declining career. To save himself, he sells off all of his Gray Ghost merchandise. Immediately afterwards, a series of crimes related to the old show begin to occur. Batman, having himself been inspired partly by the show to become the crimefighter he now is, goes to Trent for help, and they team up to put an end to the crimes, and also revive Trent's career. Note: The Gray Ghost was voiced by Adam West, the star of the 1960s television show Batman.
19 19 "Prophecy of Doom" Frank Paur Story by : Dennis Marks
Teleplay by : Sean Catherine Derek October 6, 1992 ( ) Nostromos and Lucus
Batman investigates a cult, called the Brotherhood, founded by the "mystic" Nostromos, after hearing about a number of stories from his colleagues about his ability to predict the future. Batman finds out that Nostromos is actually a con artist who was rigging near-fatal accidents to gain the confidence of Gotham's upper class citizens, and he must expose this ruse before it is too late.
20 20 "Feat of Clay: Part 1" Dick Sebast Story by : Marv Wolfman and Michael Reaves
Teleplay by : Marv Wolfman September 8, 1992 ( ) Roland Daggett
Bruce Wayne is framed for the attempted murder of Lucius Fox. The real perpetrator is an actor and master of disguise named Matt Hagen, who was disfigured in a car accident years ago. In order to keep his fame, he secretly started working for Roland Daggett, who provides him with a monthly supply of an addictive face cream known as Renuyu (a pun on "Renew You") that can temporarily reshape his face back to normal, and who wants to take Wayne Enterprises over for marketing expansion. For botching the murder, Hagen's supply is cut off, and when he breaks into Daggett's lab for more Renuyu, he pays the price dearly when Daggett's men drench his face in the formula and force him to swallow liters of it to avoid drowning. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is arrested and taken into custody, charged with the assault on Fox.
21 21 "Feat of Clay: Part 2" Kevin Altieri Story by : Marv Wolfman and Michael Reaves
Teleplay by : Michael Reaves September 9, 1992 ( ) Clayface and
Roland Daggett
Bruce Wayne is released from prison on bail. Hagen, as it turns out, survived the murder attempt on him, but at a high cost: the formula entered his body and soaked every single one of his cells, turning him into a shape-shifting mutant. With his newfound powers, Hagen, now calling himself Clayface, decides to take his revenge on Daggett and his men, and Batman must bring Daggett to justice and stop Clayface before innocent people are hurt.
22 22 "Joker's Favor" Boyd Kirkland Paul Dini September 11, 1992 ( ) (weekday)
January 31, 1993 ( ) (primetime) The Joker and Harley Quinn
After a man named Charlie Collins curses at the Joker on the road for offensive driving, the Clown Prince of Crime corners him and intimidates him into doing him a "small favor". Two years pass, and the Joker finally decides how to use Charlie: to sneak a bomb into the Peregrinator's Club, where Commissioner Gordon is to give a speech at an award ceremony. Charlie, who merely has to open the door, is skeptical at first, but for the sake of his family, he reluctantly decides to obey. Note: This episode features the debut appearance of the Joker's accomplice and love interest, Harley Quinn.
23 23 "Vendetta" Frank Paur Michael Reaves October 5, 1992 ( ) Killer Croc
Detective Bullock is arrested for kidnapping. Batman, who dislikes Bullock but nevertheless believes him to be a good man, investigates, and discovers the identity of the real criminal: Killer Croc, who harbors a vendetta against Bullock for capturing him once. Batman must clear Bullock's name before it is too late.
24 24 "Fear of Victory" Dick Sebast Samuel Warren Joseph September 29, 1992 ( ) The Scarecrow
The Scarecrow invents a fear chemical that is activated by adrenaline. Then, he uses it to affect the outcome of athletic events. Whenever a single person becomes agitated, the fear chemical kicks in, turning his excitement to fear. The Scarecrow bets against the sports stars' teams as part of his criminal scheme to scare up some quick cash, and Batman and Robin must foil his plot.
25 25 "The Clock King" Kevin Altieri David Wise September 21, 1992 ( ) Clock King
After his company goes bankrupt, Temple Fugate becomes the Clock King. Fugate sets out to seek his revenge against the man whom he blames for his misfortunes: Mayor Hamilton Hill. Fugate kidnaps Hill, intending to do away with him to accomplish his revenge. Batman must stop Fugate from carrying out his revenge and save the mayor's life.
26 26 "Appointment in Crime Alley" Boyd Kirkland Gerry Conway September 17, 1992 ( ) Roland Daggett
With the help of arsonists, Roland Daggett plans to destroy Crime Alley and use the land to expand his business empire. Note: Based on the comic-book story "There Is No Hope in Crime Alley" (Detective Comics #457, March 1976) by Denny O'Neil and Dick Giordano.
27 27 "Mad as a Hatter" Frank Paur Paul Dini October 12, 1992 ( ) The Mad Hatter
Miserable Wayne Industries scientist Jervis Tetch is unable to pursue the girl he loves, Alice the secretary. When she splits up from her boyfriend, he makes an advance and develops a fast friendship with her, until her boyfriend reconciles with her and proposes to her. Enraged, Tetch decides to take matters into his own hands, and dons the mantle of the Mad Hatter, using his mind-control devices to force those who have wronged him all his life to become his mindless slaves.
28 28 "Dreams in Darkness" Dick Sebast Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens November 3, 1992 ( ) (weekday)
December 20, 1992 ( ) (primetime) The Scarecrow
Batman is incarcerated in Arkham Asylum after being exposed to the Scarecrow's fear-inducing gas. Batman knows that the Scarecrow has escaped for the second time and is planning to poison Gotham's water supply with the same fear-inducing gas, and he must bring himself to break the law and escape from Arkham before the Scarecrow brings Gotham to its knees. Notes: Loosely based on "Batman: The Last Arkham" of Batman: Shadow of the Bat #1–4 by Alan Grant. This episode adapted the comic book story with the inclusion of the Scarecrow instead of Victor Zsasz and Dr. Bartholomew instead of Jeremiah Arkham.
#1–4 by Alan Grant. This episode adapted the comic book story with the inclusion of the Scarecrow instead of Victor Zsasz and Dr. Bartholomew instead of Jeremiah Arkham. The Scarecrow's scheme in this episode was similarly used by Ra's al Ghul (with assistance from the Scarecrow) in Batman Begins .
. The Joker's real name is implied to be Jack Napier when Dr. Bartholomew, who thinks the patients' alter egos as supervillains are a product of Batman's fantasy, mentions it among the names Harvey Dent and Pamela Isley.
29 29 "Eternal Youth" Kevin Altieri Beth Bornstein September 23, 1992 ( ) Poison Ivy
Several rich industrialists are invited to the Eternal Youth Health Spa, and that's where they are last seen before disappearing. The only connection: they had something to do with the death of plants. Bruce Wayne also receives an invitation (although it was one of his greedy directors who nearly made the deal to destroy a rainforest before Bruce forced him to shut the operation down), but Alfred and his "lady friend", Maggie, go in his place. When they do not return, Batman is forced to investigate, discovering that the spa is run by Poison Ivy, and that she has been using a formula to turn the industrialists into humanoid trees, including Alfred and Maggie.
30 30 "Perchance to Dream" Boyd Kirkland Story by : Laren Bright and Michael Reaves
Teleplay by : Joe R. Lansdale October 19, 1992 ( ) (weekday)
March 14, 1993 ( ) (primetime) The Mad Hatter
Bruce Wayne wakes up one morning to find that his life is completely upside-down: his parents are alive, the Batcave does not exist, Alfred does not remember Robin, and he is engaged to Selina Kyle. However, it doesn't mean that Batman isn't still around, and Bruce starts to wonder what has happened, especially after seeing the characteristics of a dream (such as book and newspaper prints not making sense) inside this new life.
31 31 "The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy" Frank Paur Elliot S. Maggin October 14, 1992 ( ) Josiah Wormwood
Baron Jozek, furious at Batman for humiliating him at a dinner party (over Jozek's underworld connections), hires Josiah Wormwood, a master in setting traps for his victims, to hunt down Batman and bring back the hero's cape and cowl. Note: Based on the comic-book story "The Cape and Cowl Death Trap!" from Detective Comics #450 August 1975, written by Elliot S. Maggin.
32 32 "Robin's Reckoning: Part 1" Dick Sebast Randy Rogel February 7, 1993 ( ) (primetime)
May 17, 1993 ( ) (weekday) Tony Zucco and Arnold Stromwell
During a fight with some gangsters at a construction yard, Batman and Robin learn the name of their boss: Billy Marin. While Robin looks forward to going up against Marin, Batman becomes distant, and after a falling out at the Batcave, Batman doesn't allow Robin to accompany him on the search for Marin. Robin investigates on the Batcomputer, and soon realizes that Billy Marin is not the boss' real name. Rather, it is an alias of Tony Zucco, the man who killed his parents (which Batman already knew, but chose not to tell Robin). Notes: The flashbacks to Robin's origin story is based on Detective Comics #38 (June, 1940).
#38 (June, 1940). This episode won the 1993 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour).[2]
33 33 "Robin's Reckoning: Part 2" Dick Sebast Randy Rogel February 14, 1993 ( ) (primetime)
May 18, 1993 ( ) (weekday) Tony Zucco
Angered by Batman's deceit, Robin sets out to find Tony Zucco on his own, all the while plagued by the memories of his parents' death and how Bruce took him in as his own son. Eventually, Batman manages to find Zucco at an old amusement park, but breaks his leg during the fight. Robin finally arrives and prepares to kill Zucco in revenge.
34 34 "The Laughing Fish" Bruce W. Timm Paul Dini January 10, 1993 ( ) (primetime)
April 27, 1993 ( ) (weekday) The Joker and Harley Quinn
Joker creates a toxin that affects only fish, mutating them into Joker fish. Then, he targets innocent men who refuse to copyright his Joker fish. The Joker also captures Harvey Bullock, and Batman must rescue him and foil the Clown Prince of Crime's insane scheme. Note: This episode is based on three Batman comics, blended together; "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge" from Batman #251 September 1973 by Denny O'Neil with art by Neal Adams, followed by "The Laughing Fish" and "Sign of the Joker!" from Detective Comics #475 and #476, of February/March 1978, both by writer Steve Englehart with art by Marshall Rogers.
35 35 "Night of the Ninja" Kevin Altieri Steve Perry October 26, 1992 ( ) Kyodai Ken
A mysterious ninja is robbing Wayne Enterprises subsidiaries, and Batman discovers that the ninja is actually his equal in combat. A grudge against Bruce Wayne and skills to match him can only mean one person: Kyodai Ken, an old rival of Wayne's teacher from his days in Japan, and who was thrown out of the dojo after attempting to rob it, only to be stopped by Wayne. Ken, it turns out, wants revenge.
36 36 "Cat Scratch Fever" Boyd Kirkland Story by : Sean Catherine Derek
Teleplay by : Buzz Dixon November 5, 1992 ( ) Roland Daggett and
Professor Milo
Batman must stop Roland Daggett's plan to release a viral plague designed by Professor Milo into Gotham by way of its stray cat population. The case gains new urgency when Catwoman becomes infected with the virus during her search for her missing cat, Isis. Now, Batman must find an antidote to save the woman who loves him most.
37 37 "The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne" Frank Paur Story by : David Wise
Teleplay by : Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens October 29, 1992 ( ) (weekday)
February 28, 1993 ( ) (primetime) Hugo Strange, The Joker,
Two-Face and The Penguin
After a prominent judge is injured during a struggle with some thugs demanding money from her in exchange for a strange tape, Bruce Wayne decides to take a trip to Yucca Springs, a resort where the judge had vacationed, and consult Dr. Hugo Strange, a psychiatrist. Bruce soon learns that Strange has invented a machine that extracts people's darkest secrets from their minds and transfers them to videotape — and now Strange has proof of Bruce's secret identity as Batman, and plans to auction it to three of Gotham's prominent crime bosses. Note: Based on the comic stories "The Dead Yet Live" and "I Am the Batman!" from Detective Comics #471 and #472, of August/September 1977 by Steve Englehart.
#471 and #472, of August/September 1977 by Steve Englehart. Dr. Strange's scheme in this episode was similarly used by the Riddler in Batman Forever.
Several robberies take place at major companies, including Wayne Enterprises, and Bruce Wayne, as Batman, discovers the thief to be a mechanical briefcase. Bruce meets with his old friend, Karl Rossum, an expert in robotics who lost his daughter to a vehicle accident years ago. He also meets Rossum's assistant, Randa Duane, and Rossum's ultimate creation: a prototype A.I. known as Holographic Analytical Reciprocating Digital Computer (H.A.R.D.A.C.) Bruce invites Duane to dinner, and around the same time, certain civilians start acting strangely. Most surprising is when Duane unexpectedly leaves Wayne Manor while Bruce is on the phone, and the entire Batcave turns on Batman. Note: This episode marks the series' debut appearance of Barbara Gordon, not yet Batgirl. All of Barbara's starring appearances were in episodes written by Brynne Stephens.
39 39 "Heart of Steel: Part 2" Kevin Altieri Brynne Stephens November 17, 1992 ( ) H.A.R.D.A.C.
Batman manages to free himself from the Batcave's clutches, and brings it back under his control, although he fails to track Duane down. Barbara Gordon approaches Batman to inform him of her father's sudden change in behavior. A brutal fight between Batman and Detective Bullock ensues, during which Batman pushes Bullock onto the Bat Signal, and reveals him to actually be an android, meaning that the real Bullock and James Gordon have gone missing, and Batman knows who the culprit is: H.A.R.D.A.C. Batman must stop the evil supercomputer before it is too late.
40 40 "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?" Eric Radomski David Wise November 18, 1992 ( ) (weekday)
January 3, 1993 ( ) (primetime) The Riddler
Edward Nygma creates the video game The Riddle of the Minotaur for the company Competitron, but is fired by his superior Daniel Mockridge, who wants the profits for himself. Nygma vows revenge, and takes up the mantle of the Riddler two years later. While Batman sympathizes with Nygma, he and Robin find themselves forced to stop him before he kills Mockridge in a life-sized version of the Minotaur maze. Despite successfully rescuing Mockridge, who complete a deal to move his company to Gotham, the incident leaves him in a permanent all-consuming fear of Nygma's return for revenge. Note: This episode features the series' debut appearance of The Riddler. Fun fact: When Robin is playing the Minotaur game on the Batcave computer, the majority of the sound effects heard from the game are actually from the NES game Super Mario Bros. 3.
41 41 "Joker's Wild" Boyd Kirkland Paul Dini November 19, 1992 ( ) The Joker and
Cameron Kaiser
Cameron Kaiser builds a casino hotel modeled after the Joker, called "The Joker's Wild". The Joker sees this on the news and, enraged, escapes from Arkham again, with one thought on his mind: destroying the casino, unaware that this is exactly what Kaiser wants him to do as part of an insurance claim.
42 42 "Tyger Tyger" Frank Paur Story by : Michael Reaves and Randy Rogel
Teleplay by : Cherie Wilkerson October 30, 1992 ( ) Tygrus and Dr. Emile Dorian
Selina Kyle is kidnapped by the villainous genetic engineer Dr. Emile Dorian and becomes his latest experiment to provide his man-cat hybrid named Tygrus with a mate. Batman learns of this and comes to the island to rescue Selina. He is captured and forced into a deadly game of cat-and-flying mouse as Tygrus hunts Batman through the island's jungles.
43 43 "Moon of the Wolf" Dick Sebast Len Wein November 11, 1992 ( ) The Werewolf
and Professor Milo
Batman investigates the appearance of a werewolf-like creature in Gotham, not realizing that the monster happens to be one of Bruce Wayne's associates — Anthony Romulus, ex-Olympic champion. Behind the scheme is twisted chemist Professor Milo. Note: Based on the comic story of the same name by writer Len Wein with art by Neal Adams, from Batman #255, April 1974.
44 44 "Day of the Samurai" Bruce W. Timm Steve Perry February 23, 1993 ( ) Kyodai Ken
Kyodai Ken kidnaps Kari, star pupil of Yoru Sensei, the martial arts instructor who taught both Kyodai and Bruce. The ninja's ransom for her is a scroll that teaches the location of the fabled Death Touch.
45 45 "Terror in the Sky" Boyd Kirkland Story by : Steve Perry and Mark Saraceni
Teleplay by : Mark Saraceni November 12, 1992 ( ) She-Bat
When a giant-sized bat ransacks Gotham harbor, Batman suspects that Dr. Kirk Langstrom is up to his old tricks, taking the Man-Bat formula again. Batman isn't the only one. Kirk's wife, Francine, is so distrustful of her husband that she decides to leave him. After further investigation, Batman discovers that this Man-Bat is not Kirk, but someone else, and thus he shames Francine's father into permanently destroying the formula. Note: Loosely based on "Man-Bat Over Vegas", originally presented in Detective Comics #429, by Frank Robbins. The setting has been shifted from Las Vegas to Gotham Harbor, and in keeping with the family-friendly rating of the television show, She-Bat is not a vampire in the adaptation. The final line of the episode, "the nightmare's finally over", is similar to one of the final lines from the original comic, "Now Fran's vampire nightmare is about over".
The Joker, Killer Croc, the Penguin, Two-Face, and Poison Ivy all meet at a poker table, each telling a tale of times when they almost defeated Batman. At the same time, Harley Quinn is about to kill Catwoman after she rescued Batman from the Joker's electric chair, and Batman must save her. Notes: Influenced by a four-issue story arc in Batman (1977) #291–294, entitled "Where Were You on the Night Batman Was Killed?". In each of the four issues, one of Catwoman, Riddler, and The Joker all recount their claims to have killed the Batman. However, the plot for "Almost Got 'Im" is quite different (six stories in the show, and four completely different ones in the comic book), with only the Joker as an overlapping antagonist.
Two-Face's strategy in "Almost Got 'Im" (strapping down Batman to a giant coin and flipping the coin in the air) was taken from the comic; World's Finest Comics #30, September 1947. In a back-up tale both Batman and Robin were tied to a giant penny that was catapulted onto spikes by a lesser known villain, the Penny Plunderer.
47 47 "Birds of a Feather" Frank Paur Story by : Chuck Menville
Teleplay by : Brynne Stephens February 8, 1993 ( ) The Penguin
Veronica Vreeland is looking for a way to create a splash with her next party, and arrives at the idea of having a former criminal in attendance — especially if there is one whose manners would create a stir. The Penguin, who has recently reformed, fits the bill perfectly. In the process of convincing the Penguin to come to her party, Veronica finds she likes the corpulent little guy. For his part, the Penguin begins to fall in love with her, until he overhears that he is merely being used...
48 48 "What Is Reality?" Dick Sebast Marty Isenberg and Robert N. Skir November 24, 1992 ( ) (weekday)
March 7, 1993 ( ) (primetime) The Riddler
Seeking to prove once and for all that his is the superior mind, the Riddler lures Batman into a riddle-solving contest inside the virtual reality of a computer game in order to save Commissioner Gordon's life. In the course of solving the riddles and escaping the Riddler's traps, Batman learns that he is able to manipulate the virtual reality landscape much like the Riddler does.
49 49 "I Am the Night" Boyd Kirkland Michael Reaves November 9, 1992 ( ) (weekday)
December 13, 1992 ( ) (primetime) The Jazzman
On the anniversary of the death of Bruce's parents, Batman accompanies Leslie Thompkins to Crime Alley to place roses on the spot where they were gunned down. Meanwhile, Commissioner Gordon is on stakeout to arrest Jimmy "The Jazzman" Peake during a drug smuggling ring. Batman had promised to be there, but arrives late to find a gun battle going on. He helps defeat the gangsters and arrest the Jazzman, but at a high cost—Gordon is severely wounded. The incident traumatizes Batman and he contemplates giving up his crime-fighting career, despite the Jazzman escaping prison to carry out his personal vendetta against Gordon (who had sent him to prison six years before).
50 50 "Off Balance" Kevin Altieri Len Wein November 23, 1992 ( ) Count Vertigo and Talia
While following Count Vertigo's trail, Batman encounters Talia, daughter of the head of the Society of Shadows, who was sent by her father to prevent the capture of a sonic drill that the Count stole. But after his identity is mistakenly revealed to Talia, Batman remains off-balance as to where her true loyalties lie. Note: This episode is a direct adaptation of "Into the Den of the Death-Dealers" from Detective Comics #411, May 1971 by Denny O'Neil with art by Bob Brown. The story is famous for the first appearance of the character Talia al Ghul.
51 51 "The Man Who Killed Batman" Bruce W. Timm Paul Dini February 1, 1993 ( ) The Joker, Harley Quinn and Rupert Thorne
When small-time gang member Sidney "The Squid" Debris (played by Matt Frewer) seemingly kills Batman by accident, he gets involved with gangs all over Gotham, as well as the Joker and Rupert Thorne, none of whom believe his story that everything that is happening is by preposterous happenstance.
52 52 "Mudslide" Eric Radomski Story by : Alan Burnett
Teleplay by : Steve Perry September 15, 1993 ( ) Clayface
Clayface is falling apart, literally. His clay-like body is disintegrating. Fortunately, a scientist he knew from his movie star days is working on a remedy. However, Hagen is forced to steal money to pay for the expensive components of the remedy. That is, until one of his targets is Wayne Biomedical Labs...
53 53 "Paging the Crime Doctor" Frank Paur Story by : Mike W. Barr and Laren Bright
Teleplay by : Randy Rogel & Martin Pasko September 17, 1993 ( ) Rupert Thorne
Dr. Matthew Thorne (played by Joseph Campanella), losing his medical license and forced into becoming the crime doctor by his younger brother, crime boss Rupert Thorne, must perform delicate surgery on Rupert. He can't do it alone, and kidnaps Dr. Leslie Thompkins to assist. Batman discovers Leslie's disappearance, and rushes to track her down – and has an additional interest in Matthew, because he was a medical school classmate of Bruce Wayne's father Thomas.
54 54 "Zatanna" Dick Sebast and Dan Riba Paul Dini February 2, 1993 ( ) Montague Kane
When the glamorous magician Zatanna is framed for a robbery during her act, Batman swings to her defense. Zatanna is grateful, though a little puzzled, by the Dark Knight's commitment to prove her innocence, but the two heroes unite and use the skills her father, Zatara, taught them to expose and combat the culprit: an evil illusionist named Montague Kane.
55 55 "The Mechanic" Kevin Altieri Story by : Steve Perry and Laren Bright
Teleplay by : Randy Rogel January 24, 1993 ( ) The Penguin
Thanks to a freak accident during a high-speed chase, the Batmobile is virtually demolished. After Batman takes the car to his personal mechanic, Earl Cooper, the Penguin makes his move and tampers with the Batmobile, putting it under his control. Note: The Penguin's scheme in this episode was similarly featured in Batman Returns.
56 56 "Harley and Ivy" Boyd Kirkland Paul Dini January 18, 1993 ( ) The Joker, Harley Quinn
and Poison Ivy
When the Joker fires Harley, she tries going on a crime spree of her own, joining up with Poison Ivy, and the two become Gotham's Queens of Crime, much to the Joker's fury.
57 57 "Shadow of the Bat: Part 1" Frank Paur Brynne Stephens September 13, 1993 ( ) Two-Face, Rupert Thorne
and Gil Mason
When Commissioner Gordon is framed for taking bribes from Rupert Thorne, his daughter Barbara pleads with Batman to show up at a rally being put on in the commissioner's behalf. But when Batman disappears after finding the person behind the frame-up, Barbara takes the law into her own hands as Batgirl. Note: This episode marks the series' debut appearance of Barbara Gordon as Batgirl.
58 58 "Shadow of the Bat: Part 2" Frank Paur Brynne Stephens September 14, 1993 ( ) Two-Face and Gil Mason
Robin discovers that Gil Mason is in league with the underworld and goes to investigate him. He encounters Batgirl along the way, and go their separate ways to stop Mason. They then meet again to learn that Gil is working with Two-Face to take out Gordon, and have Batman (as Matches Malone) captured.
59 59 "Blind as a Bat" Dan Riba Story by : Mike Underwood and Len Wein
Teleplay by : Len Wein February 22, 1993 ( ) The Penguin
The Penguin steals an experimental helicopter from an air show, causing an explosion that temporarily blinds Bruce Wayne. Batman knows he won't be able to wait until his vision returns to track the Penguin down, and he must find a way to do so without the use of his eyes.
60 60 "The Demon's Quest: Part 1" Kevin Altieri Dennis O'Neil May 3, 1993 ( ) Ra's al Ghul
When Robin is mysteriously abducted from his college campus, Batman begins a fruitless search... until he is astounded by the sudden appearance in the Batcave of Ra's al Ghul. Ra's quickly reveals that his daughter, Talia, has been abducted under circumstances similar to Robin's, suggesting that the same people are responsible. So begins an uneasy truce between Batman and 'The Demon'. Note: A direct adaptation of "Daughter of the Demon" from Batman #232, June 1971, and "The Demon Lives Again" Batman #244, September 1972, both by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams. Famous for introducing one of Batman's deadlier foes; Ra's al Ghul, father of Talia.
61 61 "The Demon's Quest: Part 2" Kevin Altieri Story by : Dennis O'Neil and Len Wein
Teleplay by : Len Wein May 4, 1993 ( ) Ra's al Ghul
After freeing Talia from her father's clutches and escaping from an avalanche, Batman and Robin follow the only clue they have – the word 'Orpheus'. After discovering that 'Orpheus' is Ra's private satellite that will orbit over the Sahara, the duo travel to the Demon's desert stronghold. There, Batman learns that the satellite is actually a weapon which will explosively destroy all the Lazarus Pits simultaneously throughout the world, destroying all the life that exists. Note: A direct adaptation of "Daughter of the Demon" from Batman #232, June 1971, and "The Demon Lives Again" Batman #244, September 1972, both by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams.
62 62 "His Silicon Soul" Boyd Kirkland Marty Isenberg and Robert N. Skir November 20, 1992 ( ) H.A.R.D.A.C. and
Duplicate Batman
When a Batman impersonator appears in Gotham City, the real Batman deduces that Karl Rossum is somehow involved and confronts the inventor. The other Batman, a duplicate, then shows up and a battle between the two takes place. After the duplicate Batman escapes, it begins its campaign to recreate H.A.R.D.A.C.'s goals of a robotic society. Note: The anime series The Big O was partially inspired by this episode.
63 63 "Fire from Olympus" Dan Riba Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens May 24, 1993 ( ) Maxie Zeus
Believing himself to be the reincarnation of Zeus, Maxie Zeus steals an experimental weapon that the government developed. The mad man desires to use the weapon against the people of Gotham City and Batman must put a stop to Maxie's mad plan against the city he loves.
64 64 "Read My Lips" Boyd Kirkland Story by : Alan Burnett and Michael Reaves
Teleplay by : Joe R. Lansdale May 10, 1993 ( ) The Ventriloquist
A brand-new gang has made its debut committing the slickest crimes ever, thanks to the gang leader, Scarface. It's up to Batman to stop Scarface and his "dummy", the Ventriloquist.
65 65 "The Worry Men" Frank Paur Paul Dini September 16, 1993 ( ) The Mad Hatter |
Genre
Action, Platformer
Action, Platformer Platform
PC, PS3, X360
PC, PS3, X360 Release date
Jun 14, 2011 (US)
Jun 16, 2011 (EU)
This game was released on June 16, 2011 and is no longer available to pre-order. Any incentives that were offered are listed below.
Alice: Madness Returns is an upcoming multiplatform action-adventure game from Spicy Horse studio with game designer American McGee. It will be released in June this year for PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 platforms.
The sequel picks up 11 years after the events of the first game. Alice is living in the gloomy Victorian London, still haunted by nightmarish hallucinations that interfere with reality. She seeks refuge in the Wonderland, but finds it warped by her own insanity. If Alice is to save herself from the madness, she has to use her Vorpal Blade and an array of other crazy weapons to defeat twisted enemies and recall the repressed memories of her past.
Pre-order bonuses
The first A: MR preorder bonus is available for gamers on EA Store only. Those who reserve a copy of Alice: Madness Returns – The Complete Collection will receive both the sequel and the re-mastered original game, American McGee’s Alice, as digital download.
The second bonus is available on Amazon, GameStop, and the aforementioned EA Store. Gamers who pre-order Alice: Madness Returns at any of these retailers will receive 9 songs from the official soundtrack composed by the former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna.
Finally, a free Alice: Madness Returns Interactive Storybook app is available for download on iTunes. Complete it on your iPhone, iPod or iPad (anything that runs iOS 4.0 and above) and unlock a $10 discount for the upcoming game at EA Store! The story book serves as a prequel to A:MR and features some impressive artwork.
Beautiful Insanity trailer
The fourth trailer for A: MR features some gameplay footage, including fantastic environments and battle scenes with interesting new weapons.
Want to find out more? Visit EA.com/Alice for official news, trailers, screenshots and other info. |
A college degree once looked to be the path to prosperity. In an article for TechCrunch, Sarah Lacy writes, "Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe."
But the jobs that made higher education pay off during the inflationary boom, kicked into high gear by Nixon waving goodbye to the last shreds of a gold standard, came primarily from government and finance.
In 1990, 6.4 million people worked for federal, state, and local governments. By 2010, that number had grown almost 6 times — to 38.3 million — with many of these jobs being white-collar.
In 1990, the financial sector was less than 7.5 percent of the S&P 500. By 2006, this sector had grown to 22.3 percent of the S&P, and that year the financial sector constituted 45 percent of the index's earnings.
"Prices and wage rates boom," writes Mises.
Everybody feels happy and is convinced that now finally mankind has overcome forever the gloomy state of scarcity and reached everlasting prosperity. In fact, all this amazing wealth is fragile, a castle built on sands of illusion. It cannot last. There is no means to substitute banknotes and deposits for nonexistent capital goods.
Times have changed.
Last week, HSBC Holding Plc announced plans to eliminate 30,000 jobs worldwide by the end of 2013. The job cuts will affect "support staff where we believe we have created an unnecessary bureaucracy in this firm over a number of years," HSBC chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver said.
Goldman Sachs plans to cut 1,000 positions. Bank of America is laying off 1,500 employees and closing 600 retail branches.
At the same time that banks are trimming their fat, according to a Labor Department report released earlier this month, from May 2010 to May 2011 local governments shed 267,000 jobs and state governments 24,000. Local government employment in May, at 14.165 million jobs, was the lowest since July 2006.
An increase in the amount of real savings, which induces a fall in the interest rate and a lengthening of the production schedule, increases an economy's productive capacity, creating genuine growth brought about by the investment in higher-order goods such as factories and other production assets.
Conversely, easy, cheap credit fools entrepreneurs into believing that society's collective time preference has fallen, enticing them into investing in higher-order goods, such as land, factories, and the like — when in fact the collective time preference hasn't changed, and the demand for higher-order goods is merely a mirage. The result is booms and busts rather than genuine growth.
College degrees are similar to what the Austrians call higher-order goods. It's thought that a student will gain knowledge and seasoning in college that will make him or her more productive and a candidate for a high-paying career. The investment of time and money in knowledge pays through higher productivity and is translated into higher income. Higher education is the higher-order means to a successful career.
PayPal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, questioning the value of higher education, tells TechCrunch,
A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed. Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It's like telling the world there's no Santa Claus.
The excesses of both college and homeownership were always excused by a core national belief that, no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.
The New York Times' David Leonhardt even claims,
Construction workers, police officers, plumbers, retail salespeople and secretaries, among others, make significantly more with a degree than without one. Why? Education helps people do higher-skilled work, get jobs with better-paying companies or open their own businesses.
Using data from the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, Leonhardt asserts that dishwashers with college degrees make $34,000 a year while those without make $19,000.
No employer in their right mind would pay nearly double for a dishwasher with a college degree. However, there are plenty of fresh college graduates cobbling together multiple low-level jobs just to make ends meet.
"More college graduates are working in second jobs that don't require college degrees," writes Hannah Seligson in the New York Times, "part of a phenomenon called 'mal-employment.' In short, many baby-sitters, sales clerks, telemarketers and bartenders are overqualified for their jobs."
Nearly 2 million college graduates were mal-employed last year, up 17 percent from 2007. Nearly half of all college graduates are working at a job not requiring a degree.
In the United States, 80,000 bartenders as well as 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees. Nearly a quarter of all retail salespersons have a college degree. In all, 17 million Americans with college degrees are working at jobs that do not require a bachelor's degree.
"Young college graduates working multiple jobs is a natural consequence of a bad labor market and having, on average, $20,000 worth of student loans to pay off," said Carl E. Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers.
"The median starting salary for those who graduated from four-year degree programs in 2009 and 2010 was $27,000, down from $30,000 for those who graduated in 2006 to 2008, before the recession," Seligson writes, adding, "Try living on $27,000 a year — before taxes — in a city like New York, Washington or Chicago."
Like all booms, higher education has been fueled by credit. In June of last year, total student-loan debt exceeded total credit-card debt outstanding for the first time, totaling more than $900 billion.
All of this credit has pushed the average cost of tuition up 440 percent in the last 25 years, more than four times the rate of inflation. But while the factors of production on campus have been bid up, just as they are in any other asset boom, the return on investment is a bust. In 1992, there were 5.1 million mal-employed college graduates. By 2008, the number was 17 million.
Not only are the returns poor, but the quality of the product is poor (as in the case of new-construction quality in the housing boom). According to the authors of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, 45 percent of students make no gains in their critical reasoning and thinking skills, as well as writing ability, after two years in college. More than one out of three college seniors were no better at writing and thinking than they were when they first arrived at their campuses.
Many projects contemplated and started during the real-estate boom are never completed, as prices are bid up, and owners run out of capital. Such is the case for many attending college, as over 45 percent of those who enroll as freshmen ultimately give up, realizing they lack the disciplinary and mental capital, and do not graduate.
Similar to the government push for increased homeownership, government is foursquare behind having more young people attend universities. One of President Obama's top goals is to increase the number of Americans attending college.
But why? "Among the members of the class of 2010, just 56 percent had held at least one job by this spring, when the survey was conducted," reported the Times recently. "That compares with 90 percent of graduates from the classes of 2006 and 2007."
And because they can't find jobs, 85 percent of college grads move back in with their parents after they graduate. According to a poll by Twentysomething Inc., a marketing and research firm based in Philadelphia, that rate has steadily risen from 67 percent in 2006.
Perversely, while the market tries to clear away malinvestments in finance and real estate, plus the jobs that supported them, colleges continue to turn out more business majors than any other discipline. In 2007 and 2008 there were more than 335,000 business degrees granted — 100,000 more than a decade before, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
At the same time as law schools have a building boom underway, many new law grads can't find work or are working temporary jobs at $15 an hour.
David Segal reports for The New York Times,
And while law grads can't find work, law schools are enrolling more students than ever before at tuition rates of $40,000+ a year. Segal explains that law-school tuition has increased at 4 times the rate of undergraduate education, which itself has increased 4 times the CPI. "From 1989 to 2009, when college tuition rose by 71 percent, law school tuition shot up 317 percent."
Students and their parents are investing in the higher-order good of a college degree, in the mistaken belief that plenty of jobs await college graduates at the end of four or six or seven years. However, time preferences haven't changed. The demand for consumer goods remains, and that's where the jobs are. The boom in demand for bankers, barristers, and bureaucrats is over.
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Located inside the Land at EPCOT, Garden Grill is the only rotating restaurant in Disney! Yes, the restaurant rotates! The scenery changes all around you, as you enjoy a delicious meal. One minute you could be looking at murals on the wall(hint: hidden Mickey) and next thing you know is you are experiencing parts of the Living with the Land attraction. It was definitely an awesome new experience to try.
The food was delicious. The meal is served family style but it is not your typical servings of chicken, potatoes and salad. At the Garden Grill you start off with a fresh salad, like really fresh because they grow the salad ingredients like right downstairs. You also get some bread and honey butter before the main course. Once you have had you fill of appetizers the main course begins its way out. They bring out two large plates. One plate has a bowl of macaroni and cheese, which is super cheesy and good, and sweet potatoe fries. The largest of the plates has many different meal options for you to mix and match. First there is a delicious serving of turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce. Next there is a fish of the day (talapia the day I was there) with a jasmine rice and tangy dressing. Lastly there was a large serving of mashed potatoes and beef, which tasted amazing! It was a nice change from your typical family style food. Also, if you run out of something (we needed a couple servings of macaroni and cheese) they bring you as much as you like!
Forgot to mention that this is also a character meal where you can meet Farmer Mickey and his pals Pluto, Chip and Dale. They were super interactive and came to our table more than once.
So, if you are planning a trip for Thanksgiving down to Disney give Garden Grill a shot. I think your families would enjoy it!!
Enjoy!!!
PD
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Steve House, looking back on the Denali Slovak Direct
19.07.2017 di di Planetmountain
17 years after his ground-breaking ascent, American alpinist Steve House looks back on the extremely fast repeat of the Slovak Direct up the South Face of Denali (Alaska), climbed with Mark Twight and Scott Backes in 60 hours non-stop.
Using the recent 5-day repeat of the Slovak Direct on Denali (6194m) by the young Italians David Bacci and Luca Moroni as a pretext, we asked Steve House to recall his astounding ascent carried out in 2000 with Mark Twight and Scott Backes in 60 hours of non-stop climbing. At that time their ascent - only the third after the 11-day first ascent carried out in 1984 by Blažej Adam, Tono Križo and František Korl and after the 7-day second ascent by Kevin Mahoney and Ben Gilmore - marked a radical shift in why and how climbs were made. Better still: the motivation, starting from the route and the mountain, was aimed at trying to understand more about themselves. They chose a path and a method - both difficult and in some respects "crazy" - that took them beyond their physical and mental limits. The result was an epic, if not absolutely unique, ascent (read House's Beyond The Mountain to find out more). Their experience was based on their climbing partnerships and on a journey that was intended to go beyond the boundaries of the usual way of thinking. Theirs was the search for illumination and a vision, but also, and above all, as Steve House summarizes below, an experience that was both formative and unforgettable.
Non-stop Slovak Direct by Steve House
Our dream with the Slovak was to push ourselves right to the edge of what we thought was possible, and see what would happen to us. We did not care about repeating the route (we missed the 2nd ascent by a few weeks as a then-unknown rope team climbed the route the month before us). Or setting a time or speed-record. We saw what I still believe is the most difficult and most beautiful route on Denali, and we saw a forge. A place we could enter, and come out transformed. Re-shaped. Tempered.
It was very important that the three of us were very close. And it was important that we were close in each relationship. Scott and Mark were, and still are, very close to one another due to many experiences they had as a rope team and lifelong friends. Scott and I spent important time together, most notably climbing M-16 on Howse Peak in 1999. And Mark and I spent time together on several previous expeditions in Alaska. We are all still remarkably close friends today, 16 years later.
The forge worked. We all learned new things about ourselves and about each other. We saw just how strong our wills to live, to have life and embrace it to the full extent was. The closer we got to dis-order (we once lost our way on the route and had to make several abseils), the more we felt our resolve to climb, to live, strengthen. By the time we got to the top we were, strangely, full of energy. We almost ran from the summit down to the 14,200’ camp in just over two hours time. The process emptied us, and filled us. The climb almost destroyed us, it made us weak, almost killed us, but we only got stronger. And we still have that strength today.
To find out more about Steve House and his alpinism courses check out www.uphillathlete.com |
Just a week after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced his intention to raise the 5 percent consumption tax to 8 percent next April, Finance Minister Taro Aso said he was upbeat about raising the levy further to 10 percent.
Aso told reporters Tuesday the government should decide by the end of December next year whether to raise the tax to 10 percent in October 2015, as required by a special tax reform law enacted last year.
“It’d be hard to compile the (fiscal 2015) budget unless we make the decision by around (the end of) December” because it affects government revenues, Aso told a news conference.
The tax reform law contains an article that allows the government to cancel the planned hike if economic conditions deteriorate considerably.
But during the news conference, Aso indicated he believes the tax should be raised, pointing out social security expenditures are rapidly growing as society ages.
Unlike Aso, senior aides to Abe at the prime minister’s office are more sensitive to voter reaction and cautious about consumption tax issues.
Later the same day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters nothing has been decided about whether and when to raise the sales levy again beyond next April.
“The prime minister has just made the decision to raise the consumption tax from 5 percent to 8 percent,” Suga told a news conference.
“We will just make an appropriate decision, based on the law,” he said.
The Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito face many local-level elections in spring 2015 that could make it difficult for the ruling bloc to alienate voters before then.
When asked about the elections, Aso said, “I cannot make any comment on that” because the Diet enacted the tax law last year and decided on the timing of the planned tax hike. |
Node is much more than JavaScript on the Server.
That's Node's gimmick though right? You can now write both your server and client in JavaScript.
No longer will you toil away, learning and bouncing between multiple environments. Painfully switching contexts, excreting blood and tears when you are forced to move from the client to the server or vice versa.
Hopefully you picked up on my sarcasm.
The fact that Node uses JavaScript is but a tertiary point (a benefit to some, a downside to others). It most definitely is a contributor to it's success, but so much so that the primary point and purpose of Node is often missed. If this is obvious and apparent to you, you probably can stop reading.
Saying that you like Node because you can write JavaScript on the server side is like saying you like red Lotus Elises because they are painted red. Not everyone likes red, and even if everyone did, it's hardly the most important/objective thing that makes this car "good".
Node is fundamentally different than the dynamic language platform status quo. It was born from an obsession with efficiency. A dissatisfaction with the classic 1-to-1 relationship between threads and connections drove it's ability to handle a significantly increased level of concurrency for web applications written with dynamic languages.
Blocking and the I/O Problem
The classic bottleneck of most applications, web or otherwise, is I/O.
The application is regularly transferring information to and from a database, the file system, the network, or a combination of these. Generally, the transfer of this information is far slower than the speed of the CPU operating on this information in memory. Productive CPU over-utilization is likely not your problem.
The second problem is the way we have handled the first. Historically understanding computers, we think sequentially. This is how Computers think right? You provide a set of instructions and they are run in sequence from top to bottom. Your first program generally looks something like this.
// print console . log ( "Enter your name: " ); // block execution to retrieve data // keeping the process tied up awaiting the // data's return var name = console . read (); // manipulate data and report console . log ( "Hello " + name + "!" );
But what if you could do this in a non-blocking way
// print console . log ( "Enter your name: " ); // make a request for the data, but allow the process to // be free to do other things, providing a bit of code // to run when the data is retrieved. console . read ( // When we are notified we have a // response, manipulate data and report function ( err , name ) { console . log ( "Hello " + name + "!" ); } );
Making your process block and wait around for millions of clock cycles is a waste of time and resources. To handle additional requests, you must use a process manager of some kind to keep around multiple processes. As the web moves to be a more interactive medium, we are continually reducing the size of each request, while multiplying the number of requests generated by every single client. This makes it obvious why the 1-to-1 relationship between a request and a process is hard to scale.
Historically, we have taught ourselves to more easily reason our programs in the first style, but I would argue that the second style is equally, if not more, intuitive as a human being.
Thinking like a Human
As a human being you understand the asynchronous nature of information flow. You intuitively know that it's just not efficient or practical to stop everything you are doing every time you need to retrieve or communicate information.
As a developer, every time you ask a manager or stake holder of a project for clarification, do you simply sit and wait quietly for a reply? No, of course you don't. You move on to the next thing that you can make progress with, juggling a hand full of important tasks. Once the information comes back, you continue with the related task.
For a more rudimentary anecdote, you are driving in your car with a friend of yours and you need to know the weather report for tomorrow. Would you slam on the breaks and stop traffic to turn to your friend and ask what the weather will be like tomorrow? Waiting still and silent (except for the honking behind you) until he looks it up for you? Of course you wouldn't, you would continue having other conversations and driving while he retrieves the information for you.
In this way, Node's non-blocking/asynchronous model does not need to be as foreign as it would seem at first pass.
Why not threads?
Threads are hard, heavy, and generally overkill
They do solve the rudimentary problem of parallelism, but they present an all new set of problems around thread-safety and mutability. They are generally very complex and difficult for dynamic languages to implement, if implemented at all.
In Node, everything but your code, runs in parallel.
Everything that can be handled via parallelism for you, is. But because your code is never run in parallel and always in a single thread, issues of thread-safety and mutability fall away. This provides many of the benefits of parallelism for the common use case without presenting the developer with near the additional complexity.
Again, I would argue that the way Node handles parallelism again mirrors how we as humans process thoughts, not in parallel, but with highly efficient multi-tasking.
Language X has a non-blocking server too...
Non-blocking I/O is not a new thing, but what makes Node different is the platform is built entirely around this principle. Non-blocking is philosophically adopted as the rule, not the exception. So when you go to grab that Node MySQL library, you can expect it will be fully compatible with your non-blocking application. Generally this cannot be said of other event driven frameworks written in other dynamic languages.
No language or platform is without tradeoffs, but hopefully I've illuminated what I believe makes Node special both as a practical problem solver and an interesting academic exercise. |
"Wow! I just got my bell rung."
That's what we used to say growing up playing youth football in the late 1970s. I remember the first time -- I wore it like a badge of honor. I got my first concussion! I immediately said, "Put me back in, Coach!"
Including peewee football, Pop Warner, high school and college, all the way through to my 16 years in the NFL, I played tackle football for about 30 years -- more than half my life -- and I can honestly say I have no idea how many concussions I have had. One reason for that: There was no "concussion protocol" when I played, even up until the time I retired in 2005. After a hard hit to the head, you just got up, shook your head, saw some stars and tried to play through it. If you were hit hard enough to come out of the game, you were asked, "How do you feel?" and, "What's your address?" and, "How many fingers?" If you answered correctly, then you could go back in the game.
Today's game is much different. The good news is, in 2016, if there is even a question as to whether a player is concussed, he must go through a much more complex series of tests and his helmet is taken away. If it is determined he suffered a concussion, then he must sit out at least the following week.
The reality is, football is a contact sport and concussions will continue to occur.
My kids are athletes and love to play all sports. They have gravitated towards baseball and basketball, which makes me exhale. Why? Because football has done so much for me and brought me so much joy that it's hard for me to speak ill of the sport in any way whatsoever. It has been at the core of my existence on this planet. I am the son of a retired NFL and NCAA football coach, and my brother Skip is a veteran NFL assistant coach currently with the LA Rams (still getting used to saying that!). Ours is a bona fide American football family. I cannot pretend I didn't have dreams of my sons following my footsteps onto the gridiron. I was the runner-up to Barry Sanders for the Heisman Trophy in 1990 and often fantasized about my son winning it... If my kids were as passionate about football as I was, I don't know how or if I could say no to them.
Enter my wife, Holly.
She's not your average "football wife." I married a die-hard lifelong Eagles fan and, as they say, I "out-kicked my coverage" with her! She is a force and is never shy about expressing her opinions!
Holly has made it clear about her extreme unease with the concept of our sons playing the sport that brought us so many highs. She, like me, feels a bit hypocritical because of her love of the sport and her dreams of watching the Peete boys extend the family football legacy. But, she has also nursed me back from countless concussions, a torn patella, two torn Achilles tendons, surgeries, rehabs, busted fingers and everything in between. I think for her, repeating that movie with her boys is not something she wants to relive. Injuries are a part of any sport, but the effects of concussions down the line scares the mess out of her.
For me, to be 100 percent honest, the fear of the unknown is unsettling when I sit alone and dream of my cognitive health 10 or 15 years from now. Although I feel fine, the delayed effects of so many blows to the head understandably worries me.
I have been personally touched by the impact of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), which is a disease brought on by repeated brain trauma. I was great friends and teammates with the late, great Junior Seau, who had CTE and took his own life. I will never get over losing him. I just lost my former teammate Kevin Turner to ALS that he felt was linked to too many hits. My former teammate and dear friend Erik Kramer also recently attempted suicide, and though we don't know for sure that he has CTE, it is all still so jarring for me because these are my contemporaries.
And, so, I speak their names because we must continue to spread awareness to help make the game safer and to rally to take care of those who are suffering now.
As for me, the damage has been done, so what do I do now?
First, I thank God every day for a loving, proactive wife. She is all over me to stay in front of this thing. Thankfully, the advances in medicine and technology are allowing us to actively study and discover ways to treat, protect and heal the brain. The Football Players Health Study at Harvard University is using a whole-player, whole-body approach, studying not just the brain but the entire player and his history to get a more comprehensive snapshot that will help improve the care and treatment of players like me and so many who came long before -- and after. |
As an experiment, the two captured as much air as they could in a large Ziploc freezer bag, closed it, and put it on eBay—it eventually sold for 99 cents. Their second attempt started a bidding war, someone bought the bag for an astounding $168, sparking the idea for what's now Vitality Air.
The pair stumbled into the business venture in 2014 after talking to friends who were frequent visitors to Asia and would tell them about poor air quality in China, specifically.
The city recommended that schools stay closed, and residents take public transit instead of driving or walking. Those who did step out were encouraged to wear masks — and some turned to ordering the air canisters created by Troy Paquette and Moses Lam.
From December 8 to December 10, Beijing was under its first-ever red alert — the highest in the four-level system adopted two years ago — for air quality, with children and the elderly being told to stay inside.
It may have started out in jest, but two Canadians are now profiting off a smog "red alert" in Beijing, as Chinese people buy canisters of fresh air from the Rocky Mountains.
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It may have started out in jest, but two Canadians are now profiting off a smog "red alert" in Beijing, as Chinese people buy canisters of fresh air from the Rocky Mountains.
From December 8 to December 10, Beijing was under its first-ever red alert — the highest in the four-level system adopted two years ago — for air quality, with children and the elderly being told to stay inside.
The city recommended that schools stay closed, and residents take public transit instead of driving or walking. Those who did step out were encouraged to wear masks — and some turned to ordering the air canisters created by Troy Paquette and Moses Lam.
The pair stumbled into the business venture in 2014 after talking to friends who were frequent visitors to Asia and would tell them about poor air quality in China, specifically.
As an experiment, the two captured as much air as they could in a large Ziploc freezer bag, closed it, and put it on eBay—it eventually sold for 99 cents. Their second attempt started a bidding war, someone bought the bag for an astounding $168, sparking the idea for what's now Vitality Air.
"The way we capture the air now is a bit of a trade secret," Paquette, who goes down to Banff and Lake Louise from Edmonton, Alberta to fill giant cans with air through clean compression, and brings it home to bottle it, told VICE News.
"As much as it started out as a novelty idea, with the really bad smog they've had in Beijing, we're finding people are buying it as more than just a novelty, but for everyday use" he says. "There's been quite a demand."
Image via Vitality Air
The canisters have a cap mask attached to it and contain about 150 1-second sprays.
Single and twin packs of cans are being sold from $16 to $46. Aside from China, interest has also come from places like Iran and Afghanistan, said Paquette.
Paquette says it took a while for the product to gain any traction, but since the smog alert issued in Beijing last week, demand has skyrocketed.
Lam told the Telegraph their first shipment of 500 bottles was sold in four days, and a crate containing 4,000 more is on its way to China.
And Paquette said distributors in China have expressed interest in carrying Vitality Air in stores.
Heavy — China Xinhua News (@XHNews)December 15, 2015
But the concept of breathing in air from another location to deal with thick smog isn't completely novel.
For example, to promote tourism in the area and to raise awareness about China's air pollution crisis in 2014, the Laojun Mountain Natural Reserve Development Co. gave residents of Zhengzhou — one of the most polluted cities in the country — a chance to breathe in fresh mountain air from sealed bags.
And Vitality Air isn't the only business capitalizing on the smog. On Monday, a restaurant in Jiangsu Province was caught adding an "air cleaning fee" to customers' bills, some media reported.
Follow Tamara Khandaker on Twitter: @anima_tk |
NBC 7's Steven Luke reports on the testimony before the City Council on Monday, July 14 and the effects the vote could have on others in San Diego. (Published Tuesday, July 15, 2014)
The San Diego City Council approved a hike to the city's minimum wage and a chance to earn five sick days a year at a special Monday evening hearing.
After hearing comments from councilmembers and the public for two and a half hours, the council voted 6-3 along party lines on the measure that bumps the wage to $9.75 on Jan. 1, 2015, $10.50 in 2016 and $11.50 in 2017.
That phased-in minimum wage hike represents quite a comedown from an original proposal of $13.09 an hour, and its backers are pointing to the example of a local grocery chain that's already gone to $10 an hour, so far without price increases.
"We are family-owned, and if that means at the end of the day that there's a little bit less for the people who own Jimbo's, so be it,” said “Jimbo’s …Naturally” founder and owner Jim Someck. “But I've found in the past when we make changes like that, somehow the bottom line tends to continue to stay strong.
SD Fact Check: Minimum Wage Increase Enforcement
How will the increase of the minimum wage in San Diego be enforced? Scott Lewis and Lisa Halverstadt from the Voice of San Diego take a look at how local leaders intend to regulate the raise. (Published Friday, July 11, 2014)
“Whether that's because we get more efficient, or because the volume of the company goes up -- sales increase, customers get treated better -- it just has a rippling effect. When we do something right, it takes care of itself."
In an interview Monday at Jimbo’s downtown location in the Westfield Horton Plaza mall, Someck said employees at his five locations in San Diego County average between $14 and $15 an hour and receive no tips.
He told NBC 7 that he'll look to keep ahead of not just the state's minimum wage, but whatever might be in effect citywide going forward.
City Council to Decide on Minimum Wage Increase
The San Diego City Council is expected to vote on an ordinance tonight that could raise the minimum wage to $11.50 by 2017. NBC 7's Nicole Gomez has a preview. (Published Monday, July 14, 2014)
Jimbo’s is giving its higher-paid workers commensurate raises too, in the belief that they help recruit and retain experienced workers – and is just good business.
"I don't think there's any reason to penalize people who have been here and gotten the experience,” Someck explained. “If we're raising the bottom-line people, then we can also take care of the people who have been here for a while."
But critics of the city measure say Jimbo's has a specialized employment structure with a clientele that can afford products at higher price points.
Moe Sadighian, who operates three cafes downtown, said minimums above the state's will pressure other businesses to give raises to their better-paid workers as well.
"Somebody who's making above the minimum wage is expecting the same amount of increment in their wage,” said Sadighian, whose partnership owns Mariscos El Pulpo, Funky Sanchez’s and The Reef in the Gaslamp Quarter.
According to Sadighian, friends with smaller restaurants fear they'll need to shorten work shifts, resort to layoffs and lose customers who balk at increases in menu prices that will have to be made.
“They have six to eight, nine to ten employees and they tell me if this happens, they're not going to make it,” Sadighian related. “No one's going to pay $4 for a taco when average taco is going for $2."
Sadighian believes there’s a chance employees actually will wind up making less following a minimum wage hike: "Let's be very frank about it. They live off their tips. Their tips is where they make the most money. So when (a minimum wage increase) happens, there's less customers. There's less tips."
The minimum wage measure is linked to a proposal calling for five days of "earned sick leave".
Opponents are expected to launch a ballot challenge. |
Two new bills have been introduced and referred to the House Education Committee tackling the science curriculum currently taught in public schools in New Hampshire.
Rep. Jerry Bergevin is serving his first (and hopefully last) term and introduced the first bill, which would require schools to teach evolution as a theory, and would include “the theorists’ political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.” I’m not sure why this would be relevant or anyone’s business, but I’m sure he’ll clarify and explain his reasoning coherently…
“I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It’s a worldview and it’s godless. Atheism has been tried in various societies, and they’ve been pretty criminal domestically and internationally. The Soviet Union, Cuba, the Nazis, China today: they don’t respect human rights.”
*Phew* For a minute there, I thought he might say something asinine, offensive, and totally false.
There are so many things wrong with that quote and it begs me to wonder how, yet again, the most ignorant among us continue to infiltrate government positions. Bergevin also made this statement:
“As a general court we should be concerned with criminal ideas like this and how we are teaching it… Columbine, remember that? They were believers in evolution. That’s evidence right there.”
Are we really going to do a head count for who has done more harm based on their religious or non-religious ideations. Some bad people might be atheists, but they aren’t bad because they are atheists and most bad people who are atheists aren’t doing bad things in the name of atheism.
Reps. Gary Hopper and John Burt introduced the second bill, which has a slightly higher probability of actually being passed but is equally as obnoxious. Basically, they are challenging science as a field altogether, even going so far as to say:
“I want the problems with the current theories to be presented so that kids understand that science doesn’t really have all the answers. They are just guessing.”…
Hopper wants Intelligent Design taught in classrooms, but hasn’t yet been able to find an example of it being successfully legislated into schools…
Um, maybe that’s because there isn’t a shred of real evidence to support such a theory and one might even make the claim that Intelligent Design is one step short of a guess.
He then attempts to tug on the heartstrings by claiming to care about the students’ sense of purpose in life.
“But more and more scientists are coming to the conclusion that it was not even remotely possible that it happened by accident. I want to introduce children to the idea that they have a purpose for being here.”
Thank goodness there is at least one voice of reason out there. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, speaks out:
“Yes, it is the case that scientific explanations change with new data, but at some point you reach the stage where there is an agreement among scientists… You’re not improving science education for young people by pretending that well-established ideas are up for grabs. The idea of evolution, that living things have common ancestors, is not being challenged in science today,” she said.
She added that Bergevin’s bill “should be obviously unacceptable to legislators on its face. They ought to be able to see pretty quickly that this bill is just silly.”
Oh, how I hope Scott is right.
This topic goes round and round, with a different ringleader each time and usually — hopefully — the same results. Intelligent design has no place being taught in public schools and is, at best, a farfetched and highly implausible theory that counters everything that science represents (and not in an “intelligent” and challenging kind of way). Let’s hope common sense and reason are plentiful in New Hampshire on voting day. |
Bill Gates talks to reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York, Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK - Bill Gates says he and Donald Trump talked big ideas Tuesday in Trump Tower.
The co-founder of Microsoft Corp. told reporters that he and the president-elect had a "good conversation about innovation, how it can help in health, education, the impact of foreign aid and energy" as well as "a wide-ranging conversation about power of innovation," the Associated Press reports.
CNBC also posted a videotaped interview in which Gates said that Trump could possibly motivate the country in the same way that John F. Kennedy did in the early 1960s.
"In the same way President Kennedy talked about the space mission and got the country behind that," Gates said, "I think whether it's education or stopping epidemics, other health breakthroughs, fighting polio. And in this energy space, there can be a very upbeat message that (Trump's) administration (is) going to organize things, get rid of regulatory barriers and have American leadership through innovation."
Gates said it was the first time he had spoken with Trump, though he said they have mutual friends.
In addition to Gates, Trump met Tuesday with rapper Kanye West and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, a Trump transition official said.
Trump also held a meeting with TV personality Omarosa Manigault, Cleveland Pastor Darrell Scott and NFL legends Jim Brown and Ray Lewis to discuss a program to help youth caught up in gang violence.
"We couldn't have had a better meeting,” Brown said. “The graciousness, the intelligence, the reception we got was fantastic.” |
Rubbish truck dumped body at Melbourne tip, police say
Updated
The body of a man found dumped a tip at Hampton Park, in Melbourne's south-east, this morning was brought in on a rubbish truck, detectives believe.
A tip worker found the body face down in rubbish at the Hallam Road site around 8:00am.
The employee first thought the body was a mannequin.
Police were yet to identify the man or how he died but Detective Senior Sergeant Shane O'Connell believed he died recently.
"We believe that he was brought in one of the trucks this morning," he said.
"It's very disturbing. No-one deserves to be in the position this gentlemen finds himself in."
A spokeswoman for Sita, the company that runs the landfill, said they were cooperating with police.
The landfill takes general household rubbish, commercial and industrial waste and construction and demolition materials.
Topics: murder-and-manslaughter, hampton-park-3976
First posted |
A UC Berkeley sociology reader’s backpack, which contained about 50 students’ final exams, was stolen Wednesday — but merely a day later, the backpack and all the exams were recovered, thanks to a vigilant campus alumnus.
Professor Joanna Reed, who teaches Sociology 130AC — otherwise known as Social Inequalities: American Cultures — received a call Wednesday from Aaron Platt, one of the three readers for her approximately 150-student course, notifying her about the theft.
“He went and tried to look around the neighborhood,” Reed said. “He didn’t find (the exams).”
Reed said Platt was unharmed in the robbery and called it “a crime of opportunity” rather than a violent mugging.
After discussing the situation with other members of the sociology department, Reed emailed the affected students Wednesday about 9:15 p.m. via bCourses, informing them of the theft and outlining two options: allowing Reed to base their final grade on the work they did before the final or taking a make-up exam at the start of the spring semester.
Reports of the theft first surfaced in a screenshot of Reed’s email that was posted in the Facebook group UC Berkeley Memes for Edgy Teens, run in part by members of the Daily Cal editorial staff.
Forrest Li, a UC Berkeley sophomore whose exam was stolen, was going to allow Reed to base his final grade on the rest of his coursework, as he felt that he did well in the course until the final exam.
“I was pretty happy because I didn’t really do that well on the final,” Li said with a laugh.
Campus senior Sheriden Lucero, however, was shocked and upset when she received Reed’s email: She felt that both of the options were unfair. In an email she sent to Reed, Lucero said she felt that she had done very well on the final and did not want to settle for “a lesser grade” by accepting the first option.
Reed acknowledged that some students were displeased about the options, but the concerns became irrelevant once she received an email Thursday from Berkeley resident Chris Helwig, who had found the exams.
Helwig, a UC Berkeley alumnus, saw the exams in a pile at Tremont and Prince streets, near the Ashby BART station, when he was commuting to San Francisco for work. He noticed Reed’s name on the covers of the Blue Books and later looked up Reed online to notify her about the abandoned backpack. Platt was able to pick up his backpack — and all of the stolen exams — off the street later that day.
“I just thought it would be the right thing to do to find out who (the backpack) belonged to … I’m happy that (the exams) were recovered,” Helwig said.
Reed said she never expected to recover the final exams and was pleasantly surprised by Helwig’s email. She repeatedly expressed her gratitude for Helwig’s good-Samaritan attitude.
According to Reed, Platt told her that while the exams smelled heavily of vodka, they were otherwise in good condition.
Reed was doubtful that the exams had been tampered with, saying it was “not something we’re really worried about.” She added that she and Platt did not suspect that any students in the class were behind the theft.
In an email to the entire class sent Thursday about 9:28 p.m. via bCourses, Reed said that final grades would be calculated normally now but that final grades would not be released until Jan. 3, given the delay in obtaining the exams.
Although many students were relieved that the original exams were found, some expressed irritation with the situation.
“This is an institution that we pay so much money for … and we work hard, and the fact that our grades can be affected by something as extraordinary as that is just upsetting,” Lucero said. “We pay for a level of professionalism, and they didn’t deliver on that.”
Reed agreed that the past few days had been tumultuous and dramatic, but said she was relieved that in the end, everything would proceed as usual.
“The good news is we got all of the exams back. That’s ideal,” Reed said. “That’s what we want — to treat everyone fairly and to make sure that all the work that people put into studying for the final and writing the final is (recognized).”
Chantelle Lee is an assistant news editor. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @ChantelleHLee. |
CLOSE A safety alert was issued by the FBI and ATF after an anonymous user posted threats to the image-sharing website 4chan. Video provided by Newsy Newslook
The University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia. (Photo11: Daniel Burke)
Universities in Philadelphia on Sunday were warning students and faculty about an "unspecified" threat of violence being monitored by local and federal law enforcement agencies.
The FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) warned that threats of violence due to take place at 2 p.m. ET Monday had been made against "an unspecified university near Philadelphia," several schools said on their websites.
The University of Pennsylvania, Temple University and Drexel University sent out alerts. Authorities said they had no knowledge of specific threat to students or to a particular university.
A statement on the University of Pennsylvania's website warns of an "unspecified" threat to Philadelphia universities on Monday (Photo11: University of Pennsylvania)
A statement on Drexel's website said the threat came via "a recent social media posting" after last week's shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Since the shooting, the statement said, "the FBI has seen similar social media postings throughout the country."
It continued: "Although the FBI has assured us there is no specific threat to a particular college or university, we are taking this very seriously and are taking extra precautions to protect the Drexel community."
The schools planned to operate normally Monday, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, but the statements urged students to report any suspicious activity. Drexel said it planned to increase patrols and had asked campus police and security officers to "report and investigate any suspicious person or package."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1LdEccH |
This is a like a long lasting drama. Some guys wanted to make a handheld and started making promises without having a prototype. It showed and they had to back down after a first disaster Kickstarter campaign. In the meantime, they secured some cash from investors, managed to be at the GamesCom 2016 with a prototype, and they have just relaunched their Kickstarter campaign with success – at the time of writing they already achieved their funding goal of 250k Euros, well ahead of the deadline. Not everyone gets second chances but I think they have learned from their mistakes and have come back with something to show that is more tangible than before.
The specs have now been fixed and you will get the following (based on their Kickstarter page):
CPU: AMD Merlin Falcon RX-421BD (12-15w) SoC at 2.1 GHz
Cores: 4/4
iGPU: Radeon R7 at 800 MHz
RAM: 4GB (SMACH Z) || 8GB (SMACH Z PRO) DDR4 2133 MHz
HD: 64GB (SMACH Z) || 128GB (SMACH Z PRO)
Screen: 6” FULL HD (1920×1080). Capacitive touch-screen.
Battery: 5 hours of gaming.
MicroSD Card Slot.
USB 3.0 type C.
HDMI video output connection.
Wi-Fi connectivity 5.0 Ghz. 4G LTE mobile network connectivity (PRO model only)
Bluetooth connectivity.
Front-camera 1.3-megapixels (PRO model only)
I think it is smart that they decided to go with AMD instead of Intel. Intel has recently announced that they will slowly discontinue their x86 line of SoCs for tablets and smartphones (the Atom line) making it very unlikely in the future to have such portable gaming devices using Intel with the x86 architecture (the folks behind the GPD Win mentioned this issue as well).
Us Linux gamers know that AMD has a pretty weak reputation when it comes to performance, but things are improving and we have seen that their Vulkan driver seems to be already ahead of their OpenGL one for the games that support both APIs. By 2017 we can only hope this will improve further. And as said earlier, there’s simply no choice from now on for mobile gaming, it’s AMD or nothing. Nvidia does not have any x86 SoC (their Tegra is only for ARM).
OK, but will it really be powerful enough to play most demanding games?
A Question of Performance
Looking at the AMD Merlin SoC, you can find from their specs sheet that:
The integration of AMD Radeon™ graphics via the third-generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture enables the AMD Embedded R-Series SOC to deliver up to 58% more graphics performance than the Intel Core i7-5650U based on the 3DMark® 11 (Performance) benchmark, and 22% moregraphics performance than the previous generation AMD Embedded R-Series RX-427BB processor based on the 3DMark 11 (Performance) benchmark.
Note that the benchmark they refer to is not purely apple to apple, since they used DDR3-2133 for their AMD chip while the Intel reference only used DDR3-1600. Not completely fair, but hey, even specs sheets can almost be considered as PR piece these days.
Anyway, let’s assume we trust this, what kind of gaming performance can we realistically expect then ? Looking at what a Intel Core i7-5650U can do can give us some indication. Based on what the MacBook Air 13 inches delivers, we can see the following in 1366×768 resolution:
Tomb Raider 2013 : 34 fps on average (medium details)
: 34 fps on average (medium details) Bioshock Infinite : 26 fps on average (medium details)
: 26 fps on average (medium details) Alien Isolation: 26 fps on average (medium details)
Not too bad, but let’s keep in mind that the Smach Z has to drive a Full HD screen, which is substantially way more pixels (192% more than 1366*768) so even if the processor is indeed 158% faster than the Intel mentioned above, it should result in a loss of framerate compared to the results shown on the MacBook. Anyway, that means that the most demanding games of 2013 to 2014 will be running at around 20 fps in medium details in FullHD.
It is therefore not very surprising that they tend to show their benchmarks in their Kickstarter campaign in 720p more often than not – note that these figures are for Windows10, so you should probably expect lower performance for most of these games on Linux (as we know not all ports are on parity with Windows):
Metro: Last Light Redux ( 720p . High settings) ~ 35 FPS (also available on Linux)
. High settings) ~ 35 FPS (also available on Linux) Company of Heroes 2 ( 720p . Medium settings) ~ 25 FPS (also available on Linux)
. Medium settings) ~ 25 FPS (also available on Linux) Jotun (1080p) ~ 45 FPS
Skyrim ( 720p . High setting) ~ 25 FPS
. High setting) ~ 25 FPS Just Cause 2 ( 720p . Medium settings) ~ 35 FPS
. Medium settings) ~ 35 FPS Spiral Knights (1080p) ~ 50 FPS
Overwatch ( 720p . Medium) ~ 30 FPS
. Medium) ~ 30 FPS Torchlight II (1080p. Very high settings) ~ 35 FPS (also available on Linux)
Xcom: Enemy Unknown ( 720 p. High settings) ~30 FPS (also available on Linux)
p. High settings) ~30 FPS (also available on Linux) Civilization 5 (1080p. High settings) ~ 28 FPS (also available on Linux)
Tomb Raider: Survivor ( 720p . Medium settings) ~ 40 FPS
. Medium settings) ~ 40 FPS Alien: Isolation (720p. Ultra settings) ~ 35 FPS (also available on Linux)
That’s all good and well, but when the Smach Z comes out in 2017, it’s unlikely that it will run any of the latest AAA games from 2016 or early 2017 very well at all. So it’s a matter of expectation settings. This being said, it will probably still run indie games just fine. As well as Rocket League! I have to admit that have a machine on the go to play Rocket League is a very alluring proposition!! I can also imagine there’s a bunch of gamers out there who would not mind having XCom or Civilization on the go.
The choice of a 1080p is a little disappointing to be honest. They basically caved in to fan pressure, but it’s going to cause some major issues:
Running games at 1080p will lead to disappointing framerates more often than not
Running games made for desktop PC at 1080p on a 6 inches screen will make text very tiny and hardly readable.
Running games in 720p on a 1080p will result in upscaling artefacts. Not nice at all on LCD screens.
A 1080p screen will consume more power than a 720p screen, so less gaming time in the end.
So what to make of it ? It will be a good portable system for low-medium details gaming, but you won’t get the “PC Experience” in such a format (as in, you will not get the steady 60 fps you get from your fast GPU nor the high detailed textures and effects). Is that still better than what’s available out there ? Right now, yes, but by the end of 2017, who knows, there may be a lot of alternatives (including the Nintendo Switch, I guess?).
Incidentally, the Switch and the Smach Z have about identical dimensions:
The Switch has been rumored to be 23 cm wide with a 6.5 inches screen
The Smach Z will be 25 cm wide with a 6 inches screen
Of course the comparison is a little absurd in absolute terms. You will only be able to play Nintendo games on the Switch, while the Steam catalog is supposed to be much broader from Day 1 on the Smach Z. But they still fit in the same category of “portable gaming consoles”.
So, what about Linux ?
While Smach Z was in the first place made for SteamOS (in the first place Smach was an acronym for Steam Machine!), they have now switched gears to support Windows 10 as well as a custom Linux distro – Windows 10 was a request from many supporters of the previous campaign, and they have probably felt the pressure to support Windows as other competitors like the GPD Win support it anyway by default.
There are very few details regarding what they call Smach Z OS (their custom Linux distro):
Linux (SMACH Z OS): We’re able to modify and adapt the OS to SMACH Z creating a better interface and experience. We recommend choosing Linux for better performance. More and more games are becoming compatible with Linux with time; now are about 2,500.
Better performance? That remains to be seen. Better look overall (boot directly in Steam Big Picture Mode, more customization, etc) I am willing to believe. Another interesting aspect is going to be battery life on Linux vs Windows. For most laptops it is very hard to get remotely the same battery life on Linux vs Windows, we will see if they can address this on their hardware.
Design: The Good and The Bad
They now have a working prototype so it does not feel like vaporware anymore, while they expect the final version to be slightly more compact.
They claim to get 5 hours of gaming, but that seems highly unrealistic since the SoC will already claim 15 W or even more in turbo mode, which will lead to high power consumption in no time if you are gaming with it on and on. They could include a large battery, but this is going to be a trade-off in the end between how compact and how heavy the final device aims to be. They seem to target 400 grams for the device as a whole, well I am afraid it will be very challenging to get 5 hours of gaming with so little weight. We will see.
Control-wise, the choice to copy the Steam Controller is not bad per se, but it makes the device really long and it certainly will not fit in any regular pocket anymore. 25 centimeters! Your regular pocket is rather 12 to 15 centimeters. The lack of a D-pad is also a potential drawback for certain games, even though they still plan to provide the option to buy some plastic plugs to go on the haptic pads to simulate an actual Dpad or specific buttons. This may be a good idea but I would really like to see how it feels in practice. Then, there is the lack of keyboard. For many Steam games this is not an issue, but there are a lot of Steam games that require some kind of keyboard controls, and this will likely be a drawback of the current design vs the GPD Win.
Now for the storage. 64Gb by default will not get you very far – you can already assume several gigs will be gone because of the OS and potential swap partition, and whatever is left is going to be consumed very fast if you install several AAA games, especially the ones they have listed. AAA games these days can easily take 20 to 30 Gb and this number keeps inflating year after year. So one of the issue of such a flash-memory based console is that it will be pretty difficult to have many AAA games on it at the same time (sure, you can purchase another 32Gb MicroSD card, but that won’t fundamentally change the fact that it would be much more comfortable to have 256 or 512 Gb).
Then the price may be something of a show-stopper for many. The Basic version of the Smach Z is going at 299 Euros on Kickstarter, but they mention the retail price will be much higher. I am not sure how much more it is going to be, but maybe 400 Euros ? For a dedicated gaming machine, it may be a little expensive, but who knows? The PC gaming crowd may not be as budget-sensitive. And in a way, it’s cheaper than a console since you don’t have to buy your games again – whatever is in your Steam Library can be played for not additional fee.
Now for the good. It will only have passive cooling, which should be a major advantage versus the GPD Win (with its ridiculous fan). At least it will behave like a portable machine in that regard.
Then there is the upgradability bit. It’s still fuzzy at this stage because it’s very much at the bottom of their Kickstarter page, but in short:
With Clickarm the performance of your SMACH Z can be improved even after its purchase. You will be able to purchase more modules of RAM, HDD or even a new SoC and install it easily yourself or send it to us.
It sounds very similar to what is planned for the DragonBox Pyra (which will have a separate SoC board that can be exchanged for a better one later on), and that certainly increases the appeal of this device for me, if it can behave like a mini-PC in that sense.
Finally, the fact that it is going to be an Open device that you can fiddle with is a massive win. On Linux I am assuming you will also be able to use it as a full-fledged computer with the HDMI connection you could imagine using it as a laptop replacement provided you have a Bluetooth or USB keyboard with you. You will also be able to install emulators and that should open up the possibility of PS2 and Gamecube/Wii emulation on the go. That sounds really great.
My Final Thoughts
There is still a non-negligible chance that such a project tanks along the way, or fails to deliver on the hype, so I will never recommend anyone to crowdfund such a project unless they are well aware of the risks. For my part, if they manage to deliver this device at this price range and if nothing else beats it to market by end of 2017, I will certainly consider it for purchase, because there is virtually nothing out there like it at the moment.
The best thing we can hope is that this project gives some ideas to other manufacturers to do something similar. Having more x86 handheld, gaming-capable PCs is not a bad thing, especially if they support Linux.
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The winds of war in the Middle East, specifically pitting Iran against Saudi Arabia, are turning into a full-blown sandstorm. And the latest evidence of this comes from a surprising source: An interview in a Saudi newspaper.
No, a relatively short interview in an Arabic-language paper in Riyadh isn't usually a big deal. But it is when that interview is with the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot.
The interview alone is big news, as it's the first of its kind with an Israeli military official in the Saudi press. But it's what Eisenkot said in the interview that really made history and made it clearer than ever that Saudi Arabia and Iran are marching ever closer to a direct confrontation.
Here are the three Eisenkot quotes from Saudi Arabia's Elaph newspaper that deserve the most attention:
"With President Donald Trump, there is an opportunity for a new international alliance in the region and a major strategic plan to stop the Iranian threat." "We are ready to share intelligence, (with Saudi Arabia), if necessary. There are many common interests between us." "Iran seeks to take control of the Middle East, creating a Shi'ite crescent from Lebanon to Iran, and then from the Gulf to the Red Sea. We must prevent this from happening."
The creation of once non-existent ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel has been widely reported, but never publicly confirmed by either government, ever since the Iran nuclear deal was signed by the U.S. and other key Western nations. There have been coy hints to be sure, like when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a halfhearted "no comment" to 60 Minutes reporter Leslie Stahl when she asked him last year if Israel had improved its relationship with Saudi Arabia as part of a coalition against Iran. And neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia has yet confirmed widespread reports in the Middle Eastern media that new Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman secretly visited Israel in September.
In that context, General Eisenkot's very public interview in a government sanctioned newspaper, (as all official newspapers are in Saudi Arabia), is a relatively massive public admission of allegiance between former sworn enemies. And the point of that admission is not to strike up the band for a rendition of Kumbaya, but to get that new coalition's ducks in a row for the ever more inevitable direct war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
To be clear, it's not a political hot potato for the Israeli government or Netanyahu if such an alliance becomes public. While some segments of the Israeli public rebuff political leaders who make peace process concessions to the Palestinians, peace deals or cooperation with Arab nations for mutual security reasons are welcome news in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
It's in the Arab nations where this is very dicey. That's especially true in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of extremist Islamic Wahabbism, where any acknowledgement of Israel's legitimacy -let alone working with the country - can be met with massive and violent protest. The world saw that in stark terms when Muslim Brotherhood assassins murdered Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981 in retaliation for the peace deal he signed with Israel two years earlier.
But Crown Prince bin Salman apparently isn't giving any quarter the extremist old guard. In addition to plowing ahead in his hawkish stance against Iran, he's also cracking down on extremist clerics in the kingdom in a way no Saudi leader has ever even tried. At the same time, the prince has been promoting clerics who speak of tolerance for Judaism and Christianity. He's taken away the religious police's power to make arrests for "crimes" like immodesty. And, as has been reported most widely of all, he and the king have finally started to lift the nation's ban on women driving.
There is a method and a correlation to all of this. Bin Salman clearly understands that to fight Iran effectively and earn the crucial support he needs from the U.S. and Israel, he must present the world with a clear difference in culture and intentions than Iran. If the Saudis continue to abandon the long-running race to lead the world in Islamic extremist and violent piety and show a willingness to recognize and respect Israel, that will be a stark enough difference for anyone to notice. And there's a time element here as both Saudi Arabia and Israel are clearly seeing the current Trump administration in Washington as at least a silent partner in all this. But they also know this can change, so the time to move is now.
The priorities the Saudis are making make sense in the context of the more bitter and much longer-running Sunni-Shia war that's been going in fits and starts since the year 632. Hatred for the U.S. and Israel may seem supreme in radical Islamist cultures, but the Sunni-Shia divide is worse and a lot older. And with the wars in Syria and Yemen showing no signs of slowing down, hostilities between the Sunni standard bearers in Riyadh and the Shia rulers in Tehran have never been more likely.
In the past, Israel has always been a potential deal breaker for any coalition of Muslim countries engaged in an alliance with the U.S. Saddam Hussein, for example, tried to destroy the coalition against him in the first Gulf War by launching Scud missiles at Tel Aviv in 1991. That effort failed, but it was one of the most serious challenges to the war. The George H.W. Bush administration fought hard to keep Israel out of the war to preserve the loose Arab coalition against Iraq.
Now, Saudi Arabia has gone many steps further than just hoping to keep Israel on the back burner. This newspaper interview is tantamount to openly flaunting a growing partnership against Iran.
The Saudis, long the biggest bank in the Middle East and the controlling force behind OPEC, are making it clearer than ever that it's okay to partner with Israel. On its face, that's a peaceful and modernizing move. Hopefully, it will endure and yield dividends long beyond the current political climate.
But as anyone who knows the history of the region will tell you, right now the growing ties between the Saudis and Israelis could be an ominous sign that war is coming.
Commentary by Jake Novak, CNBC.com senior columnist. Follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny.
For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter. |
Despite interest from six squads, Spaniard says there is no price tag for the unconditional support his team has given
Alberto Contador will likely return to Saxo Bank and target the Vuelta a España when his racing ban ends in August.
Breaking his media silence Monday, Contador spoke at length on Spanish radio about his controversial clenbuterol case that resulted in disqualification from the overall wins at the 2010 Tour de France and the 2011 Giro d’Italia, among other results.
Contador is officially off the Saxo Bank team, but he said that returning to Bjarne Riis’ team was his preference despite offers from six major teams.
“I feel blessed, considering the situation that I find myself, in that there have been a lot of high-level teams who have been in contact with my brother (his agent, Fran). Six, among them Movistar,” Contador told Cadena Cope. “Without a doubt, returning to Saxo Bank is my first choice. They did something that no other team would be capable of doing; they supported me unconditionally, from the manager to the sponsor… There are better financial offers, but unconditional support has no price.”
Contador’s ban ends in early August and the Spanish climber said he was planning to jump back into the action at the first possible moment.
He will likely race the Eneco Tour and the Clásica San Sebastián before starting the Vuelta a España in mid-August. He also hopes to be selected for the world championships in the Netherlands.
“For the first time I can confirm I will race the Vuelta,” Contador said. “The Vuelta means a lot to me, I am super motivated. I will arrive to the race with fresh legs.”
Contador won the 2008 Vuelta, but said there is no guarantee he will be able to win again, especially following a six-month forced stop due to his racing ban.
“Cycling is not like math. A lot of factors come into play and anything can happen,” he said. “I am working hard, sacrificing more than ever and trying to get through this period in the best way possible. … I made some tests and I had the best results ever.”
Contador also spoke at length about his controversial clenbuterol case.
“They have done a lot of damage to me. It’s difficult to forget, but life goes on and I have to put this to one side. It’s been a hard past few months. I would never wish what I have been through the past two years on my worse enemy,” he said. “I never opened the newspaper, Internet banned, I wanted to push it off to one side and stay concentrated on my bike.”
Contador also reiterated his argument that he is not guilty of doping, saying that the decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to uphold his adverse test from the 2010 Tour’s second rest day is “proof that sport justice does not work.”
“It’s still difficult to understand that all this happened, above all because I consider myself 100 percent committed to the anti-doping struggle,” he said. “I have always been extremely careful about everything I’ve done, recognizing that I am an example to many people… There were moments when I felt like giving up. It was desperate. When you do everything possible, working three times as hard as you work to win a Tour, a Giro or a Vuelta, to demonstrate my innocence, to defend your honor, and then in the end they give you a two-year ban, well, sometimes you just want to give up.” |
More than 70 Humber College students at a campus residence fell ill Thursday night with some type of gastrointestinal illness, but the cause of the sudden outbreak remains unknown.
The students all live at the one residence on the north campus at Highway 27 and Finch, and started reporting feeling ill late in the afternoon, according to Andrew Leopold, director of communications.
More students fell ill as the evening wore on, he told CBC Toronto early Friday morning.
The school's dean of students later told reporters that of the 77 students in total who got sick, 30 were taken to hospital.
"All students who were transported were treated and released and returned to residence throughout the night," Jen McMillen told reporters outside the school.
Toronto Public Health investigating
The students were all suffering from symptoms like vomiting and abdominal pain, she said. Some of the school staff members who were helping students at the residence through the night have also developed the symptoms, according to McMillen.
More than 70 Humber College students at a campus residence fell ill Thursday night with some type of gastrointestinal illness, but the cause of the sudden outbreak remains unknown. 0:24
The source of the illness has not yet been determined, she said when asked whether food poisoning may be to blame. To her knowledge, food was still being served on campus.
The school notified Toronto Public Health (TPH), McMillen said. The city agency focused on food poisoning when addressing CBC's questions on Friday.
Dr. Michael Finkelstein, associate medical officer of health, said TPH has opened an investigation, which includes speaking to officials at the hospital where students were treated, as well as health-care personnel at the school.
"TPH will be reaching out to the students who reported that they were ill today to gather more information such as where they ate and what food they ate before they became ill and if they attended any specific functions where food was served before they became ill," Finkelstein said in a statement provided to CBC.
'Nobody wants to come out of their rooms'
Students who were outside the residence Friday described the atmosphere in the building.
"Nobody wants to come out of their rooms," Duncan Lotoski told CBC.
Lotoski was in bed around 9:30 p.m. ET when he noticed flashing lights through his window. When he looked out, he saw a number of ambulances.
"Then you hear supervisors in the halls handing out masks saying, 'Wash your hands, wash your hands,'" he said. "I just stayed in my room for the rest of the night."
Jazz McClean said friends who have fallen ill are convinced they got food poisoning.
"It was wild," he said of what it was like inside the residence building overnight. "There were people on the floor."
Meanwhile, classes and other services on campus were not affected on Friday, McMillen said.
Students are being instructed to rest, drink lots of fluids and to "practice good hygiene," she said. |
Two senior Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services committees are incensed that the Pentagon granted a special one-time dispensation to troops allowing them to march in uniform in the San Diego Gay Pride Parade, The Hill reports:
Said Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) in a statement:
I am calling on the DoD to halt these dangerous exceptions to policy for political purposes. This decision was an outrageous and blatantly political determination issued solely to advance this Administration’s social agenda. Sadly, this is yet another violation in what has become a pattern of this Administration’s assault on the longstanding history of the Department of Defense as a nonpolitical organization.
Rep. James Inhofe (R-OK) is also incensed and wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta:
"If the Navy can punish a chaplain for participating in a pro-life event or a Marine participating in a political rally, it stands to reason that DOD should maintain the same standard and preclude service members in uniform from marching in a gay-pride parade. I respectfully request a detailed explanation of the rationale you used to grant this ‘one-time waiver’ of DOD policy, who requested the waiver, why this waiver was considered justified over other requests, and whether you are considering other exceptions to current policy.”
Watch troops discuss what marching in uniform meant to them HERE. |
Over the last several months, the BJP has been on the high horse. There it was, lending its voice to Anna Hazare's high-voltage campaign, marking attendance on his stage
at Jantar Mantar while Parliament was still in session. Before that, L.K. Advani had embarked on his own tourathon against corruption, raging against black money, targeting the UPA. More recently, before the Lokpal bill debate took over the House, the main opposition party stopped talking to the country's home minister, accusing him of involvement in the 2G scam. Through it all, the party's self-righteous tone has not wavered. But as recent developments in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh underline, there is a hole in the halo.
In UP, the BJP has just welcomed into its fold Babu Singh Kushwaha and Badshah Singh, former ministers in the Mayawati government, both sacked on graft charges. Kushwaha's sacking in particular was a high-profile event, given that the long-time Mayawati aide was seen to preside over the NRHM scam which was alleged to be the reason behind the murky saga of the murder of two CMOs and the death of
a deputy CMO. Whether or not Kushwaha makes it to the BJP's final list of candidates, the party has been tainted by his rehabilitation. To be sure, there is more bad news from UP and it involves other parties as well, from smaller players like Ajit Singh's RLD, which has just taken in the man who announced the Rs 51-crore bounty on the head of a Dutch cartoonist in 2006, to the SP which is reportedly debating the entry of history-sheeter D.P. Yadav. Yet there is something particularly ungainly about the picture of the BJP swallowing its own fiery rhetoric so soon after it raged on the Lokpal in Parliament.
The pre-poll musical chairs of the criminal and the corrupt in UP frames another truth: Team Anna, with its neat battlelines, has completely missed the point. Quite simply, corruption has no fixed address or a one-stop solution. It will have to come in several shapes and sizes and it will demand commitment from "us" as well as "them".
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News4's Chris Lawrence has the latest in the search for missing U.Va. student Hannah Graham. (Published Friday, Sept. 26, 2014)
A man charged with abducting a missing University of Virginia second-year student waived extradition Thursday after being captured in Texas Wednesday, but there is still no sign of the student, authorities said.
The Lynchburg Commonwealth's Attorney's Office confirmed it investigated a sexual assault allegation against the suspect 12 years ago but didn't file charges.
Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr., 32, declined to challenge his return to Virginia in a very brief court hearing Thursday, where he did not look at the cameras or speak other than to acknowledge his signature to a Galveston County, Texas, judge. Charlottesville, Virginia, Police Chief Tim Longo said he expects Matthew to be back in Virginia later Thursday or Friday.
The 6-foot-2, 270-pound former college football player was captured less than a day after he was charged with abduction with intent to defile, or sexually molest, Hannah Graham, who went missing Sept. 13 in Charlottesville.
Earlier Thursday, Judge Mark Henry held Matthew without bond on a fugitive from justice count. Appearing via video link to hear the charges against him, Matthew, in a dark green jumpsuit with his hands cuffed, signed papers and refused a court-appointed attorney. He told Henry he wasn't out on bond on any other charges before his arrest.
Matthew appeared confused and asked the judge a few short questions. He expressed concern that his clothes were taken when he was booked into Galveston County jail. "I should be able to have some kind of clothing,'' he said.
Henry told him that his jumpsuit was sufficient and that his personal items would be returned later.
After the appearance, Henry told KPRC-TV that he expected Matthew would be extradited to Virginia within a day or two. But details on how or when he would be moved remained unclear.
MT @jacelarson: #Galveston co. has search warrant for car found w/ Jesse Mathew but waiting to execute until VA police arrive. #HannahGraham — David Culver (@David_Culver) September 25, 2014
Investigators from Charlottesville police, Virginia State Police and the Albemarle County Sheriff's Office arrived in Texas Friday. They are looking at Matthew's car for any possible evidence of Graham's whereabouts, Galveston's sheriff said. They may also try to interview Matthew in the county jail.
Matthew's attorney Jim Cablos said his client sounded "pretty good" when they spoke Wednesday night, adding "We are thankful and relieved that, um, Mr. Matthew is, um, safe."
Matthew was arrested Wednesday afternoon on a beach in the sparsely populated community of Gilchrist, police said. The capture came less than a full day after police announced they had probable cause to arrest Matthew in the case.
Police received a non-emergency call from a woman reporting a suspicious person, and responding Deputy Ross Perez found a man who had pitched a tent on the beach with his car parked nearby, Trochesset said. Matthew refused to give the officer identification, Trochesset said, but the car's plates revealed it was the vehicle sought in the case.
Police think the tent had been in the area a day or two, Trochesset said. Authorities were concerned Matthew may have been trying to flee to Mexico, a source told the Associated Press.
'We're Hopeful That We Will Find Hannah': Police Chief Says
Meanwhile, in Charlottesville, police say an intense search for Graham continues.
"This case is nowhere near over,'' Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo said at a news conference late Wednesday. "We have a person in custody, but there's a long road ahead of us and that long road includes finding Hannah Graham.''
The search is focusing on rural and wooded areas around Charlottesville, Longo said Thursday on NBC's "Today'' show.
"We're hopeful that we will find Hannah and return her to her parents," Longo said. "We're going to continue to have that hope until we find evidence of the contrary."
At a news conference Thursday afternoon, Longo asked for continued patience and assistance from the community.
"We have an obligation to bring her home one way or the other," he said.
Longo asked real estate agents to check any vacant properities. He also asked property owners to check any wildlife cameras they may have. He advised the public not to touch any possible evidence they may find but to call police immediately.
Police also are trying to find any contacts Matthew may have made on the route from Charlottesville to Texas.
Hannah's Last Known Whereabouts
According to authorities, Graham met friends at a restaurant for dinner Sept. 12 before stopping by two parties at off-campus housing units. Officials said she left the second party alone and sent a text message to a friend saying she was lost.
Surveillance videos showed her walking, and at some points running, past a pub and a service station and then onto the Downtown Mall, a seven-block pedestrian strip where police believe she entered Tempo Restaurant with Matthew. The video that has been publicly released does not show the two entering the bar together; instead, "witnesses place them in the bar together,'' Charlottesville Police spokeswoman Miriam I. Dickler said in an email.
The restaurant released its own statement Thursday, urging patrons to report anything they may have seen on Sept. 13.
"We do this in the hope that reviewing these details might help anyone who might have seen Hannah that night recall any information...that could help police," the statement read.
Who is Jesse Matthew?
Matthew had been employed at the University of Virginia Medical Center since Aug. 12, 2012, as a patient technician in the operating room, according to the university.
The charges against him surprised Dave Hansen, who first met him about 11 years ago when Hansen served as an assistant pastor at an area church.
"I always thought he was a gentle giant, just a nice guy,'' Hansen said. "He seemed genuine with his faith and spirituality...I don't see him doing this at all, but that's usually the case, I guess.''
Matthew attended Liberty University from 2000 to 2002, said officials with the Lynchburg school founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. The school's athletics website listed him as a defensive lineman on the football team.
He was accused of a sexual assault on Liberty's campus in October 2002, but charges were never filed, according to Lynchburg's deputy commonwealth's attorney.
More recently, he served as a volunteer for the football team at The Covenant School, a private Christian pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade school in Charlottesville. Officials said his involvement began last month after interviews with the athletic director and football coach, as well as normal background and reference checks.
After Matthew was named a person of interest in Graham's disappearance, school officials said in a letter that he will "no longer be working with our football program while this matter is being clarified and resolved.''
While Matthew has had past brushes with the law, the details of those cases are not clear.
Online court records show Matthew was convicted of trespassing in 2010 but provide no details about the incident. Details also were unavailable for two other charges of assault and attempted grand larceny relating to a 2009 incident that were not prosecuted. Matthew, who had a taxi permit from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles from 2007 to 2010, also has several traffic infractions, records show.
Copyright Associated Press / NBC Southern California |
HYDE PARK — London-born filmmaker Will Robson-Scott wanted to explore the violence that plagues Chicago's South and West sides — so he went directly to the source.
“Chi Raq,” Robson-Scott's new documentary, features interviews with Chicago gang members and others who admit to both committing the violence as well as being victims themselves.
“I didn’t want the film to be about my views, I wanted the subjects who live or have grown up in Chicago to tell their stories and give them a voice,” Robson-Scott said. “Many people have asked if I was scared shooting, but to be honest the people in the West and South [sides] of Chicago were more friendly and accommodating than your average Londoner or New Yorker.”
Robson-Scott is primarily a photographer. "Chi Raq," shot in black and white, is similar in style to his earlier work chronicling the London grime music scene and also graffiti crews across the United Kingdom and Europe.
Now based out of New York, Robson-Scott said he was surprised with the level of candor he got from interview subjects in Woodlawn, Grand Boulevard, Englewood and other neighborhoods.
“I think being English helped, people seemed genuinely surprised I was there and I think they dropped their guard a bit,” Robson-Scott said. “Many peoples’ only reference to English people was Austin Powers or the Geico lizard — they were as interested in me as I was with them.”
The film points out that 4,265 people have been killed in Chicago since 2001, 2½ times the number killed in Afghanistan in that time. It opens with an interview with a gun-toting, joint-smoking apparent gang member as he drives through the streets of the city.
"Chicago was always a violent place, you know what I'm saying?" the man said. "As time goes on, it's just gotten more and more violent because the attitude changed to, now everybody don't give no f---. ... Ain't no leaders out here. Ain't nobody accountable for your actions."
Another man agrees that the lack of leaders led to a "systematic uproar," saying when "they took all the gang chiefs away, they took the structure."
The film doesn’t look for solutions, but instead provides the reasons for the violence from the viewpoint of those closest to it.
“The first thing I remember was being arrested when I was a shorty,” said another unnamed man in the movie who said he sold crack in his teens. “Once I became a part of the system, it f--- me up if you understand what I’m saying because it was in and out after that.”
The film is available online from Protein TV, an urban arts and culture journal based in New York and London, along with photos Robson-Scott shot while in Chicago.
“The reason for the violence are deep rooted in the community, but to be honest this is not strictly a Chicago issue, although it’s very bad in Chicago,” Robson-Scott said. “It’s an American issue.” |
Compatible with both Android and iOS (currently in beta) operating systems, Square Off is designed as a user-friendly app. It lets you interact with the board effortlessly; it just takes a click to begin the game.
It uses a compact 2 axis robotic arm with a magnetic head beneath the box to move the magnetic chess pieces. The AtMega 2560 chip with Bluetooth BLE ensures smooth communication with a smartphone, taking care of decrypting and execution. The most important thing is that it is programmed in a way so that the chess pieces don’t collide during automatic movements.
Live streaming mode: Tune into any match, worldwide. It also lets you record those matches and replay them, whenever you want.
Training mode: Play against the artificial intelligence of the board that can challenge you with 20 different difficulty levels.
Square Off mode: Challenge anybody, from anywhere in the world. You can either play board vs board or board vs app. The chess pieces shall move on their own, reflecting every move of your opponent.
But why an app? The idea is to keep the board button-free so that the users can enjoy the classic chess board experience. Be it selecting sides (black or white), difficulty levels, opening moves of computer, challenging friends, analyzing games, using the timer or chatting with the opponent (this feature is being worked upon), everything is controlled through the app.
Phone is connected to the board all the time via Bluetooth, allowing you to save an incomplete game. Also, it uses your phone’s Wi-Fi to connect to the internet and your phone’s processor to process the data and think of the next possible moves.
Currently, it works on Stockfish 7 which is one of the best open source chess engine and second engine is Cuckoo Chess, which is suitable for beginners. We plan to offer more chess engines in the future.
Additional Features:
Play against 20 different difficulty levels
Select opening moves with ease
Load and save an incomplete game
Membrane sensing technology to detect the location of pieces
Receive audio feedback during check, promotion, checkmate and for invalid moves (invalid moves, strictly not allowed)
Get all the instructions through the app, on your phone screen
In the year 2013, the Chairperson of National Association of Blind (NAB) got in touch with us to understand the feasibility of an idea. He wanted us to design a chessboard for visually impaired. It’s not possible for them to play chess on computers and smartphones. We, ourselves being board game lovers, simply dived in to explore the possibilities. We researched tirelessly to finally arrive at a design. But, we didn’t have any funds to bring it alive. That’s when an idea struck us.
We started participating in various technical paper presentations and national level tech competitions to earn the prize money, just to create the prototype. Gradually we gathered sufficient money to design our first prototype in 2014. And guess what? It worked.
The Chairman of NAB who was visually impaired himself, tested the prototype and loved playing on it. We showcased this prototype in many national exhibitions and got a great response. But, on 3rd October, 2014, for the first time we got an opportunity to present our prototype in front of an international audience in Maker Faire, Rome. This was the real turning point.
We received tremendous response, exhaustive feedback and we realised that the board has the potential to connect the entire world. So, the moment we returned, we were driven to work harder. We created 4 more prototypes and visited several events to get as many feedback as possible. We are board game lovers, but not exactly pro chess players. That’s why it was necessary to find out what those features were that would excite a chess player? From the very beginning, we have been dedicated to bring alive the features requested by users. More opportunities flowed in.
Maker Faire - New York and Rome
We were invited to showcase the prototype at all the IITs in India, then MIT Boston FAB 11, Startup Istanbul and the Sharjah Chess Club. After 3 years of sustained efforts, finally our Beta product was ready in May, 2016. To test the product and gauge the response, we produced a small batch of Collector’s Edition Square Off boards and sold 20 specially created, highly premium boards within no time.
The struggle to create the manufacturing system
The next step was to work out the mechanics of a large scale production. The aim was clear, getting the best price without compromising on the quality of the board.
However, the challenge was to find a manufacturer that would offer an incredible combination of technology and luxury. Which means advanced software and hardware perfectly encased in a premium wooden surface. End of July 2016, we visited Shenzhen, China to explore the manufacturing possibilities. Shenzhen being an electronics hub of the world, we found the technical expertise. But, finding a dealer for wood wasn’t that easy.
After a lot of research and we fortunately stumbled upon a dealer who can supply us the desired quality of wood. And now we are all set to produce on a bigger scale to reach a larger number of people.
Your backing is of utmost importance to us. Your funding is what can help us undertake bulk orders through our suppliers, at best possible prices. So that we can direct the suppliers’ discounts, back to you. With your support we are aiming to raise 45000 euros to achieve the minimum order quantity, so that we can arrive at the most economical price point. More importantly, we need funds to bear the setup costs to kick-off production and deliver to as many chess lovers as possible. That’s not all. The certification, necessary paperwork and government approvals can be possible only when we have a strong backing.
Your support opens up the possibility to develop many more fun board games that people would love to play.
Chess is just the beginning. Our vision is to add a variety of board games like Checkers, Backgammon, Snakes & Ladder, etc. to build a highly connected board gaming platform.
All you would need to do is to upgrade the Square Off App, replace the top surface with another board game panel and you will be ready to play your preferred game with anybody in the world.
We will be glad to hear your suggestions on what board games would you like to see next, on Square Off. And, we are all ears for fun, innovative board game ideas too. So let your mind run wild and create an interesting board game. If the idea is entertaining enough, it can be the next game on our board.
Get in touch with us
If you have questions at any time, during or after the campaign, you can always reach us at [email protected] or leave a comment on this page.
Our heartfelt gratitude goes out to the following people for helping us out throughout our journey |
Homer. Democritus. Anaxagoras. Three brilliant thinkers and writers, men who contributed to the development of classical Greek thought, and most importantly, men who believed the earth was flat. To their ranks, we can now add California resident Mike “Mad Mike” Hughes.
Seeking to free himself from the fetters of earthbound gravity, just as he has already freed his mind from the ironclad scientific evidence the world is round, Hughes is planning to launch himself into space on Saturday via a homemade rocket, The Washington Post reports. Hoping to reach a height of 1,800 feet—also roughly the nearest distance Hughes’ enlightened mind has come to human logic during this project—his scrap-metal rocket ship will propel him at 500 miles per hour for a mile-long journey. No word yet on whether fellow flat-earth truther BoB will be there to support him.
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And this is only the first phase of Hughes’ ambitious multi-tiered project to disprove what centuries of scientific thought and outer-space travel have confirmed, repeatedly and with increasingly little effort. The 61-year-old limousine driver plans to subsequently follow up his doubtless successful Saturday flight with a drive several miles up into space, in order to photograph the flat disc that actually comprises our planet. With that, Hughes hopes to “shut the door on this ball earth” nonsense believed by the many unthinking sheep who simply accept what sound mathematics, as well as countless pieces of photographic and video evidence, have told them.
Hughes is actually a fairly recent convert to the truth of a flat earth, as he tells a fellow flat-earther in a recent fundraising interview for the project. He says he came to the realization the earth is flat about a year ago, following several months of “research,” which presumably involved reading up heavily on a variety of earth-related informative critical and investigative journalism sites, like NBA player Kyrie Irving’s Instagram feed. Once he gets proof, it will put a stop to the steady stream of Illuminati Freemason astronauts—including John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, Hughes assures us—who have pulled the veil of deception over our collective eyes.
Completely coincidentally, this conversion to horizontal honesty came around early 2016. This just so happened to be about the time Hughes’ previous Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for an Evel Knievel-style rocket flight to space—in which he didn’t say a word about flat earth or conspiracies—raised exactly $310 of his $150,000 goal. His post-conversion GoFundMe campaign, freed from Kickstarter’s insidious allegiance to ball-shaped ideologies of evil, managed to wring about $8,000 out of fellow flat-earthers, more than enough to explain his adding a coat of Rust-Oleum and “Research Flat Earth” imprinted on his homemade rocket.
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While some might see his recent enlightenment (or “unlearning”) as an opportunistic cash grab, Hughes appears serious in his desire to disprove the actual model of our planet, just as serious as he is about needing additional funds to take the next step, should he survive Saturday’s attempt. (A previous shorter rocket flight of Hughes’ ended with him being pulled moaning from the wreckage, as seen in this video.) We here at The A.V. Club are rooting for a successful mission this weekend, if only so that our weekend news editor doesn’t end up having to make an extremely depressing addendum to this currently very entertaining story. |
Moving from London to Bristol – should we do it?
A month or so ago a reader got in touch to ask about our experiences of moving from London to Bristol. He asked for an honest pros and cons of moving – what’s better, what’s worse, how have we found the adjustment?
It’s around two years since my husband saw the house i’m sitting in. So, if you’re considering moving to Bristol from London, here’s my honest list of things to consider.
Firstly, if you’re lucky enough to be in a position to buy, either by selling your London home or just not having enough deposit to get on the ladder there, here’s the thing: Bristol property is still cheaper than London, but there are areas where it’s almost comparable, and the market is probably faster, or as fast. Houses and flats sell in hours. Open days and ‘best and final offers’, the nail-biting blind bids, are popular. It’s hard trying to view houses from a different city. I would suggest taking a mid-week holiday and viewing as many houses as you can. Be brutal, be on the estate agent’s backs like rats on cheese, and show willing. Property near good schools sells better than anything else.
The above is a few screenshots from RightMove of what’s available in some price brackets, big and small. If you’re selling a two bed in 1-6 in London, probably all of them are within your mortgage grasp though!
On the subject of schools – I’m afraid the situation here is as fevered, if not more, than it is in London. Research the ones you like the look of and speak to people about the admissions process. Secondary schools, for many, are more of an issue.
There is a big, big North/South divide in Bristol which people just don’t mention. It’s not a positive or negative thing, but it does exist. In very general terms, property is cheaper south of the river. BUT – this is changing fast because in the areas near to Temple Meads (Southville, Bedminster, Windmill Hill, Knowle, Totterdown) you can walk to the station, and when the track gets upgraded and you can get to London in just over an hour, well, that makes it more commutable than some parts of Surrey, for example. The traditional North Bristol areas for families (Cotham, Redland, Bishopston, Horfield etc) are not as close to the centre, but all easy to get to a centre office from. Public transport is ok, driving can be tough, there’s a lot of traffic in Bristol, it’s comparable to London for that.
Bristol is hilly, there’s no denying it. It makes for beautiful views, great skylines, and a lot of houses with steps up to the door, or steps into the garden. If you want a garden, don’t be fooled into thinking they are always bigger here. Some of the most pricey houses don’t have anything more than a courtyard. Strange but true. In terms of parking, you’ll be lucky to be able to park on your street, especially on terraced roads, although it’s better than London. There are some resident’s parking zones.
Bristol has ‘villages’ just like London. It has more green space and, drive in any direction for 20 minutes and you are in open countryside. You’re in Devon and Wales in an hour and Cornwall in two. You’re 2 hours from London by train and, actually, I regularly drive to central London and on a good day, you’re there in 2.5hrs tops. In other words, you can go back easily and tempt your friends to visit you quite easily too. Oh, and there’s an airport, so you can still go on holiday to most places in Europe – but you’ll need to go to London to fly to other continents.
(A great way to see Bristol is the Instagram hashtag #igersbristol)
Children’s services are good. You have a few hospital choices to give birth in. We don’t have as many children’s centres any more, due to cuts, but we have many, many more baby and child cafes, more available playgrounds (think having a few to choose from each week rather than just the one nearest your house). I’ve not had a problem finding an NHS doctor or dentist, and both are good. We’ve got everything London has which you might currently think of as being unique: a carnival (St Pauls), a natural history museum, a science museum, many outdoor music festivals, a big waterside scene with many things to do, musicals, theatre, etc. There’s a big focus on food, and coffee, and drinks here.
What do I miss? The tube. The Evening Standard. Everything else I miss is just memories of life pre-children – nights out, Soho on a Friday night, The City on a deserted Sunday, dodgy Stockwell nightclubs, beers after work on hot pavements wearing a bad skirt suit, dodgy taxis, all-day hangovers, packed parks, the noise of trains.
Why did we move? We had jobs to come to, we wanted to buy a house, not a flat, we wanted to be away from the pressure of the home counties young family scene, and nearer our favourite coastal counties. The shorter commute means Tibbs sees her father most evenings, which is a huge deal for both of them. Personally, I wanted any kids we have to grow up wanting to go down to London when they’re ready, like I did, and get the most out of it, rather than grow up in it and be underwhelmed by anywhere else, or worse still, live on the fringes of it and still not really experience it (personal opinions here, I realise this is not how it is for everybody!).
Bristol is a great alternative to London for raising a family. There are of course others (am biased but Manchester is wonderful too).
If anyone else has any advice for people considering the move, please do leave a comment.
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For a film that was set to anchor 20th Century Fox’s post-Wolverine Marvel slate, Gambit is off to a bit of a rough start. First there were rumors that the film’s star Channing Tatum would walk away from the project over budget disputes. Shortly after, director Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) had to drop out of the film due thanks to consistently pushed start dates that eventually brought him into conflict with prior commitments. Fox scored a coup when they landed Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman to take over at the helm, but with the October 2016 release date fast approaching, and production slated to begin in March, it seemed an impossible feat for any director to have a large-scale superhero film ready in such a short window. Today, Fox announced that Gambit has been given some breathing room as the studio has pulled the film’s 2016 release and dated two addition unnamed Marvel films.
Gambit will no longer arrive in theaters on it’s planned October 7th release date, and while a new release date has not been announced, Fox has slated two mystery Marvel projects
for October 6, 2017, and January 12, 2018. The first film will face off against Andy Serkis‘ The Jungle Book: Origins, while the second will be pitted against Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner sequel.
The October 6 date falls a year after Gambit’s intended release, and it’s possible that Fox has given Liman and Tatum the breathing (and schedule) room they need to make the film, especially considering its lead actor’s busy schedule. Tatum recently signed on for an R-rated musical comedy with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and is also set to reprise his role as Jenko in 23 Jump Street, though neither film currently has a release date. It’s also likely that the success of Deadpool has taken some of the weight of urgency off the film’s shoulders, as the studio is no longer scrambling to find a household name to lead their next gen of their mutant franchise.
As for that second date, a peculiar one indeed given that January is often considered a dumping ground month and definitely not a home for major studio releases. However, given Deadpool‘s unprecedented February success (Disney’s record-shattering December release for Star Wars, for that matter), and the serious crowding of superhero films on the docket as we near the end of the decade, it makes sense that studios will lean toward a year-round tentpole schedule. That said, the odds are that this date either belongs to the X-Force film, which Ryan Reynolds recently called a “priority”, or more likely, the already-ordered Deadpool 2, which writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are currently writing. And then, of course, there’s the possibility that these dates belong to none of these things and Fox is going to totally blow our minds.
What do you guys think? How do you see Fox’s schedule shaking down? Sad to see Gambit pushed, or were you expecting as much given the insanely short slated production timeline? Sound off in the comments below. |
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Chores went by quickly with so many things racing through my head. In what seemed like no time at all, a single horn blow called us to the house for dinner a little before sundown. I finished penning my swine and walked quickly to the house, washing my hands before helping Ma move food from the kitchen to the table.
Dinner was quiet that night, nobody was talking except to ask to pass the potatoes or the salt, or whatever else was out of polite reaching distance. There were a lot of looks my way. Abe and Molly ended up needing to be separated at the table, with Ma swapping places with Molly. They still tried to poke and prod at each other behind Ma’s back, but they weren’t squabbling verbally, and Ma seemed happy with that. She only went into discipline mode once, grabbing Abe’s ear when he poked in Molly’s direction with a table knife. Behind Ma’s back. Yes, I believe in extra sensory perception in mothers. Watching Ma deal with Abe and Molly for the last few years made me a believer. I suspected that I was too irritated by her always knowing when I was doing something wrong when I was growing up to actually recognize it as being uncanny. She always claimed it was just situational awareness.
When the meal was nearly finished, I decided that if nobody else was talking, I needed to. “I don’t want to go to town tomorrow with nothing but myself. I will be taking my culls. Does anyone need me to take anything to town, or bring anything back? I’ll be taking one of the small carts, but will take the large cart instead if there’s something big that needs to be moved.”
Zeke looked at me for a second with a puzzled look. “Don’t you want to fatten them up for a little while on the locusts and forest mast? It’s a bit early for good forest mast, but there’s some out there, the locusts didn’t do a lot of damage to the forests.”
Pa looked at Zeke sharply but I spoke before Pa could. “I’d like to, Zeke, but I don’t know when I’ll have to go.” I shrugged.
Zeke winced. “Sorry, I spoke too quickly.”
“Besides,” I continued, “with my culls gone, there will be fewer swine to eat the locusts, hay, and mangels, and more mast in the woods.” I shrugged. I didn’t need to explain how risky a late planting was. This early we’d definitely get something, but it might not be much.
Zeke nodded. “Understood.” He looked at me for a second. “I would suggest you try to sell to the marina before the butcher. The butcher will not be as interested in fattening our swine on offal from other butchering as he will for a farm pig. They grow a lot faster on fewer calories per kilo. The marina would rather deal with smaller animals, and if you sell them leash-trained culls, the marina master’s children can take the swine up and down the coast for washed up edibles every day on top of the fish offal.”
I had planned to take the swine to the marina first anyway, for most of the reasons Zeke had provided, but I nodded anyway. “Thanks, Zeke, I’ll do that.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Granpa and Pa and Edward all nodding with small motions, agreeing with Zeke in their own minds.
Pa spoke. “Is anyone aware of critical needs? If not, I’m going to say that we save barter and fisc until after taxes.” Pa looked around the table, from person to person, even Abe and Molly, who could tell by Pa’s face that it wasn’t time to joke. Jan spoke up hesitantly. “I think I have enough bedding and cloth for swaddling and diapers for junior here,” she patted her slightly rounded-out belly, “but I may need more. I’ll check. It’s no rush though.” She looked at Ma.
Ma smiled. “We’ll figure it out. We’ve got some rags packed away that are big enough for swaddling and diapers, and I know I’ve got plenty of quilting rags. Worst case, the longer we wait, the more our food will be worth, in exchange for cloth.” Her mouth twisted a bit. “I don’t like holding food over people’s heads to get better prices, but taxes are going to be bad this year.”
There were nods around the table, I was one of the ones nodding. Abe and Molly were clearly clueless, but nodded anyway, looking around and trying to figure out what everyone was agreeing about.
Edward cleared his throat. “Sorry to bring this up, but the state is certainly going to pay you in fisc in the militia, Allen. You had best open a bank account in town for yourself tomorrow while you are there.”
I hadn’t thought about that. “Thanks Edward, that’s a good idea. I’ll need to set it up so that Marza…” As I said Marza’s name, I stopped moving and speaking with my mouth still open, thinking to myself, Marza is also fifteen, the only fifteen-year-old on the Gonzalez farm.
Granpa tapped his wooden food knife on the worn wooden plate in front of him. “No. I can tell you right now that what you are thinking will not happen. Riko will not let Marza be their farm’s militia representative. One of the other men on their farm will go.”
“Are you…”
“I’m more than certain.” Granpa broke in. “Riko will absolutely not allow it. I know him. Trust me.” He caught my eye and chuckled. “Or don’t trust me, and be happy when you find out that I was right. I can live with that.”
There was a little laugh shared around the table, and I relaxed some. Granpa was almost never wrong when he was confident, but I would feel a lot better when I knew for myself. Trust, then verify.
Pa spoke next, from his position at the other head of the table, opposite Granpa. “Anyone else have anything to discuss that we need to talk over as a family?”
I heard my name whispered, and from the corner of my eye I saw Abe poke Molly. They both looked at me and laughed between themselves. Abe saw me looking and turned back to the table quickly, Molly was canny enough to do the same without looking at me. Both of them were hilariously fake-innocent looking, pretending they didn’t have any mischief planned. I smiled a little and carefully arranged my tableware away from the edge of the table and prepared myself to be rushed by rambunctious wrestling rascals as soon as Pa said we could leave the table. It wasn’t like they didn’t do the same thing at least a couple nights a week, as one last excuse to get themselves worked up before bed. No punching, biting, pinching or slapping was allowed, but grappling and tickling was.
“OK. Everyone, Jan and Edward and Zeke have cleanup tonight. Everyone else, out of their way.” Pa started pushing back his chair to stand.
I pushed my chair back quickly so I could catch the rampaging raggedy ruffians as they ran my way.
They both collapsed forward in their chairs, and thumped their foreheads on the table, hard enough to shake everyone’s plates and glasses. A moment later, they both started to fake snore. Loudly. “ZZZZZ!”
Everyone at the table just stared at them in confusion.
Ma looked at both of them, her head panning from Molly on one side of her to Abe on the other, and back. “What… are you two doing?”
Abe opened one eye. “We’re just like Allen. Someone has to carry us to bed.” He closed his eye, and the two of them started fake snoring rather obnoxiously again.
“ZZZZZ!”
“ZZZZZ!”
I was shaking with suppressed laughter so hard I could barely think, but the thought came through anyhow. The little weasels. They played me like a harp.
I carefully stood up, making as little noise as possible, and held my right index finger over my mouth, and the rest of the adults showed big smiles, even Pa. Working my way over behind Abe I grabbed him by the torso with both hands and picked him up out of his chair. As I lifted him, he squirmed in my grasp and shriek-squealed in that strange childish manner, the happy-to-be-scared sound generating an irresistible ‘tickle me’ trigger. Not that changed my plans. Tickling was already going to happen. I went to my knees behind Ma’s chair and set Abe down on his back, and started tickling his ribs mercilessly for a few seconds.
Any second now. I watched Molly with my peripheral vision while I also watched Abe to make sure he wasn’t hyperventilating or too red in the face, tickling him just enough to make him yell “Allen. No fair!” Then he started making non-word noises, laughing and breathing heavily.
I saw Molly’s legs shift slightly, and her head moved just a little, turning to give her a view of her escape route. Aaaand. Now. Molly’s chair squeaked across the floor a few inches, and she bolted, trying to run past me. I quickly snaked out my left arm and hooked my hand around her torso, dragging her into a brief hug before carefully laying her flat on the ground next to Abe. Serious tickling followed immediately, leading to the jokesters flailing and twisting back and forth while shriek-squealing and laughing. When their voices started to indicate actual distress, I stopped.
“You two OK?”
Two weak voices, almost in unison “Yes!”
“Good.” I held my hands up in front of them and wriggled my fingers. “Let’s do that again!”
“No!” “No!” a chorus of two voices called out and as I dropped my hands towards their bellies again they shrieked in laughter.
Instead of tickling them again like I knew they thought I was going to do, I suddenly, carefully grabbed each of them by one of their calves. Then I quickly went from my knees to my feet, picking them both up and holding them upside down by one leg, suspended a few inches above the ground. There was another round of high pitched happy shrieking and a great deal of arm-wheeling. I didn’t lift them too far off the ground because they were twisting pretty hard and both massed around twenty-five kilos or so. I wasn’t Edward, able to throw a bale of hay nearly twenty feet, but I was strong enough for this.
I bent my elbows a bit, bringing the two of them closer together as they hung suspended upside down from my hands. After bringing them a bit closer so I could face them both, upside down, I spoke to them. “I thought you said you needed someone to carry you to bed? I’m just trying to help.”
Both of them looked startled for a moment, blinking at me, and then they looked at each other and back to me again.
“I didn’t mean this!” Abe protested, pointing at me, “and you know it, you too-tall meanie.”
Molly was far cleverer. “I didn’t say that. I’m not guilty. Put me down.” She crossed her arms and stared at me, upside down.
“Ah, but the best plans of little siblings never survive contact with a smarter older brother.” I retorted. “I can tell you that from experience.”
Zeke’s voice came from the other side of the table over Ma’s barely audible laughter. “It’s true.”
I thought to myself, with a little irritation, you didn’t have to agree so convincingly, Zeke.
Edward chimed in. “Definitely. As the oldest, smartest brother, I’ve ruined my fair share of great plans.”
I bent my elbows a bit to bring them closer to my torso, and poked my face a bit closer to them, but not close enough that they could hit me. I made a funny face and stuck my tongue out at them. “That was a good one though. You won tonight. I’m just being a spoilsport and abusing my bigger muscles and better looks.”
There was more upside-down good-natured yelling and flailing as I took them back to the kid’s room and carefully lowered them onto their sleeping pad. “There we go, as requested, two bed deliveries.”
They both, almost as one, stuck their thumbs in their ears and waved their fingers at me as they made loud raspberry splutters.
I smiled and straightened up, wistfully thinking to myself. They think and act so much alike. Inseparable. Sometimes I wish I’d had a sib near my age. Zeke was fun at times, but we were never close like these two. You have to pull them apart with horses and tie them down with ropes, or they’ll be in each other’s back pockets again in seconds.
They didn’t stay in their bed for long though, of course. Ma had followed me as I carried them, and called out. “OK, restroom and tooth brushing. Now.”
I left the room to two young voices complaining. “Awww, Ma…”
Edward and Jan and Zeke were chatting in the kitchen to the sound of plates and glasses being washed.
Pa was sitting in his chair with what looked to be a horse bellyband across his lap, picking stitches. Probably the one that he had been complaining about when the planting season ended. Normally it would be a winter job, but if we were going to plant a late crop of table beets and radishes tomorrow, we would want both plows in the field to do it quickly.
Granpa had a heavy piece of flat oak on his lap, carefully cutting a marked piece of leather into a shape clearly intended to replace the piece Pa was removing from the bellyband.
They both looked up at me and nodded when I sat down and reached out to pick up a breeching strap. I inspecting it and found that it seemed to be OK, except for some loose stitching that would irritate the horse wearing it. Pa leaned over and picked up the case of ceramic needles, and held it out to me. I looked at the stitching again and judged that I could use a medium needle. Small needles broke too easily to use them unless you needed to.
Nobody spoke, there was detail work to do. Glass knives cut threads, bull-oak punches with diamond tips cut holes in new leather pieces, and ceramic needles stitched harness pieces back together again. Zeke and Edward joined us when the dishes were done, and the pile of damaged tack in the middle of the room quickly disappeared. When the last piece was assembled, we passed each piece around the circle of all five of us so we could all look at it.
Granpa spoke first, after he sheathed his glass blade. “The rugrats got you pretty good Allen.”
I laughed and the rest of us did too. It felt good. I just wished I could stop worrying about what was going to happen tomorrow, and after that. “They did Granpa. Yes they did. I wish we could bottle energy like that.”
Pa raised his eyebrow at me. “You wish we could bottle energy like that?” His eyes cut over at Granpa. “You hear that, Pa? Allen here is already getting old. In another couple years he’ll be bedridden for sure.”
I looked to Edward and Zeke, who both shook their heads. Zeke grinned. “You stepped in it, I’m not helping.” Edward nodded and kept his mouth shut.
I raised my hands in surrender, chuckling. “You have to admit they have endless energy.”
Granpa smiled again. “That they do.”
In unspoken agreement, we started lightly moistening the leather. It had all been cleaned before it was put up, and the new leather was clean, but we would be plowing the fields tomorrow, and planting the next day if the locusts were done. A little neatsfoot oil would go a long way to keeping the leather pliable, but it shouldn’t be put on very dry leather.
About three hours after dinner, we had finished all the harness repairs, and put all the supplies away. Edward carried the tack back out to the horse barn, and returned a few minutes later. Ma and Jan had finished checked through non-food supplies, and decided that there shouldn’t be any need for extra cloth for Jan and Edward’s upcoming baby. They hadn’t found any lack of other supplies that were critical.
We all drank a hot rose hip, mint, and honey tea and talked about what to do on the next day. Everyone carefully avoided mentioning that I couldn’t help implement tomorrow’s plans, but I was able to contribute a couple ideas.
Once everyone knew what they would be doing the next day, we broke for bed. Before I stood, Ma moved next to me where I was sitting, leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “You did well tonight with Abe and Molly. I…” She stopped talking, and looked me in the eyes for a second. “I’m sorry if I upset you earlier.”
“I understand, Ma.”
She ruffled my hair then everyone went to their beds.
**
The next morning, before the sun was up, I joined the rest of the family for a light breakfast that really wasn’t all that good. Ma was using up the oldest preserved food, and some of the garden produce that had been locust-damaged, or wasn’t fully ripe. Foods that in a good year would likely have been fed to the swine as treats. Molly and Abe complained a bit, but settled down after a quick talking-to by Ma.
In the near-darkness of pre-dawn, I carefully walked out to the equipment barn and picked up four swine harnesses and a bundle of simple rope leashes. I dropped them in the bed of the small cart I was planning on taking to town and pulled the small cart out of the equipment shed by hand. After inspecting it by the dawning light, I found no problems or damage. Thirty minutes later, I waved to Granpa, Abe, and Molly as they returned from milking the cows.
My four largest sows pulled the cart. My fifteen culls that were leash-trained were tied to the back of the cart by their leashes. The five that I hadn’t even managed to reliably leash train were in a wooden crate with slatted sides for ventilation behind me on the cart. Speedy was the only squealer I was keeping this year. That hurt, a lot, because there had been some good ones in the most recent litters, especially Chuckle, but I had to lighten the burden on the farm. I only kept Speedy because I really wanted to see what she filled out like with those longer back legs.
Butchering and eating our own swine was out of the question. They would know. It would make them very difficult to work with for weeks. They considered us to be dominant members of the herd. Swine were not extraordinarily protective of one another, but they were herd animals, and our swine were smarter than any farm pig. If they heard or smelled one of their own being slaughtered, smelled the scent of one of their own in the table scraps, or encountered something made from the leather of a sounder member, they would be afraid of us and very difficult to control. The boars might even get aggressive with us if they were in rut.
It happened every now and then that a sow or swine would die on the farm. We would then be forced to field dress the carcass and take it into town to the butcher. Otherwise we normally took sows to the butcher the first time they produced only two squealers after their fifth year. Boars would go to the butcher when they reached three hundred kilos, or in their tenth year. A strong stud boar might be kept longer, as long as he was able to produce quality offspring.
Exceptions were made for exceptionally smart, tractable boars and sows, giving them a couple more chances to breed, or allowing them to grow a little bigger. We wanted those genes. The smarter and more tractable our swine were, the better they could work.
In the direst need, of course, we would butcher and eat our own swine, but we’d eat the horses and cows first. A single-plow could be managed by a team of four big sows. Zeke had been plowing the mangel fields for years. The third plow allowed all the crops to get into the ground just a little faster.
The only reason Zeke wasn’t plowing today, was because we didn’t want the swine in the fields immediately after table beet and radish plantings. Even if they didn’t root up the seeds, they would certainly disturb the plantings, compacting the soil with their feet. If the swine were to be allowed to eat the corn plant roots, it had to be on plowing day, because seeds would be going into the ground the next day. Granpa was going to take the other five of my sounder up to the fields so they could eat as much corn root as possible as well. We’d leave them there overnight with the boars.
As I prepared to turn up the Gonzalez farm road, I shook my head, hoping none of my fears would come to pass. The swine breeding records we had went back over two thousand years, and there were references to records at least a thousand years older than that. The records had been copied time and time again over those years, and some of it was certainly bad data after so many copies. Anything more than a hundred years old was pretty meaningless to us with the tools we had available anyway. The ancient records were more tradition than useful.
Losing our swine would be a huge loss. There weren’t many swineherds like us who bred for the traits we did, so rebuilding a good sounder would be extraordinarily difficult. All the nearby farms that used our services would have to hire people for that work, or take farm labor off of other jobs. You simply did not recreate thousands of years of work in a few seasons.
I turned slowly and carefully off of the main road, watching behind me to make sure none of the squealers leashed to the back of the cart were in danger of being caught under a wheel.
I was hoping to spend a little time with Marza today. I wasn’t disappointed. As I pulled up to the house, I saw Marza on the front steps of the main Gonzalez home with a butter churn. Which was weird. Most people did not try to do work in high traffic areas, and she’s be in the way of everyone coming in and out of the house.
“Allen!” She yelled as she quickly set aside the butter churn and ran towards my cart. I pulled the cart off the side of the road to avoid blocking the road and hopped off the cart, watching as she ran to me. I never got tired of seeing her run. I could still remember when she could outrun me, back years ago. It used to frustrate me so badly. She was tall and muscular, long, jet black hair in a thick braid behind her. Brown eyes and a couple freckles framing a button nose and a mouth capable of the most incredible smiles. Her rough, baggy work clothes had never hidden her beauty from me.
As she got close, I reached out and grabbed her under the armpits and lifted her into the air, spinning her around once, as she laughed and called out “Put me down!” as she put her hands on my head, since she couldn’t reach my shoulders.
After one rotation I let her to the ground. We drew each other into a powerful embrace and hung onto each other for a full thirty seconds. Then we relaxed a bit and I leaned over and she stood on her toes and we kissed for about ten seconds. When there was a conspicuously loud, brief female-sounding cough from inside the house, we detached from each other and I set my chin on top of her head as we held each other loosely. There weren’t many women I could do that with, most were just too short. Marza was perfect. Well, to me. I suppose I was biased.
With the immediate pleasure of greeting handled, I started speaking to help direct my mind towards important, pressing matters that I could do something about, instead of things pressing against me that I wasn’t allowed to do anything with, yet. “Does your family have anything that needs to go to town that will fit in the cart, Marza? I’ve got a little room left beside the cage.” As I said that, I dreaded the possibility that she might say she had to report for militia duty.
Marza looked at me, clearly picking up the stress in my voice. Then she looked away from me, towards the house with a bit of nervousness. “No, with the harvest being what it was, we’re holding onto everything we can until we see what we get from the beet and radish harvest.” Granpa is going into town today to pick up some needles, a couple punches, and some leather strap, but he’ll be paying with fisc, not barter. All three house families are plowing for all they are worth right now. We’ve got all six plows in the field and five hunters in the woods, hoping to pick up some deer. The family children are hunting for acorns, blackberries, anything in the woods that we can eat.”
I looked at her a little funny, and she looked back at me. “What?”
“Not to pry into your family business, but why is your Granpa going into town? I know he can hunt. Why not send someone else to town for simple stuff like that?”
The senior Mr. Gonzalez came around the corner at that moment, on a light draft horse, and I understood immediately what was happening. He wasn’t hunting, but he was carrying a bow and quiver. He was also wearing a backpack. “Oh. I see.” I didn’t even imagine that he might choose to enlist himself rather than one of his children or granchildren. He was between Pa and Granpa’s age, a bit shy of sixty if I remembered right. I did the math in my head, accounting for Pa and Ma starting to have kids later, and farther apart, with Marza being the middle grandchild of the third-oldest child of Mr. Gonzalez.
“You seem surprised, Allen.” Mr. Gonzalez chided me. “Don’t tell me that you expected me to allow Marza to join the militia, even if the Countyman wanted her because of her age?”
I was surprised and took a moment to consider my words. Talking without thinking around Mr. Gonzalez led to embarrassment more often than not. “I was informed by my Granpa, in no uncertain terms, that Marza wouldn’t be your farm’s representative. I am surprised though.” No need to say why I was surprised though. If he couldn’t figure that out, I would know why he was doing it. I hadn’t seen signs of mental degradation in him, and he was a bit young for it, but it was possible.
Marza abruptly elbowed me in the side, but said nothing. I looked down at her, but she didn’t even look at me, continuing to look at her Granpa. His gaze shifted from me to her, and his brows beetled a bit. “No, Marza, it’s not going to happen. Nobody else is going; it’s going to be me. I won that argument last night, and your granma agreed with me, if you recall. If you want to argue with her about it, feel free. If you convince her that one of the younger men should go, then I’m sure she’ll try to convince me of the same.”
Marza sighed. “I’m not that foolish, Granpa. Enough of the family agreed to it that I’m not going to fight it. That doesn’t mean I agree with it.”
I was distinctly uncomfortable listening in on family politics. Not my family. Yet.
Mr. Gonzalez got a bit of a sharp look on his face. “Which of your generation would you prefer to grow up without a Pa or Ma, Marza? Which family do I choose to risk losing someone who might be fit and hale for decades? I’m fit and hale now. That’s not going to be true for many more years. My bones ache in the morning, and when it rains. My hearing is not quite what it was. My sight is starting to go as well.”
I shifted my weight from foot to foot. It was not my place to be hearing this. I wanted to shrink to a few centimeters tall and hide somewhere.
Crossing her arms, and tightening them around herself a bit, Marza spoke with some heat, looking up to meet his gaze. “Knowledge. Experience. You won’t stop being useful until the day you croak, Granpa. Allen’s Granpa is missing a foot, but he does his fair share. Sure, he can’t plow a field or throw hay bales, but I haven’t seen you doing those things a whole lot recently either. And if you say your mind is going, I’ll flat out call you a liar after the logic webs you spun last night.”
I really, really wanted to be elsewhere, but at the same time Marza was looking distraught and I wanted to offer some comfort. I shifted slightly, to stand a little closer to her and put my left arm around her hip. When she didn’t pull away, I put just a little pressure against her, and she bumped up a little into me. Not leaning against me but touching me.
A sad look crossed Mr. Gonzalez’s face. “Who then, Marza? Which uncle or aunt will go and maybe not return? Or maybe it will be one of your generation? Which niece or nephew? Give me a name, and then give me a reason that I can take to your granma.”
Marza said nothing for a moment as she leaned heavily into me. “I don’t want to lose either of you. Allen’s family doesn’t really have much of a choice.”
Mr. Gonzalez shook his head. “Marza, our family doesn’t have a choice either. Not while your granma and I run it, and we’re in agreement. We let you all speak your minds, but we don’t run the farm by committee.”
She stared up at him for a moment and then her shoulders slumped, and she leaned into me even heavier. I almost staggered. Despite being a full head and then some shorter than me, Marza weighed almost as much as me.
I looked up at Mr. Gonzalez. I really didn’t appreciate him dragging me into the conversation, and I was starting to get agitated at him for pushing Marza as hard as he had. I could feel her shoulders shaking.
Before I could say anything, Mr. Gonzalez raised his right hand with palm facing me. “If you’re going to complain at me about how I just upset Marza, call me Riko. You’re close enough to becoming family that I’ll accept it.”
I opened my mouth, briefly, and then closed it. Then I looked at Marza, and then at him again, suspiciously, after I realized he had said nothing in Latino. Marza didn’t switch to Latino when I was around unless she was told to. If the conversation had been unintended, Mr. Gonzalez would have said something in Latino, and everything after that would have been in Latino, leaving me completely in the dark. “You set this up, didn’t you, sir?” I paused. “Riko.”
He nodded. “Of course I set this up. I could have been halfway to town by now, and Marza really should be out combing the forest for edibles instead of sitting on the porch churning butter, a job her ma would normally be doing right now. You two are going to start a family soon, you need to at least have some appreciation about how devious you will need to be in order to get what you want from your future kids and grandkids.”
Marza stopped shaking after his last sentence, abruptly turning her head towards Mr. Gonzalez, as he turned his head slightly towards her and smiled a tight, lopsided smile. Then his face became serious and his dark eyes bored into us as he spoke in a hard voice. “It also helps to understand how much some of those decisions will hurt. When you have to make a terrible decision, the more you care, the more it hurts, and no amount of logic makes it hurt less. Consider this a demonstration.”
I could feel Marza stiffening up and muscles tensing against mine, so I decided to try to be a little aggressive, maybe to keep Marza from snapping out at him. She had to live with him, after all.
In a sharp tone I snapped out, “I didn’t particularly care for the delivery, but the lesson is well taken, Riko.” I looked down at the top of Marza’s head and back at him. “I hope that you get an opportunity to teach us more, perhaps with a little less drama.”
“You’re not thinking. But that’s OK. That’s what your elders are for.” He chuckled. “People learn better under stress. That having been said, even in a best case scenario where nothing happens to either me or you, Allen, you two are going to settle pretty far from here. Family will not be able to visit you easily, and it’s hard to teach real world knowledge by post. Though you’re more than welcome to send mail, of course, when the time comes.” He looked towards the sun. “Allen and I need to go, Marza. He clearly has some culls to sell, and I need to make purchases. We both have to speak to the militia officers, before midday.”
Marza gave me a hug and I leaned over so we could kiss. The kiss lasted for several seconds before Mr. Gonzalez coughed. We kept kissing anyway, and he laughed. “Well, when you come up for air, Marza, your cousins are expecting you in the blackberry fields along broken rock trail. Give your ma the churn, she’ll finish the butter.”
“Mmmhmm,” Marza mumbled with our lips locked, giving Mr. Gonzalez a thumbs up with one hand.
I was willing to let the kiss go on for quite some time, but Marza pulled away, and held me at arms-length with both hands. “You will come here to say goodbye at least one more time before you go.” It wasn’t a request.
I nodded. “I will.”
She nodded, sniffled once, and without saying another word, she turned and ran to the steps, picking up the churn and walking to the door of the house. We waved at each other when she turned back towards me in the doorway.
Mr. Gonzalez waited until I looked back to him before he spoke. “Mind if I keep you company on your way to the butcher’s, Allen?”
“I’m heading to the marina master first.” I replied, “But I’d be happy to keep you company until we reach town.”
Mr. Gonzalez looked at my swine for a moment, clearly thinking. “Makes sense, I suppose. I wasn’t aware that you sold to the marina. We don’t have anything to do with them, except to trade for oyster shell powder for soil remediation.”
“They don’t buy many, but between fish offal and vegetation and sea life washing up on the coast, swine fatten up pretty nicely there. If we sell them leash-trained swine, they can just be walked along the coast by kids to let them get a lot of food that people can’t or won’t eat. The marina master usually buys one for every one of his children in school, every year.”
I finished turning the cart around, carefully watching to make sure I didn’t run over any leashed squealers. When I finally got us turned around, I clucked and raised the reins and lowered them quickly. The four sows in trace quickly got us moving to a moderate walking speed.
Mr. Gonzalez had waited for me to get my team turned around before starting to speak. “I’ve raised farm pigs. I was always a bit afraid to feed them fish offal. No concern about the bones?”
I looked over at him, thinking to myself. Is that a trick question?
After looking at my expression for a second, Mr. Gonzalez laughed. “Hah! Marza is going to have so much fun with you if she can get a reaction from you that easily.” He shook his head. “I don’t know everything. Your Granpa and I, we generally talk about important things that we share in common, and family. I taught him a lot about soil remediation and how to test soil quality, and he taught me a great deal about pests and pest management. There was a lot of other sharing too, but I never had a need to know about your forest swine, because I don’t raise them. That doesn’t mean I never wanted to know about them, but there is almost always something more important to do than indulge idle curiosity, no?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.” I smiled a bit as I looked up at him on his horse, pacing my cart. I stopped speaking but then realized I hadn’t answered. “Oh, sorry. Uncooked fish skeletons aren’t really a problem for swine. They are smart eaters. Cooked fish is a different story, the bones are more dangerous when cooked. I’m almost certain it would be the same for farm pigs.”
“Indeed.” He responded, thoughtfully. “We’ve got an hour and a half or so of road ahead of us, so let’s trade questions?”
“Sure. What do you want to know about our swine, sir?” I was having a hard time calling him Riko. It just felt wrong.
“Farm pigs rarely have stripes like that, but almost all of yours do. Did you breed the striped markings into them?”
“No, sir. That’s natural. Forest swine these days really aren’t real one-hundred-percent forest swine, not even ours. They are crossbreeds between forest swine and farm pigs. The stripes on squealers are protective coloration like white tailed deer fawn have; it blends into the forest litter. There’s a good bit of farm pig genes in our swine too, but we try to keep the forest swine genes dominant. We trade boars now and then with distant family, but if nobody within a decent range has a good quality boar they will trade, we’ll buy striped male squealers from farm pig litters. Only ones with stripes though when we buy them. A squealer with no stripes is almost always going to be a cull. Stripeless ones almost never take training well, like these three.” I pointed to the three non-striped squealers in the cage on my cart.
He was silent for a minute, then nodded. “How long have your family been breeding swine?”
“About three thousand years that we’re sure of, based on records. Maybe longer.”
Mr. Gonzalez whistled. “That’s amazing. You have records that far back? I don’t have my own family genealogy traced as far back as your swine.” He paused. “Of course, the records are available if we need them bad enough.” He raised his head a little, sharply, to indicate something overhead, in this case it was clear he meant Albert. Then he turned back to me. “Your turn. Three questions, and then my turn again.”
I thought about it. “Well, you’ve raised farm pigs so you might have tried this. Pigs and swine eat so many different types of food. Is it worth trying to give them special feed if you want to use their manure to target specific soil deficiencies?”
“Very good question. Give me a moment to think about it.” He looked forward, clearly thinking, and after a couple minutes began an answer.
For the next twenty kilometers, we talked swine and soil mostly, but a little about genetics and woodworking too. It was an interesting conversation. It made me feel rather good to be teaching Mr. Gonzalez things he didn’t know, and learning from someone with his combination of book and practical knowledge was a treat.
Eventually we parted ways in town, and I went to the marina master’s home along the river, near where the estuary began. I sold him four of the smallest culls, for a lot less fisc than I would have preferred. I was trying to sell them early, and smaller than usual. He had also, apparently, been talking to the butcher about how much to pay for our swine. I managed to get him to come up on the price a bit when I reminded him how easy it was to feed them, and that the community was probably going to be buying everything the fishermen could possibly catch for at least the next six months.
I returned to town, and checked the trade board in front of the town post office, just in case one of the townsfolk had a note up that they wanted a swine. We’d sold a few to families in town before. A small garden of mangels and table scraps would raise a fine cull overwinter. Mostly they wanted farm pigs that grew very fast though. Unless they had kids, and then the leash trained squealers were novelty gifts that would eventually make it to the table. Novelty gifts were much more valuable than butcher meat.
I was surprised to see that despite the early locust swarm, there was one family that wanted to buy a squealer. I opened the glass-fronted cabinet and pulled out the request, put it in my pocket, and then paid them a visit at the address they had given.
After a little haggling and proving to the Tanner family that Chuckle would obey their eight-year-old daughter on his leash as well as he obeyed me, I sold Chuckle for twice what I would have gotten for him from the butcher. Before leaving, I carefully explained that they should never, ever put their hands in Chuckle’s mouth; anything in a swine’s mouth was food until the swine chose to spit it out. I also made sure they understood that swine did tricks and obeyed commands mostly for food, not loyalty. I let them know the names of others in town who had recently bought from us, in case they wanted to compare notes, and then left them to their own business. I delivered the rest of my swine culls to the butcher and he paid standard rates for them.
By the time I’d sold all my swine, it was very close to midday, according to the town square sundial. I walked into the bank.
A nicely dressed young lady who I thought I remembered being two or three years ahead of me in school looked at me and sniffed with a little frown. I smiled back. Pa always said that bankers didn’t like the smell of hard work. He’d also been very clear that they still had to be treated with respect, because one day you might need a loan for a new piece of equipment or a building.
I led with a smile. “Hello Ma’am. How long would it take to set up a new bank account?”
She looked at me and forced herself to smile. “About thirty minutes young man.”
Thirty minutes? How many times do they have to count it? I wondered to myself as I shook my head. “I’ll have to come back after I go speak to the militia officer then. I don’t have thirty minutes.”
She got a real smile on her face. “Oh, if you are signing up for an account for your militia pay, the militia officer will create an account for you.” Her relief was so obvious it was funny, and I barely kept myself from laughing at her.
Letting the militia officer set up an account for me sounded handy, but I wouldn’t get my first pay for a while, I was sure. The officer would certainly be a very busy man today. “Will he do that today? I have fisc to deposit today.”
Her smile faltered, but quickly recovered. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“I’ll come back after I speak with the militia officer then. Thank you.” Yes, Ms. Necessary Evil, the stinky farmer will be back in your building for thirty minutes, later today. I thought to myself with a smile as I walked out the door. A couple minutes later, I drove my carriage over to the Countyman’s house to find out where to meet the militia officer.
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Are you stumped by split infinitives? Terrified of using "who" when a "whom" is called for? Do you avoid the words "affect" and "effect" altogether?
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Mignon Fogarty, a.k.a. Grammar Girl, is determined to wipe out bad grammar—but she's also determined to make the process as painless as possible. A couple of years ago, she created a weekly podcast to tackle some of the most common mistakes people make while communicating. The podcasts have now been downloaded more than twenty million times, and Mignon has dispensed grammar tips on Oprah and appeared on the pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.
Written with the wit, warmth, and accessibility that the podcasts are known for, Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing covers the grammar rules and word-choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers. From "between vs. among" and "although vs. while" to comma splices and misplaced modifiers, Mignon offers memory tricks and clear explanations that will help readers recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules. Chock-full of tips on style, business writing, and effective e-mailing, Grammar Girl's print debut deserves a spot on every communicator's desk. |
A man traveling from Rhode Island to Detroit with his 4-year-old son was stopped at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, R.I., the Transportation Security Administration said, after a TSA screening agent noticed disassembled gun components "artfully concealed" inside three stuffed animals in his carry-on bag.
The gun parts were found in an X-ray scan during a routine security screening. According to the Associated Press, a ".40-caliber gun was found inside one animal, while a magazine loaded with two .40-caliber rounds and a firing pin were found inside a second animal; another part of a gun known as a slide was found inside the third animal."
The stuffed animals were a teddy bear, rabbit and a Mickey Mouse, the TSA said. The gun parts--which could have been assembled to make a working firearm--were confiscated.
Astonishingly, the man--whose name was not released--and his son were allowed to continue to their destination after authorities concluded he didn't pose a safety threat. The man said he did not realize the stuffed animals contained the weaponry.
"It appears to be the result of a domestic dispute," Rhode Island Airport police chief Leo Messier said in a statement to the AP. "It was jointly investigated by the RI Airport Police, FBI and the Rhode Island State Police and it was determined that there was no threat at any time to air safety."
"This is just another example that threats can appear anywhere, and this is why TSA officers take a closer look at everything," the TSA added in a release. "It's also an example that shows that even though TSA has modified the screening process for children 12 and under, the security process is still just as effective."
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View this email in your browser VISIT FLORIDA Racing Takes Delivery of Riley-Gibson
Both Marc Goossens and Renger van der Zande, who were recently announced as VISIT FLORIDA Racing’s full-time drivers for the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship campaign, were on hand to take their first laps in the car.
IMSA has established all-new regulations for the top Prototype class in IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship competition, which will officially launch with the Rolex 24 At Daytona on January 28-29.
Saturday’s test served as an initial shakedown for the Daytona Beach-based team prior to the first official IMSA outing next week at Daytona International Speedway.
VISIT FLORIDA Racing will take part in an IMSA open test on December 13 and 14 in preparation for the 2017 season. The new season officially kicks off with the annual Roar Before the 24 at Daytona International Speedway January 6-8.
For more information, visit www.sdr-motorsports.com Daytona Beach, Fla. (11 December 2016) – VISIT FLORIDA Racing took delivery of its new Gibson-powered Riley Technologies Mk. 30 on Saturday as the team put the brand new LMP2 machine through its paces at Carolina Motorsports Park.Both Marc Goossens and Renger van der Zande, who were recently announced as VISIT FLORIDA Racing’s full-time drivers for the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship campaign, were on hand to take their first laps in the car.IMSA has established all-new regulations for the top Prototype class in IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship competition, which will officially launch with the Rolex 24 At Daytona on January 28-29.Saturday’s test served as an initial shakedown for the Daytona Beach-based team prior to the first official IMSA outing next week at Daytona International Speedway.VISIT FLORIDA Racing will take part in an IMSA open test on December 13 and 14 in preparation for the 2017 season. The new season officially kicks off with the annual Roar Before the 24 at Daytona International Speedway January 6-8.For more information, visit www.sdr-motorsports.com
For Additional Information:
Julie Conlin, Sunday Group Management
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2017 CALENDAR
Rolex 24 At Daytona
January 26 - 29
Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring
March 15 - 18
Grand Prix of Long Beach
April 7 - 8
Circuit of the Americas
May 5 - 7
Detroit Grand Prix
June 2 - 3
Sahlen's 6 Hours of the Glen
June 30 - July 2
Canadian Tire Motorsport Park
July 7 - 9
Road America
August 4 - 6
Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
September 22 - 24
Petit Le Mans
October 5 - 7 |
I tend to photograph my sangha, the Village Zendo, at aesthetic high points. Like when we’re on retreat and there are 80 of us meditating in black robes, sitting in the big old church we rent in winter. Or when Enkyo Roshi stands at the altar in a cloud of incense. We look exotic, like Zen monks.
But in 2011, I started to ask about our ordinariness. What do we look like meditating in our apartments, or sitting on a couch? I wanted to make photographs of regular Zen life, and see if they showed the same spirit as my photos of our exotic high points. The life of a lay Zen man like me is marked by mysticism and ordinariness. I wondered if I could show both.
I did this series in the fall of 2011 called “Ordinary Zen.” I photographed my friends from the Zendo meditating at home, and interviewed them about their practice.
Bill Seizan Ewing
I used to occasionally spend a weekend not talking. I’d get together with one of my friends, someone I felt comfortable with, and I’d say, let’s do something this weekend, let’s not talk. We’ll have a slumber party, and we’re not going to speak. So when I heard about a silent month retreat with the Village Zendo, I thought that sounded weird and funky and I’d love to try that.
I took beginning meditation instruction at the Village Zendo in 2002. I had no problem sitting on the floor. The instructor said, let’s do this for five minutes, just count your breath up to ten and then start over. I got up to thirteen before I remembered to go back to one!
I’ve been dancing Tango for six years. At the first lesson, you stand really straight, put your hands on your stomach, breath so that you can feel your stomach—it’s this whole physical thing. Tango is really Zen. You have to be in the moment, right there with the person you’re dancing with. Your awareness goes, not just to your center of gravity, but to the center of gravity you’re creating together. And when you connect like that, that’s Tango. The feeling is like nothing else.
Jean Yugetsu Carlomusto
I’m one of the most un-Zen people on the planet. No one would ascribe Zen to me. It’s because they misunderstand what Zen is. They think Zen is the Buddha sitting strong—and that’s true. But there’s also the Buddha having a screaming fit at the dog for peeing on the rug. What elevates it is that you try to be aware of it at every moment. That’s the hardest thing.
I got into Zen through Enkyo Roshi. She had been my professor, and one day after I graduated I saw her on the street, and her head was shaved. I thought, I hope she’s okay. She said, we’re meditating at my apartment; I’ve become a Zen priest.
That was the early 90s. I was working at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and at ACT UP. The people I was close to started to die, and there was a period of time for about a year when I didn’t want to go out. I just stayed home. And the meditation helped me recover some kind of savoring of life.
Emma Seiki Tapley
I got into Zen because my mom was into Zen. I was 23. I went to the zendo and got very formal instruction. It felt like hell. I thought, my mom obviously wants to kill me. When is it going to be over?
I can’t remember which came first, my art or Zen. I’m becoming comfortable taking longer with my work, and as a consequence the paintings are getting better. And that comes from sitting. Slowing down. People are not into that—they appreciate it, but they’re not into it.
Randall Ryotan Eiger
I’d just had a really bad breakup with a girl and I was moping around, and my roommate said, “Read this. It’ll make you feel better.” It was Alan Watts’s The Way of Zen. When I read it I said to myself, I have no idea what this is, but this is the truth. I started reading a lot of books about Zen. I didn’t start sitting, but I did read a lot of books for the next seven or eight years.
I finally did begin my practice in 1989, and for years I was in intense pain. My body is the kind of body that doesn’t like to do that sort of thing. If someone had worked with me on the physical side of it that might have helped but no one did. After three periods of meditation I was scraping myself off the floor.
Some time in my 30s I became a therapist. Because I come from a Zen perspective I’m not interested in curing people. I just let them sit with their hellish problems. I’m fine if there’s no progress at all, because I firmly believe that it’s by going into the problem that you begin to untangle the knot.
See more of A. Jesse Jiryu Davis’ writing and photography on Lion’s Roar. |
(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Police might soon be able to detect more than just alcohol on their breathing test devices. A new Swedish-designed device can detect 12 different controlled substances, including methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, morphine and marijuana.
Though most states have laws against driving under the influence of drugs, police have had no easy way of testing it on the road, so a blood or urine sample has been necessary to charge offenders. In a study published in the Journal of Breath Research Thursday, Olof Beck, of Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, detected drugs on the breath of 47 patients at a drug addiction emergency clinic.
"Considering the samples were taken 24 hours after the intake of drugs, we were surprised to find that there was still high detectability for most drugs," Beck said in a statement.
The Breathalyzer test was able to correctly detect drug use in 87 percent of cases; the test was equally as accurate as blood and urine tests, according to the study. Beck said future studies could be used to correlate breath concentrations of drugs with concentrations in urine and blood. He suggested that a breath test could be given at the scene and then confirmed with a blood test later.
"In cases of suspected driving under the influence of drugs, blood samples could be taken in parallel with breath when back at a police station," he said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, drugs other than alcohol are involved in about 18 percent of fatal car crashes. Drunken driving accounts for about a third of all traffic related deaths, and about 1.4 million drivers are arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol each year.
"There is a possibility that exhaled breath will develop into a new matrix for routine drug testing and present an alternative to already used matrices like urine, blood, oral fluid, sweat and hair," the study says. "Since exhaled breath may be as easy to collect as in alcohol breath testing it may present a new more accessible matrix than blood at the roadside."
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EchoStar, the satellite service provider affiliated with Dish Network, is ambitiously jumping into the smart-home space with Sage, a home-automation hub aimed at consumers looking for a comprehensive, but easy-to-install do-it-yourself solution.
The feature that makes this system so interesting is that it connects in between your cable, satellite, or streaming-video set-top box and your TV, overlaying its dashboard on the screen and showing the live TV using picture-in-picture mode. There will also, of course, be smartphone and tablet apps for the system.
Product manager David Lett was a somewhat light on details—including a price tag and availability—when he gave me an embargoed briefing last month, but I liked what I heard. I was especially enthused with the part about this being a self-installable, self-monitored system that’s free from monthly subscription fees (more on that later).
Similar to the Wink Relay and the Wink Hub, the Sage houses radios for all of the most popular smart-home protocols: ZigBee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. Users will also be able to download updates that will add support for other protocols, such as Nest’s Thread or 6LoWPAN. So Sage should have the infrastructure to support most any type of lighting control, security camera; door, window, motion, or glass-break sensor; thermostat; or other smart-home component.
The Sage controller supports just about every home-control protocol you can think of.
Echostar will build some of these devices itself. Lett mentioned three—in addition to the hub itself—that sound pretty awesome: There’s a doorbell sensor that sends an alert to your TV and to your smartphone when someone rings the doorbell. If there’s a security camera pointed at the front door, a video stream showing the person who rang the bell will pop up on your TV.
The Sage hub will have a battery backup and a GSM module.
Lett described a battery-powered, snap-on, mechanical retrofit for existing light switches that installs without touching the AC wiring (no, I don’t understand it either). And he told me about a wired outdoor security camera that uses power-over-Ethernet, but that has a Wi-Fi module in its AC adapter. You feed its flat Ethernet cable through the window—closing the window on the cable, presumably—and plug it into the AC adapter. Video streams from the adapter to your Wi-Fi router wirelessly, and you don’t need to worry about having an outdoor AC outlet or a camera that runs on undependable battery power.
Sage could be an effective self-monitored home-security system because it provides a direct connection to your local emergency responders. "If someone breaks in," said Lett, "and is detected by a motion, glass-break, door/window sensor, me an everyone in my family will get an alert on our smartphones. If a security camera is involved, a clip of what triggered the alarm comes attached to the message. That video will pop up on the TV, too."
"If you see an intruder," Lett continued, "simply press the 'Call 911' button on the app and it will connect you with the local emergency responder. At the other end of the call, they'll see your local address on their screen, so they'l know where your house is. Because you can verify the event with video, they will send an emergency response. And the system avoids false alarms because you can verify what's happening inside the house."
The Sage hub can control lighting, door locks, thermostats, and more.
“We’ve gone to extreme measures to make the system easy to install and easy to use,” said Lett. “We developed a conversational rules engine that asks you questions about what you want to accomplish.”
But Echostar doesn’t intend to entirely reinvent the wheel. The company also plans to operate a certification program to ensure that third-party products meet its requirements for performance, security, and interoperability.
The Sage hub will have a battery backup and a GSM module, so that it will remain able to send alerts to your smartphone in the event of a power outage or if a burglar cuts the phone or cable-TV line that you use for Internet service. This all sounds like a lot of service and infrastructure for EchoStar to support without an ongoing revenue stream, so I pressed Lett on this point. He reiterated that there would be no monthly service fee—unless the customer signed up for some optional services, such as purchasing cloud storage for additional video for the security cameras. “We’re still trying to figure that out,” he said.
I'll continue to report on Sage as EchoStar does that. It's a very interesting product. |
Renewable-energy projects worth billions of dirhams are making the leap from conception to construction to completion across the region. Shams 1 came online last year in Al Gharbia, and projects in Abu Dhabi and Dubai should be up and running by 2017.
The UAE is leading the Arabian Gulf region in renewables projects, driven by ambitious targets to diversify the energy mix in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Across the region, governments are undertaking these renewables projects to free up oil and gas for export and use in other industries, and to meet rising demand for power and water.
These plans, and the issues that underlie them, are sure to come up for discussion and analysis at the World Future Energy Summit, which runs tomorrow through Wednesday in Abu Dhabi.
The total value of renewables projects and master plans, either completed or under execution, in the GCC states is US$4.5 billion, split between $1bn for hydro projects (all of which are in Saudi Arabia) and $3.5bn for solar, according to figures from Meed Projects.
The UAE is currently the biggest renewables market in the GCC with $1bn worth of projects under execution or operational.
Looking ahead, the total value of projects and master plans due for award between now and 2025 is $162bn, with the biggest long-term market being Saudi Arabia.
Kuwait, Qatar and Oman also are undertaking important projects to produce clean energy.
“Usage of renewables would present multiple benefits to these countries, the highest ranking being the ability to reduce dependence on hydrocarbons,’’ said Abhay Bhargava, the regional head of energy and power systems at the consultancy Frost & Sullivan.
“Additional benefits are the potential to develop a local industry, freeing up of hydrocarbons for usage in industry or other applications like refining, employment benefits and industry development through the creation of a new industry.’’
In the UAE, Abu Dhabi is leading the renewables drive with a target to derive 7 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2020. The capital is also home to the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena), the multilateral organisation set up in 2009 to promote renewables.
Abu Dhabi has also set up the green-energy firm Masdar, which is building a low-carbon, zero-waste city and has a number of renewable energy projects in the UAE and abroad.
Last year, Masdar and its partners – the French energy company Total and the Spanish energy-infrastructure company Abengoa – launched the 100-megawatt (MW) concentrated solar power (CSP) plant Shams 1 in the UAE’s Western Region, Al Gharbia.
Shams 1 generates enough electricity to power 20,000 homes in the UAE.
This is Masdar’s second solar plant, after launching a 10MW solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant to provide electricity to Masdar City, with excess power fed to the Abu Dhabi grid.
Masdar is awaiting approval from the Abu Dhabi Executive Council to go ahead with a 100MW solar PV plant in Abu Dhabi. Masdar might also build a 30MW wind farm on Sir Bani Yas island.
CSP plants produce power by concentrating sunlight, usually through mirrors that heat liquids and generate steam to run turbines for power generation. PV plants use solar panels, which convert sunlight directly to electricity.
“PV is a proven technology for investors and very quick to install,” said Gus Schellekens, Middle East sustainability leader, and Hannes Reinisch, senior manager for sustainability and renewables, at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“From a cost point of view, PV technologies have shown the largest reduction in overall installed cost, and can be developed to meet a particularly type of need, eg as a utility scale solar farm to deliver power during the day meeting peak demand in the UAE and more widely across the GCC,.
“You don’t build small CSP plants, you tend to build larger [50MW-plus] CSP plants. CSP also provides you with the opportunity for storage and as a result can fulfil a very different need to PV.’’
In addition to its local projects, Masdar has stakes in a number of renewable projects around the world, including the world’s largest offshore wind farm, the 630MW London Array.
Back in Abu Dhabi, the government-owned energy company Taqa is building a waste-to-energy power plant to convert 1 million tonnes of municipal solid waste into 100MW of power, with completion expected by 2016 or 2017.
In Dubai, the Government has announced plans to generate 5 per cent of its power from renewables by 2030. To meet these needs, the emirate is building the Dh10bn Mohammed bin Rashid Solar Park, which is forecast to generate 1,000MW. The first project in the park is a 13MW solar PV plant, the biggest such facility in the Middle East and North Africa, according to Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa). First Solar, the biggest US-solar panel manufacturer, built the facility, which is to be followed by a 100MW solar plant.
“We floated the tender to assign advisers and consultants. We expect to go to the market in the second quarter of 2014 to get the bids,’’ for the 100MW plant, said Waleed Salman, Dewa’s executive vice president for strategy and business development
The plant is being built in partnership with the private sector as an independent power plant project, with an expected private sector stake of 49 per cent. Completion is expected by 2017.
In the park, there will also be a research and development centre and an innovation centre, as part of plans to allow manufacturers of solar panels to test their products.
“We look at this programme as a major programme toward implementing renewable energy in the region in an economic way,’’ Mr Salman said. “We are building the road map to it. Part of it will be the test facility that will enable all the manufacturers to come and put their small units, connect them to the grid to see the behaviour and performance of their panels on that site.’’
Dubai is also looking at waste-to-energy and will assess its economic feasibility, he said.
Dubai wants not just to generate power from solar, but also to build an industry around it and will encourage manufacturers to set up facilities for this purpose.
“Manufacturers are waiting to see the projects, and if they see there is a demand, they will move. Looking at the region today, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, they all have announced that renewable projects will be a big part of their whole energy mix,’’ said Mr Salman. “When the manufacturers see this become a reality and there are projects on the ground, this will encourage them to start moving toward the region.’’
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The Ravens have only had left tackle Eugene Monroe on the field for a few plays this season, but it sounds like that should change when they take on the Browns this weekend.
Monroe was a full participant in practice on Wednesday for the first time since suffering a concussion on Baltimore’s first offensive possession. Monroe has missed the last three weeks while waiting to get cleared through the concussion protocol, but feels like he’s on track to resume his role on Joe Flacco’s blind side this weekend.
“You can’t really control being injured,” Monroe said, via ESPN.com. “I had some things happen that are just unfortunate, both last year and this year. I’m healthy now and preparing for this game on Sunday. That’s all that matters.”
The Ravens will be trying for a second straight win when Cleveland comes to town on Sunday, a goal that should be a bit more attainable with Monroe in the lineup. |
If you've got a mean underhand throw or know someone who does, now is the time to stack your team. There's one week left to register for the Adult Softball Program in South Bend.
It’s a great way to get your friends, family or co-workers together for some fun or competition.
Men's and coed softball teams can sign up to play at the Byers Softball Complex in South Bend.
There are normally around a hundred teams in the adult softball fall leagues.
You don't have to live in South Bend to register; players come from all over Michiana.
The deadline to register is Tuesday, August 8th. Teams can register at the O’Brien Recreation Center in South Bend, 321 E. Walter St, or at the Byers Softball Complex office, 1300 S Mayflower Rd
Teams should have 15 men or co-ed players. Teams are separated into recreational and competitive leagues. South Bend Venue Parks & Arts say they try to keep it fun for teams of all skill levels.
“Teams will come in and they'll want to play in recreation and they play and they blow out teams out here, but the next year we move them up because if it's recreation that means that they're playing for fun,” says athletic supervisor Ray Comer.
The entry fee for teams is $265 for teams that play single games, around 6 games per season, and the player participation fees is an additional $110 per team.
South Bend Venue Parks & Arts is also inviting the kids to come out and register for their fall youth flag football teams. Children don’t need to be experienced, everyone is welcome.
Boys and girls age 6 - 12 can be signed up for youth flag football at the O’Brien Fitness Center. The deadline is August 26th and the first game is September 16.
Games are at the O’Brien Fitness Center in every Saturday. They normally have 10 teams dived by age groups and it great way to get young kids introduced to the sport. |
Much of northern China has been shrouded in heavy smog since the beginning of December, prompting nine cities to issue red alerts, and affecting at least another 50 cities across seven provinces.
This latest smog attack triggered the first use of the so-called unified warning system by the local governments in China’s national capital region, which includes Hebei province and the municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin.
The system, announced in October, is designed to unify the grading standards for heavy pollution warnings and tighten the rules on pollutant emissions.
On Saturday, the air quality index (AQI) in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, exceeded 500 — the maximum reading — and remained there until Monday.
According to U.S. Environment Protection Agency standards, AQI levels above 150 are considered unsafe.
See smog-covered Shijiazhuang through a 72-hour time-lapse video. By Quan Yi
Shijiazhuang is one of the most severely polluted cities in China. From Friday, the AQI rose steadily from around 100 to 500 in three days’ time, and measurements of PM 2.5 – small pollution particles that are especially harmful because they can enter the bloodstream – were as high as 736 micrograms per cubic meter.
By comparison, the highest AQI recorded in Beijing over the same 72-hour period was 454, and the highest PM 2.5 reading was 431, according to Aqistudy.cn, a weather data website operated by a nongovernmental organization.
Shijiazhuang was among the 10 most polluted cities in China in 2015, according to the country’s Ministry of Environmental Protection. In 2013, the city had 322 days of polluted air, and it remained atop a list of cities with poor air quality for a staggering 11 months, according to statistics from the China Meteorological Administration.
Shijiazhuang’s energy-intensive industries are to blame for its unenviable reputation, says Wang Luguang, chief engineer of Hebei’s Environmental Protection Agency. According to public data, the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal, accounts for up to 70 percent of the city’s air pollution. Additionally, a three-year urban renovation project begun in 2008 resulted in massive construction sites that produced vast clouds of dust. The rapid growth of car ownership in Shijiazhuang is another factor that has contributed to the city’s pollution, Wang says.
The poor air quality has also led to an increase in hospital visits, especially from children, many of whom have developed pneumonia, according to a local media reports.
It appears the smog blanket is now spreading to other parts of the country. More than 20,000 travelers were delayed at Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport in southwestern Sichuan province on Sunday.
Meanwhile, all schools in Shanghai suspended outdoor activities on Monday, when AQI readings in the city reached 227.
Correction: Shijiazhuang’s AQI reached 500 on Saturday, not Friday as originally reported.
(Header image: The Shijiazhuang skyline enveloped by smog, Hebei province, Dec. 2, 2016. Quan Yi/Sixth Tone) |
Benoit Hamon, riding to victory from left-wing obscurity on a radical proposal to a pay all adults a monthly basic income, will be the Socialist Party candidate in France's presidential election after handily beating ex-Prime Minister Manuel Valls in a primary runoff vote on Sunday.
Hamon's win sends the divided Socialists, weakened by the chronic unpopularity of outgoing President Francois Hollande, into a tough presidential battle behind a candidate with limited government experience and hard-left politics that could alienate some center-left Socialist voters.
With ballots counted at 60 percent of polling stations, Hamon had almost 59 percent of the vote to Valls' 41 percent. Valls immediately conceded defeat in the face of the result that appeared like a clear sanction of both his and Hollande's polices.
With the ruling party having settled on its candidate, the race for the presidential Elysee Palace begins in earnest, although the outcome of the two-round general election vote in April and May looks increasingly uncertain.
Leading conservative candidate Francois Fillon, who also previously served as prime minister, was rocked during the past week by allegations that his wife, Penelope, held a fake but handsomely paid job as a parliamentary aide. Financial prosecutors are investigating.
At a campaign rally in Paris on Sunday -- where a boisterous crowd gave Penelope Fillon a standing ovation and chanted her name, Fillon said, "We have nothing to hide."
"Through Penelope they are trying to break me," he said. "I will never forgive those who chose to throw us to the wolves."
A priority for Hamon, a 49-year-old former junior minister and, briefly, education minister, will be to rally the Socialists, split ideologically and wounded by Hollande's five-year tenure as president.
The party is also squeezed by rivals on both flanks. Fiery far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon and centrist Emmanuel Macron, Hollande's former economics minister, are both making hay by appealing to disappointed Socialist voters.
Early polling has suggested the Socialist candidate will struggle to advance to the presidential runoff in May, where far-right leader Marine Le Pen could be waiting, campaigning on anti-Europe, anti-immigration and anti-Islam themes.
The turnout on Sunday, at around 2 million voters, was more robust than in the primary's first round of voting a week ago, but still suggested a lack of enthusiasm among the 44-million French electorate. The primary was open to all voters who paid 1 euro ($1.04).
Hamon wasn't as tainted as Valls by Hollande's unpopularity because he rebelled and quit the government in 2014.
Valls served as Hollande's prime minister for more than two years until last December, when it became clear the president couldn't win a second term. But having to defend the government's economic policies and labor reforms against Hamon proved an uphill fight.
Hamon's signature proposal for a 750 euros ($800) "universal income" that would be gradually granted to all adults also proved a campaign masterstroke. It grabbed headlines and underpinned his surprise success in the primary's two rounds of voting, first against six opponents and then against Valls in the runoff.
Sharply criticized by Valls as unrealistic and ruinous, the no-strings-attached payments would cushion the French in an increasingly automated future, as machines take their jobs, according to Hamon.
He proposes a tax on robots to help finance the measure's huge costs -- by Hamon's reckoning, at least 300 billion euros ($320 billion) if applied to more than 50 million adults.
Hamon also proposes legalizing cannabis and allowing medically assisted deaths.
First-time voter Maayane Pralus said Hamon "has a lot of the youth vote with him, which is sick of the old politics."
"People call him utopian, but that's the politics we've been waiting for," the 18-year-old student said.
Valls, 54, emphasized his government experience. He was prime minister when gun and suicide-bomb attacks killed 147 people in Paris in January and November 2015, and still in office in July 2016 when a man drove a truck into crowds in Nice, killing 86 people.
Such are the left's divisions that some Valls supporters may now shift to Macron's independent run for the presidency.
In such a complex political landscape, some voters cast ballots strategically.
Bernard Biassette, 74, a retired bank worker, voted for Hamon only to eliminate Valls, whom he saw as a greater threat to his hoped-for president -- Macron.
Hamon "is throwing money out of the window," Biassette said. "He's not a serious candidate." |
The Manitoba Canadian Royal Mounted Police are on the lookout for two men who robbed a beer store in Russell, Manitoba on August 15.
It's not an unusual crime, until you factor in the one guy wearing a full hockey goalie uniform AND carrying a stick.
Per the Ottawa Citizen, the men were captured on store surveillance shattering the front door of the store and making off with several cases of beer. The “goalie” wore a No. 17 jersey, a blocker pad and a trapper mitt.
Article continues below ...
Nothing about this makes sense. Why do you wear all that? Why have a trapper mitt and a stick when you have to carry things? Finger prints? That's the only quasi reason I can think of.
Anyways, the RCMP are looking for help from anyone who has a lead or has “played against a goalie matching this description.”
And now, a question: Is this the most Canadian crime? I'm not a historian, but it has to be up there.
Dan is on Twitter. Goalie crime is up and no one is talking about it. |
Paramount Pictures has announced they will be releasing Forrest Gump in IMAX theaters for a one-week run to celebrate the film’s 20th anniversary. The film has been digitally re-mastered for the IMAX format and released domestically starting September 5th 2014. Later in the month, the film will hit home video in a special Diamond Luxe Blu-ray release from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on September 30th. Read the full press Forrest Gump IMAX release after the jump.
Forrest Gump IMAX Press Release
FORREST GUMP CELEBRATES 20TH ANNIVERSARY WITH EXCLUSIVE ONE-WEEK IMAX® RELEASE ON SEPT. 5
LOS ANGELES – July 21, 2014 – IMAX Corporation (NYSE:IMAX; TSX:IMX), Paramount Pictures, a division of Viacom, Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAB), and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment today announced that Robert Zemeckis’ Academy Award® Best Picture-winning Forrest Gump will get an exclusive one-week IMAX® re-release, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the film’s original theatrical release in 1994. The film will be digitally re-mastered for the immersive IMAX® format and released domestically by Paramount Pictures in IMAX® theatres starting September 5.
Forrest Gump, which won six Academy Awards including Best Actor (Tom Hanks) and Best Director, will also receive a special Diamond Luxe Blu-ray release from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment September 30. The Diamond Luxe edition features a new sleek and durable collector-style packaging, with a state-of-the-art sophisticated design.
“As a ground-breaking achievement in both cinematography and visual effects for its time, Forrest Gump has become a modern American movie classic,” said Greg Foster, Senior Executive Vice President, IMAX Corp. and CEO of IMAX Entertainment. “We’re thrilled to once again collaborate with our longtime friends and partners Bob Zemeckis, Tom Hanks and Paramount. This film deserves a platform like The IMAX Experience® to help make its 20th anniversary one to remember.”
“On behalf of the entire Forrest Gump family, it is with great pleasure and pride that we bring Forrest Gump back to the big screen using the latest technology for the ultimate IMAX experience,” said producer Wendy Finerman.
Originally released in theaters by Paramount Pictures, Forrest Gump stars Hanks in the title role, a man who — despite his sub-normal IQ — led an extraordinary life, with a ringside seat to many of the most memorable events of the second half of the 20th century. The award-winning film went on to gross more than $675 million at the global box office, of which nearly $330 million came from North America, making it the highest-grossing film of all time when it was released in 1994.
The film also stars Robin Wright, Sally Field and Gary Sinise in his Oscar-nominated role as the cantankerous Lieutenant Dan.
The IMAX release of Forrest Gump will be digitally re-mastered into the image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience® with proprietary IMAX DMR® (Digital Re-mastering) technology. The crystal-clear images, coupled with IMAX’s customized theatre geometry and powerful digital audio, create a unique environment that will make audiences feel as if they are in the movie.
About Paramount Pictures Corporation
Paramount Pictures Corporation (PPC), a global producer and distributor of filmed entertainment, is a unit of Viacom (NASDAQ: VIAB, VIA), a leading content company with prominent and respected film, television and digital entertainment brands. Paramount controls a collection of some of the most powerful brands in filmed entertainment, including Paramount Pictures, Paramount Animation, Paramount Vantage, Paramount Classics, Insurge Pictures, MTV Films, and Nickelodeon Movies. PPC operations also include Paramount Home Media Distribution, Paramount Pictures International, Paramount Licensing Inc., and Paramount Studio Group.
About Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Inc.
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) brings together Warner Bros. Entertainment’s home video, digital distribution and interactive entertainment businesses in order to maximize current and next-generation distribution scenarios. An industry leader since its inception, WBHE oversees the global distribution of content through packaged goods (Blu-ray Disc and DVD) and digital media in the form of electronic sell-through and video-on-demand via cable, satellite, online and mobile channels, and is a significant developer and publisher for console and online video game titles worldwide. WBHE distributes its product through third party retail partners and licensees, as well as directly to consumers through WBShop.com and WBUltra.
About IMAX Corporation
IMAX, an innovator in entertainment technology, combines proprietary software, architecture and equipment to create experiences that take you beyond the edge of your seat to a world you’ve never imagined. Top filmmakers and studios are utilizing IMAX theatres to connect with audiences in extraordinary ways, and, as such, IMAX’s network is among the most important and successful theatrical distribution platforms for major event films around the globe.
IMAX is headquartered in New York, Toronto and Los Angeles, with offices
in London, Tokyo, Shanghai and Beijing. As of March 31, 2014, there were 840 IMAX theatres (707 commercial multiplexes, 18 commercial destinations and 115 institutions) in 57 countries.
IMAX®, IMAX® 3D, IMAX DMR®, Experience It In IMAX®, An IMAX 3D Experience®, The IMAX Experience®, IMAX Is Believing® and IMAX nXos® are trademarks of IMAX Corporation. More information about the Company can be found at www.imax.com. You may also connect with IMAX on Facebook (www.facebook.com/imax), Twitter (www.twitter.com/imax) and YouTube (www.youtube.com/imaxmovies). |
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Winged cats have been known to exist since the 19th century, but only a handful of people have actually seen, let alone owned one. This woman in Sichuan province watched as her beloved kitty grew angel wings on his back last summer after a bunch of female cats tried to mate with him. "Many female cats in heat came to harass him, and then the wings started to grow", she said.
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Geneticists have a less romantic theory. They believe it could be a genetic defect, a skin condition, or the result of poor grooming. Yet this is not the only cat that has been found to have "wings". Here are a few other examples.
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