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Photo: Masixole Feni
A Zimbabwean passport (file photo).
Harare — Zimbabwe said Wednesday it is expecting more women who were trafficked to Kuwait to come back home.
Zimbabwe learnt last year that an estimated 200 Zimbabwean women were stranded in Kuwait after falling victim into human trafficking schemes.
Since then, 128 women have been returned to Zimbabwe. They had been lured to the Arab country after being promised lucrative jobs only to be turned into slaves by their employers.
The Zimbabwean government said the women were recruited by friends and relatives. While in Kuwait, the women were subjected to harsh working environments and suffered physical abuse.
The first group of 32 women was repatriated in April 2016 while the latest group arrived back in the country in May.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Ngoni Masoka said more women were still expected back in the country from Kuwait.
"It is worth mentioning that more women are still expected to come as more awareness is raised with the support of the Zimbabwean Embassy in Kuwait," the permanent secretary said while addressing a parliamentary committee Wednesday.
To reduce vulnerabilities that may push victims back into being trafficked, the International Organization of Migration in partnership with the ministry had sourced funding for provision of medical and psycho-social support to the identified victims, Masoka said.
"The first hundred returnees have submitted project proposals that will be funded to a maximum of 1,500 dollars each to start income generating projects," he said.
Xinhua |
Edit: Since this question has come up so much- no, these are not direct quotes from Miyazaki- I read, listened to, and and watched many, many interviews of Miyazaki, and the words in my comic are paraphrases/translations/simplified summaries of all of the notes that I took on the things that he said during the interviews. Due to the constraints of the assignment, I was challenged to find a way to word and present his whole philosophy in five short pages. I took careful, and much-considered artistic liberties when creating the narrative of this comic, and all decisions were made based upon the importance of maintaining cohesiveness between statements, so that Miyazaki's message and philosophy would be well-translated, and clearly understood through my comic.--------------For my visual narratives class we had to make a five page comic that told the story/a story of a famous person's life. I chose to do Hayao Miyazaki, and instead of doing a direct sroty about him, I chose to do a telling oh his philosophy about life- beliefs that he has gathered through his life and now incorporates into his movies.The whole comic was done using ink- no pens, just nibs and brush, and all shaded was done with ink washes.I had never used ink (besides micron pens) until now, so it was a bit daunting, but it turned out to be pretty fun!Page 2: [link] |
Paul Scholes insists Jose Mourinho should partner Paul Pogba with Michael Carrick to get the best out of the Frenchman.
Since his transfer from Juventus as the world’s most expensive player, Pogba has made a steady start, but hasn’t been able to live up to the expectations of fans.
He is still adapting to life under Jose Mourinho but fans on social media felt he was starting to look lost in his free role at the centre of the park.
Speaking about his talent, Scholes claims Carrick could replicate Pogba’s relationship with Pirlo and Marchisio.
“He’s not the greatest controller of a football game,” he said.
“You have to remember he came from a brilliant team at Juventus. Andrea Prilo and Claudio Marchisio could control the game and let him go and do his thing.
“I would like to see Carrick with him. He can direct him and tell him where to go.”
Pogba has been criticised by pundits for his positional discipline, as he is always looking to get forward which can often leave United’s defence exposed.
Carrick has not featured for Man United since the Community Shield, but we could see him in action this month with a busy schedule ahead.
Mourinho played Pogba further forward against Feyenoord, but his positional change came as a result of Wayne Rooney being left at home to rest for the Watford fixture.
The Portuguese boss will need to work out what he wants from his midfield, but having too many players can never be a negative as he now has different options to counter his opposition. |
The Goal - You're creating amazing interactive animations
You will come away from these courses excited and passionate about creating high quality rich animations. You don't need any background besides basic HTML/CSS as we will teach you programming starting in course #1 where you will learn JavaScript through animation. Bring joy to your life, Line up your pockets with a skill that is always in demand and empower yourself with the endless opportunities creative developers have.
By joining our complete bundle of courses you will be empowered with everything you need to know from beginner all the way to a skilled animation developer. These courses will excite you and motivate you to create a high quality Rich animations and if for variety of outputs fitting for HTML5, JavaScript, Flash banners, Desktop applications, IOS and android apps using the GSAP JavaScript and AS3 library.
Stretch Goals:
$5,000 - extra samples in all courses.
$10,000 - Extra Surprise Bonus course for all supporters In January.
$15,000 - 2 Live Q&A Sessions for supporters of full bundle
The courses in this bundle:
Course 1:
Learning JavaScript through Animation
Target Student: New to code with light HTML/CSS background.
Retail Price: $199
Learning better is better. You want to be challenged, You need to be challenged but that does not mean it can't be fun. Forget about boring technical jargon. Visually stimulating experiences is the answer. The logic is simple: when you enjoy coding, you code more. It inspires you to push yourself and in the process you learn more and enjoy it as you're rewarded immediately when you're developing your skills through amazing animations.
Instead of reading a massive coding bible(and giving up on page 12) wouldn't it be wonderful if you could turn programing into a fun animation project? Fun always makes things easier, Even when they're challenging. If you ever had a dream to program or to animate this is a must course for you. read more.
Course 2:
Animating in JavaScript better, is better
This course is for students that already know some JavaScript but have limited background in animation. In this course you will discover the TweenLite and TweenMax animation libraries, you will learn the differences between them and how to maximize them to create stunning interactive animations. By the end of this course you will have the skills needed to create web interactive animations.
Target Student: Knows JavaScript no/light animation skills.
Retail Price: $149
Course 3:
Advanced JavaScript Animations
This course will fit animators/developers that are already familiar and comfortable animating with the TweenLite/TweenMax libraries. Through this course you will learn about the usage of nested animations and creating Timelines for more advanced animations. We will create together complex animation tasks and break them down to simple concepts that will help you become a better developer. By the end of this lesson you will have all the skills needed to create complex interactive timeline animations.
Target Student: Knows JavaScript & how to work with TweenLite/TweenMax.
Retail Price: $149
Course 4:
Animating ads with TweenNano(AS3)
This is the starting point for animation in Adobe Flash using TweenNano. By the end of this course you will have the foundation understandings of how to animate with the GSAP library. We will cover the main animation methods, properties and callbacks. By the end of this course you will be capable of creating your own Ad animations.
Target Student: Lite AS3 or JavaScript background.
Retail Price: $49
Course 5:
The TweenLite and TweenMax Master Class(AS3)
This course will go through all the critical components of TweenLite and TweenMax with live examples that will showcase how to leverage these libraries to their max. This course is jam packed with many examples and illustrations to showcase how to take advantage of the features backed in these libraries.
Main Topics: TweenLite, Plugins, Animating non visual elements, Animating Sound, creating custom animations, tricks and tips to improve your animations and more.
Target Student: Lite AS3/JavaScript background with basic animation skills.
Retail Price: $149
Course 6:
The TimelineLite and TimelineMax Master Class(AS3)
This course will go through all the critical components of TimelineLite and TimelineMax with live examples that will showcase how to leverage these libraries to their max. This course is jam packed with many examples and illustrations to showcase how to take advantage of the features backed in these libraries.
Target Student: AS3 developers with with animation skills.
Retail Price: $149
Why programing animation is critical for everyone.
One of the most critical skills in the modern world is the capability to analyze and to visualize information. The most successful people in all industries have a sharp eye for analyzing information but yet have a very visually fluid process of thinking. We are all born with these latent capabilities. These features are inside each and every one of us but need to be nurtured for them to strengthen.
We think programmatic animation is one of the most fun, creative and powerful ways to engage your mind and at the same time create content that will stand out on the web.
One of our most popular courses is our HTML with Mom – where I grabbed my mom that barely know how to check her emails and taught her HTML. Check out some of our other projects on 02skills.com
We think learning should be fun and engaging for example our project from last year when My mom joined me to learn HTML – Check that intro out to see our style.
Why learn with us?
Learning is about being part of a community
We know that learning a new skill is hard so we make it easier by making it easier for you to connect with other students learning the same thing at the same time. We integrated commenting in every area of the site to make it easier for you to interact with other students and with us. We have unlimited live support. We will never give up on you, we will be with you until you get it.
Our motto is “learning better is better”. In the age of twitter and social media most modern online education content assumes a lot about the user. We do our best to simplify and make complex topics really simple and fun. So far we created 103 courses over the last 3 years. Our videos have been viewed over 1,000,000 times, we have 15,000 students and just crossed our 1000 4-5 star review line.
Over the years we created many topics but most of them have never been published and are only available for our 02GEEK members. We didn't publish them because the costs associated with publishing content on the web: creating the art work, editing, promos, networking, ads and so forth. As such until now we only published courses we knew would sell well while courses we couldn't invest the capital in promoting them we kept as exclusive content for our members.Our goal is to publish our content and have it on 02skills.
Thanks & giving 5% back
Thanks for believing in us and helping us cross our goal as our way to thank back the KickStarter community we will be kicking it foreword and investing 5% of our income back to projects of the community. We want to thank KickStarter as well for making us a Staff Pick.
About us:
We are not funded by any large cooperation nor do we have ambitions to take over the world. Our goal is to make highly complex technical topics accessible to Developers, designers and Startups. Our main method is through detailed engaging video lectures, live events and interactive applications.
The 6 courses will be available for our members on 02geek and will be sold separately on 02skills our Online market place for our courses.
You will come away from these courses excited and passionate about creating high quality rich animations. You don't need any background besides basic HTML/CSS as we will teach you programming starting in course #1 where you will learn JavaScript through animation. Bring joy to your life, Line up your pockets with a skill that is always in demand and empower yourself with the endless opportunities creative developers have.
By joining our complete bundle of courses you will be empowered with everything you need to know from beginner all the way to a skilled animation developer. These courses will excite you and motivate you to create a high quality Rich animations and if for variety of outputs fitting for HTML5, JavaScript, Flash banners, Desktop applications, IOS and android apps using the GSAP JavaScript and AS3 library. |
Wrestle Kingdom is over – what a great show it was! Good undercard, awesome title matches (EVERY single’s title match became an instant classic), and, most importantly, absolutely unforgettable main event. Let’s take a closer look at the Okada vs. Omega match and think what’s next for both Rainmaker and Cleaner!
I was waiting for this fight since August. Omega did awesome job in last year, proving that he’s one of the best wrestlers in the world and definitely the biggest western non-WWE superstar. Great psychology, incredible athleticism and spots. Spots that only he could take.
I was pretty sure that we’d see some high-risk actions in this match too, and I knew that Omega would sacrifice his body really bad – he’s a risk taker. Okada needed something special as an ace and I think that Omega was the best option for him on Wrestle Kingdom. Kenny represents such a different style than, for example, Goto and Tanahashi. Everyone knows that Omega can do absolutely everything in ring and we witnessed it once again on Wednesday.
First of all – terminator-styled Omega’s entrance. It was fun, slightly parodic and well-suited Kenny’s persona. I don’t think I could imagine a better way for him to enter Tokyo Dome’s ring.
The road to Tokyo Dome was very intense for both Okada and Omega. After succesfully defending his G1 title shot against YOSHI-HASHI and Goto, Omega took on Okada pretty hard, as he and Bullet Club had matches with CHAOS on almost every NJPW show in October and December. We had some memorable moments on this road, we jumped on the hype train. Omega’s journey in 2016 was incredible – after taking over BC from Styles, Kenny made a lot of steps to have an opportunity to main event Wrestle Kingdom. In a period of one year he did more than a lot of guys in their whole career. I’m pretty sure that last year will definitely shorten his career, but hey – who knows if he would have second chance to prove his skills?
So they entered the ring and… the time stopped. Literally, the match took 46 minutes from our lives, but it felt like they were fighting for 15 minutes. A lot of people complained that the beginning of the fight was boring. When I sat down in front of the screen I knew that this match was going to be pretty long. It’s obvious that you can’t handle the same tempo throught 45 minutes, even if you are Okada or Omega. It was a storytelling that needed some substructure and the first 15-20 minutes did this work. This part was all about the locks and mat wrestling, searching for rival’s weaknesses and trying to make them even more problematic for the opponent.
Then we had the moonsault – display of Omega’s inhuman speed and agility. As always in his fights, spot like this means the beginning of the second stage of the fight – it’s some kind of a turning point. The match speeded up, with more moves from both Kazuchika and Kenny. Insane Dragon Suplex and Rainmaker’s landing on his neck made me almost scream. Earlier on WK11 we saw KUSHIDA taking similar bump from Takahashi, but this… This was insane. Just take a look at this:
After this suplex it was clear to me that regardless of the result this match would become an classic, even more than that – maybe one of the best matches that wrestling world had ever witnessed. So much sacrifice from both Okada and Omega.
The ending… The ending was the quintessence of everything that I love in wrestling. Crowd went absolutely nuts when Omega kicked-out after Rainmaker. The fact that Kenny didn’t use One Winged Angel once in entire fight works really well for his finisher. If I’m correct he made three attempts to OWA and each time it felt like this would end the fight immediately. He made his finisher more dangerous without even using it in the fight!
I think it was very unlikely that Okada would lose Tokyo Dome defence to the gaijin who just a year ago was in the Junior Heavyweight division. I believed that Kenny could do it, but it was the voice of the heart. My mind told me something totally different. I don’t understand people complaining that NJPW buried Omega. How he would got buried if he gave so awesome fight in his first main event in Tokyo Dome? As I said to my friend – he didn’t lose anything. I’m pretty sure that this feud is not over, although after Suzuki’s return things got pretty complicated. NJPW have just announced that G1 Special will take place in USA. They want to expand to the world and Omega will definitely help them. Is 2017 going to be the year of first Omega’s IWGP Heavyweight title reign? YES!
New Legend? In my opinion Kenny will change his gimmick a bit. YB didn’t help him in the match against Okada. Omega seems like losing his “crazy” persona and heading into more serious version of Cleaner. Do I like this direction? Yes. As much as I like the current Kenny, I think that he needs to change something in his character. In my opinion he will become less arrogant, maybe BC won’t help him anymore as much as they used to do? Time will tell.
Poll
You guys have given 39 votes in my poll “Which stable made better addition?” under my last article about LIJ’s and BC’s additions after WTL. The results:
26 votes (66.67%) – LIJ made better addition (Hiromu Takahashi)
13 votes (33.33%) – BC made better addition (Cody Rhodes)
I think it’s a good way to connect with you guys. I want to know what do you think about WK11’s main event booking – who deserved more to be the IWGP Heavyweight Champion?
Plus: I’ve started my fanpage! If you enjoy reading my articles and want to keep up with me, maybe ask some questions or just want to give some feedback – feel free to do it on my Facebook!
http://facebook.com/korakuenwrestling
PS: You can now also rate my posts! ↓
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Arizona's first wind-energy power plant is a step closer to generating electricity after two government agencies recently approved land agreements with the developer, Iberdrola Renewables. The first phase of the wind farm is scheduled to open by 2010, with about 30 wind turbines as tall as 300 feet generating 63 megawatts of electricity when the wind blows, enough for nearly 16,000 homes. A second phase could bring an additional 200 or more turbines for a maximum capacity of 314 megawatts, which would provide enough electricity for 78,500 homes when the wind blows. The Bureau of Land Management signed a right-of-way agreement and other documents for the Dry Lake Wind Project planned northwest of Snowflake, and the Arizona State Land Department signed a permit for the portion of the project that will use its rural property. The BLM will earn $36,966 in leases on the project next year and should get $87,255 a year after that if the project develops as proposed. State Land's deal is tied to the amount of electricity generated at the plant, and could earn $4 million during the 50-year agreement, Commissioner Mark Winkleman said. Iberdrola also has a private agreement with the Rocking Chair Ranch to use some of its land. The ranch runs cattle on the public and private land in the area, but cattle operations won't be affected by the development, owner Bill Elkins said. Iberdrola, a global company with Spanish headquarters, has an agreement with Salt River Project to sell the utility all of the electricity from the wind farm for its Phoenix-area customers. Stephen Allred, an assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of the Interior, called the project a "totally positive approach to meeting our energy needs in the U.S." The BLM received the application in summer 2007 and acted "fairly fast," but the agency still can improve the speed at which renewable-energy projects get permits, Allred said. "We have to do better with the federal government to give access to them, to speed up the time frame, and to get transmission (lines) to them," he said. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more |
The Georgetown University Master's in Cybersecurity Risk Management prepares you to navigate todays complex cyber threats. Take classes online, on campus, or through a combination of both -- so you dont have to interrupt your career. Learn more.
It may be natural for Linux aficionados to get upset when someone criticizes their favorite operating system, but that doesn't make it any easier to bear.
So when some less-than-flattering comments about Linux were revealed recently -- made back in January by none other than Google Chrome developer (and ex-Firefox lead) Ben Goodger -- many Linux bloggers were dismayed.
Goodger had been working on the Linux port of the Chromium project, for which the alpha was recently released. Ars Technica reviewed the alpha, concluding that it's "shaping up nicely," but there was apparently much frustration along the way.
"This entire situation is a clusterf*ck," wrote Goodger earlier this year. "I am not happy with the technical constraints imposed by Linux and its assorted UIs on Chrome's UI and feature set."
Is it even possible to take criticisms like that lying down? Not if the Linux community is on the receiving end, you can be sure.
Time for Standardization?
On Slashdot, jeevesbond called attention to the story, noting that Adobe has been "getting twitchy about the glibc fork" and had previously described Linux's various audio systems as "welcome to the jungle."
Such comments led jeevesbond to wonder, in fact, if it's "time to concentrate on consolidation and standardisation in GNU/Linux in general, and the desktop in particular?"
Was there any shortage of opinions on *that* juicy topic? Not on Planet Linux!
'Linux Is a Server OS'
"Good luck," began Mikkeles.
"It was time 10 years ago when Linux was first gaining real momentum in that area," added bonch. "I remember posting Slashdot comments about it and getting told Linux was about 'choice' and that if I didn't like it, I should contribute code. Ten years later, even Google is bashing Linux for it. I bet nothing will change even now.
"Linux is a server OS, only used on the desktop by enthusiasts," bonch added. "Accept it, because the kind of standardized APIs that are needed are not going to happen with the attitudes that this community has."
Indeed, well nigh 1,000 comments had been made on the topic in less than a week, so we here at LinuxInsider knew the question needed some closer examination.
'Citing Irrelevant Points'
"I am a supporter of Google on the whole, but I think they really mishandled Chrome on a number of points," Slashdot blogger Enderandrew told LinuxInsider.
First, "they started a project that they intended to eventually be multiplatform, but utilized coders who only knew how to make very Windows-centric software," he said. "In doing so, they made life difficult on themselves in the porting process."
Perhaps more to the point, "instead of accepting responsibility for their choice -- every choice comes with an opportunity cost -- they instead divert blame to the Linux platform, citing irrelevant points," Enderandrew explained.
'Problematic Toolkit'
Google also "chose a problematic toolkit that won't easily match the appearance and functionality of the Mac or Windows ports, but then later claimed the main reason they didn't use Qt from the get-go is that multiplatform toolkits would restrict them in exactly this capacity," Enderandrew added. "Not only is this statement not true of Qt, the reality is that they chose a toolkit that doesn't serve their needs well."
GTK, in fact, is also "being criticized by many Gnome/GTK developers, to the extent that GTK is about to see a fairly large overhaul [and] retooling as they approach a 3.0 release," he noted. "This means that even after Chrome is ported to GTK, it will likely need to be updated again for GTK 3."
Had they used Qt, on the other hand, the Chrome developers could have shipped "a product for Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris on the same day," Enderandrew asserted.
'I Am Extremely Disappointed'
Finally, Google made "the foolish decision to have completely different forks for the different platforms, which makes contributions harder, provides more bugs, hurts the consistency of the product, and overall makes maintenance of the code vastly more difficult," Enderandrew opined. "This decision is the hardest to justify.
"With very different platform forks, Chrome will operate, perform, look and behave differently on different platforms," he concluded. "As someone who uses Linux and Windows daily, I wish Firefox was more consistent on both platforms, and I am extremely disappointed that Google has decided not to value consistency."
Others, however, took no offense at Goodger's comments.
"I didn't see the words as particularly harsh or even unwarranted," Chris Travers, a Slashdot blogger who works on the LedgerSMB project, told LinuxInsider. "The reaction to the thread is fairly overblown, though."
'Simply Settle On a Toolkit'
The basic issue, Travers asserted, "is that Linux does not offer the consistency that Google wants for Chrome, and this leaves them with a few options.
"However, it seems to me that the initial way forward would be to simply settle on a toolkit -- GTK or QT-- and make a great browser using that," he added. "If later one wants to support the other as well, they can do that. Nearly every system comes with the options of both GTK and QT, and these play together reasonably well."
If users are uncomfortable "using multiple inconsistent widget sets, they probably aren't using Linux with anything more than the default applications for their desktops," he concluded. "Chrome won't make headway with these users anyway, so why not just choose whichever toolkit meets their needs best and run with that?"
'It Would Be Good to Standardize'
Nothing in FLOSS, GPL or GNU/Linux precludes standardization, blogger Robert Pogson asserted.
"Many FLOSS packages are created to fill a niche and are not intended to be on every desktop," he told LinuxInsider. "GNU/Linux on the desktop has reached a tipping point where, for efficiency, it would be good to standardize a desktop environment and its libraries. Major players would likely be interested in calling a conference to hash this out."
Goodger's problem, however, "is not so much the Linux libraries but the fact that he's trying to wedge them into some sort of internally designed cross-platform wedge," Montreal consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack told LinuxInsider. "I suspect that 'views' needs more changes than the Linux libraries do."
'Too Many Choices'
The problem comes when developers approach Linux GUI apps such as browsers at abstraction layers, Slashdot blogger yagu told LinuxInsider. "There are myriad available options, all with good and bad features, but mostly incompatible at some levels -- and impossibly incompatible when writing something as complex as a browser," he explained.
"It wouldn't be hard to port Chrome in one context -- say, Gnome -- but once you've picked that as your target, using Gnome paradigms, widgets, libraries and tools, you now have something almost guaranteed not to work as designed in KDE," yagu asserted. "This is probably the big downside to developers for Linux GUIs: literally too many choices creating too much work."
The ultimate solution "is to develop and port GUI applications to the lower-level graphics engines, but that would be Xwindows, and that borders on a lost discipline," yagu added. "Certainly it is difficult and labor-intensive. The finished product with this approach is much more compatible across the Linux desktops, but at the same time lacks in specific desktop enhancements through special APIs."
It is a solvable problem, yagu concluded -- "I'd choose the Xwindows approach" -- but "there won't be any solution that makes all Linux users happy." |
The Home Depot will h ire more than 80,000 workers to help deal with the expected springtime rush. (Photo: Mark Humphrey, AP)
Home Depot is the latest retailer to announce that it's hiring, saying that it's aiming to fill more than 80,000 jobs in time for the spring time rush.
The home improvement retailer will be bringing on a range of employees, from cashiers to freight handlers to customer service representatives. To hasten the hiring, It’s even shrunk the application, and is enabling potential workers to apply by clicking on a smartphone or tablet.
"We want everyone to have an easy and convenient experience with The Home Depot, whether they're shopping with us or applying for a position," Tim Crow, the retailer’s executive vice president, human resources, said in a statement.
The jobs will consist of permanent, part-time positions, as well as seasonal jobs. There's also a chance that some of those hired just for spring could land a long-term position, with Home Depot saying that typically half of its seasonal hires stay on permanently.
Home Depot’s hiring binge stands in contrast to several other retailers who have been slashing positions as they shutter stores. American Apparel said in January that it would be cutting 2,400 jobs. And Macy’s previous and pending closures of dozens of locations will result in the loss of 10,100 positions.
Spring is a particularly busy season for home improvement hubs. Lowe’s, which specializes in garden and building supplies, has said it would bring on tens of thousands of workers to help handle the expected rush. And last month, it also said that it would hire more than 1,700 full-time workers by October.
Walmart is another big box retailer that is bolstering its payroll. The world’s largest retailer said in January that it would create 10,000 new retail jobs in the U.S. this year, and also put 24,000 additional people to work in construction as it opens new stores and renovates existing locations.
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA - OCTOBER 31: Tim Lincecum #55 of the San Francisco Giants waves to the crowd during the San Francisco Giants World Series victory parade on October 31, 2012 in San Francisco, California. The San Francisco Giants beat the Detroit Tigers to win the 2012 World Series. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images) (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – The Giants overcame the Kansas City Royals in a do-or-die Game 7 on enemy soil to win the World Series Wednesday night, so get ready for a party – a big one. San Francisco is planning a welcome home bash for Halloween-day.
Team officials have been planning for days to be ready to host the city’s third victory parade in five years, and they’re counting on previous experience to help make things as smooth and enjoyable as 2010 and 2012. As in previous years, the center of the action will be on Market Street as it approaches the Civic center from the East. The official starting point for a parade has moved up to Market St at Stuart St. (Planners originally slated it for 2nd and Market but plans are constantly shifting).
From there, the “Parade of Champions” will march west on Market before veering right on McAllister to the steps of City Hall. Here’s the planned route:
KPIX 5 parade coverage will begin at 11 a.m.
KPIX LIVE WEB STREAM: Any Giants events available will be live-streamed online here. KPIX Live video works on mobile devices including iPhones, Androids, iPads, and more
The impending Halloween-morning rainstorm could affect the timing of any parade. The parade will actually get rolling slightly later this year (it was 11 a.m. in the past). This year, the festivities start around noon and culminate with speeches from players and dignitaries in front of San Francisco City Hall. In the past the parade portion has lasted about an hour and a half. The length and timing of the speeches are a big variable, depending on how big a show the city and team plan to put on. The entire event would wrap up by around 4 p.m. Combine the event with a planned Critical Mass cycling protest, and the commute home for San Francisco-based workers hoping to trick-or-treat with kids in the suburbs could be particularly painful.
TRAFFIC: KCBS Live Traffic Map
Complete street closure information will be made available prior to the event. As always, you can get the latest on local freeway conditions from the KCBS Traffic Maps.
The KPIX 5 forecast calls for the chance of rain moving in right around the lunch hour on Halloween. So unless you enjoy partying like 2012 Marco Scutaro in the rain, plan on bringing an umbrella.
Click the following links to get transit info for Caltrain, BART and Muni, which will likely be the most heavily trafficked public transit options for the events. BART says they will run rush hour service all day long and operate until 2 a.m. to handle the crowds, Caltrain won’t be adding trains but does say it will “provide extra capacity” on existing runs. Runs out of San Francisco at the end of the day will take off when the trains reach capacity. The Golden Gate Ferry says extra ferries have been added to the schedule, they will be loaded up and sent when full, rather than operating on a schedule. Riders are encouraged to buy tickets in advance or use a Clipper Card.
Want to prepare by re-living the last two parades? Check out these photo galleries from 2010 and 2012.
Complete Giants Coverage: |
PHILADELPHIA ― The chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign urged U.S. intelligence agencies on Wednesday to get an ironclad agreement from Donald Trump that he would not leak information to the Russians before providing him with presidential candidate briefings.
“I think it’s an issue that … Jim Clapper’s going to have to come to grips with,” John Podesta said in an interview with The Huffington Post, referring to the director of national intelligence. “And I think they’ll have to find a way to negotiate with him and with his campaign to get … more than assurances ― sort of some proof that they can be able to hold on to that information.”
Speaking from the site of the convention, Podesta’s remarks underscored the extent to which the event unfolding behind him had become upended by the latest controversial remarks from the other side of the ledger. Earlier that morning, Trump had encouraged Russian agencies to try to hack and leak information on Clinton’s emails, following a hack these same agencies apparently executed on the Democratic National Committee.
“This isn’t a normal political story, and it’s not funny ... And for Donald Trump to suggest that a foreign power should hack the candidate of the opposing power is beyond outrageous. I think it is really disqualifying,” Podesta said.
“I don’t know how the DNI assures himself that information that is being passed on to him is going to be secure,” he added.
Choosing his words deliberately, Podesta conceded that the events of the last few days would change Clinton’s approach to Russia should she end up winning the presidency. But he also made the point that the relationship between the two countries was at a stage of general distrust well before the party committee’s emails were hacked.
“I think that she’s been very skeptical and very tough on Putin since the days that he came back into power,” Podesta said. “So I think while this is a particularly outrageous potential interference in our democratic process … if they’re interfering in our democratic process, that means only that the pressure needs to ratchet up even more than it already has been.”
In ways more profound than virtually any other campaign controversy, Trump’s wink and nod to the Russians roiled the trail on Wednesday. It wasn’t just the timing ― coming during the heart of the Democratic convention ― it was in the way it quickly sparked backlash from members of his own party, who are deeply wary of Trump’s cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin.
But for all the geopolitical dust that Trump kicked up, the Clinton campaign also found itself having to deal with an impending and potentially immediate domestic problem as well. Officials in the ranks have resigned themselves to the high likelihood that more DNC emails will leak.
The DNC has brought in a few firms to assess the extent of what has been exposed, Podesta said. The campaign itself was relying on a “high level of technical security” to monitor its own vulnerabilities.
“I think we have a better sense of information that ― files that they searched, avenues that they were exploiting,” Podesta said. “So we’re just going to have to take this one day at a time. But this is an extraordinarily serious matter that needs the attention of our intelligence agencies, the law enforcement ― and the American public has to ask itself what is going on here.” |
Team Japan’s Kazuhisa Makita pitches against Team Europe in the fourth inning of their friendly baseball game at Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Tuesday, March 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi) (Photo: The Associated Press)
TOKYO (AP) — Japan rallied with three runs in the eighth inning to beat Team Europe 4-3 Tuesday in the first of a two-game series.
The European team took a 3-1 lead in the fourth inning on a double by Oscar Angulo that scored two runs at Tokyo Dome. Nobuhiro Matsuda drove in the game-tying run and Yuhei Takai singled in the winning run in the bottom of the eighth.
The series is part of the World Baseball Softball Confederation's efforts to have baseball make a return at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Baseball and softball were dropped after the 2008 Beijing Games but could make a return in 2020 under reforms made by the International Olympic Committee.
The European team, making its international debut, was made up of players from six countries, mostly the Netherlands and Italy.
Japan reliever Katsuki Matayoshi picked up the win after recording thee outs in the eighth.
The series wraps up on Wednesday at the same venue.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
Montavilla Brew Works
A file photo of beer. (Kristyna Wentz-Graff/Staff)
A natural flavor found in hops and beer helped mice fight weight gain and high cholesterol, a new study found.
The study, authored by Oregon State University researchers, looked specifically at the compound xanthohumol and how dosages could affect health in mice, a news release said. The study was recently published in the journal Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics.
For the study 48 male mice were given a high-fat diet and different amounts of xanthohumol. The mice were randomly split into three groups of 16 -- one group wasn't given any xanthohumol and the other two groups received 30 or 60 milligrams per kilogram of body weight a day for 12 weeks.
Mice given the highest dosages of xanthohumol cut harmful cholesterol by 80 percent, insulin levels by 42 percent and a biomarker of inflammation by 78 percent, when compared to mice that weren't given the compound.
And, although all of the mice were gaining weight and eating the same amount of rich food, weight gain increased by 22 percent less in mice that were given the compound.
Specifically, the study found that the xanthohumol apparently had boosted oxygen intake and metabolic rates and also cut down plasma in a protein that affects cholesterol levels.
"This is the first time we've seen one compound with the potential to address so many health problems," Cristobal Miranda, a research assistant professor with Oregon State's Linus Pauling Institute and lead author on the study, said in a statement. "These were very dramatic improvements."
More research is needed to see if the same tactic could work for humans, but the compound appeared to tackle many traits of metabolic syndrome, according to a news release on the study. Those with metabolic syndrome have been diagnosed with at least three conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure and elevated lipids.
From 25 to 34 percent of United States adults meet criteria for the syndrome, and are therefore at a higher risk of type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to the news release.
But, before you start guzzling beer in hopes that it will improve your health, researchers noted that the highest amount of xanthohumol used in the study is far beyond ordinary dietary levels. Sixty milligrams per kilogram of body weight a day would equate to 3,500 pints of beer daily for a human adult.
However, researchers noted that high amounts of xanthohumol could potentially be taken in the form of a daily dietary supplement.
Read more here.
--Laura Frazier
[email protected]
503-294-4035
@frazier_laura |
One often discussed question is whether it’s better to keep your laptop plugged in, or if you should use it on battery power.
Turns out, the answer isn’t entirely straightforward. Let’s take a look.
Know Your Laptop Battery
For both types of batteries, the following statements are true (for modern laptops ):
A battery cannot be overcharged. There’s no danger of a battery being overcharged if you leave it plugged in all the time. As soon as it hits 100%, it will cease charging and won’t start again until the voltage falls below a certain level.
There’s no danger of a battery being overcharged if you leave it plugged in all the time. As soon as it hits 100%, it will cease charging and won’t start again until the voltage falls below a certain level. Fully discharging a battery will damage it. Having a battery fully discharged for an extended period can put it into a deep discharge state, from which it might never recover.
So, based on this, do we conclude that you should simply leave your laptop plugged in all the time? Not quite.
Things That Damage Lithium Batteries
Charge/discharge cycles. Every battery has a finite number of times it can be charged and discharged.
Every battery has a finite number of times it can be charged and discharged. Voltage level. The higher the charge level (measured in volts per cell), the shorter the battery’s life.
The higher the charge level (measured in volts per cell), the shorter the battery’s life. High temperature, over 30 degrees celsius. This can cause irreparable damage.
Charge Level
Lithium-ion batteries charge to 4.20V/cell, which amounts to 100% of its capacity. At this level, the battery will have a lifespan of 300-500 discharge cycles.
Every 0.10V/cell reduction in the charge doubles the number of discharge cycles, until the optimum is reached: 3.92V/cell, with 2400-4000 discharge cycles. Unfortunately, at this level the battery is only 58% charged, so the runtime will be little more than half of a fully-charged battery.
Heat
And then there’s heat. Elevated temperatures, typically classified as being over 30 degrees celsius, will shorten the life of a battery irrespective of any other factors. Simply leaving your laptop in your car on a summer’s afternoon is a bad idea.
When the stress of high temperature combines with the stress of high voltage, the effects are even greater.
The Battery University tests showed that a battery stored with a 40% charge at 40 degrees would see its capacity fall to 85% after a year.
Charged to 100% the capacity falls to 65% under the same conditions. For a fully charged battery at 60 degrees the capacity plummets to 60% in just three months.
The evidence seems clear. Keeping the battery permanently charged at 100% will slowly shorten its life. Keeping it at 100% and exposing it to high temperatures will shorten it much quicker.
Should You Remove The Battery?
If heat is such a danger, it begs another question. Should you remove the battery altogether when using your laptop on AC power?
If you do choose to remove the battery, ensure that you store it properly. This means charged to between 40% and 70%, and kept at room temperature.
Recommendations
Curiously, the industry as a whole doesn’t seem to have settled on a single answer for the question about whether to use your laptop on AC or battery power.
Apple’s advice is no longer on its website, but you can still read it online . The company recommends against leaving a laptop plugged in all the time. Instead, it suggests:
An ideal user would be a commuter who uses her notebook on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing
Leaving your laptop plugged in will not cause short term damage, but if you only ever use it on AC power you’ll almost certainly find that after a year the battery’s capacity has been significantly reduced. Similarly, if you only ever use it on battery power you’ll get through the battery’s discharge cycles quicker.
So, the best solution is something of a compromise between the two: use it on battery power some days, and keep it plugged in on others. And in all cases, you’ll want to ensure it doesn’t get too hot.
How do you use your laptop? What steps do you take to keep your battery lasting for as long as possible? Let us know in the comments.
Image credits: Remove laptop battery via ifixit.com, Plugged in via Anthony Ryan |
TUNIS (Reuters) - Several thousand Tunisians marched through central Tunis on Saturday to protest against a bill that would grant amnesty to businessmen accused of corruption when autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali was in power.
Critics of the Economic Reconciliation bill say it is a step back from the spirit of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution to oust Ben Ali but government officials say it is a way get the businessmen to inject some of their ill-gotten cash back into the economy.
The draft law allows businessmen to reveal stolen funds and repay them. No exact figures exist for the amount of graft during Ben Ali times but based on past investigations, officials say some $3 billion could be returned initially under the law.
Waving flags and banners saying “No to forgiveness” and “Enough Corruption”, about 5,000 people accompanied by opposition party leaders and activists marched through the capital’s central Avenue Habib Bourguiba.
Six years after the uprising against Ben Ali, Tunisia is praised as a model of democratic transition but it is still struggling with the corruption, economic malaise and youth frustrations that helped trigger the revolt.
For many critics the law - which has been stuck in parliament for two years since President Beji Caid Essebsi proposed it - is simply an amnesty for criminals and a way to rehabilitate Ben Ali allies back into Tunisian society.
“We’re here to say to Essebsi and his cohorts that the law will fall in the street like in all democracies,” Popular Front opposition leader Ammar Amroussia told Reuters. “He wants to pass this corrupt law, but these protests show that we say no.”
Essebsi, himself a former Ben Ali official, sent the law to parliament in 2015 though the bill was delayed after criticism it benefited business elites tied to the government. It is now being debated in committee and then goes to a plenary session.
Despite a consensus between secular and Islamist parties that helped keep Tunisian stable after the uprising, the bill has divided Tunisians between those who want to close the door on the past and those who say they cannot tolerate corruption.
Protests against the law, and others in the south of Tunisia this month over jobs, come at a sensitive time for Prime Minister Youssef Chahed who is struggling to pass austerity measures and public spending reforms to help economic growth.
Despite its democratic progress, free elections and new constitution, Tunisia still faces social unrest among many young unemployed who feel their revolution against official abuses and corruption has not delivered economic opportunities.
“Today we are saying the defenders of the revolution are still here,” said protester Sabra Chrifa, wearing a T-Shirt with the slogan “No Forgiveness”. “We can’t accept something that whitewashes corruption like this.” |
Mr Grayling attacked human rights laws as the hate cleric was released from a high security prison and returned home having won his latest challenge against deportation.
He was freed after the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) used human rights laws yesterday to block his removal to Jordan amid claims that evidence gained under torture could be used against him.
Mr Grayling told the Commons: “All of us believe the law should not operate in this way and this case underlines my view that there is a very real need for major changes to the way the European human rights framework operates."
Qatada, once branded Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe, will face strict bail conditions and be watched round-the-clock in an operation reportedly costing £5 million a year.
But Mr Grayling said European human rights laws, introduced in Britain through the 1998 Human Rights Act, were not intended to help dangerous men like Qatada.
He added: "I do not believe it was ever the intention of those who created the human rights framework that we are currently subject to, that people who have an avowed intent to damage this country should be able to use human rights laws to prevent their deportation back to their country of origin."
David Cameron said he "shares the British people's frustration" at Qatada's presence in Britain.
"I am completely fed up with the fact that this man is still at large in our country. He has no right to be there, we believe he is a threat to our country.
"We have moved heaven and earth to try to comply with every single dot and comma of every single convention to get him out of our country.
"It is extremely frustrating and I share the British people's frustration with the situation we find ourselves in."
Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg urged the Government to follow Henry VIII's ruling that it was high treason to appeal to a court outside his kingdom.
The North East Somerset MP said: "Has not the time come for this Parliament once more to legislate to prohibit appeals to foreign courts and to prohibit the judgments of foreign courts leading our judiciary?"
Terror suspect Qatada was released from Long Lartin prison today and returned to north London.
He was driven away from the maximum security prison HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire in a black Volkswagen people carrier.
The heavily-bearded cleric, who was sitting in the rear of the vehicle, made no attempt to hide from waiting media cameras and appeared to be smiling.
He was met by protesters outside his home, the location of which cannot be identified.
Earlier Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, said the Government is “absolutely determined” to deport Abu Qatada as a legal watchdog warned it could take “years” to remove him. He said the Government would appeal against the ruling.
“We’re determined to deport him,” he told ITV’s Daybreak. “We strongly disagree with the court ruling, we’re going to challenge it, we’re going to take it to appeal.
“We’re absolutely determined to see this man get on a plane and go back to Jordan.
“He doesn’t belong here, he shouldn’t be in this country, he’s a dangerous person. He wanted to inflict harm on our country and this coalition government is going to do everything we can to challenge this every step of the way to make sure he is deported to Jordan.”
However, David Anderson QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, indicated that it could take years before Qatada can be removed from Britain.
Mr Anderson said he believed the Jordanian government could resolve the impasse by amending the country’s “code of criminal procedure” to satisfy the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which ordered Qatada’s release yesterday.
But he conceded that the deportation process may then need to start again, including allowing Qatada repeated appeals, before the cleric can be deported.
Mr Anderson told BBC Radio’s Today programme the key to resolving the dispute was with the Jordanian government.
“It's a very frustrating episode for all concerned but as far as I can see this is not the end of the road,” he said.
“What the judge said, what the court said in terms, was that a simple amendment to the Jordanian criminal code so as to remove an ambiguity that is in it at the moment ought to suffice to make deportation possible.
“It would then be possible to say without fear of contradiction that Abu Qatada, if placed on trial back in Jordan, would not be tried on the basis of evidence obtained by torture,” he said.
Such action could see Qatada deported in “months” or “a very few years”, he added.
Jordan’s acting information minister, Nayef al-Fayez, said the Jordanian government shared Britain’s “disappointment” at the ruling.
“From our tentative understanding, there will be an appeal from the British government and accordingly we will be coordinating closely with them to see what are the next steps to be taken,” he told the BBC.
The former Tory security minister, Baroness Neville-Jones, called for reforms to deportation law to allow ministers to decide who should be thrown out of the country.
“The system is now being made a monkey of,” she told Today.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Mitting ordered that Qatada should be released from a high-security prison and imposed bail conditions that only placed him under a 16-hour curfew.
It is the latest twist in a legal battle that has run for more than a decade and cost the taxpayer more than £1 million in legal fees and benefits. |
Scala vs Java – Differences and similarities
8 MINUTE READ
Scala is a new generation Java virtual machine (JVM) language that is gaining popularity as a modern alternative to Java. Following its launch in 1995, Java went on to become the undisputed leader among programming languages, especially in the context of server-side development. At present, Scala is nowhere near as popular as Java, but it has been steadily gaining momentum over the past few years.
When Twitter made the decision to move their platform from Ruby to Scala in 2009, it caught the attention of many in the world of web development. This knowledge within the industry had a huge impact and many other companies began to follow suit in making the transition to Scala. A large number of high-profile websites such as eBay, Netflix, LinkedIn and The Guardian now use Scala for backend development.
Juliano Alves (@vonjuliano), Senior Software Engineer at uSwitch.com, was an early adopter of Scala. Speaking to Venturi’s Voice, he explained his motivations for learning the language:
“I like technology, so I am always looking for a better tool to solve my problems. Scala is more modern than Java, it has more resources, is more concise and it adds the functional programming paradigm. Besides, it runs on the top of the JVM, so it can make use of all the advantages of the platform,” he said.
With more and more programmers opting to learn Scala, it is important for all those who work in development to understand the major differences between Java and Scala so they can make an informed decision when choosing the most appropriate language for their next project.
Size and quality of code
While using Java, developers are required to write long lines of code to accomplish routine tasks. Scala enables developers to complete the same tasks with more concise lines of code. A task which requires 20 lines of code in Java may only take 6 in Scala. Condensing code in this way makes it more organised, readable and reusable. Fewer lines of code also makes it easier to identify and correct bugs.
Bruno Catarino, experienced Java and Scala contractor, highlighted that concise code offers a few additional benefits when it comes to dealing with more complex expressions: “Due to the functional nature of Scala it allows for more natural use of Lambda’s and chain functions, requiring significantly less code than Lambda use in Java,” he said.
Complexity of code
While it can accomplish tasks with less code, Scala has a more complex structure than Java. Developers can get the job done with less lines of code, but the code they do write is complicated. Many developers point out that there is a steep learning curve which needs to be overcome when first adopting Scala. Juliano offered helpful advice for Java developers toying with the idea of learning Scala.
“Although it’s possible, I would say to avoid rewriting ‘Java code in Scala’. Scala isn’t exactly a simple language, and many of the solutions and concepts from Java don’t apply. Dedicate some time studying the language and its ecosystem, but more important, learning functional programming,” he said.
Explaining how he got to grips with the language, Bruno said it was very much a case of incremental improvement over time.
“I started studying Scala and looking into the difference between the two languages in my own time. Eventually I got an opportunity to implement Scala on a project I was working on. I started slowly, writing code in a more object orientated way if I didn’t know how to do it in a functional way. By using the language on a project I began to pick up new tips and tricks and my code improved over time. I didn’t try to jump ahead and become an expert straight away as I had to balance my learning with the delivery of the project for the client. I have been working with Scala for 2 years and am still picking things up as I go along. For instance there are new functional libraries I would like to start working with,” he said.
When it comes to using Scala’s advanced features, there is a high degree of complexity involved. This is why it has gotten a reputation as being a difficult language. However, for those who are learning to code from scratch, Scala’s more concise code may actually make a beginners life easier.
Functional programming
As Java was created in the 1990’s it was designed like other conventional object-oriented programming languages. However, it has since been upgraded with functional programming capability. Programmers can now use Java 8 to write functional programs. But even though Java has now introduced some functional aspects, it still strongly relies on mutable state.
On the other hand, Scala was created in the early 2000’s and was designed from the outset to be a functional programming language. Unlike Java, it has better and more advanced functional programming features like immutability, high order functions and lazy evaluation.
“Java 8 isn’t bad for everyday use, but there is a lot of noise in it. This is not because the new functional features aren’t good, it’s more to do with the Java type system, which is inferior to Scala’s. Besides, Scala has had this features for ages, so it had time to refine and improve it while it’s new in Java,” said Juliano.
Structures
Scala borrows most syntax and language features from Java. But it still has a number of structures that are not available in Java. For instance, Scala supports case classes and automatic type inference. The highly structured nature of Scala further enables programmers to convert it into domain specific language (DSL). This gives programmers the option to customise Scala’s look and feel according to the specific needs of their projects.
Interoperability
In theory, Java and Scala are cross-compatible with each other. Developers can call Java functions directly inside Scala code. But as Juliano noted previously, the process of writing Scala functions in Java code or Java functions in Scala code is not straightforward. Each language implements interfaces, collections, annotations and other features differently. So while the two languages are interoperable, these differences complicate matters. As a result, Java and Scala tend to be coded separately.
Concurrency model
With Java 8, programmers are required to use the conventional thread-based concurrency model. This technique divides a program into several concurrently running tasks at the time of execution. Conversely, Scala uses the actor model which is more modern and efficient. It allows developers to define each object as an actor with its own behaviour and mailbox. Thus, Scala simplifies thread communication and control making the entire process more efficient. However, Juliano highlighted that this doesn’t necessarily mean the process is simple.
“Basically, actors are an abstraction that allow you to model your concurrent system to have entities (or actors) sending messages to each other and them performing their jobs without human input. Conversely, when you work with traditional concurrency you have to handle low level objects like threads and executors yourself. Actors allow you to model your product with high level abstractions. But this is not easy. Concurrency always gets very complicated,” he said.
Performance
According to a test conducted by James Roper for DZone, Scala is 20% faster than Java. However, James was quick to point out in his post that this is not the full story – micro performance benchmarks rarely are.
As both languages run on JVM, their code must be compiled into bytecode in the same way before it can be run. Scala’s performance advantage derives from an optimisation technique called ‘tail call recursion’ that runs within the Scala compiler, where if the last statement in a method is a recursive call, it can get rid of that call and replace it with an iterative solution. This tail call recursion optimisation is what accounts for the performance difference found by Roper. Despite this niche optimisation, in real-terms Java and Scala have near identical performance characteristics as both languages are subject to the costs and benefits of JVM.
“Unless you are implementing a real-time product, this comparison doesn’t really matter. If the application handles network traffic, http requests or connects to a database, the impact of the language performance is insignificant.” said Juliano.
Availability of tools and frameworks
As noted earlier, Java is older and more mature than Scala. Therefore, developers have access to a broader range of editors, frameworks and tools. This is arguably Java’s biggest advantage. It will take years to build the same sort of community and archive of tools for Scala.
“Java has so many tools because it is ‘THE’ solution for the enterprise world (alongside .net). I believe most of these larger companies won’t adopt Scala because ‘it’s hard’, and there will always be greater abundance of Java developers. But the community around the Scala is already pretty big”, said Juliano.
As Scala continues to grow in popularity, new tools and frameworks are now being launched regularly. Also, Scala developers have the option to utilise several existing Java development libraries and frameworks as it is also a JVM language.
Conclusion
On the whole, Java and Scala share many similarities and both can be used for building a wide variety of applications. But each programming language has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. For this reason, it’s important to keep in mind the specific needs of a project when deciding what language to go with. Scala remains the clear choice for big-data applications but for other projects, its complexity, and fewer number of developers may offset some of the benefits it can provide.
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You know the drill: Microsoft releases a new OS and, roughly a year later, a hefty service pack arrives with a raft of fixes and added features. Neowin is reporting that the company will put out two updates in June and October of next year, both under the codename Redstone. There'll still be the regular patches and updates, but according to ZDNet, Redstone is believed to bring support for "new classes of devices that aren't already part of Windows 10." Naturally, Microsoft has already issued a standard no comment, not that it'd be too eager to distract attention away from this summer's launch. Oh, and before you ask, Redstone is a Minecraft reference in the same way that Windows 10's codename, Threshold, was a nod to Halo. Microsoft is nothing but loyal to its first-party franchises. |
Guest post by Jim Steele
Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
MSN appears to be a source of climate fear mongering and “fake climate news” based on their story under the headlines Antarctica hits record high temperature at balmy 63.5°F .
The story was accompanied by what can only be a horribly photo-shopped photograph for the unassuming warmunista of a mushroom-shaped ice form teetering on a rocky outcrop.
Supposedly it was photographed on the opposite side of the continent from which the record temperature occurred. Climbing such a structure would be a difficult technical climb for an experienced mountaineer. Furthermore when Adele penguins come ashore to breed they avoid the ice if possible, only crossing snowfields as the seek ice-free breeding territories. Lastly if you magnify the picture 500%, the penguins become extremely pixilated, the ice chunk less so, and the background rocks even less so, a fingerprint of 3 different photographs with different resolution that have been overlain.
MSN reported, “An Argentine research base near the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula has set a heat record at a balmy 63.5° Fahrenheit (17.5 degrees Celsius), the U.N. weather agency said on Wednesday.” The record was set in 2015 and the WMO report simply confirmed the temperature. The Wunderblog had reported in March 2015, “On March 24th Base Esperanza (under Argentinean administration) located near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula reported a temperature of 17.5°C (63.5°F). Although this is the warmest temperature ever measured since weather stations became established [in 1953] on the southern continent, it is complicated by what the very definition of ‘Antarctica’ is.
To induce fear over Esperanza’s temperature record MSN writes, “Antarctica locks up 90 percent of the world’s fresh water as ice and would raise sea levels by about 60 meters (200 ft) if it were all to melt, meaning scientists are concerned to know even about extremes around the fringes.”
However high temperatures at Esperanza tell us nothing about climate change, or if there is any threat of melting ice caps or rising sea level. Instead Esperanza presents a prime example of how temperatures can rise dramatically without any increased input of heat. Argentina’s Esperanza weather station is situated on the most extreme equatorward tip of the Antarctic peninsula and its mean monthly temperature for March is -3.6 C. But Esperanza’s location subjects it to episodic warm northwesterly winds which is why it is also infamous for its foehn wind storms that can dramatically increase temperatures by 10 to 40 C degrees in a matter of hours.
This record 17 C (63.5 F) temperature recently recorded, is 20 C above average, and as expected the record temperature is the result of foehn winds. Foehn winds warm temperatures via adiabatic heating (no heat input) as descending winds passing over the nearby mountains warm from adiabatic compression. It is meaningless weather regards penguins. But no mention of foehn winds by MSN.
At least the Wunderblog, was honest about the cause of record warming in 2015 stating,
“A strong high pressure ridge and a Foehn wind led to the record temperatures as Jeff Masters explains here: This week’s record temperatures were made possible by an unusually extreme jet stream contortion that brought a strong ridge of high pressure over the Antarctic Peninsula, allowing warm air from South America to push southwards over Antarctica. At the surface, west to east blowing winds over the Antarctic Peninsula rose up over the 1,000-foot high mountains just to the west of Esperanza Base, then descended and warmed via adiabatic compression into a warm foehn wind that reached 44 mph (71 km/hr) at 09 UTC on March 24th, near when the maximum temperature was recorded. A similar event also affected Marambio on the 23rd.”
Likewise in the 2016 paper Absence of 21st century warming on Antarctic Peninsula consistent with natural variability researchers with the British Antarctic Survey reported, “The trend in the SAM led to a greater flow of mild, northwesterly air onto the AP [Antarctic Peninsula] with SAT [surface air temperature] on the northeastern side increasing most because of amplification through the foehn effect.”
This isn’t the first time such photo fakery has been used. There’s the Ursus Bogus episode, and NCDC’s fake flooded house, to name a couple. Anything for the cause – Anthony
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As progressives and academics it is very easy to dismiss the rhetorical mudslinging of performance-based news hosts such as Bill O’Reily and Glenn Beck as irrational and ill-informed. Aware of the game they are playing, we’re reluctant to give them the outraged response that, ipso facto, fuels their agenda. Seeking more erudite modes of engagement, we slouch uncomfortably into our favorite coffee shop couch while, despite our deepest wishes, their game goes on. Sometimes, however, these propagandists strike a nerve so close to home that not responding seems the greatest injustice.
Last Tuesday, Glenn Beck dedicated an entire episode to attacking liberation theology and one of its greatest proponents, James Cone. Linking Cone’s groundbreaking Black Theology and Black Power to the killing of “cracker babies,” Beck sought to show how liberation theology was both a perversion of the message of Christianity and a purveyor of radical evils. In a simplistic bifurcation, Beck contrasted liberation theology to his own view of what he called “traditional Christianity.” He claimed that salvation was a strictly personal affair and that there were no “works” we could do to receive the grace of God. Central to his concern was that liberation theology promoted “collective salvation” and resulted in communism and redistribution of wealth. On his infamous chalkboard he drew lines from James Cone to the Black Panthers, then to Reverend Jeremiah Wright, then Marx, then, you guessed it, President Obama and immigrants. Chalk lines, however, are easily erased.
But as the news and reaction to this show began to spill off the Facebook pages of James Cone’s students into the halls of Union Theological Seminary, it quickly became apparent that erasing these chalk lines and pointing out the obvious—that Glenn Beck took Cone out of context, that he repeatedly contradicts himself, that he knows nothing about the Bible or liberation theology, and so on—was too easy, and even non-productive. While such statements are undoubtedly true, might we avoid his mudslinging and ask ourselves what we can learn from Glenn Beck and his appeal?
This was the question that I was seeking to answer as I sat down with Union’s President Serene Jones and a group of students to discuss the appropriate way to address this attack on our beloved professor of liberation theology.
Given the fact that a response is what he wants and will ultimately lead to no real dialogue, why is it important to respond to Glenn Beck’s attack on liberation theology and James Cone?
The reason why he just can’t get away with doing this with no response whatsoever is that not only is there the argument he is making on television, there is also all the unspoken but evident racist, sexist, and fascist sensibilities that he is playing to in our country. The real challenge is to effectively engage those sentiments and that may mean engaging him directly or taking other directions.
Throughout the show, Beck continually claims that this has nothing to do with race. Is it safe to assume that he means what he says, and that his fear stems from a more generalized xenophobia and fear of the other?
Perhaps you could call it xenophobia. But I read it more as an appeal to some of our most vulnerable and troubling instincts as human beings. When the world seems uncertain and unsteady, we want to stabilize it by figuring out who we can hate so that our world becomes stabilized by making us the good guy. He plays to that sentiment. This is where the racism, sexism, and fascism come in. They appeal to all of those unconscious fears that we have and they run the spectrum. Racism is always just a general subcategory of playing on that fear.
Glenn Beck obviously has a large following, many of which may be the very poor and oppressed that liberation theology seeks to speak to. In what ways might progressive Christianity seek these other directions?
My guess is that the people who are most attracted to the perspective that he outlines are not attracted to it because of its carefully reasoned argument, but because it gives voice to a general sense of frustration and fear. And so how is progressive Christianity able to address that? Only by addressing it in the long run by understanding the sources of peoples’ fears and the social/structural issues that make people feel so vulnerable. Attacking Glenn Beck head on is not the way to reach the fears of his audience—it would probably only fuel their fears. So the bigger picture as a theological educator, a minister, a theologian and a person of faith is that you address the fears that fuel it by being prophets of grace.
It is important that you mention grace, as Beck’s entire show plays on a simple bifurcation between personal and collective faith and salvation. He claims that liberation theology “deals exclusively with external realities” and does not address the issues of personal grace. What role does grace play in liberation theology?
In that show it is ludicrous that on the one hand he is saying that there is no such thing as social justice in the gospel—that we are supposed to take care of people because we simply want to—and that everything happens by virtue of merit. It is a very muscular sense of personal ethics. But then he turns around and says that grace reminds us that ethics does not matter at all. In fact, grace is a very important political concept. Just as grace reminds us as individuals that there is nothing we can do to earn the love of God—that it is simply poured out upon us—so too it reminds us that at a political level, the minute we start constructing political structures that we think are unambiguously right, we are making our own politics into God. Nobody does that more than Glenn Beck.
Glenn Beck calls for context at the beginning of his show. Dr. Cone wrote Black Theology and Black Power in 1969 in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement and Beck’s great fear is that immigrants will latch on to it; do you think there is a parallel?
The answer goes back to the fear of the Other. Immigration puts that squarely before us as a nation. But what Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King Jr., and James Cone remind us of is that the ultimate test of any community or identity is how it manages that border between what is known and what is outside. We live in a country that has a long history of sometimes doing that well and sometimes doing that in horrific ways. Glenn Beck plays on the edge of that border all the time. The thing about grace is that it removes the line altogether and gives us a completely different way to think about meaning.
***
Perhaps what surprised the students and professors of Union Theological Seminary the most was that, at least in the eyes of Glenn Beck, liberation theology is still a potent and vital force in American culture. By dedicating an entire show to James Cone and liberation theology, he is actually undermining his own position by giving public voice to a theology that in so many ways has receded from the headlines as an important influence. This exposure might draw us all to reflection, not just to reaction. If Beck can serve as any sort of signifier, then liberation theology is still important and clearly has a future. Unlike Beck, I look forward to the day that a young immigrant worker picks up a copy of God of the Oppressed and realizes her humanity through it.
James Cone once said in class that if you can write a book that people are still talking about 40 years later, then you might have had something very important to say. At the 41st anniversary of Black Theology and Black Power, we thank you, Glenn Beck, for reminding us of its growing importance. |
THIS could be Queensland’s most shameless thief.
An Ashgrove woman whose house had been robbed was shocked to find a post on Facebook – from her own account – telling her she should be more careful with security.
Her laptop, cash, jewellery and a list of passwords were stolen, prompting police to warn “virtual” possessions could become more valuable to thieves than typical household items.
“Sorry, I left the keys in the hat out the front because I can’t drive a manual, and I did not take your chargers … they’re in a drawer maybe,” the Facebook post from the thief said.
“I try to be considerate, you should change your password and use more secure ones, and a locking filing cabinet, your passports will be returned to you, your locks are fine and rather tough to pick, no prints on anything for sure, sincerest apologies.”
Inner West Patrol Group acting Inspector Corey Allen told The Courier-Mail that although the case was an exception, it showed that thieves could target digital items through a house break-in.
The thief was also able to withdraw cash from a nearby ATM after the break-in.
“If they grab your wallet they might get $100 but if they grab your password they could get $1000 by getting on to your phone or computer,” he said.
“They could technically get into your internet banking, your social media.
“Computers and our phones, they are not just for typing a letter and making a phone call anymore; it is a digital life and he’s invaded that space as well.”
Fraud and Cyber Crime squad Detective Superintendent Brian Hay said he was not aware of an increase in break-ins targeting digital items.
He said the woman did not do the wrong thing by storing passwords but he warned people should be discreet about where they store hard copies of passwords.
“It’s opportunistic – I can see the time coming down the track when computers will be stolen not for re-sale value of dealing in a second-hand situation but actually (for) acquiring the data that is on the computer,” he said.
Det Supt Hay said people should consider not using their full names in online profiles unless it was for a specific purpose.
Insp Allen said people should change passwords if they thought they were compromised, move password lists to a more secure area and de-authorise computers.
“Storing passwords – they really are the key to your digital life – if you store them in a way that is easy for people to find, this is an example of what can happen,” he said.
The disturbing burglary sadly isn’t the only chilling account of a break-in.
Earlier this year a New Farm woman told how she woke to find a man standing in her room watching her sleep. At the time police warned of a naked peeping tom in the area who had broken into homes.
And who could forget the eery footage of a hooded burglar caught on tape creeping around a pensioner’s home as she slept in a chair in her UK home? The pensioner had installed cameras after being burgled at least four times in 12 months.
News_Rich_Media: A burglar in the has been caught on hidden camera multiple times walking around an elderly woman’s home while she was asleep in the lounge room on a chair.
For safety tips go to police.qld.gov.au/programs/cscp/eCrime/ |
Global Wave of New Coal Plants Is Going Bust, New Report Finds
Today, the Sierra Club and CoalSwarm, keeper of the global coal plant tracker database, released a comprehensive report on the global coal pipeline -- and the news is big. The global boom in coal-fired power plant construction is going bust.
Since 2010, for every coal plant completed worldwide, two proposed coal plants have been shelved or canceled. We have known for a while that the coal industry was facing serious headwinds -- even banks like Citi and Goldman Sachs have been warning of coal’s impending decline -- but the scale of project failure should be a wakeup call to anyone who still thinks the coal industry’s salvation lies in a 21st-century global coal boom.
Globally, in 2014, for the first time ever, carbon emissions were flat as the world economy grew, largely due to reduced coal use and the expansion of clean energy. Even as coal use continues its rapid decline in the United States with 187 coal plants announced for retirement since 2010, thanks in large part to widespread grassroots pressure from communities demanding an end to deadly pollution, the U.S. coal industry was counting on a booming exports business to keep it afloat. But today’s report shows this is simply not going to happen.
According to this new report, coal use in China declined for the first time in 2014, while the economy simultaneously grew at 7.3 percent, proving that coal is not synonymous with growth. The picture in India is even more dismal for coal companies looking to the subcontinent for salvation. There, for every one project that was completed, six were shelved or canceled. And that coal renaissance that was supposedly going to take place in Europe? In the EU, retired coal capacity outpaced new capacity by 22 percent. Nowhere is the European shift away from coal more apparent than in the UK, where the leaders of the three main political parties recently made a joint commitment to accelerate the shift to a low carbon economy and to end the use of unabated coal for electricity.
The evaporation of coal prospects overseas also buoys the work of local residents and First Nation communities as they fight to stop new coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest and the Gulf of Mexico. These groups have been working to demonstrate the devastating effects that the proposed railway and port infrastructure would have on human health and traditional fishing. All along, activists have worked to show that these coal projects were financially untenable. This new report provides further evidence that coal industry forecasts of an insatiable coal boom in Asia were more marketing pitch than business plan. This will further undermine the remaining projects, as the proposed export terminals continue to fall like dominoes under the combined pressure of grassroots activism and economic realities.
But there is also a warning to accompany this good news. While larger trends are turning against coal, there are still over 1,000 gigawatts of new coal-fired generation proposed worldwide. This may not be enough to revive the coal industry in the face of accelerating coal plant retirements, but it is enough to devastate the climate and public health. To avoid catastrophic climate disruption and the global instability and human suffering it would cause, we must continue building on the progress found in the report to phase out coal plants and replace them with clean energy.
With attention turning toward the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris this December, it is critical that countries commit to ending subsidies and policies that favor coal, and instead focus on cutting-edge clean energy solutions that not only create jobs but also protect public health. As the latest reports on carbon emissions make clear, we’re moving in the right direction. Whether or not we can reach a meaningful global agreement will depend, in large part, on whether countries can continue making the progress identified in this report -- phasing out dangerous, outdated, and polluting energy, while deploying the clean energy technologies of the 21st century. |
Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay. It’s about sodium-loaded pork fat, stinky triple-cream cheeses, the tender thymus glands and distended livers of young animals. It’s about danger—risking the dark, bacterial forces of beef, chicken, cheese, and shellfish. Your first two hundred and seven Wellfleet oysters may transport you to a state of rapture, but your two hundred and eighth may send you to bed with the sweats, chills, and vomits. Gastronomy is the science of pain. Professional cooks belong to a secret society whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and the threat of illness. The members of a tight, well-greased kitchen staff are a lot like a submarine crew. Confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders, they often acquire the characteristics of the poor saps who were press-ganged into the royal navies of Napoleonic times—superstition, a contempt for outsiders, and a loyalty to no flag but their own. A good deal has changed since Orwell’s memoir of the months he spent as a dishwasher in “Down and Out in Paris and London.” Gas ranges and exhaust fans have gone a long way toward increasing the life span of the working culinarian. Nowadays, most aspiring cooks come into the business because they want to: they have chosen this life, studied for it. Today’s top chefs are like star athletes. They bounce from kitchen to kitchen—free agents in search of more money, more acclaim. I’ve been a chef in New York for more than ten years, and, for the decade before that, a dishwasher, a prep drone, a line cook, and a sous-chef. I came into the business when cooks still smoked on the line and wore headbands. A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumors of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavory side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place. In the early seventies, I dropped out of college and transferred to the Culinary Institute of America. I wanted it all: the cuts and burns on hands and wrists, the ghoulish kitchen humor, the free food, the pilfered booze, the camaraderie that flourished within rigid order and nerve-shattering chaos. I would climb the chain of command from mal carne (meaning “bad meat,” or “new guy”) to chefdom—doing whatever it took until I ran my own kitchen and had my own crew of cutthroats, the culinary equivalent of “The Wild Bunch.” A year ago, my latest, doomed mission—a high-profile restaurant in the Times Square area—went out of business. The meat, fish, and produce purveyors got the news that they were going to take it in the neck for yet another ill-conceived enterprise. When customers called for reservations, they were informed by a prerecorded announcement that our doors had closed. Fresh from that experience, I began thinking about becoming a traitor to my profession.
Say it’s a quiet Monday night, and you’ve just checked your coat in that swanky Art Deco update in the Flatiron district, and you’re looking to tuck into a thick slab of pepper-crusted yellowfin tuna or a twenty-ounce cut of certified Black Angus beef, well-done—what are you in for? The fish specialty is reasonably priced, and the place got two stars in the Times. Why not go for it? If you like four-day-old fish, be my guest. Here’s how things usually work. The chef orders his seafood for the weekend on Thursday night. It arrives on Friday morning. He’s hoping to sell the bulk of it on Friday and Saturday nights, when he knows that the restaurant will be busy, and he’d like to run out of the last few orders by Sunday evening. Many fish purveyors don’t deliver on Saturday, so the chances are that the Monday-night tuna you want has been kicking around in the kitchen since Friday morning, under God knows what conditions. When a kitchen is in full swing, proper refrigeration is almost nonexistent, what with the many openings of the refrigerator door as the cooks rummage frantically during the rush, mingling your tuna with the chicken, the lamb, or the beef. Even if the chef has ordered just the right amount of tuna for the weekend, and has had to reorder it for a Monday delivery, the only safeguard against the seafood supplier’s off-loading junk is the presence of a vigilant chef who can make sure that the delivery is fresh from Sunday night’s market. Generally speaking, the good stuff comes in on Tuesday: the seafood is fresh, the supply of prepared food is new, and the chef, presumably, is relaxed after his day off. (Most chefs don’t work on Monday.) Chefs prefer to cook for weekday customers rather than for weekenders, and they like to start the new week with their most creative dishes. In New York, locals dine during the week. Weekends are considered amateur nights—for tourists, rubes, and the well-done-ordering pretheatre hordes. The fish may be just as fresh on Friday, but it’s on Tuesday that you’ve got the good will of the kitchen on your side. People who order their meat well-done perform a valuable service for those of us in the business who are cost-conscious: they pay for the privilege of eating our garbage. In many kitchens, there’s a time-honored practice called “save for well-done.” When one of the cooks finds a particularly unlovely piece of steak—tough, riddled with nerve and connective tissue, off the hip end of the loin, and maybe a little stinky from age—he’ll dangle it in the air and say, “Hey, Chef, whaddya want me to do with this?” Now, the chef has three options. He can tell the cook to throw the offending item into the trash, but that means a total loss, and in the restaurant business every item of cut, fabricated, or prepared food should earn at least three times the amount it originally cost if the chef is to make his correct food-cost percentage. Or he can decide to serve that steak to “the family”—that is, the floor staff—though that, economically, is the same as throwing it out. But no. What he’s going to do is repeat the mantra of cost-conscious chefs everywhere: “Save for well-done.” The way he figures it, the philistine who orders his food well-done is not likely to notice the difference between food and flotsam. Then there are the People Who Brunch. The “B” word is dreaded by all dedicated cooks. We hate the smell and spatter of omelettes. We despise hollandaise, home fries, those pathetic fruit garnishes, and all the other cliché accompaniments designed to induce a credulous public into paying $12.95 for two eggs. Nothing demoralizes an aspiring Escoffier faster than requiring him to cook egg-white omelettes or eggs over easy with bacon. You can dress brunch up with all the focaccia, smoked salmon, and caviar in the world, but it’s still breakfast. Even more despised than the Brunch People are the vegetarians. Serious cooks regard these members of the dining public—and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans—as enemies of everything that’s good and decent in the human spirit. To live life without veal or chicken stock, fish cheeks, sausages, cheese, or organ meats is treasonous. “It’s been done, but I don’t think it’s been redone.”
Like most other chefs I know, I’m amused when I hear people object to pork on nonreligious grounds. “Swine are filthy animals,” they say. These people have obviously never visited a poultry farm. Chicken—America’s favorite food—goes bad quickly; handled carelessly, it infects other foods with salmonella; and it bores the hell out of chefs. It occupies its ubiquitous place on menus as an option for customers who can’t decide what they want to eat. Most chefs believe that supermarket chickens in this country are slimy and tasteless compared with European varieties. Pork, on the other hand, is cool. Farmers stopped feeding garbage to pigs decades ago, and even if you eat pork rare you’re more likely to win the Lotto than to contract trichinosis. Pork tastes different, depending on what you do with it, but chicken always tastes like chicken. Another much maligned food these days is butter. In the world of chefs, however, butter is in everything. Even non-French restaurants—the Northern Italian; the new American, the ones where the chef brags about how he’s “getting away from butter and cream”—throw butter around like crazy. In almost every restaurant worth patronizing, sauces are enriched with mellowing, emulsifying butter. Pastas are tightened with it. Meat and fish are seared with a mixture of butter and oil. Shallots and chicken are caramelized with butter. It’s the first and last thing in almost every pan: the final hit is called “monter au beurre.” In a good restaurant, what this all adds up to is that you could be putting away almost a stick of butter with every meal.
If you are one of those people who cringe at the thought of strangers fondling your food, you shouldn’t go out to eat. As the author and former chef Nicolas Freeling notes in his definitive book “The Kitchen,” the better the restaurant, the more your food has been prodded, poked, handled, and tasted. By the time a three-star crew has finished carving and arranging your saddle of monkfish with dried cherries and wild-herb-infused nage into a Parthenon or a Space Needle, it’s had dozens of sweaty fingers all over it. Gloves? You’ll find a box of surgical gloves—in my kitchen we call them “anal-research gloves”—over every station on the line, for the benefit of the health inspectors, but does anyone actually use them? Yes, a cook will slip a pair on every now and then, especially when he’s handling something with a lingering odor, like salmon. But during the hours of service gloves are clumsy and dangerous. When you’re using your hands constantly, latex will make you drop things, which is the last thing you want to do. Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter Read classic New Yorker stories, curated by our archivists and editors. Finding a hair in your food will make anyone gag. But just about the only place you’ll see anyone in the kitchen wearing a hat or a hairnet is Blimpie. For most chefs, wearing anything on their head, especially one of those picturesque paper toques—they’re often referred to as “coffee filters”—is a nuisance: they dissolve when you sweat, bump into range hoods, burst into flame. The fact is that most good kitchens are far less septic than your kitchen at home. I run a scrupulously clean, orderly restaurant kitchen, where food is rotated and handled and stored very conscientiously. But if the city’s Department of Health or the E.P.A. decided to enforce every aspect of its codes, most of us would be out on the street. Recently, there was a news report about the practice of recycling bread. By means of a hidden camera in a restaurant, the reporter was horrified to see returned bread being sent right back out to the floor. This, to me, wasn’t news: the reuse of bread has been an open secret—and a fairly standard practice—in the industry for years. It makes more sense to worry about what happens to the leftover table butter—many restaurants recycle it for hollandaise. What do I like to eat after hours? Strange things. Oysters are my favorite, especially at three in the morning, in the company of my crew. Focaccia pizza with robiola cheese and white truffle oil is good, especially at Le Madri on a summer afternoon in the outdoor patio. Frozen vodka at Siberia Bar is also good, particularly if a cook from one of the big hotels shows up with beluga. At Indigo, on Tenth Street, I love the mushroom strudel and the daube of beef. At my own place, I love a spicy boudin noir that squirts blood in your mouth; the braised fennel the way my sous-chef makes it; scraps from duck confit; and fresh cockles steamed with greasy Portuguese sausage. |
Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:
Team Fortress 2
Added "tf_allow_player_use" server ConVar to control players executing +use while playing (defaults to 0)
Fixed a bug where full backpacks resulted in an item being repeatedly found each time the game is started
Fixed being able to burn players/buildings that are in the water while standing outside the water
Fixed teleporting Spies getting stuck in enemy players standing on the exit
Fixed server log not listing telefrag kills as weapon "telefrag"
Fixed the Pyro's airblast pushing Spectators in free-look mode
Fixed Pyro's Hadouken killing Scouts that have used Bonk! and are phasing
Fixed freezecam screenshots sometimes being saved outside the Screenshots folder
Fixed deathnotice and server log entries not using the unique item names/icons when buildings are destroyed
Fixed a case where the weapon selection menu wasn't drawing the images of non-standard items if the player was using hud_fastswitch 1 and using slot7-10 to view the panel
Fixed CTF HUD not centering the flag panel if there is only one active flag
Community requests
Added the ability to set a parent for the item_teamflag entity
Added OnPickUpTeam1 and OnPickUpTeam2 outputs to the item_teamflag entity
Added intro movie .mp3 files to the sound/misc folder
Click to expand... |
By
Messes are intimate, secret, somewhat shameful. Mess is supposed to be kept backstage. Posting this picture of my messy workspace is almost as embarrassing and inappropriate as posting nudes, but it’s necessary aesthetic background:
All the new thinking about mess is apologetics: what if mess is good? Perhaps mess makes us more creative. Messiness is a sign of intelligence. All that. As a pathologically messy person, I cannot concur with this glorification of mess. Being in a messy environment is stressful and discouraging. There is an unease that remains even when you block out the conscious awareness of mess.
This is not say that mess is a pure bad. Mess is not even necessarily ugly. The famous photograph of Albert Einstein’s desk, taken on the day he died, is a particularly picturesque mess. This is recognizably a mess, but it is calming to look at, and deeply touches our personal feelings. It has mono no aware.
Most mess is not pleasing to look at, especially when experienced raw, without the benefit of a photographer imposing an overall order on the mess through composition and a monochrome palette.
Alan Watts is, as far as I know, the premier ordinary language philosopher of mess. He enters the problem with an observation: clouds are not a mess.
When you look at the clouds they are not symmetrical. They do not form fours and they do not come along in cubes, but you know at once that they are not a mess. A dirty old ashtray full of junk may be a mess but clouds do not look like that. When you look at the patterns of foam on water they never make an artistic mistake and they are not a mess. They are wiggly but in a way, orderly, although it is difficult for us to describe that kind of order.
Alan Watts, The Tao of Philosophy, p. 27.
Watts observes that elements of the natural world – clouds, foam on water, the stars, human beings – are not messes, though the nature of their order remains inscrutable, and Watts doesn’t try to pin down its precise nature. Mess seems to be somehow a property perceptible only in the presence of human artifacts. Is this the result of some kind of aesthetic original sin on the part of humans, uncanny beings severed from the holiness of Nature? I hope not. “Humans are bad” is a boring answer.
We can learn something about order from the mystery of mess. We start here: a cloud is not a mess, but an ashtray full of cigarette butts is a mess. In tracking down why this is so, we will find, through the lens of the mess and the non-mess, a clue to the hidden orders in our minds.
Mess Is Not Shannon Entropy
What is salient about mess is disorder. At the outset, we might be tempted to think of mess and disorder as the mere absence of order. But we will see that mess cannot be present without the visual implication of a legible order.
In the abstract language of information theory, the kind of disorder called entropy is the lack of structure or compressibility in data. Consider a rectangular field of pixels which can be either black or white. A field of pure black or pure white has maximum order in the sense of Shannon entropy: you hardly need any bits to explain how to recreate the image. This is not a mess.
On the other hand, consider a rectangle of pixels specified by a random process, with black and white equally likely. There is no way to compress this data: each pixel must be specified separately. It has maximum entropy (within this monochrome, rectangular, pixelated problem space). But it is not a mess.
Finally, consider this rectangle of black and white pixels:
This rectangle takes fewer bits to specify than the randomly pixelated rectangle. There are repeated letter forms, geometric forms, patches of black and white. There is much more order and compressibility here. And it’s a mess.
Consider also the clouds. When Alan Watts notes that they are not symmetrical and do not come along in cubes, this is a way of saying that the number of bits necessary to specify a picture of the clouds is quite high. They have high entropy, they contain a lot of information, yet they are not mess.
Is it possible for any fluffy white thing in the sky to be a mess? Imagine a skywriter convention, with many planes writing words in different fonts (some in single lines, some in dot matrix style) across the sky. Gradually the wind obscures the legibility of some letters. This seems like a mess. But, again, this sky requires fewer bits to specify: patterns of letters and dots are repeated and may be specified as mathematical shapes rather than pixel by pixel.
It seems that human artifacts made from natural materials do not decay into mess, while human artifacts made from highly ordered artificial materials (sheet rock, plastic) decay into mess. Compare this rough stone ruin overgrown with moss
with the ruins of a rectilinear room made from highly ordered materials:
The stone ruin is not a mess, but the rectilinear green ruin is clearly a mess. And again, it would take us more bits to specify the mossy stone ruin than the crumbling painted interior, with its straight lines and even flat surfaces interrupted by corruption and decay.
So here is a mystery: why are tableaux that are apparently more orderly (in the sense of compressibility in the data required to specify them) also more messy? Let me offer a few more hints, in the form of definitions supplied by my friends, before I reveal the answer. Sam Burnstein notes a connection to intentionality: “Messes are low-intentionality as a whole but high-intentionality in their component pieces.” “A mess is a decaying purpose,” says @allgebrah. Chris Beiser deconstructs the experience of mess: “Mess is an incomplete aesthetic experience composed of a surplus of objects that produce aesthetic experiences (often themselves incomplete) of vastly different types and durations, without a canonical ordering.” And Daniel Klein hints at the implied user interface of mess in conceiving of “mess as matter deficient in side-effect-free interfaces.”
And here is the answer: in order for mess to appear, there must be in the component parts of the mess an implication of extreme order, the kind of highly regular order generally associated with human intention. Flat uniform surfaces and printed text imply, promise, or encode a particular kind of order. In mess, this promise is not kept. The implied order is subverted. Often, as in my mess of text and logos above, the implied order is subverted by other, competing orders.
The information theory equivalent of a mess might be a chunk of data, pieces of which have been encoded using different symbolic systems, according to no particular order. If we discover the correct encoding for a part of the message, this seems to promise that it will work for the whole thing; but this promise is not kept.
Mess is only perceptible because it produces in our minds an imaginary order that is missing. It is as if objects and artifacts send out invisible tendrils into space, saying, “the matter around me should be ordered in some particular way.” The stronger the claim, and the more the claims of component pieces conflict, the more there is mess. It is these invisible, tangled tendrils of incompatible orders that we are “seeing” when we see mess. They are cryptosalient: at once invisible and obvious.
Every object and building implies a particular order, rendering some objects incompatible. If these incompatible objects are present, they are “mess.” Some buildings are more “exclusive” than others, aesthetically excluding large classes of objects. These highly ordered buildings are, for this reason, prone to mess. Stewart Brand, in How Buildings Learn (at around 14:50, h/t Graham Johnson), interviews the residents of an austere, rectilinear, highly-ordered Le Corbusier house. They note that they have had to get rid of “inessentials” in order to live there, forgoing ornate antique furniture and comfortable armchairs. A maison Corbu strongly projects a particular order onto its space, such that the vast majority of human furnishings are aesthetically excluded, rendered mess. Living within these constraints is a discipline, and “purifies the soul” in the sense of requiring you to live like you’re on a camping trip all the time. Houses with less austere order place more relaxed demands on their contents, including their occupants.
That which is “garbage” is aesthetically excluded from almost every visible order. Garbage is mess by its very nature, even if it is not the kind that rots. It must be taken away to where no one will look at it, because the decaying imprints of order it bears interfere with the aesthetic demands of all human spaces. Artists have been interested in garbage for precisely this reason. One of the few examples I have seen of garbage being incorporated into an order that is not “mess” is the nest of a bowerbird that has been decorated with bright blue plastic bottle caps and bright blue plastic straws.
Do non-human animals perceive mess? A bowerbird must. In order for the male to build and tidy up the bower (whose only purpose is for display), and for the female to judge it, they must have cognitive access to an imaginary order – a kind of ideal bower – to compare it to.
Like humans, some non-human animals exert effort to keep their feces away from their living spaces. (Sociologists call this the “fecal habitus,” in their manner of rendering the familiar alien.) Feces are aesthetically incompatible with human spaces; “mess” is used euphemistically for feces produced in ordered spaces and contexts that exclude them. Presumably, feces exclusion originated in a pathogen avoidance strategy. We keep feces, urine, vomit, and blood away from social contexts (to the extent possible) because they could be sources of highly ordered entities (bacteria, viruses) that will disrupt and conflict with our bodies’ own order.
The hygienic function of keeping incompatible orders separate extends into the objects of the mental world. Mess is stressful and uncomfortable; politeness demands that we cover, hide, or mask indications of orders incompatible with our mutually projected social order. At minimum, we must cover our nakedness outside of the intimate sphere. In masking parts of reality, we need not become less ourselves; what is masked forms the background against which the form of what is not masked is clear and salient.
Masking
When enough snow falls on a city to make everything look soft and white on top, it looks less messy. Limiting the color palette and softening sharp lines renders the underlying order more harmonious. The snow masks the conflicting orders implied by billboards, cars, dumpsters, and concrete sidewalks. A mess photographed in black and white (masking color) looks less messy. Strong composition of a photograph can mask messiness, foregrounding a certain subset of forms that interact harmoniously.
In my above example of the “mess” rectangle with overlapped text and logos, if either layer were masked, it would not be a mess. Covering certain aspects of reality is necessary to leave other aspects perceptible. We mask incompatible things from each other in order to prevent mess, and politely mask mess itself. Mess is intimate.
How can houses allow for the existence of mess without being a mess? Christopher Alexander’s ALCOVE pattern (in The Timeless Way of building) is a solution to the conflicting forces of intimate mess and social interaction, using a sort of mask. People want to be together, but they also like to do their own hobbies and activities. The person doing the hobby (say, me knitting) is absorbed in an imaginary order of the future, and only vaguely aware of the visual appearance of tools, materials, books. To observers who are not presently absorbed in this hobby, it looks like a mess. Knitting, for instance, requires not only knitting needles, but scissors, a tape measurer, a crochet hook, a yarn needle, and stitch markers. Loose ends are clipped off and accumulate, together with the unused remains of balls of yarn. Garments in progress have loose strands hanging off of them. Stitch books must sometimes be consulted. (This is not just my problem: producing containers for organizing hobby supplies of all kinds is a major industry.)
An alcove offers a little place to do a hobby that masks the distasteful appearance of mess and allows the hobbyist to be together with others without annoying them. If they all sat in one big room around a big table, the mess would distract and irritate. Multiple hobbyists’ incompatible messes might even flood together into a supermess, and swallow everyone.
Clothing in general, and costumes of particular social roles (business suits, priest collars), are like alcoves for our bodies. We take them with us and can interact with others safely within social orders, without getting distracted by the intimate order of the body.
Orders of Strands
What is likely to be a mess? I think one of the most common messes is your hair. We should be suspicious of our hair for several reasons: first, humans grow the longest hair of any mammal. Second, no other mammal has our hair pattern of unlimited-length head hair growth and limited-length body hair growth. Third, Donald E. Brown included “hairstyles” on the list of human universals.
Long strands, whether curly or straight, are difficult to keep organized. Thread is wound on a spool; rope is looped; electronic cables are intricately braided; yarn is organized in skeins and balls; hair is brushed, braided, waxed, shaved, dreaded, wrapped around hair donuts, trimmed, dyed, and pinned up.
Incidentally, another of Brown’s human universals is the production and use of string, yarn, or a tying material. Humans quickly became virtuosos at organizing fibers.
Hair is “a mess” if it has not been ordered according to the standards of one’s culture and situation. To have hair is to have a black hole of ordering effort: merely existing (sleeping, running, wearing a hat, going outside, etc.) disrupts the order of hair. The quality of being “a mess” is perhaps more perceptible in hair that has been carefully pinned up into a complicated style and slept in, than in hair that is merely unstyled and unbrushed. The tattered remains of a hairstyle imply an order incompatible with having hairs sticking out everywhere and being kind of smushed on one side. Merely unbrushed hair only suggests the alternate order of brushed hair.
Human hair, then, is a locus for the display of order. Its “natural” state is mess, implying that hair comes with an order deficit, requiring organizational effort to come up to the level of acceptable human. Our minds and personalities are similar.
The Order of Clouds
Alan Watts said that there is a way to turn any mess into not-mess: add symmetry. The example he gives is a kaleidoscope, in which a mess of incompatible things is turned into a shifting geometric pattern.
The kaleidoscope, transformer of messes, adds a particular kind of symmetry. It is not mere bilateral symmetry; Rorschach blots can still be messes. The kaleidoscope produces what Christopher Alexander calls local symmetries: the property of being composed of many overlapping sub-pieces that display symmetry. Watts says that clouds are not symmetrical, and they are not, precisely, but in their forms we can often detect local symmetries (particularly in stratoculumulus clouds).
Here is the earlier picture of basement clutter transformed with a kaleidoscope filter:
This no longer looks like mess. Shape and form at different levels of scale pop out. Deformed, fragmented, and reflected upon themselves, the components of the mess no longer conflict with each other as much. Conceptually, they are masked; whatever they were, whatever reality they implied, is lost in the new order of geometric forms.
“Local symmetries” is the most objective of Christopher Alexander’s Fifteen Fundamental Properties, described in The Nature of Order (see my The Quality Without a Name at the Betsy Ross Museum” and The Fifteen Fundamental Properties). “Alternating repetition” is also a rather objective property, and the kaleidoscope imposes that too (see the alternating arms). In this image, strong centers (perceptible, thing-ish subsets) are formed and support each other. The arms form thick borders.
The kaleidoscope transforms mess into non-mess by viewing the mess through a (literal) lens of many of the Fifteen Fundamental Properties. It imposes an organization so strong that it cancels out the whining from whatever garbage or mess you put into it. These are the properties that are found throughout Nature, as well as in beautiful architecture and objects – beautiful not in the sense that they are striking, but in the sense that they produce a sense of inner calm and the ability to recognize one’s self in them.
Are there truly no messes in Nature? That it “never makes an aesthetic mistake”? On short time scales, at least, there seem to be natural messes. When a tornado destroyed most of Cathedral Pines in Connecticut, the result looked to residents like a mess. People even cleaned it up, removing fallen trees from the newly-bare ground. The perception of the flattened forest, with trees scattered and dead, conflicted with the remembered order, the ideal, ordinary forest with trees mostly alive and pointing up. An enormous force disrupted the everyday order of the forest; this order repairs itself, but only slowly.
The underlying natural order of clouds and stars, Alan Watts says, is difficult to describe. It is a special order formed of many regular mathematical laws operating on an irregular world. Life exploits mathematical elegance, while making local adjustments everywhere according to the systems it interacts with – wind, water, sun, other life. The Fifteen Fundamental Properties are an attempt to describe, if not explain, the order of nature, which somehow never seems like a mess.
Clouds are an image of the interaction between air currents, water, and geography. Each element is a reflection of the others. Animals and plants are reflections of their environments, which change to become reflections of them. Being constantly rebuilt by independent entities and forces at all scales of time and space, constrained by each other, is how the order of nature never looks like a mess (except during tornado season).
An irregular world struggling to be regular always achieves a certain level of regularity which is interrupted by unusual configurations created by the very forces that produce the regularity as they act against a framework of three-dimensional constraints inherent in space.
Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order Vol. 1, p. 279
The properties predict several things about mess. A building or object that displays these properties is likely to retain them as it decays (see the mossy stone ruin), whereas things lacking the properties are likely to decay into mess. And a mess will be more pleasant if it is ordered by the fundamental properties. Alexander gives the example of a typical car repair shop: it appears rugged and even grimy, but it has the kind of “‘messy’ order that has been created by the real everyday needs of the people who work there.” He contrasts this with the superficially orderly, but shallow and sterile, storefront of a restaurant (id. at p. 337).
Just as the bowerbird has some kind of cognitive access to the imaginary way a bower should look, we seem to have access to a mental order hinted at by the fifteen fundamental properties, intuitively if not consciously.
Imaginary Orders
A great deal of our reality is made from imaginary orders we carry around in our heads. We use these imaginary orders to rebuild, navigate, and judge our world. A mess is a visceral clue to the existence of these invisible orders.
Perhaps we can braid some threads.
A mess is a juxtaposition of components, one or more of which implies an order that conflicts with the orders implied by the other components. In other words, two or more components create incompatible mental projections.
A joke (or humor in general) is the surreptitious introduction of a mental projection that is later shown to be mistaken. Incompatible mental projections quickly switch places in time. (See On Some Possibilities for Life as a Joke.)
A self is constructed from first-person experience and from mental projections of how others see oneself; these are often in conflict. (See The Essence of Peopling.)
A story or narrative is a mental projection of characters and events embedded in a particular causal logic. Listening to a story seems passive, but in order to process the narrative, the listener must construct a coherent mental world out of the details provided. Unconscious predictions are made, and then winnowed and changes as more evidence is presented and conflicts resolved. The experience bears a strong resemblance to the game, says Nick Lowe (in The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative, text from which is mangled with logos in an image above):
I would suggest that these homologies between the two different kinds of model universe [game and narrative] may be more than coincidental: that narrative universes and games are different cultural artifacts of a common underlying cognitive apparatus, originally evolved to interpret real-world experience to an intelligible system of mental representations.
As human beings, “projecting and sharing stylized model worlds in mental space” is both our ancestral job and our favorite hobby. The world that we interact in is mostly imaginary, constructed by all of us out of fantasies and guesses. As we get more intelligent, we will get more imaginary. |
Good news, Ravens fans: It looks like 2018 is the year for everything purple.
Pantone announced its Color of the Year on Thursday, and it’s Ravens purple.
OK, so it’s really called “ultra violet,” but it sure looks like the home team’s colors. Pantone says, “Ultra Violet communicates originality, ingenuity and visionary thinking that points us toward the future” — all things the Ravens will need as they continue the hunt for a spot in the playoffs (and face their archrivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers, on Sunday night).
The color of the year, according to a Pantone representative, means “more than ‘what’s trending’ in the world of a design; it’s truly a reflection of what’s needed in our world today.” Hopefully for Baltimore, the world needs more of the Ravens in January.
And at the very least, Ravens fans will be on trend with their gear and accessories. |
The Boston Celtics have taken their fans on a surreal roller coaster ride of emotions this season, one filled with exhilarating highs often followed by head-scratching lows.
But through it all, Kyrie Irving more than any other Celtics player believes when the time comes and the games are upgraded in value significantly - better known as the playoffs - he has shown no doubts that Boston will be ready, willing and capable of getting to the NBA Finals.
"In the playoffs, when we can plan for a team, prepare for a team, I still don’t see anybody beating us in seven games,” Irving recently told reporters.
So, they can just flip a switch like that, huh?
Irving’s confidence in the Celtics being able to get to the Finals stems from Boston’s success against the Eastern Conference's top-shelf squads this season.
Against the top four teams in the East (Milwaukee, Toronto, Indiana and Philadelphia), the Celtics are an impressive 7-4.
They hope to continue along those lines tonight when they travel up North to take on the Toronto Raptors.
MORE CELTICS
This will be the fourth and final matchup between these two during the regular season series which Boston leads 2-1.
If Boston wins tonight, they will take the head-to-head series which could come into play if the two finish with an identical record.
While Irving’s confidence in being able to right the ship in time for the playoffs makes sense for him, it’s not going to be quite as easy for his teammates.
Even with last season’s success in the playoffs, folks forget one of the keys to how Boston performed in the postseason a year ago entered around them finishing out the regular season strong, winning in eight of their last 12 games.
And that success, that confidence spilled over into the postseason with a number of Celtics players getting their first shot at playing a pivotal role in the team’s postseason aspirations which ended with a trip to the Eastern Conference finals losing to Cleveland in seven games.
Irving wasn’t available at that time, missing the team’s entire postseason run as he recovered from a surgical procedure to removed infected screws in his left knee that were put in place following a left kneecap injury in 2015.
All of the Celtics recognize the playoffs are indeed around the corner, but the focus has to be on the moment at hand - facing the Toronto Raptors.
Because if this team will successfully turn it on during the playoffs, they have to start building towards that now.
That doesn’t mean they have to go on some sort of torrid tear per se. But they do have to start playing better to develop the kind of good habits you absolutely have to have in order to have any kind of legitimate shot at postseason success.
Last year’s team dealt with key losses both at the start (Gordon Hayward) and at the end (Irving) of the season.
But in between that period of time, we knew a couple things about that team.
They would play to the final horn, regardless of how deep a ditch they had to climb out of in order to have a shot at winning.
And when games were close, they were clutch - and it wasn’t just Irving delivering the goods, either.
This season the Celtics are 3-5 in games decided by three points or less.
Last year?
They were 11-8 with the 11 wins tied with Indiana for the most wins in the league by three points or less.
Winning close games. Playing tough defense.
Those were the two defining qualities of last season’s Celtics team, a team that by and large looks almost identical to the team on the floor now in terms of personnel.
MORE FROM A. SHERROD BLAKELY
But when it comes to this team’s identity … they have not played anywhere close to the consistency of last season’s squad which is why their identity on so many levels is radically different now.
Instead of playing solid defense night-in and night-out, that solid defense has been sporadic.
And the ability to win close games hasn’t been a strength of this team, with the latest blown opportunity coming at Milwaukee last week when they rallied to lead late in the fourth quarter but failed to come up with a necessary defensive stop in order to fully swing the game’s momentum in their favor.
Which brings us back to flipping the switch when the playoffs arrive.
No one questions whether the Celtics have enough talent to do so.
They have proven themselves repeatedly that when they face the best, that’s when they are at their best.
But the playoffs require that mindset and that ability to be on a certain level of consistency, something this Celtics team has shown very little of with any kind of regularity which is why the idea that this team can just turn it on for the playoffs is hard to see coming to fruition.
Click here to download the new MyTeams App by NBC Sports! Receive comprehensive coverage of your teams and stream the Celtics easily on your device. |
The battle over the compound fructose now reaches new levels of obfuscation. The food industry is a strong – and loud, and rich – proponent, hard to ignore. The European Food and Safety Agency has just weighed in, in favour of the substitution of sucrose (table sugar: a disaccharide composed of the monosaccharides glucose and fructose) with fructose alone, the sweeter of the two – even to the point of allowing health claims for fructose on the packaging of processed foods.
And yet the scientific data on fructose says it is one of the most egregious components of the western diet, directly contributing to heart disease and diabetes, and associated with cancer and dementia. Nature magazine has just published a scathing indictment of fructose by Dr Lewis Cantley, one of the US's leading cancer researchers. But the EFSA says it sees no harm, justifying its stance on the basis that fructose has a lower glycaemic index than glucose.
The concept of glycaemic index is simple. This is how high your blood glucose rises after ingesting 50 grams of carbohydrate in any specific food, which is a measure of a food's generation of an insulin response, and is used as a way of showing a food's potential for weight gain. Glycaemic index is a proxy for how high your insulin level will rise, which determines whether that blood glucose will get shunted to fat cells for storage. Low-glycaemic-index diets promote blood sugar stability and are associated with weight loss. But the EFSA has missed the point. Glycaemic index is not the issue.
Glycaemic load is where it's at. This takes into account how much of a given food one must eat to obtain 50 grams of carbohydrate. The perfect example is carrots. Carrots have a high glycaemic index – if you consume 50 grams of carbohydrate in carrots, your blood sugar will rise pretty high. But you would have to eat 1.3lbs – 600 grams – of carrots to get 50 grams of carbohydrate. Highly unlikely. Any high-glycaemic-index food can become a low-glycaemic-load food if it's eaten with its inherent fibre. That means "real food". But fructose is made in a lab. It's anything but "real".
Yes, fructose has a low glycaemic index of 19, because it doesn't increase blood glucose. It's fructose, for goodness sake. It increases blood fructose, which is way worse. Fructose causes seven times as much cell damage as does glucose, because it binds to cellular proteins seven times faster; and it releases 100 times the number of oxygen radicals (such as hydrogen peroxide, which kills everything in sight). Indeed, a 20oz soda results in a serum fructose concentration of six micromolar, enough to do major arterial and pancreatic damage. Glycaemic index is a canard; and fructose makes it so. Because fructose's poisonous effects have nothing to do with glycaemic index; they are beyond glycaemic index.
The food industry is fond of referring to a 1999 study showing that liver fat generation from oral fructose occurs at a very low rate (less than 5%). And that's true, if you're thin, insulin sensitive, fasting (and therefore glycogen-depleted), and given just fructose alone (which is poorly absorbed). Conversely, if you're obese, insulin resistant, well fed, and getting both fructose and glucose together (like a sizable percentage of the population), then fructose gets converted to fat at a much higher rate, approximating 30%. In other words, the toxicity of fructose depends on context.
The industry points to meta-analyses of controlled isocaloric "fructose for glucose" exchange studies that demonstrate no effect from fructose on weight gain or other morbidities. Perhaps one reason for this is because crystalline fructose is incompletely absorbed. When that happens, residual fructose in the gastrointestinal system causes pain, bloating, and diarrhoea: ask any child the morning after Halloween in between trips to the bathroom relieving his diarrhoea. Furthermore, those meta-analyses where fructose was supplied in excess do show weight gain, high levels of lipids in the blood, and insulin resistance. The dose determines the poison.
The EFSA has boosted the position of the sugar industry, either through incompetence or collusion. But it is clear that this recommendation is scientifically bogus. Nutritional policy should be based on science – not pseudoscience, as we have seen over the past 30 years. |
Here, too, the most interesting moment in the video isn’t the rant; it comes when an aghast patron intervenes. “Do not talk to other people that way,” he says. The two then discuss whether they should “step outside” and settle things, before the Trumpeter leaves the shop grumbling about the “absolutely ridiculous” experience. (He has since apologized for his behavior, but still maintains that he was discriminated against.)
The Delta video was perhaps the most bizarre of these three instantly famous incidents—and the reaction it captures is also telling. The man on video appears to be exhorting a plane full of people to share his enthusiasm about the president-elect, clapping his hands over and over while shouting “Donald Trump, baby! ... Come on, baby! Trump!” Greeted by utter silence, he then demands to know, somewhat defensively, whether “We got some Hillary bitches on here?” (which might have been what got him banned from the airline for life).
So, yes, these people were acting entitled. In two of the cases, they were engaged in racial harassment. And sure, they’re all displaying petulant and pathetic assertions of white privilege. But they’re also full of what the scholar and author Robin DiAngelo calls “white fragility”—“a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.”
Anti-racist activist Tim Wise says these episodes demonstrate, as much as anything else, how recent years have created “a perfect storm of white anxiety” in the United States: There was the economic crisis, followed by the election of the first black president—and a nagging anxiety about the fast-approaching end of majority-whiteness in America. And then, of course, along came Trump, who Wise describes as “much more the bullhorn than the dog whistle” with his racial appeal. The president-elect has mainstreamed expressions of bigotry, allowing for greater expression of a new white identity politics—even among Americans who don’t support Richard Spencer-style white nationalism.
The good news in these videos, to the extent that there is any, is that both their content and their spread on social media suggests that other white people aren’t going to be, to use a Wise phrase, “silent partners” for assertions of white nationalism and privilege. Jessie Grady’s decision to capture the episode in Michaels—and to immediately rally to the aid of black store employees, along with several other customers—was a prime example of what racial-justice activists call “white allyship.” (Grady also raised more than $22,000 on GoFundMe for the store manager.)
Wise said he’s seen more white anti-racist activists in recent years than he has for many decades—and Trumpism has undoubtedly helped them find their voices, too. In a strange way, these disturbing viral videos can be a gift, showing Americans who we really are—both bad and good. They’re also an challenge to be our best selves, to act in such situations the way we’d hope to be seen on camera. |
Healthwise
Columnist Larry R. Miller (Photo: Courtesy Photo)
When the neural pathways in the brain became stronger, deeper ruts, we began to think, feel, act, and believe in automatic ways. When that's the case we begin to operate more and more within the boundaries of those ruts in your brain. Then we begin to feel, think, behave, respond and believe that we can’t change or that changing would be very difficult. You know those thoughts that course through your mind “Well, that’s the way I am. That’s who I am.” Once we believe that, we begin to look for more ways to solidify our convictions that we’re right about whatever we believe is true and that change isn’t possible.
Anything you repeat over and over whether it's mind talk, something you practice or are repeatedly exposed to, the effects are the same, it causes a change in your brain. More neural pathways are made available for doing, thinking, believing, feeling or being “it”. The result is a new neural pathway is created for it.
In the early days of brain plasticity research, monkeys were trained to push a lever over and over for many days. When the brains of the monkeys were looked at, researchers found that lots of neurons had been dedicated to lever-pushing.
Most of our lives are spent in the beta brain wave state. The beta wave represents excitement of the cortex to a higher state of alertness and tension. This is a good place to be some of the time but not all the time. The alpha, theta, delta, and gamma brain waves are more resourceful brain wave patterns and meditation can help you become better at creating them.
These brain wave states are involved in the most fundamental human ability-awareness. When you're in those states, you’re not just creating new neural pathways, new ruts, you’re creating super-awareness. Awareness, super awareness in particular, creates choice and when you're able to create choices, you can choose what you want to experience in life.
Repeated meditation or other ways to enter these brain wave states allows for a is a huge increase in awareness, which allows you to see that you have choices about, and the ability to change, your automatic responses. And, as a result, you can choose to step out of the ruts that no longer are beneficial. Once these new patterns become the established norm, you’ll naturally choose to do, feel, think and be what's best for you to reach the goals you have set for yourself.
Eric Kandel, the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Medicine, discovered that when an animal learns something over a period of several hours, that learning process causes signals to be transmitted into the DNA of the nerve cells.
Those signals, Kandel found, turn certain genes on and other genes off. He proved that you can repeat a thought or action over and over, or create slower, more coherent brain waves day after day through meditation, and some of your genes are turned on to make new proteins inside your brain cells.
This genetic change alters the structure of that cell and changes the number of connections that cell has with other cells in your brain which leads to more awareness, more resourceful ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and being that are more beneficial and have the ability to slow the aging process.
Kandel also showed, contrary to what had long been believed, that even our genes can change. Not only can our brains change, we can also change the genes we inherited or the personal characteristics we've created in those genes and consequently lessen, or eliminate totally, our beliefs about genetic predisposition.
Kandel's research proved that our thinking, behavior and the way we stimulate our brain can actually influence the aspect of the gene that causes it to turn on or off certain proteins, proteins that influence our level of awareness, what we believe is possible, our emotional reactions and how much motivation, creativity and happiness we have.
Larry R. Miller has been a freelance writer since 1982 on health, fitness and, more recently, anti-aging.
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Famous Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, who is credited as the author of the famous war strategy guidebook Art of War had said; “know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.”
Those words were from the 5th century BC. The ‘art of war’ in the 21st century is drastically different. So much so that Christopher Coker, professor at the London School of Economics and author of Warrior Geeks in a 2013 piece declared that technology, in fact, is now making man the weakest link in warfare.
India is also now looking to get into the world of advanced drone warfare. New Delhi has shown renewed interest in buying some of the top US-made drones currently proving their worth for the American military around the world. As border management for India remains a critical challenge, not just with Pakistan but China as well, drones with capabilities of surveillance and strike operations would be a boon for the Indian armed forces.
Technological advancements over the past two centuries have largely taken place as by-products of military solutions to make warfare smarter, more accurate and more lethal. An aircraft is capable of taking you from Delhi to Rio de Janeiro within a few hours in utmost comfort and safety today, and the same technology is also used to drop bombs in war zones. Nuclear technology is used today for both mass destruction of humankind via its weaponisation and mass development of humankind via its immense potential for providing clean energy to millions of people.
War, after all, is widely considered as a human condition by philosophers and scholars, a view that has upheld over the evolution of mankind. But humans being an integral part of conflict throughout history is now being challenged, something perhaps not many would have envisaged. Automation in warfare by machines is now being driven by the advent of Artificial Intelligence or AI. Machines in battlefields are being prepared to think for themselves and decide who is a target and who is not.
Drone warfare is one of the big success stories of machines taking over the more dangerous tasks in a battlefield while the pilots are brought into a strange dystopian-utopian world of killing people from behind an office desk that is inside a military base thousands of miles away. Drones today are seen as the ace of spades in military arsenals, specifically with the United States, which has used them for targeted killings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and now even Pakistan with immense success.
Most of America’s drone program, which is spread out over military bases around the world, actually takes place from the parched state of Nevada, which is home to the Nellis and Creech Air Force bases, just outside the glitz and glam of Las Vegas. From here, a drone pilot can operate his machine remotely sitting in his living room if he wants. This is an awkward phase in air warfare at least, where the rush of flying a fighter plane into a war zone for pilots is slowly turning into an unlikely desk job. A modern military drone, such as the famous MQ-1 Predator model, has capabilities of flying non-stop for 18 hours at a height of nearly 30,000 ft (drones have now also successfully completed mid-air refuel trials, meaning in the near future they can be kept in the air indefinitely). It can keep circling a target over enemy territory and perform pinpoint surveillance, including high-definition video, audio, still photography and even heat-sensor based videography. This means that if you are sitting inside your home having a hot meal, the drone’s sensors can catch the heat from your food and body to get your exact location. The aircraft can do all this in a hostile environment while not endangering a pilot’s life and as a machine costing a fraction of the price compared to a conventional fighter jet manned by a human crew.
American drone pilots have known to struggle with moral and ethical dilemmas with this new job of killing people remotely and then going back home and trying to lead normal lives. The recent Hollywood film Eye In The Sky touched on this very subject, bringing this aspect of modern warfare to public eye.
Artificial Intelligence’s infusion with drone warfare could wipe out these dilemmas. Machines don’t have a conscience, ethics or morals and neither do algorithms.
Governments and developers have now started thinking much beyond such basic automation in warfare. The advent of AI is now taking ideas of drones in a war zone to a more futuristic, questionable and, perhaps, worrying place. Programmes are now being developed to integrate AI with drones. To make it simpler, work is taking place to make it possible for drones to decide their targets themselves, in effect removing human interference (not to be confused with removing human oversight).
According to a June 2016 article from the University of Cincinnati (UC), a recent simulation conducted at the university in a man vs machine situation saw the AI machine win simulated aerial combat exercises against experienced US pilots. But this is automation at an operation level, a direct challenge to the limitations of the human brain and attempts to breach the envelop of its capacities. The more worrying prospects, as mentioned above, is developing abilities for machines to think for themselves, specifically in a war zone. More importantly, the UC project has achieved this feat of defeating human pilots in combat simulation using the processing power of a tiny computer called Raspberry Pi which is available for as little as $35 in the market.
Lethal Automated Weapons Systems (LAWS) are being funded world over on an advanced level now. However, the intent is clear— to make machines plug the gaps of human thinking, physical endurance and so on. Experts have said that ‘self-thinking’ war machines are going to be a reality not in a matter of decades, but years. In fact, many of them are already in operation, as PW Singer, former Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution explains so well in his paper titled ‘Robots at War’. Currently, international law requires human intervention in engaging targets during wartime and, perhaps, this is the only major reason that is keeping full-automation of drones at an arm’s distance.
The technology exists and work is being conducted. For example, the joint Anglo-French drone program called Taranis is being developed as a futuristic evolution of drones, to be battle-ready by 2030. But the program’s manager Clive Morrison has said that they were working on the presumption that capabilities of autonomous strikes might be needed in the future. This is a strong indication that it is indeed only international laws keeping automation in targeting away from drones at the moment and that the technology is perhaps near fructification for drones to make their own decisions on who to take out or what to strike today itself.
Influential scientists and entrepreneurs such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk of Tesla and Space X fame have called for more robust debates on how AI is going to be incorporated into humanity as a beneficial force and not a destructive one. Hawking, in 2014, had warned that development of AI could “spell the end of human race”. While perhaps Hawking’s is a quite an alarmist proposition over the future of AI, there is no doubt that the exit of human conscience, ethics and intuition from war machines in the future, which today is being protected by the international legal framework, is a possibility with grave consequences for mankind in a world already fraught with so many fault lines. |
The U.S. Federal Reserve made history Wednesday when it raised its key interest rate by 0.25%.
It's a big moment for the U.S. economy. Here's what you need to know.
1. It's the first rate hike in nearly 10 years: This is the Fed's first rate increase since June 2006. Back then, the economy was hot: Unemployment was at 4.4%, and the housing bubble was about to burst. The Fed tried to cool it down by raising rates.
2. It's a good sign for the economy: The rate increase is a signal that the U.S. central bank is confident about the strength of the economy and its ability to handle higher borrowing costs. It also shows how far the economy has come since the Great Recession ended in 2009, when unemployment hit 10%. Now it's at 5%.
3. Interest rates are coming off zero: The Fed put rates near zero in December 2008 to boost the economy and stimulate the collapsed housing market. Rates haven't budged since then.
Related: Wall Street celebrates historic rate hike
4. The Fed wants to raise rates slowly: The Fed increased its target rate from near zero to 0.25%. That's a very small move. The Fed also said it expects to continue to raise rates at a slow, gradual pace next year.
5. Savers will finally make a little money: If you put money in your savings account, you will slowly start to earn interest over the next couple years as rates start climbing higher. Savers haven't earned any interest since 2008.
6. Higher rates are usually bad for stocks: But not always. When the Fed last raised rates between 2004 and 2006, the S&P 500 actually gained 15%. But higher rates increase how much it costs companies to borrow. And that can the economy to slow, which is not what stock markets want. On Wednesday, U.S. stocks went higher after the rate hike was announced.
7. Home buyers, now's the time to pay attention: Mortgage rates won't skyrocket overnight but they are expected to start climbing. A typical rate on a 30-year mortgage is 3.9%. That's very low. In 2006, mortgage rates were above 6%.
Related: Finally! Fed raises interest rates
8. Higher rates will make the dollar stronger. A strong dollar is a nice perk for U.S. travelers but it's not good for American businesses, such as Apple (AAPL) and Nike (NKE), that sell their products abroad. A strong dollar makes American products more expensive -- and less attractive -- to foreign shoppers.
9. The Fed doesn't want to be late. The Fed doesn't want to hurt U.S. trade. Interest rates often take a few months to really have an impact on the economy. If it waited much longer, it runs the risk of an overheated economy.
10. Almost everyone had expected a rate hike: Over 80% of traders expected the Fed to raise rates, according to a CME Group analysis.
11. The Fed's historic move was led by Janet Yellen. Fed Chair Ben Bernanke led the central bank during the last rate hike in 2006. Now his hand-picked successor, Janet Yellen, is the one in charge. She's the first woman to be Fed chair in the bank's 112-year history. |
In 1996, Kielhurn was arrested after she was found with 25kilos of cocaine,
A Florida woman has been arrested after hitting her lesbian partner in the face with a dildo.
Annette Kielhurn of St. Petersburg was in the presence of a police officer when during an argument with Gamze Capaner-Ridley she pulled out the sex toy and slapped her in the face.
This arrest comes almost 20 years after Kielhurn was sent to prison for three years after being found passed out and drunk in a car that contained 25kilos of cocaine in the backseat - which had a street value of $2.5million.
Annette Kielhurn (above, right in mugshot from June arrest for trespassing) of St. Petersburg, Florida was charged with domestic battery on Saturday after she hit her partner in the face with a dildo
The Smoking Gun obtained a copy of the police report which says that Capaner-Ridley, 57, had filed for a civil domestic violence injunction on Friday, and on Saturday an officer accompanied her as she removed some personal belongings.
Things started to get heated between the women when Kielhurn, 57, objected to a dress that Capaner-Ridley planned to take with her.
That is when, according to the police report, 'the defendant intentionally shoved a dildo in the victim’s face and grabbed her right arm while arguing whose it belonged to.'
At that point, Kielhurn was arrested and charged with domestic battery.
It was also noted that Capaner-Ridley had asked the defendant several times not to touch her.
Kielhurn was booked on a misdemeanor and released on $500 bail.
She also has a court case pending after she was arrested for trespassing last month.
Kielhurn is a former New York State corrections officer who also owned a cleaning company in Long Island before being arrested in 1996.
She was in North Carolina when an officer found her passed out and drunk in the driver's seat of her rental car.
The officer asked to search her vehicle and she agreed, at which point a suitcase was discovered in the trunk with a large quantity of cocaine.
A breathalyzer administered by the officer registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.18 percent. |
Earlier in the week, many scoffed at the stereotype-confirming 30% of Republicans than supported the bombing of Agrabah - the fictional city from the Disney movie Aladdin. Now, according to WPAResearch, a new poll shows a stunning 66% of young Democrats are especially eager to take in the imaginary refugees.
As WPAResearch reports,
Public Policy Polling, which is known for adding questions in surveys to exploit Republicans who are less informed, recently found that 30% of Republican voters would support bombing Agrabah, a fictional country in the Disney film Aladdin.
On December 20, 2015, WPA Research fielded a national survey of 1,132 registered voters that found 44% of Democrats would support taking refugees from that same Agrabah.
Would you support or oppose allowing refugees from Agrabah to be re-settled in the United States?
PPP may have proven that some Republicans will support bombing a fictional country, but fully 44% of Democrats will allow refugees from anywhere into the country, whether they are potential ISIS supporters from Syria or potential cartoon characters on a magic carpet ride.
Additionally, 'Young' Democrats aged 18-34, a key constituency of President Obama, are especially eager to take in imaginary refugees.
So, nearly two-thirds of these voters support accepting refugees from Agrabah. This seems particularly suprising given this generation grew up watching Disney films such as Aladdin. |
UNHOLY TRINITY: MONSANTO, BIG PHARMACY, NEW WORLD ORDER
By Dr. Laurie Roth
July 20, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
Goal – De population
Pharmaceutical companies will control and make you dependent on their medicine of choice. Monsanto will engineer seeds and control food supplies. Obama, the U.N. and his new world order handlers will manage and control it all.
Long before Obama’s tyrannical and controlling rule on America we were viewed as cattle to be forced into shuts to either brand or slaughter. Underneath our noses and beyond most people’s understanding, food, medicine, property rights and even the length of our life span has been assaulted, designed and planned.
You thought all this time you had the right to live, breath, grow food and function as you felt lead??? Aren’t you a precious little cow? Obama, Monsanto and the New World order crowd believe they have that right to control you, not you. You are simply in the way other than being trained and pushed around as a good little ‘surf’ that creates income for the elite international power brokers.
Who is Monsanto and what are they doing?
Monsanto is a huge international GMO who plans to control and IS controlling more and more of the international food supply. They aren’t just a little start up research group studying food supply. They are in 60 countries, have over 14,000 employees and have revenues of $6 billion. They have invested over 500 million in one of their destructive schemes – genomics and biotechnology. I call it what it is – ‘depopulation’ hiding behind ‘Mother Theresa’ goals.
Monsanto is quite famous for the release of the ‘Terminator Seed’ which renders a seed as a controlled and neutered item that can only produce a crop one time. Farmers and growers cannot use and re-use seeds as they have historically done for thousands of years. Monsanto has made sure that their Terminator Seed is good for one crop only. Thus, the farmer is forced to come back to them and get more seeds that ‘hark’ Monsanto controls. Now growers are dependent on Frankenstein’s laboratory.
Where do they hide and do they have real influence?
One whistle blower using an assumed name ‘Miguel’ talked of Monsanto’s domination in our colleges and universities. He also said that after watching them and working with them for 25 years it was most clear that their care for the safety and welfare of people and health is seriously in question. Monsanto has been accused numerous times of fraud, threats to health, accused of ecological disasters and false evidence.
Some say that ‘genetically modified food’ is the harbinger of saving a hungry humanity. Monsanto talks a good game on the surface, food protection, stopping world hunger and viruses but it appears more and more that their goal is just the opposite. Control the world food supply, and depopulate parts of the world by creating massive illness and death, dependency on them for modified seeds. They will have the increasing power to turn the ‘modified’ spicket on and off -- create diseases at will and get rid of unwanted populations. Obama and the U.N. must be thrilled…and you thought abortion was the big de population weapon.
With most of the world standing against Monsanto’s terminator technology, they are verbally distancing themselves from it but in truth pushing and funding it worldwide. It is a known fact that poor farmers feed up to 1.4 billion people a year. If they cannot afford to buy seed after the first year, millions if not billions will die from starvation.
Big pharmacy
The bottom line is that pharmaceutical corporations control billions of dollars, influence research and what competition is allowed in the drug world. They also need people sick and dependent on dangerous and expensive drugs.
There has long been a systematic attack on the natural health movement, products and people who support health and keep you healthy. Big pharmacy needs to keep making money from our dependency on their drugs and an ill population. They have evolved to a version of the Gambino crime family. Who cares about getting people well and off medication?
“In medicine, we see the dominating power of big pharmaceutical corporations, spending millions to court doctors, influence research, (all once deemed unethical) all the while expanding the mechanistic model of the human body. Corporate support of medical schools seems to be turning physicians into sales representatives, winning trips for pushing one drug over another – James Redfield”
How many times have we heard of the FDA threatening and shutting down perfectly safe and fine milk and cheese farms, hiding behind contrived and extremely controlling regulations? Threats are made, fines are issued, guns are drawn, and farms and businesses are shut down, many times perfectly good animals slaughtered. The American people do precious little to stop these endless assaults on our liberty and health. We are becoming good little serfs just as Pharmacy, Monsanto and the New World Order has planned.
Healing Hero and miracle of the Day – MDS Forte
Recently I had the honor and thrill of interviewing Dr. Alberto Ruiz who has devoted his life to helping people get healthy. He reminded me in our interview that rates of cancer have increased from 1 out of 20 to 1 in 3 now. It appears more and more that we are being poisoned and killer diseases are now flourishing.
Ruiz discovered through much painstaking research a natural, safe and organic product from the rain forests in Guatemala that he calls the ‘rain forest miracle.’ He found miraculous even unbelievable healing responses with MDS Forte. Naturally, most of you haven’t heard about it because it heals people and reverses blood sugar to normal if you are Diabetic. It also returns cholesterol levels to normal and activates your glucose control mechanism to start working again. I’m surprised the FDA, Obama and Pharmacy crowd haven’t identified him as a terrorist by now since he is taking away from Pharmacy income and seeing so many get well.
What does Dr. Ruiz MDS Forte do? Check it out and make up your own mind (and no he didn’t pay me to say this). Here are a few morsels I know about this product. It is changing the world of diabetics by putting blood sugar back to normal within the first month. It reactivates your own insulin so your glucose control mechanism starts working again, balances cholesterol levels, achieves healthy triglycerides and is known for banishing unwanted fat and adding lean muscle by destroying food and sugar cravings.
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Imagine using affordable, safe and natural products instead of expensive medication. Imagine normal cholesterol levels and normal blood sugar levels again. Check out for yourself and start getting dramatically better instead of feeding and medicating your illness. Go to www.bestbloodsupport.com The responses from very real people are more than amazing. Try it for yourself and spread the word.
We must as a nation rise up and protect our right to natural healing, natural foods, our right to grow and buy what we want to. We must stop international corporations like Monsanto from controlling and destroying our food supply by pushing Terminator seed technology and demonizing naturally grown food and health remedies.
Join me in getting our country back. Listen to my national radio show 7-10pm PAC at www.therothshow.com |
Over the last two years, the media has gone wild with accusations at the Trump Family, the most recent of which is that the President’s son Eric moved millions of dollars from St. Jude’s Children Hospital to his own personal business. The First Son denied the rumor and the charity has praised him for raising millions for sick children.
Forbes reported that Eric’s charitable golf outing gave more than $500,000 in payments to the Trump Organization from 2012 to 2014, though there was no itemized list of expenses. Meaning the author who wrote the article could not deduce the cost for individual items like staff, alcohol, travel, food, and/or entertainment which would not have benefitted the Trumps.
“It is unclear from these tax forms how much of those payments went to the Trump Organization,” ABC News admitted.
A pair of anonymous sources with alleged knowledge to the charity event were the backbone of the author’s claim and insisted that it was Donald who demanded the charity be billed for holding events on the Trump golf courses.
Meaning any accusation that Eric, the President, or their company directly profited from the charity is baseless. Once again, the media is using anonymous sources to defame the President’s name and his son’s work to help sick children.
St. Jude’s President and CEO Richard Shadyac Jr. released a statement back in December 2016 praising Eric’s charitable work, which included more than $3.6 million in donations that year.With his help, they raised $16.3 million as of December 31, 2016 as part of his $20 million pledge to the charity.
“We recognize and appreciate that, in addition to this pledge, ETF (Eric Trump Foundation) contributions and fundraising efforts prior to the $20,000,000 pledge have helped to raise collectively over $16.3 million dollars for the children of St. Jude over the last ten years,” Shadyac Jr. said.
According to Eric Trump, his expense ratio was 12.3% between 2007-2015 collectively, meaning he dropped nearly 88% to the bottom line.
The only actual evidence is that Eric Trump has worked to raise tens-of-millions of dollars for sick children. Rumors that he and his family profited from them have not been substantiated and are based on rumors and conspiracy theories.
Latest Videos |
Joey Barton is outspoken but what Rangers need right now are players
IOC president Thomas Bach hid from call of duty instead of going to Rio
Slaven Bilic's West Ham team have it all to prove again this season
Fans have the right to protest - and to boo UEFA, because they deserve it
City have worked their way up only to see UEFA benefit the establishment
Pep Guardiola is doing a wonderful job at Manchester City. Eight matches, eight wins, breaking a record that stretched back to the days when opponents included Gainsborough Trinity, Woolwich Arsenal and Darwen.
He has coached Kevin De Bruyne to the form of his life, Raheem Sterling is going that way, too — and already his ideas feel like revolution, evolution and everything in between.
On the subject of UEFA, however, he would do well to mind his own. This is the City fans' specialist subject and he cannot begin to understand how his supporters feel about Europe's governing body.
Pep Guardiola has told Manchester City fans to forget the past when it comes to UEFA
Of course Guardiola is mystified that the Champions League anthem is booed at the Etihad Stadium. He has lived happily on the right side of the tracks throughout his magnificent career.
As manager of Barcelona and Bayern Munich, his has been a life of UEFA-crafted privilege. They have never been anything other than lovely to him.
Not just on a personal level, either. Guardiola might not actually realise his life has changed now he is with Manchester City, because he remains feted wherever he goes. For UEFA, he will always be the man that thrust Lionel Messi into their world, and gave the Champions League some of its greatest nights and feats.
They adore him, and understandably so. And he loves them back. Why wouldn't he?
They extinguish competition, their wealth helps create one-team leagues, they levy £50million fines on rival upstarts — and if all that doesn't work, they rewrite the co-efficient calculations and adjust the financial share of the market pool to ensure the giants of European football seize a greater share of the revenue generated by English clubs.
Guardiola has only worked at clubs that are in league with UEFA, that work hand in glove to preserve their status in the closed shop of the European elite.
So before telling City's fans to forget the past, he might want to get a glimpse of his future. It is all there, in UEFA's new co-efficient table.
Bayern Munich were ranked second in Europe with 163.035 points, and stay there — but now with 189. Barcelona were ranked third with 159.143 points, and stay there — but with 188. Manchester City had 99.257 points — and now have 84. They fall five places to 16th. And this means more chance of a tougher draw — and less money.
Fans have booed the Champions League anthem after a series of issues in the competition
City have worked their way in from Europe's wilderness: 64th in 2010, 42nd in 2011, 22nd in 2013, 17th in 2015, only to be bumped down the co-efficient table in what they believed to be a breakthrough European season.
That is how UEFA works for the clubs outside the gilded elite. That is why Manchester City's fans protest, and why Guardiola cannot understand.
'They must forget what happened in the past,' Guardiola advised, but the same could be said of him. Forget his past and familiarise himself with some recent history. Talk to more supporters, or to people around the club who have lived through the many hypocrisies, inconsistencies and injustices and would cheerfully boo from the posh seats, if only protocol and their employment contracts would allow.
Talk to them about getting fined £25,000 for coming out less than a minute late, in the same year that Porto were fined £17,000 for fans racially abusing Manchester City players. Talk about who got the money from their £49m financial fair play fine (here's a clue, Pep — you used to manage two of them).
Talk about how CSKA Moscow got hundreds of fans into a match due to be played behind closed doors when City's fans — who had done nothing wrong — were excluded. UEFA would even have charged City for booing the Champions League anthem, had news of their intention not made them appear even more petty and ridiculous.
Guardiola has only worked at clubs that are in league with UEFA, such as Barcelona
Guardiola has no frame of reference for any of this resentment. Neither do the clubs he has managed. The year before he arrived, Bayern Munich played a Champions League final at home. Barcelona are considered to have their feet so firmly under the top table that opposition fans in Spain sneeringly refer to them as Uefalona.
Claims of official bias or referees under instruction to ensure their progress are nonsense, of course — but hardly surprising when so much of UEFA's work benefits only the establishment.
And yes, it is unhelpful that Manchester City's fans do not embrace Europe, and that the ground often does not sell out on Champions League nights. Seeing the joy the travelling Leicester fans got from last week's visit to Bruges shows how positive the tournament can be for new arrivals.
Some City fans feel the same way, too — but that does not alter the rights of others to protest, as long as they then move on.
So cheer the team, get behind the players, wring every last drop of enjoyment from a Guardiola side who have, so far, exceeded even the most ambitious expectations. But boo UEFA; because they deserve it.
You never know, the more Guardiola discovers what it is like to be outside their inner circle, he may even feel inclined to join in one day.
Guardiola has got his Manchester City side playing brilliantly so far in the Premier League
'Everything you did last season, you won't get a thing for it this season, not even a throw-in,' said West Ham manager Slaven Bilic before the new Premier League campaign began. Weren't his players listening?
Duelling rabonas against Watford, three goals down before half-time at West Brom; every man around the opposition box when caught on the break for the fourth.
Who do they think they are? What was so special about finishing seventh? They've got it all to prove this season — and need to start playing like it.
West Ham have it all to prove this season having been beaten by Watford and West Brom
Super Mac had scent for goal
One of my first jobs at Reg Hayters' sports agency off Fleet Street was to ghost-write a book with Malcolm Macdonald called simply, How To Score Goals. I spent several weeks as a guest at his house, and it was good to see in his interview with the Mail last week that he remains as sharp on the subject as ever.
Few strikers were as dedicated as Malcolm. He kept notes on every opponent to further his advantage.
A favourite concerned Phil Thompson, the Liverpool centre half. Malcolm discovered on an England trip that he had an aversion to garlic, so would eat several cloves of it before games with Liverpool and breathe all over him. He thought it bought him three yards of space.
Can you imagine a modern striker doing that? For a start the club nutritionist would go mad.
Malcolm Macdonald showed he remains as sharp as ever in his Sportsmail interview
Bach hides from his call of duty
Walter Scheel, a former president of West Germany, died on August 24 this year, and was laid to rest at a state funeral held on September 7 in Berlin, the day of the Paralympics opening ceremony.
Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, therefore sent his apologies. Marking the passing of a friend had to be his priority. Even so, as the Paralympics did not close until Sunday, this still left a full 11 days for Bach to get over to Rio de Janeiro.
Unfortunately, apologies again, he had another diary clash. September 10 in Zagreb, marking the 25th anniversary of the Croatian Olympic Committee. Bach held a morning meeting with Croatia's president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, before attending a celebration at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Yet that still left eight more days to show his face in Rio. And as a man who racked up £421,000 in expenses in the period 2014 to 2015, one does not imagine Bach is too fearful of flying.
Thomas Bach has been in hiding for much of the time he could have been in Brazil
Maybe he was more concerned about incurring the displeasure of his good friend Vladimir Putin by associating with an organisation that did the right thing over Russia's systemic drug cheats.
Maybe he was unnerved by the reception that awaited him, with another pal, Pat Hickey, president of the Olympic Council of Ireland, currently held in Brazil on suspicion of ticket touting. It now emerges that Hickey contacted Bach requiring 500 tickets for the Olympic men's football final, to be sold by the Olympic Council of Ireland.
Great Britain had no allocation and accepted that, but Hickey appears to have cited great interest among Irish visitors in the meeting between Brazil and Germany — coincidentally the hottest ticket for the entire Olympics.
Hickey had also asked for Ireland's allocation of 38 seats for the opening ceremony to be bumped up by an additional 150.
Pat Hickey, Olympic Council of Ireland president, is being held on suspicion of ticket touting
Brazilian authorities believe he had a deal going with THG, a ticket and hospitality agency run by Ipswich Town owner Marcus Evans.
One would think Bach would be anxious to get to the bottom of this, to expose any hint of corruption within the Olympic movement — or at the very least would be happy to be present in person, to help police with their investigation in any way he could.
Instead, he has as good as been in hiding for much of the time when he could have been in Brazil, showing support and doing his job.
The roll call of creeps at the helm of modern sport is a long one, but it is remarkable how quickly Bach has shot to the top of that list. Where do they all come from? They must be grown on farms.
And while we're at it...
If Joey Barton played the game he talked, he would be the footballer he thinks he is. It is fine to be outspoken, to be the self-appointed speaker of truth in every dressing room he occupies, but what Rangers need right now are players.
Ones that can influence a game, change the narrative with what they do, more than what they say — and few have spoken favourably of Barton's performances in Scotland so far.
Those who have worked with him say he assumes the authority of the manager but without the responsibility or wit to maintain morale. But Rangers have got a manager, Mark Warburton, who told Barton to stay away for a week for the sake of team harmony after the 5-1 defeat by Celtic.
Joey Barton's performances for Rangers have not drawn plaudits and now they need to win
That Rangers couldn't then beat Ross County on Saturday suggests much of Barton's criticism may have been justified — but Warburton does not need a surrogate, or a challenger. He needs players who are capable of winning matches, not critiquing them.
Barton does that or there really is no place for him. Not for the first time, the performance is not worth the cost of the maintenance.
Don't let Putin pull the wool over your eyes
The Fancy Bears hack has done exactly as intended. It has muddied the waters to give the impression that other countries, most notably Great Britain and America, cheat as much as Russia do.
It's nonsense. They don't. No hack has produced evidence of samples being tampered with; of systemic doping programmes; of holes in the wall through which dirty vials disappeared and clean ones appeared.
This is all part of Vladimir Putin's hybrid war with the West. Russia now engages with hacks, with hooligans, with propaganda.
A hack has given an impression that other nations cheat as much as Vladimir Putin's Russia do
Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) are a recognised part of international sport. They are not cheating, but they are controversial because the public are so sick of drug-related corruption that any hint of a banned substance, even one ingested legitimately, makes them suspicious.
The Russian scandal in athletics and other sports has helped create a culture in which nobody is trusted. Laura Trott, a known asthmatic, takes asthma medicine — but suddenly that is made to look nefarious, not logical.
All Russia's hackers required was for one of the icons of the Olympic movement to arouse scepticism — and they have struck gold in Sir Bradley Wiggins. He said British Cycling had a 'no-needles' policy, but that turned out not to be true. Wiggins had been given a therapeutic use exemption by the International Cycling Union to receive injections of a banned drug to treat allergies before three important races.
Laura Trott takes asthma medicine but her reasons are logical as a known asthmatic
Yet we should not be confused. What he did requires explanation but it was not illegal. The use was passed by the cycling authorities, and athletes apply for TUEs all the time.
We can argue that too many are granted, or, at the very least, that their issue should be made public to protect the integrity of sport, even if the individuals' right to privacy would be compromised. But that is a separate argument.
What we cannot fall for is equivalency. The Fancy Bears hack does not put athletes such as Serena Williams, Simone Biles or Chris Froome on a par with the beneficiaries of state-sponsored doping in Russia.
We need to remind ourselves who the good guys are. It's not always us; but it's never them.
FIFA are considering moving the Ballon d'Or ceremony from their home in Zurich to more glamorous locations. The first city being considered is London. |
The street that will lead into Poland's radiant future is dilapidated. Rusty steel mesh protrudes from the concrete, and deep puddles have formed where some of the concrete slabs have sagged into the ground. But such adverse conditions can hardly shake Krzysztof Krzemiski's enthusiasm.
Krzemiski is the mayor of Reda, a small city in northwestern Poland. He maneuvers his gray Volkswagen Passat around the potholes and stops in front of a rickety chain-link fence. Behind it are massive walls from an earlier era, now overgrown with grayish-green vegetation.
It was here, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Gdansk, on Lake Zarnowiec, that Poland's communist regime once poured the foundations for a nuclear power plant. Krzemiski was the head of a work brigade at the time. "It was my first job as an engineer," he says. It was "a nice time, very demanding and challenging."
But it all ended with the fall of communism, when the country's new, democratic leaders halted construction on the plant. "We shut down the site in 1989," says Krzemiski. "A few concrete and steel parts were sold for next to nothing, and the reactor went to Finland."
Now, more than 20 years later, the situation has fundamentally changed. Poland, no longer the dirt-poor supplicant of the post-communist era, has transformed itself into an increasingly influential member of the European Union. The economy is booming, and Poland needs electricity -- a lot of electricity. For that reason, Krzemiski believes that the dream of his youth will become a reality after all, and that a reactor will finally be built on Lake Zarnowiec. "Coal is running out, the wind isn't very strong in Poland and the sun rarely shines," he says. "We need nuclear energy."
Touchy about Criticism
Poland's nuclear dream is practically destined to cause friction with its neighbor to the west. Rarely in the last 1,000 years have Poland and Germany been on such good terms as they are today. But in response to Poland's decision to build nuclear power plants, lawmakers of all political stripes in the state parliaments of the eastern German states of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (both of which border Poland), as well as in the city-state of Berlin, have passed motions appealing to the Poles to follow Germany's lead and do without nuclear energy.
But even in the wake of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, which turned public opinion in Germany massively against atomic power, Warsaw remains undeterred in its determination to develop nuclear energy. "If someone doesn't want to build nuclear power plants, that's their problem," says Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Last week, Economics Minister Waldemar Pawlak told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the decision had already been made. The state-owned energy company PGE is expected to build two reactors, and one of them will most likely be in Mayor Krzemiski's jurisdiction, on Lake Zarnowiec.
The disagreement over nuclear power isn't the only energy dispute that pits Polish producers against German politicians. They are also at odds over shale gas discoveries. Geologists have found enormous natural gas reserves locked into the rock deep underneath the hilly, forested landscapes of Pomerania and Kashubia in northwestern Poland. Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski already envisions his country as the Norway of Eastern Europe.
But, once again, it is primarily German environmentalists who are curbing the euphoria over the natural gas find. Jo Leinen, a member of the European Parliament for the center-left Social Democrats and an environmental expert, is calling for tighter regulation of the special process used to extract the natural gas, known as fracking. The process involves the injection of chemicals into layers of rock, with the risk that the substances could potentially leach into ground water.
As Poland's former ambassador to Germany, Janusz Reiter is adept at gauging the mood in German-Polish relations. He fears that a dispute over nuclear power and shale gas could revive old stereotypes on both sides. "Energy is a highly emotional political issue," he says. "For many German environmentalists, the survival of humanity is at stake."
The Poles, for their part, can be touchy when they feel that someone is trying to tell them what to do -- especially if they are German. They are also worried about the fruits of the painful transformation process, and they are afraid that without nuclear power they will never attain the standard of living Western Europeans take for granted.
'There Is No Way to Avoid Nuclear Energy'
The offices of the nuclear energy division of the Polish Economy Ministry are on Three Crosses Square in Warsaw. Director Zbigniew Kubacki receives SPIEGEL in a drab conference room. The only wall decoration consists of a map showing Poland surrounded by users of nuclear power. The Scandinavians produce nuclear energy, and so do the Baltic countries, the Czechs, the Ukrainians and, for the time being, the Germans. The Slovaks and even the Belarusians plan to build new reactors soon. Only Poland, says Kubacki, is lagging behind once again.
Kubacki points out that the country's energy consumption is growing by 4 percent a year, in parallel with its economy. Brown coal, also known as lignite, currently provides about 90 percent of Poland's energy. "But we have European obligations," says Kubacki. "We have to reduce CO2 emissions and diversify the energy mix."
Of course, Kubacki adds, Warsaw will promote renewable energy, no matter how costly. But green energy sources are not nearly enough to satisfy the country's energy needs. Kubacki insists that Poland will buy state-of-the-art reactors and adhere to the highest safety standards. But he also admits that no one in Poland knows what to do with nuclear waste, which remains radioactive for thousands of years. He also admits that according to surveys, support for nuclear energy among Poles dropped below 50 percent after Fukushima.
Nevertheless, he says, "there is no way to avoid nuclear energy." But even though he puts it diplomatically, Kubacki's message is clear: The Germans should tone down their criticism. After all, as he sees it, one reason they are so well off today is that they have been using nuclear energy for the last 50 years.
On some days, Kubacki receives up to 2,500 protest emails from Germany. Environmental initiatives based in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania provide templates for such correspondence on their websites.
"We take all objections seriously," Kubacki says politely. It sounds more like an accusation.
Height of Audacity
Many Poles fear that despite their tremendous economic successes, the Germans will continue to treat them as backward country bumpkins who are proving to be obstinate on the subject of nuclear energy.
The Poles become especially irate when the Germans and the Russians join forces, as they did almost seven years ago, when Berlin and Moscow agreed to build a natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Poland.
Then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder didn't even feel it was necessary to consult Warsaw. For many Poles, the notion that Germans now want to prevent them from developing their own natural gas reserves is the height of audacity.
Henryk Doering, the mayor of the village of Krokowa north of Gdansk, no longer understands the Germans, even though he normally holds them in high regard. Despite the resistance of local nationalists, he has preserved German inscriptions on the village school building, which date back to the time when the region was part of Germany. "Our German past is part of our history," he says.
But ever since the shale gas was discovered, he has refused to tolerate the objections coming from environmentalists across the border. The state-owned gas company has already done two test drillings in his community, and gas was found both times. "We hope to see production on an industrial scale here within two years," he says.
'Like Renegade Subjects'
Poland currently buys two thirds of its natural gas from the state-owned Russian gas company Gazprom, which charges Russia's former ally higher prices than its business partners in the West. Warsaw currently pays Russia $500 (375) for 1,000 cubic meters of gas, while the rest of Europe pays only $300. Poland has filed a lawsuit against Russia in an international court of arbitration in Stockholm.
"The Russians still treat us like renegade subjects," says Doering, but his resentment isn't just directed against Russia.
The village mayor turns toward the Baltic Sea, where the German-Russian pipeline is located. He makes an offensive gesture, slapping his left hand against the crook of his right arm and quickly raising his lower arm with his hand balled into a fist. "Once we start pumping our shale gas, you can all get lost." |
Reshoots! They're a dirty word, mostly because the only time the press takes notes of reshoots is when a production is troubled. But the reality is that for many filmmakers - including Woody Allen, who always schedules reshoots - they're a vital part of the process. They're key to the Marvel way of making movies, which is very much about finding the movie in the edit. While doing press for Guardians of the Galaxy (don't let Turtles beat it this weekend) I talked to Kevin Feige about this, and he told me that JW Rinzler's Making of Star Wars books made him feel better about their process.
I’m reading the part in Jedi where George is finding the movie in the cut. It happened in Empire, and it happened in Star Wars. You’ve heard about those famous early screenings where people were like, ‘Poor George. His career is over.’ That brings great solace to me when we screen our movies for the first time and they’re terrible and they’re a big mess. I remind myself to get calm and proceed. Post is my favorite part, because it’s easiest to find what’s wrong with the movie when you’re watching the movie.
For Feige it's important to know in advance that they will be doing additional shooting, no matter what. So while Avengers: Age of Ultron finished principal photography this week, it's pretty much a certainty that the cast will be getting back together for pick-ups, additions and tweaks. In fact Marvel already locked them in.
We always build in two weeks because the hardest thing about the additional photography is the actors’ schedules, wrangling the actors. So we just build it in. We’ve done some movies that have three days of reshoots, some that have fifteen days, twenty days if not more. Sometimes we know what we need by that point and sometimes we’re wrangling them anyway. There’s a shot in Thor: The Dark World we call the Three Continent shot. It’s one shot, with three different actors in it, that was done on three different continents. Additional photography is invaluable. Sometimes it’s to fix something that’s not working, but most of the time on our movies it’s two-fold: sometimes a better or more exciting idea will come along, or more often something will come out of the movie - because it’s too long or the movie is stronger without a particular beat or scene or shot, and you need connective tissue.
For Marvel these reshoots also offer a chance to put in easter eggs or small pieces that connect to the other movies. It's possible that cameos and larger universe shout-outs that will end up in Avengers: Age of Ultron won't even be shot until weeks before release. The famous shawarma scene in The Avengers was shot after the movie premiered.
Of course this isn't a filmmaking method that works for every filmmaker. Some are more precise in their initial shoot - it's hard to imagine Edgar Wright needing two weeks of additional shooting - but for some (and with a producer-driven studio like Marvel), it is a method that works. |
. Neil Vogel, the CEO of About.com. Courtesy of Neil Vogel
Update: About.com announced on Tuesday, May 2 that it'd be changing its name to "dotdash' after 18 years operating under another name. In our April podcast with CEO Neil Vogel, he explained how he arrived at that rebranding decision after two years of observing media trends and making the wrong choices.
Here's the interview, which was first published in late April, below.
About.com launched in 1997. It used to be one of the world's most visited websites.
Today, internet entrepreneur and investor Neil Vogel has been tasked with saving the IAC-owned dot-com brand from extinction.
"I got a phone call from Joey Levin, who is the CEO of IAC. He asked, 'What do you think of About.com?'" Vogel said during a recent interview with Business Insider. "My answer — in perfect arrogance — was 'I don't.' Who thinks of About.com? Nobody."
Levin persuaded him to come in for a job interview anyway, and Vogel walked out convinced he could help turn the company around. Now he is CEO of About.com, and to save it he's trying something that sounds crazy.
He's shutting down the entire website in early May. In its place, he's launching a half-dozen new sites.
"This is either going to work and be a great success or we're going to crash the plane as we're flying it and this is going to be a horrible failure," Vogel says he told IAC.
So far, the radical plan seems to be working. We spoke with Vogel about the turnaround, and, before that, how he founded the Webby Awards, which have been dubbed "the Oscars of the internet."
On an episode of "Success! How I Did It," a Business Insider podcast about the careers of accomplished and inspiring people, Vogel also explained how a cross-country road trip in a Ford Bronco changed his life.
Listen to the full episode here, or listen later with the buttons below:
Subscribe to "Success! How I Did It" on Art19 or iTunes. Check out previous episodes with:
Following is a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length.
Alyson Shontell: About.com is a 250-person media company that you've revived. It was a dot-com baby, founded in 1996.
Neil Vogel: Nineteen ninety-six. We're 20 years old. We're not a baby — we're not even adolescent. We're like a full-fledged millennial.
Shontell: You've been a venture partner at Firstmark Capital. You've created a company that made awesome events like Internet Week and the Webby Awards, which have been called "the Oscars of the internet."
Vogel: I've done a lot of things. I'm old, man — I'm old.
Shontell: Let's go back to when you were young and hungry. How did you start this career? Investment banking, right?
Vogel: I listened to your podcast with [Bustle and Bleacher Report founder] Bryan Goldberg and he talked about this, but when I got out of college, which was in 1992 — I went to Penn — the only things seemingly you could do were become an investment banker, a consultant, or a brand manager somewhere. And I didn't do any of those things.
For a year I took an internship at IMG, the big sports agency, which I was terrible at, and I hated it. After seven months, I went back to my roots and was an investment banker. I was a banker for five or six years. I very quickly learned that I admired and respected my clients a lot more than my bosses. I did not want to be some dude eating Chinese food in the office on Sunday night at 7:30 making a model for someone else's business. That, to me, seemed stupid. It seemed to me like I wanted to be the guy the model's being made for, which makes some sense.
I ended up leaving and going to work with a couple of guys who started a company called Alloy — or Alloy Media Marketing, for you internet 1.0 people. I was the sixth person there. We ended up growing to be a $300 million-revenue business — very profitable. It went public and had a really good run.
Shontell: What was it like back in the dot-com days for people who might be too young to remember?
Vogel: It's hard to describe. We were kids. We were 27, 28, 29 when Alloy went public. We were just playing business with other people's money. And it felt irresponsible, but we tried really hard. We worked incredibly hard.
The founder of the company, Matt Diamond, was incredibly smart. He was always very focused on building a business that made money. We always made money so we didn't have the outcome of a lot of 1.0 guys. We ended up being pretty successful. But it just was crazy. Everything was at hyper speed. Nobody knew anything. We were the first at everything we did. It was really fun.
Ultimately, I wanted to run my own thing. I left, took a year off, and, with a partner, started a business called Recognition Media. We ended up owning and producing nine or 10 different award shows and events, including the Webby Awards, and we started Internet Week, which we subsequently sold.
A life-changing, yearlong road trip in a Ford Bronco
Shontell: Before we get into that, I want to discuss the time you spent in between jobs. You did a cool soul-searching experiment in which you bought a truck and you drove across the country.
Vogel: I did. I took, like, almost a year off.
Shontell: Tell me about this crazy road trip that changed your life.
Vogel: I don't know — I was 32, single, and we just had this reasonably good outcome. I had no responsibilities and no expenses. I had a dumb rental apartment. So I bought an old Ford Bronco, took the roof off and drove around for a summer.
My father gave me great advice. He said, "Look, you're in a position where you don't have kids, you don't have anything. Go get yourself bored and figure out what you want to do."
For a couple of months I was trying really hard to think about it and figure it out. Then I decided to not think about anything. Believe me, I know it's an incredible luxury to be able to do that.
I didn't think about anything, and then everything became clear. It's an amazing feeling to have no responsibilities. Just "What am I going to do? Oh, I'm going to drive here and visit my friend." Or "I'm going to get on a plane, go to Europe, and hang out." It was amazing.
I was at the beach with some friends before Labor Day weekend in 2004. I hadn't done anything for the whole summer. I wasn't even checking email. I panicked because I had hit maximum boredom. I got in this truck and I drove back to Manhattan on the Thursday before Labor Day weekend. When everybody was going out to go the beach and have fun, I got on a plane, flew to LA to where my business partner was, and we wrote a business plan, and that became the business that was the Webby Awards and Recognition Media.
I tell people it was the best thing I've ever done in my whole life.
Shontell: You're on the beach, you realize "Oh my gosh, I actually miss work. I want to do more. I want to do something." You have this idea. Had you done anything with events before?
Vogel: No, nothing. Zero things.
Shontell: You just thought it would be a fun thing to start.
Vogel: We actually started the company by buying a very small business. Before I dropped off the face of the earth, I talked to a lot of smart media people I knew. And a guy called us with an opportunity. He said, "You can buy this thing called the Telly Awards," which was a little award show based in Ashland, Kentucky.
He found this business in an ad in the back of The Wall Street Journal. He read it, then he clipped it and faxed it to me. I took a look and said, "Wait a minute. This is a database of creative professionals who are all doing internet things and need recognition for their work." If you make TV commercials, who says whether you are doing a good job or not? You need third-party validation.
We did some research, found out there were a million of these little awards around. If we bought this first one and figured it out, we could probably do a bunch more and make this work. That's what we did. I flew to LA to do the work on this Telly Awards thing that we then raised a little bit of money and bought a few months later.
Building the Oscars of the internet, the Webby Awards
Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley at the 2011 Webby Awards. Flickr/Eddie Codel
Shontell: What exactly are the Webby Awards, and how did they become this glamorous thing?
Vogel: We bought the Telly Awards and we'd had some success with it. Then, we found out the Webby Awards were owned by IDG, the big media company. They started this award show in the '90s in San Francisco that got some traction. But it kind of went out of business. For two years they didn't have the show. But they had the brand. We approached them and said, "Guys, we want to buy this from you."
The business model is, people pay to enter, and we get lots of corporate sponsors and have a show. The first year we had 800 entries, mainly all from the United States. By the time we were done with it [seven years later] it was about 14,000 entries from 60 countries. It's the award, the Cannes Lions, or the Oscars for people who do internet stuff.
We built a brand really, really stealthily. We did it by just making sure the brand was impeccable, that the most important, most influential people liked it. And we did it all online at a time when that felt really weird to people.
Shontell: So it's a once-a-year event. How much money can you make from an event like that?
Vogel: I can't really tell you exactly how much. You can figure out the math. The more people who enter, the better off this thing is. Then you're connecting really big corporate sponsors with very tight, very engaged audiences that are super valuable. We can put you in front of 2,000 people who make the best stuff in the world every year. That's a really valuable thing.
Shontell: Was it ever hard?
Vogel: Everything is hard. It's impossible. It tells as a super-elegant story. No, but this is impossible. Everything was a disaster. We had eight offices. We couldn't get anything right. We made so many mistakes. The nature of the internet is it's very forgiving. You can't really make that big a mistake.
The interesting thing about a business that is an award show is it's once a year. Now, at About.com, we can make changes that are instant tomorrow. At the Webby Awards, you make a change, it takes a year to see if that worked. You learn how to manage businesses differently because you have a full-year cycle, which is often very annoying. We made every mistake a startup can make.
Shontell: Despite that, someone did come in and buy a big chunk of it.
Vogel: Yeah, we were happy. I'm still on the board. Then I transitioned to Firstmark Capital, where I have a bunch of friends who are investors.
Shontell: They've got early-stage investments and things like Pinterest, Airbnb, and Draft Kings.
Vogel: I spent probably a year hanging out with those guys, and I learned so much in that year from just sitting and listening to their process. The first thing I learned is I'm a terrible investor. I like the quick wits of running businesses. But the long lead time and thoughtfulness required to have a thesis and invest against it and follow up is just not my jam.
A radical plan to save About.com — shut down the URL and start from scratch
About.com
Shontell: So you started to get bored and then IAC called you. IAC owns About.com.
Vogel: Yes. So About.com was owned by The New York Times. They owned it for five or six years. IAC — Barry Diller and crew — bought it for about $300 million at the end of 2012.
Shontell: Significantly less than The Times paid for About.com.
Vogel: It is less than The Times paid, which is less than Prime Media paid before them. I think it's widely known, but About was a mess at that point. It was still one of the 20 biggest sites on the internet, but there had been a lot of neglect.
IAC, who's very opportunistic in buying things, said, "OK, this still does a lot of revenue. It has 100 million users a month. We're pretty sure we can do something cool with it." So they bought it.
Shontell: There was a bidding war for it too. Answers.com wanted it.
Vogel: There was a very quick bidding war that they won. I think the entire cycle was seven days, which is crazy when you think about how that works. Probably five or six months after they owned it. I wasn't there, so I can't say this definitively, but I can guess. I think it was a bit of a bigger mess than they thought.
I got a phone call from Joey Levin, who is now the CEO of IAC. He might deny it went this way, but it very much went this way. He calls me — Joey's a very direct character — and he says, "What do you think of about.com?"
My answer — in perfect arrogance was — "I don't. Who thinks of about.com? Nobody. It's a thing with these blue links on it. I don't think about About.com."
He says, "Come in and talk to me about it." I go in and talk to him about it. I thought he wanted me to help him find someone to run it. I went into his office, and the next thing I know, I'm going home with a stack of information.
I'm thinking, "Ugh, I'll look through it, I guess."
By the time I got through it, I had a full mental turnaround on what this thing could be. I was definitely like the 25th person they talked to.
Shontell: It was founded in the search era, right? There was no social or Facebook driving a ton of traffic. It was all the good old days of Google search traffic.
Vogel: It's all Google search. The model was — this is important to note because it took us a bit to figure out — the model was the same thing as AOL, or the same thing as MSN, or the same thing as Yahoo. It was a big general information site. In our case, we made the content ourselves with experts. They made content different ways. But it was a big general information site. I decided I would ... I'm like, "OK, you know what? I'm going to do this." I went and I signed up to do it, and a little bit of the reason was the "you can't fall off the floor" reason. I'm not going to be the guy who ruined About.com. It's already ruined, so this is all upside here.
What Marissa Mayer and Yahoo did wrong
Ethan Miller/Getty
Shontell: What do you think of Marissa and Yahoo?
Vogel: We can actually talk about that. We have point of view on that, which is part of how we decided to do what we did. We actually have a strong point of view on that. I'll make this story a little shorter here.
I joined, and within a year we took the employees from 150 to 250. Every person, with the exception of one or two above senior director was new. We have 250 people now, and there are probably 10 who were there before we got there. When I got there, I couldn't tell you how many ads we served the day before. I couldn't tell you how many visits we. It was just a mess.
We got there and spent the first year building a data-science team so we can understand what was going on. Building a sophisticated programmatic ad stack because our site kind of looks like crap. It's very hard for us to sell premium stuff. So we're going to start selling programmatic things like moving away from some other monetization things. We used a lot of Google ads and we have to not do that. Users don't really like that at scale. Hired a bunch of smart people. I basically went and drove the "A-Team" van around New York and was like, "I know you, you're great. We've worked together. Come join us!" I think people got excited about the chance to fix an iconic internet.
A year and a half into it, we launch a brand-new site and rewrote every line of code. We had code from the '90s in there. We put forth the new About.com and everyone was excited. We stopped the decline. We started to make more money, traffic stopped going down. We could go to a cocktail party with a straight face and say, "Look at this things." We had some pride in what we were doing and it was making some sense. We felt good, and then six months later we're still in the exact same spot and we're like, "Ugh, why is this not growing?" Again, at this time, everyone's really happy with us. IAC is happy with us.
Probably a year after we launched, we went back to IAC, and this was the scary moment, this was like the big move, and said, "Guys, everything we did was wrong. We're doing it wrong."
Shontell: How did you come to that? It just stalled?
Vogel: It goes back to your Marissa question. We realized that our fundamental model of what we were doing was wrong. Our value is we have this great content that advertisers will like and consumers like, but nobody cares about a general-information site anymore. You have three constituencies when you're a publisher: advertisers, consumers, and people who send you traffic (basically algorithms). And it turns out that if you play tennis this weekend and hurt your knee, you don't want your "why my knee hurts" advice from About Health. You want it from WebMD or Everyday Health. We're like, "Oh, point." If your router breaks at home, you don't want that from About Tech; you want that from EnGadget or The Verge or someone how to fix it.
Advertisers? We heard this constantly: "Your data is great, your scale is great, we like your content, but you're not endemic, so we're not working with you." They want head-of-household moms, and they make computers, but they would not give us any money. And then the other problem was algorithms. Google and Facebook and those guys no longer knew what to make of us. You can't have, "Symptoms of Colitis" content on the same domain that you have "How to Unclog My Drain." On the same domain you have, like, "How to Cook Beer-Battered Chicken" and "How to Fix My Tendinitis."
Shontell: It kind of works for Wikipedia, though.
Vogel: We'll talk about that in a second. It's a little bit different. For a site like us ... Wikipedia's traffic is going down, by the way, from search, because they're not specific. If you have colitis, you'd rather go to a colitis-specialty place than Wikipedia. They're losing also.
We came to the realization that we needed to do something. We went back to IAC and to that meeting and said, "Here's what we're going to do: We're going to turn this place from AOL or Yahoo or MSN, and I'm going to turn this into Condé Nast or Vox. And that's what we're going to do. This is either going to work and be a great success or we're going to crash the plane as we're flying it and this is going to be a horrible failure. But we're betting, because our content is good, because we still have search traffic, because we know how to play social, that we're betting that we can do this."
And IAC — because they're not a media company, they're an internet company; it's a huge difference that I've learned — they basically said "Do it. Do it. Go ahead, take the chance. Roll the dice and do it. We'd rather have the outcome that you are the next Condé Nast than have the outcome that is now, which is we're going sideways."
'We could have literally gone to zero"
Barry Diller, head of IAC, knows how to take risks. Michael Seto/Business Insider
Shontell: That sounds like it makes a lot of sense. But there is huge risk involved with a move like that.
Vogel: Existential risk. We could have literally gone to zero.
Shontell: Yes, because you have, what, over 100 million people visiting About.com?
Vogel: Yeah, about that.
Shontell: And you're talking about all these new properties that have to start from scratch, right? Then what's left for About.com?
Vogel: What we said was, we're going to take pieces of About.com, we're going to break them off and make these new brands, and then when we're done, About.com is going to go away. As of May 2, we're announcing a new brand name for all of overarching brand for our brands, and About.com is going away.
Shontell: This site that had 100 million-plus readers, you just canned.
Vogel: We didn't can it yet, but we're canning it in six weeks. Again, because we've now made five different, sites that if you add them up have more users than About.com had. That was the trick.
Shontell: How long did that take?
Vogel: We've done it over the last 12 months. The story of the first one is an easy one to tell.
Shontell: Within a year you've built four new brands that now are bigger than About.com ever was.
Vogel: In aggregate, when you add up all the things, not ever was, because that was humongous, but we are — our traffic now, we have more traffic now with four of our five brands launched. So four brands in the market, one brand still under the About.com name. We have more traffic now than we had a year ago, two years ago, when we were just About.com.
Here's what we did: The first thing we wanted to launch is we wanted to launch ... We launched a health brand called Very Well. We dove right into the pool. Health is our most valuable, most-trafficked, biggest vertical, so we came up with an idea. Our content is very much in the style of like WebMD or Everyday Health. But we thought those sites, we just didn't think they have served a market need. We thought that we could make a beautiful, kinder, gentler health site. You go to these some of other sites with a headache, you think you have a brain tumor. You come to us with a headache, we're going to make your headache feel better and explain why you had a headache and make it better. That was the thesis.
So we took our 100,000 pieces of health content of About.com, threw 50,000 in the garbage because they were old. We didn't like them. The other 50 [thousand] were read by our writers. If it was medical information; it was read by a doctor. We had 30,000 pieces of content read by physicians, edited, cleaned up. Built a brand-new site from scratch, a new taxonomy for our content, put it on the site.
We did that. We built this beautiful new site from scratch, everything from scratch. Took design, product, content, tech, everyone, walled them off. You now work for Very Well; you don't work for About anymore. You work for Very Well.
Shontell: The About people who remained were no longer able to write about beauty and health or about —
Vogel: Yeah, we moved the health stuff all to Very Well. Health is now gone from About.com, and we launched it in April.
Shontell: You see, instantly, a ton of traffic to About.com, I'm sure, go away.
Vogel: Terrifying. Really, you have to compare all of About.com to now About.com, plus Very Well, right? So here's what happens, a lot of, more, probably at the time, 70% of our traffic was from search. Three weeks after we did this —
Shontell: No search traffic, I'm sure.
Vogel: No, what you can do ... the trick is making the search traffic move to your new place. We built a new site with a new taxonomy so every URL over here gets redirected to one over here.
A month after we launched this thing, our health traffic, which is our most valuable traffic, was down. Traffic was in like 45% or 50%. But we're like, "OK, we're just going to hold on and we're already halfway done doing our next vertical." All of a sudden, Facebook, Google, all the domains figure it out. As of now, today, I think our health brand has — I'm going to get this slightly wrong because I always get numbers slightly wrong — I think we had 8 million uniques when we started a month, I think we have 17 million uniques now to Very Well. So we've pretty much doubled in size in 12 months. We're by far the fastest-growing thing in the health space. I think we're No. 4 or 5 on comScore on health because our bet was right ...
We knew that this would work. Then we launched something in the summer. Ran a very similar playbook on our personal-finance content called The Balance, which has pretty much doubled in traffic since we launched it this summer. We launched something called Life Wire in November, which is our evergreen-content tech site — how to fix my router, how to unbrick my iPhone. We launched three weeks ago, about a month ago something called The Spruce, which is the third-biggest home site on the internet, only behind HGTV and the Hearst Brands. We had such scale on About, that we're launching these new brands into the world that are new to the space with no legacy issues, look like start ups, but all of a sudden, like we're top 10 in comScore because we're coming with such scale. The market's like, "What? Where do you guys come from?"
And we have one more site to launch, called Trip Savvy, which we're launching right after we change our name. We're now going to change the name of the company May 2.
Shontell: So as a collection of sites, how much traffic do you guys have?
Vogel: More than we started. I think — I don't know — last month ... internally, I think comSquare was like 60 million last month or something. So we got a lot of scale. We're around the same size as you guys. I think internally we're like 100 million.
The future of media isn't about scale; it's about finding a niche
VeryWell is one of the new websites Neil Vogel has launched at About.com. Very Well
Shontell: So, for a while it was great to be a site that was all-encompassing, had all this scale, you know, the Yahoos, MSNs, and you. Are you're saying that that's no longer the case and that the future is to go niche?
Vogel: It doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't. I just think everybody wants expert —
Shontell: The scale days are over?
Vogel: You see it in the mall, right? There's no place for a department store. People don't want that anymore. People want things that are specialty. I think the other people in our position —
Shontell: Except for Amazon.
Vogel: Except for Amazon. But there's always a place for that. There's a place for Amazon and Target and Wal-Mart, cause they're competing on price, or service, or something. Not on expertise. And that's more of like a retail thing. But in content, you generally want content from someone you believe is an expert in that. That trends toward being an expert in like, a domain of content, which trends toward being vertical. And I think different people have made really interesting decisions about this.
I think AOL has made a brilliant decision. We looked at our content and said, "All right, we make really premium content in these very premium areas." AOL looked at their type of content and said, "You know what, this is content that is probably going to be best served by programmatic ad selling." Cause of the type of content it was, not that it's good or bad, it just is. They built an unbelievable ad stack, they assembled properties that work like this. And it totally worked, and they crushed it. And now they're like Target. Like it totally works for them, and now that's why Yahoo makes sense. I think MSN didn't want to deal. And Yahoo made a different decision.
Like we looked at what we were doing and said, "We make money one way. We sell ads against content. And we're doing it wrong, but that's the fundamental model that works for us." Yahoo wanted to become something completely different, that I don't think anyone totally understands exactly what the thesis was. And I think that's why it didn't work. I think the AOL-Yahoo combo is gonna be great. It's gonna be great for advertisers. If it works it's gonna be like a legitimate third option to the big two. And I think they took the right approach to content.
Shontell: The big two being Facebook and Google. The Duopoly.
Vogel: The Duopoly. No media buyer in the world wants there to be only two places to buy stuff from. Look, it's really dangerous and they're growing like crazy but ... If you make valuable content, and you give people a really great experience, there is a place for you in the world. When you're general, like when you're the old About.com, there might not have been a place for us in that world. Because it just doesn't work. But when you're Very Well or The Balance, and when you're like a mutual-fund company that needs to advertise against people who are specifically looking for mutual fund information, we're an unbelievable resource for them. That's better than like guessing someone wants mutual funds on Facebook.
Shontell: So one thing you mentioned is that with AOL and Yahoo merging under Verizon, you think it'll be great. And could maybe challenge these guys. And that's a mega-merger.
Vogel: That's a big one.
Shontell: You know, all these huge companies coming together under Verizon. Do you think that's going to keep happening, and is that is your goal with About, to build it up to a point where you could join and be a power player in a big mega-merger like this?
Vogel: I don't know. I think if you look at the history of IAC they, you know, the market we have is $5 billion or $6 billion, but the value of the companies that have come out of IAC are, what, like $50 billion or $60 billion. So there is a history at IAC of being the builder, not the buildee. And if we do this right, we have a really interesting opportunity to build something great.
Shontell: So one kind of different question for you, what's Barry Diller like?
Vogel: First of all, he's great. He does not suffer fools. There's something incredible frustrating that happens when you deal with him in that you'll be in a meeting with him, or you'll get some feedback from him via email, or secondhand, or you'll talk to him directly. And he will say something to you that, at the time, you will be like, "I don't what?" Because you're like an arrogant CEO and you're like, "I ... I ... I know better about my business than he does. What's he talking about?" And then a day later, you're like in the shower, and you realize, like, "Ugh, he was totally right. He was a thousand percent right."
There's nothing he hasn't seen or been through, and he has this really unique way, which I think you do, when you sit in his perspective, of just looking at our problems or issues and just ignoring the nonsense, and like, bam. Like right to it. And sometimes by getting right to it you don't understand that right away, because you're too in the weeds, or you're busy running the business. But he just like, nails it. And he's great to work for. He does not suffer fools, there's not a lot of, like, nonsense. But it's awesome to work for someone that, and this doesn't happen a lot.
Shontell: Very true. So to wrap this all up, if you had to say the one thing you've had a lot of different lives in your careers. In all of them you've found success. So what do you think is the one common thread that has made you successful in all of these different areas and, ultimately, in your career?
Vogel: I'm annoyingly relentless when I believe in something. When I was a banker, I figured out that you'll be much better at doing something if you're passionate about it. And it's not saying like, "My great passion in life is to build publishing companies," or "My great passion in life is to build award shows." But if you believe in what you're doing and you can get excited about it, you're gonna be a thousand times better. And I'm really direct and I'm really honest with people, which doesn't always work that well. But if people always know where they stand with you, you will always know where you stand with them. And I think that's really valuable. |
Nicholas Bull (left) and Nicholas DeNuccio, co-founders of Propaganda E-Liquid, are going full steam ahead with their uniquely crafted and flavored line of e-cigarette liquids. (Photo: Business Wire)
Nicholas Bull (left) and Nicholas DeNuccio, co-founders of Propaganda E-Liquid, are going full steam ahead with their uniquely crafted and flavored line of e-cigarette liquids. (Photo: Business Wire)
SANTA ANA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Although The Wall Street Journal noted recently that “the share of people under age 30 who own private businesses has reached a 24-year-low,” the duo behind Santa Ana–based Propaganda E-Liquid (www.propagandaeliquid.com) are the young and highly successful exception to the rule.
At ages 19 and 23 respectively, Nicholas DeNuccio and Nicholas Bull just celebrated the one-year anniversary of their company, which has grown from a $200 literally homemade enterprise into a thriving international business. Propaganda creates and distributes flavored liquids for e-cigarettes to nearly 500 “vape shops” in the U.S. and 11 countries, including China, the U.K., France, Indonesia, and Taiwan.
“The company has sold more than a quarter-million units in its first year,” says DeNuccio. “And we expect to double that by end of 2015.”
The business began in DeNuccio’s parents’ kitchen, where he and Bull experimented with $200 worth of ingredients and flavors in the kitchen sink. Wanting to encourage the business—and protect their sink—DeNuccio’s parents loaned the young entrepreneurs $5,000, which has now been paid back in full.
The partners credit their success to an aggressive marketing campaign that has taken them to every major e-cigarette convention (they’ll travel next to Vape Summit 2015 in Las Vegas in April), where they distribute samples, meet with clients and customers, and take orders from shops around the world. In addition, each retail location is supplied with multiple marketing materials: posters, full-page flavor menus, POP displays, shirts, hats, sticker packs, and car decals.
E-liquid flavors include the best-selling Illuminati (a blend of blood orange, pineapple, strawberry); Subliminal (sweet and sour razzmatazz candy); Widow Maker (Bavarian cream–infused blueberries); and Wild Fire (toasted almond and mezzaluna cookie). All are available in 15ml ($13) and 30ml ($23) bottles. DeNuccio and Bull spent hours of research time developing the flavors and perfecting the ingredient percentages to create what’s known in the industry as “an all-day vape.”
The brand’s edgy name (a spoof on government propaganda), “Join the revolution!” tagline, and distinctive packaging have earned Propaganda a dominant reputation in an industry that has grown dramatically in recent years. And at only 19 and 23, DeNuccio and Bull have plenty of good years ahead of them—and that’s not blowing smoke. |
Amos Yee left the city state with the intention of staying in US after being jailed for several weeks in 2015 and 2016
A teenage blogger from Singapore whose online posts blasting his government landed in him jail has been granted asylum to remain in the United States.
Amos Yee, 18, had been detained by federal immigration authorities since December when he wase taken into custody at Chicago’s O’Hare International airport.
But on Friday immigration judge Samuel Cole paved the way for his release, which attorneys said could come as early as Monday.
Singapore police arrest 17-year-old over critical Lee Kuan Yew video Read more
“Yee has met his burden of showing that he suffered past persecution on account of his political opinion and has a well-founded fear of future persecution in Singapore,” Cole wrote in a 13-page decision more than two weeks after Yee’s closed-door hearing on the asylum application.
Yee left Singapore with the intention of seeking asylum in the US after being jailed for several weeks in 2015 and 2016. He was accused of hurting the religious feelings of Muslims and Christians; Yee is an atheist. However, many of his blog and social media posts criticized Singapore’s leaders. He created controversy in 2015 as the city-state was mourning the death of its first prime minister and he posted an expletive-laden video about prime minister Lee Kuan Yew just after his death.
Such open criticism of political leaders is discouraged in Singapore. The case, which raised questions about free speech and censorship, has been closely watched abroad.
Cole said testimony during Yee’s hearing showed that while the Singapore government’s stated reason for punishing him involved religion, “its real purpose was to stifle Yee’s political speech”. He said Yee’s prison sentence was “unusually long and harsh” especially for his age.
Saudi Arabian teen arrested for online videos with American blogger Read more
Officials at the Singapore embassy in Washington DC have not addressed the case and messages left Friday were not immediately returned.
Yee’s attorney Sandra Grossman said her client was elated with the news.
“He’s very excited to begin new life in the United States,” Grossman said.
Yee said in a phone interview from jail this month that he feared returning to Singapore. But he said he would continue to speak out and had already planned a line of T-shirts and started writing a book about his experiences. “I have an infinite amount of ideas of what to do,” he said.
Department of Homeland Security attorneys had opposed the asylum bid, saying Yee’s case did not qualify as persecution based on political beliefs. It was unclear whether they had appealed the decision or if Yee would have to remain imprisoned if they did. Attorneys have 30 days to appeal.
Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said he hoped the US government would let the ruling stand, saying that Yee had been a “marked man” in Singapore since criticising the government.
“Singapore excels at creating a pressure cooker environment for dissidents and free thinkers who dare challenge the political, economic and social diktats from the ruling People’s Action Party. It’s clear the Singapore government saw Amos Yee as the proverbial nail sticking up that had to be hammered down.” |
AUSTRALIAN football icon Les Murray has died aged 71 after a battle with illness.
The legendary broadcaster was for so long the voice of football in this country as a fixture on SBS.
Murray is survived by his two daughters.
CEO and managing director of SBS Michael Ebeid was quick to pay tribute to his “dear friend”, as was longtime colleague and former Socceroo Craig Foster.
“No one better embodied what SBS represents than Les Murray. From humble refugee origins, he became one of Australia’s most recognised and loved sporting identities,” Ebeid said.
“Not just a football icon, but a great Australian story and an inspiration to many. To say that his contribution to SBS and to football was enormous, doesn’t do it justice. This is a devastating loss for all of us at SBS. Our thoughts are with his family and all that loved him.”
Devastated at the news that our dear friend & colleague Les Murray has passed away. A great Australian who really has left a great legacy. — Michael Ebeid (@michaelebeid) July 31, 2017
The world lost a football colossus this morning, Les Murray AM. He fought well into extra time but whistle has blown. His legacy is lasting — Craig Foster (@Craig_Foster) July 31, 2017
Les left family that loved him, colleagues adored him, futbol community that revered him. Well played old friend. Extraordinary performance — Craig Foster (@Craig_Foster) July 31, 2017
Another former international Robbie Slater reflected fondly on Murray’s profound influence on the game and his own life.
“Les Murray was ‘Mr Soccer’ and devoted his life to the game and did so much for the game,” Slater told Fox Sports.
“Les was someone we all looked up to; he did so much for the game.
“He gave me my first job in television. Obviously when I started at Fox, we didn’t see each other as much but we never lost contact because wherever there was a major football event, Les was there.
“He gave me a lot of advice for my career, early on. People started following me when I moved to the Premier League but Les followed me in France and always made sure everyone knew what I was doing in France. He set up an interview with me in France, which was the first shown in Australia. It just shows how much he looked out for Australian football and footballers.
“Les is not only a great loss to his family and friends, but a great loss to the game.”
The tributes kept pouring in from football lovers, players and those who knew Murray.
RIP @lesmurraySBS,sad day for so many,xmb — Mark Bosnich (@TheRealBozza) July 31, 2017
Very sad to hear the passing of Les Murray. He was a Massive ambassador for football in this country.... — Archie Thompson (@10Archie) July 31, 2017
Utterly devastating. What a man. So generous and kind. He gave us so much. Vale Les Murray. https://t.co/Hg7hPa0V2r — Sarah Abo (@_SarahAbo) July 31, 2017
For once the phrase "end of an era" is legitimate in a football context. Vale Les Murray https://t.co/yE73viuX2k — Tom Smithies (@SmithiesTele) July 31, 2017
In the days when football struggled to receive media coverage, @lesmurraySBS gave us hope each week via @TheWorldGame, he will be missed — Peter Filopoulos (@peterfilopoulos) July 31, 2017
Les Murray was funny, arcerbic, generous, flawed, kind and unique. Most of all, when most needed, he was Mr Football.#RIPLesMurray — Richard Hinds (@rdhinds) July 31, 2017
Very sorry to hear of Les Murray's passing. A football legend, advocate for people seeking asylum and an amazing personality. — Richard Di Natale (@RichardDiNatale) July 31, 2017
Vale Les Murray. We lost a giant in Australian football. Hard to imagine a World Cup without his voice. — Sam Mac & Jules (@thebleague) July 31, 2017
Murray was born in Hungary and came to Australia with his parents as political refugees in the 1950s. He grew up in Wollongong on the NSW coast where his love of football continued to grow.
Born László Ürge, Murray changed his name once he started in television.
He joined SBS in 1980, where he worked for more than three decades. He went on to become the network’s head of sport and retired in 2014, but still made guest TV appearances with his old employer.
Murray presented the network’s football coverage and worked on everything from World Cups to Champions League finals. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2006 and was also a member of Football Federation Australia’s Hall of Fame.
A published author, Murray was part of FIFA’s ethics committee and worked tirelessly to promote football in Australia at a time when it was far from the mainstream sport it is today.
Murray received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to Sports Journalism at the 2009 Australian Sports Commission Media Awards. |
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Israel and world Jewish groups denounced plans by Argentina and Iran to form a truth commission to investigate the deadly 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center that Argentine courts say was sponsored by Iran.
The forming of the commission, announced during the weekend, was seen as a diplomatic win for Iran as it confronts a U.S.-led effort to isolate Tehran because of its nuclear program.
Western nations fear Iran intends to use the program to produce atomic weapons. Israel regards this as an existential threat, citing statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about wiping the Jewish state off the map.
“The agreement between Argentina and Iran is received in Israel with astonishment and deep disappointment,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “The Argentine ambassador in Israel will be summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem to provide explanations.”
Argentine courts have said Iran was behind the attack on the Jewish center, which killed 85 people. The commission agreement, which must be approved by Argentina’s Congress, outlines plans for Argentine officials to interview suspects in Iran - not in a third country, as originally proposed by Argentina.
“Forming a joint truth commission with Iran is a farce,” Shimon Samuels, Paris-based director of international relations for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Reuters on Monday.
“It will whitewash terrorism and encourage the mullahs to become patrons of further attacks.”
The bombing came two years after a group linked to Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on the Israeli Embassy in the Argentine capital, which killed 29. Tehran has denied links to either attack.
Led by Washington, the West has imposed sanctions on Iran - including directly targeting its key oil revenues - to try to force it into a diplomatic solution that would lay to rest Western concerns that it is seeking to develop a nuclear bomb.
“The benefits of a truth commission are not evident for Argentina,” said Ignacio Labaqui, a political science professor at Catholic University in Buenos Aires. “As for Iran, it’s pure gain. It makes no real concessions and it becomes less isolated.”
WANTED BY INTERPOL
In 2007, Argentine authorities secured Interpol arrest warrants for five Iranians and a Lebanese in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center. Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi is among the officials sought by Argentina, which is home to Latin America’s largest Jewish community.
The five “truth commissioners” will be jointly named and will not be residents of Argentina or Iran, according to a document posted on President Cristina Fernandez’s Facebook page.
“Dialogue (is) the only way to resolve conflicts between countries, however severe,” she said on Sunday via Twitter.
The agreement on the commission said that after analyzing the evidence the commission “will give its vision and issue a report with recommendations about how the case should proceed within the legal and regulatory framework of both parties.”
Fernandez, who is allied with left-leaning Latin American leaders who are on good terms with Tehran, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, hailed the accord as historic.
But Jewish leaders see no upside in forming a truth commission with Iran, where Ahmadinejad has questioned the Holocaust and where authorities arrested more than a dozen journalists in the past two days over their links to “anti-revolutionary” media.
Argentina’s government also has been criticized for cracking down on dissent by fining private economists for publishing inflation estimates that far outpace the official numbers. The country could face sanctions from the International Monetary Fund over its widely discredited consumer price data.
“Forming a ‘Truth Commission’ which does not fall under Argentine law governing criminal proceedings marks a decline of our sovereignty,” said a statement issued on Monday from Argentina’s two main Jewish groups, known as the AMIA and DAIA.
“This is a setback for obtaining justice,” it said. |
It is not a typical royal residence but a terraced house on a quiet and slightly dishevelled housing estate in Sale, Greater Manchester, is now the home of the new king of Rwanda.
Three months after the country’s previous exiled monarch King Kigeli died in relative poverty in the US aged 80, an official decree by his chief courtier has declared his nephew Emmanuel Bushayija – a naturalised British citizen – as his successor.
“The Rwandan Royal Council of Abiru hereby informs all Rwandans and friends of Rwanda that in keeping with the ancient custom, it has acclaimed His Royal Highness Prince Emmanuel Bushayija as the successor of his late majesty,” the edict read.
In a video posted on Facebook, Boniface Benzinge, who describes himself as the deceased king’s assistant and best friend, reads a statement over tinny piano music saying that Kigeli had named his brother’s son as his successor in 2006 and that he wished the new king “long life and success”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The house in Sale, Greater Manchester, where Emmanuel Bushayija lives. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Father of two Bushayija, or Yuhi VI as his new royal title has him, has so far remained silent about the announcement. Answering the door of his neat and well kept house on Wednesday morning, a family member said he was not in and would not be speaking to the press.
The Rwandan royal family was exiled in 1961, when Bushayija was a baby, and he was schooled in Uganda, where he later worked for Pepsi. He moved back to Rwanda in 1994, before relocating to the UK in 2000.
He first lived in a council flat near Old Trafford, before moving to his current terraced house, which is owned by the Irwell Valley housing association. Company records show that he started a security company, Intersec Security, in 2013, which is registered to his home address but provides armed security for clients in Rwanda.
Wendy Otoo, 50, a foster carer who lives two doors down from the family, said Bushayija had mentioned his big news to her husband, but that she didn’t think it would change much for the family.
“He’s very laid back and humble,” she said. “He’s a lovely man. I look after my granddaughters full time and he’s great with them. He always stops for a chat, so he’s not very king-like.” She added: “It’s funny because my family are from Ghana on my Dad’s side, and my uncle there is a king.”
The first Dola Tope–Agboola, 43, heard about her royal neighbour was when a journalist knocked on her door on Wednesday morning. “It’s just amazing to be honest,” she says. “I’m going to be on the look out for him. I should get to know him.”
Rwanda became a republic in 1961 following a referendum, a year before it gained independence from Belgian rule. The result suggested that 80% of the public opposed the monarchy but King Kigeli claimed that the vote had been rigged.
In 2013, Washingtonian magazine found Kigeli living in subsidised housing in Virginia, living off food stamps. He told the magazine that Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda and a fellow Tutsi, had permitted him to return to his home country but said that he could not resume the throne.
While alive, Kigeli spent much of his time attempting to preserve the traditions of the Rwandan monarchy, subsidising his small income with the sale of knighthoods, and hoping that his people would one day invite him back.
Following his death, a row broke out about where he should be laid to rest and a US court ruled in favour of relatives who wanted his body returned to Rwanda. Benzinge insisted that his friend would not have wanted to be buried in his home land “as long as the current government administration that was hostile to his majesty in life was still in power”.
Benzinge’s announcement that Bushayija is the new king has also been controversial. Pastor Ezra Mpyisi, a former adviser to the Rwandan king, told journalists in the country’s capital that he would not recognise the new king.
“[Benzinge] cannot name the new king because he is in no position to do so. He has no powers to do so because he is not part of the royal family or related to the king in any way,” he said.
• This article was amended on 13 January 2017. An earlier version said Rwanda became a republic in January 1961 following a referendum. The referendum was in September 1961. |
Town Hall Talk: Man's Fingertip Bitten Off at Health-Care Rally
Updated 8:29 p.m.
By Garance Franke-Ruta and Sarah Lovenheim
One of a national series of rallies for health-care reform took a violent turn Wednesday night when, according to authorities in Thousand Oaks, Calif., an unidentified man bit off another man's pinky finger at the top joint.
The Thousand Oaks event attracted only about 100 people -- a small group compared to the turnout at congressional town halls, which have drawn up to 1,500 people. But their passions were running high, and when a supporter of health-care reform wound up among a group of about 25 counter-protesters, an argument and fistfight broke out, Ventura County Sheriff's Capt. Frank O'Hanlon told the Associated Press.
Reports differ on whether the supporter went to confront the opponents intentionally or was just walking among them while trying to cross the street to the pro-reform rally.
Southern California's KTLA-TV, which first reported on the fracas, wrote, "The 65-year-old was apparently aggressive and hit the other man, who then retaliated by biting off his attacker's pinky."
The AP reported that the injured man "retrieved the finger and went to a hospital." The man, identified by ABC News as William Rice, received care from Los Robles Hospital and on Thursday told the Weekly Standard that the hospital was unable to reattach his fingertip. Also on Thursday, Rice appeared on Fox News, where he was interviewed by Neil Cavuto (see video clip, below).
O'Hanlon told the AP that authorities have a good description of the alleged biter, who fled the scene. "It's considered a mayhem which is the removal of an appendage from a human," Capt. Bruce Norris of the Ventura County Sheriff's Department told ABC News. "The crime is punishable by imprisonment for 2, 4, or 8 years."
Attendees at the Thousand Oaks rally took to their blogs Thursday to describe the clash. Reform opponent Eric Ingemunson recounts his story on RedCounty.com, and reform supporter Karoli Kuns tells her tale at DrumsnWhistles.com.
MoveOn.org sponsored the rally, along with others Wednesday night around the country, and Ilyse Hogue, a spokeswoman for the liberal advocacy group, called the incident "a regrettable act of violence."
"While we do not have any more facts about what happened then what we saw in press accounts, MoveOn condemns violence in all forms," she said in a statement to The Post.
"While we don't know if either party involved was a MoveOn member, we regret any violence that may have occurred yesterday, and we support the Ventura County Sheriff's investigation into the situation. It is our firm hope that this event does not detract from the tens of thousands who were out peacefully making their voices heard for health-care reform and a public option," Hogue said. |
This story was updated at 2:30 p.m. EST.
While 2011 was a huge year for alien-planet discoveries, 2012 could bring something even more exciting: the first true "alien Earth."
This year saw the tally of confirmed exoplanets top 700, with NASA's Kepler space telescope flagging thousands of additional candidates that still need to be verified. And just this month, Kepler scientists announced two landmark finds — the first two Earth-size alien planets, as well as a larger world in its star's habitable zone, that just-right range of distances where liquid water (and possibly life as we know it) could exist.
These and other recent discoveries suggest that the prized quarry of many exoplanet hunters — an "alien Earth" — could be just over the horizon. In fact, such a planet may well pop up in the next round of Kepler candidates, which should be released next year, researchers said.
"I'm guessing that this next planet catalog is going to see, finally, some numbers of points that are really, truly Earth-sized and in the habitable zone," said Natalie Batalha, deputy leader of the Kepler science team at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "That's something that I really look forward to, is getting those candidates." [Vote Now! Most Intriguing Alien Planets of 2011]
Alien planets piling up
The year has seen a huge increase in the number of known exoplanets. At the start of 2011, astronomers had confirmed 528 alien worlds, according to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, a database compiled by astrobiologist Jean Schneider of the Paris-Meudon Observatory.
Less than one year later — and just 16 years after the first alien planet was found orbiting a sun-like star — the count now stands at 713. And thousands more are waiting in the wings.
On Dec. 5, Kepler scientists announced the discovery of 1,094 new exoplanet candidates, bringing the mission's total tally in its first 16 months of operation to 2,326. So far, just 33 of these potential planets have been confirmed by follow-up observations, but researchers have estimated that at least 80 percent of them will turn out to be the real deal.
These huge numbers are exciting by themselves, but the search for alien planets isn't really about increasing the tally. Rather, it's a quest to better understand the nature and diversity of alien worlds, researchers say.
"You can only understand the diversity of systems if you have enough numbers that speak to the statistics," Batalha told SPACE.com. "You really want a large sample, and that's where Kepler's going to make a huge contribution."
The diversity of alien worlds and systems appears to be high. Astronomers have found one planet as light and airy as Styrofoam, for example, and another as dense as iron. And in September, the Kepler team announced the discovery of an alien planet that circles two suns, like Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine in the "Star Wars" films.
Researchers have also confirmed several planets in their stars' habitable zones. None of them can be considered true alien Earths, since they're significantly larger than our home planet. But the search for Earth's twin may bear fruit as early as next year, researchers say.
Hunting for alien Earths
The Kepler space telescope, which launched in March 2009, hunts for alien planets using a technique known as the transit method. It looks for the tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet transits, or crosses in front of, the star from Kepler's perspective, blocking a fraction of the star's light.
Kepler needs to witness three such transits to flag a potential planet, so it's not terribly surprising that the telescope has yet to find a true Earth twin, researchers have said. If an alien version of Kepler were pointed at our solar system, after all, it would take three years for the instrument to detect our home planet.
The longer Kepler operates, the better its chances of detecting a truly Earth-like world get. And now that the instrument has nearly three years under its belt, the finds are getting especially intriguing.
"We're really starting to get down to smaller planets with longer [orbital] periods," Batalha said.
So far, none of those planets have been both Earth-size and in their stars' habitable zone. But that could change with the next announcement of Kepler candidates, which Batalha said might come in June or July. |
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If you’re making music with Bitwig Studio, did you know it is also capable of playing microtonal music? It’s not difficult to set up – in fact Bitwig is already a shade above Ableton Live in terms of microtonal scale support. In this article I’ll discuss some possibilities and limitations for microtonal music in Bitwig Studio.
Pitch bend method
If you’re the kind of musician who wants to compose standard Western tuned music with the occasional microtonal melodic intonation, then the pitch bend method is an easy way to go. Bitwig essentially locks you into standard Western tuning (12-tone equal temperament) as a tonal framework, and you can specify your deviation from that tuning on a per-note basis.
Yes, you heard correctly. Bitwig supports per-note pitch bend for its built-in instruments! This really lowers the barrier of entry for a basic level of microtonality.
But if you want to go deep, using a microtonal scale as your tonal framework, then things start to get fiddly because you’ll be using those pitch bends on almost every single note. Copy and paste will be your friend here.
Remember that per-note pitch bend does not work for VST instruments. The MIDI spec doesn’t support per-note pitch bend, so this technique only works for the Bitwig internal instruments that share Bitwig’s own unique data structure.
Equal temperaments with Bitwig Note MOD
You can use the Note MOD device to grab note information from any instrument track. That information can then be used to modulate other parameters within Bitwig’s instruments or effects.
The Note MOD device can be set up to allow you to play in microtonal equal temperaments with the Sampler, FM-4 and Polysynth instruments. That’s because these 3 instruments have a Pitch setting that can be modulated. Use the Note MOD device with the KEY modulator to modulate the Pitch setting of your instrument. A negative value will cause the notes to become smaller than a semitone, while a positive value will cause the notes to become larger than a semitone.
This gives you a world of microtonal and macrotonal equal tunings to explore. But note that this method won’t allow you to play just intonation scales or other unequal scales.
VST instruments
Of course, due to the fact that Bitwig supports VST instruments, you can simply load up tried-and-true VST instruments that support microtonal scales.
If you have a synth that can be tuned via tuning file import, then you’ll need to know how to generate those tuning files or you could simply download a few ready-made tuning packs. And don’t forget to check your synth’s manual to find out how to import your tuning files.
This method doesn’t update the look of your piano roll even if you update the tuning in your VST instrument. So you’ll be stuck in a piano roll scordatura hell, where the notes on the piano roll don’t quite match up with what you’re hearing. But don’t worry, most other DAW microtonalists are in the same ring of hell as you. Get cosy, I’ve been here for years.
SysEx / MIDI Tuning Standard support?!
In the past, SysEx was how MIDI devices sent and received data for their specific functions. This was a long time ago, before everything was done in the box with a GUI. Some new VST instruments and many old keyboard synths support microtuning via MIDI Tuning Standard (MTS) SysEx messages.
It looks like Bitwig doesn’t support SysEx messages yet (as of Spring 2016), and we’re not sure if it ever will. So MIDI Tuning Standard based microtuning is ruled out for now, sorry. Let’s hope the developers will implement it for all us nerds in the future. Cross your fingers, say prayers, burn incense, and send the developers a feature request…
If you’re using the Xen Arts plugins in Bitwig Studio under Windows or WINE then you’d better just load the .mid tuning-dumps via the UI directly on the synth itself.
Bitwig modular microtuning
In the core of Bitwig Studio there is a hidden modular environment that will later be opened up for musicians and tweakers to patch into. Without a doubt, Bitwig’s modular system could be used and abused to bend the notes in any which way you choose. Let’s wait for this one and see what the future holds.
If Bitwig Studio’s modular system inspires the same kind of sharing culture that Max for Live does, then it’s only a matter of time before some bright spark patches a microtuner plugin or microtonal synth in Bitwig modular.
If you know any other ways to squeeze a microtonal scale out of Bitwig Studio then drop a line in the comments.
Further reading |
Triggs named 2017 recipient of the Voltaire award as her five-year contract comes to an end
Gillian Triggs will receive a top award for freedom of speech one week before her five-year contract as Australian human rights commissioner expires.
Triggs, who has been consistently criticised by the Abbott and Turnbull governments for her condemnation of Australia’s treatment of refugees, was named the 2017 recipient of the Voltaire award by Liberty Victoria on Tuesday for her “courageous stand on people’s rights”.
“It’s a recognition of her work and the courage she has exhibited in the face of very withering criticism from the government from time to time,” Prof Spencer Zifcak, acting president of Liberty Victoria, told Guardian Australia.
Gillian Triggs criticises News Corp claim Human Rights Commission 'failing older white men' Read more
“Most people would just have resigned in the face of the criticism that she has received.”
Senior government ministers, including the attorney general, George Brandis, and the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, have called for Triggs’ resignation over the past two years in response to her criticism of the treatment of refugees, particularly children, in Australia’s offshore detention centres on Manus and Nauru.
Triggs responded to what she described as “highly personal” criticism by saying that resigning in the face of such attacks was “the very reverse of what I ought to be doing”.
In November the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, confirmed that Triggs’ role as human rights commissioner would end when her contract expired in mid-2017, and Triggs told Guardian Australia she had not sought reappointment.
Gillian Triggs: I won’t be cowed by political attacks Read more
Zifcak said the decision to give the Voltaire award to Triggs was not intended as a political statement against the government. For an institution formed by human rights lawyers who frequently attack governments of all political stripes, he said, invoking some political ire “just goes with the territory”.
Triggs is expected to accept the award at ceremony in Melbourne in July.
Triggs said she was “honoured” to receive the award and congratulated the other winners in a statement that referenced the controversy over section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which the government attempted to water down.
“It’s so important that we strike the balance between speaking freely and protecting people for racial abuse,” she said.
The cartoonist Eaten Fish, an Iranian asylum seeker held in detention on Manus Island since 2013, will receive the empty chair award, founded last year for recipients who are unable to accept in person.
Eaten Fish produces work about life in detention and has received an award for courage in editorial cartooning by the Cartoonists Rights Network International. In February he went on a 19-day hunger strike to protest against the immigration department’s handling of his claims of sexual abuse.
“Again, we are talking about courage here,” Zifcak said. “This is a person who is undergoing both physical and psychological suffering as a direct result of being in detention but is still willing to get out there and make it clear how people are being treated in that environment and criticise both the Australian and Papua New Guinean governments for their cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment on Manus and Nauru.”
The terrible true story of Mr Eaten Fish, Manus Island cartoonist | First Dog on the Moon Read more
Seventeen-year-old Georgia Stone will receive the inaugural young Voltaire award for her advocacy on behalf of transgender children and adolescents.
Stone was 10 years old when she won a landmark case in the family court to be allowed to to take hormone blockers, a case that set the precedent of trans children only needing parental and medical consent to access that treatment. Trans people under the age of 18 still need the permission of the family court to access cross-sex hormone therapy.
She was named the GLBTI person of the year in 2016. |
Karl Kani , one of the most influential fashion designers of streetwear in the 90s, got a special gift from Tupac . In a new interview, Kani explained that Tupac did not charge him anything to do an advertisement.
"My first interactions were with Daz and Kurupt and Snoop [Dogg]. I met Tupac a couple years after that," Karl Kani said of how he linked up with Pac. "Those guys came down, it was nothing but love. They did ads for my partners in Cross Colours and we decided we wanted to go with Tupac in our advertisement. So, I did my ads with Tupac in 94, 95."
Karl Kani stated that when he sat down to discuss doing the ad with Tupac, the rapper let it be known why he would not be charging anything to do it.
"We connected at the Hotel Nikko. I sat down and talked to the man cause I really wanted to meet him cause he was wearing a lot of my clothing," Kani explained. "After ten minutes or so in the conversation, I asked him how much would he charge me to do an ad and he kind of got real quiet. He didn't say nothing for a minute. He's like, 'Yo man, I ain't gonna charge you cause you black. You my peoples, man. I'm just gonna do it out of love.' I was like cool, game on. Two weeks later, the man kept his word and went to New York to do a photo shoot before Above the Rim came out."
Check out the entire interview above to hear about Karl Kani's experience opening up his first store in South Central and how he started working with Tha Dogg Pound. |
By Bill Maher
This week, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas asked questions during oral arguments for the first time in ten years. He’s like one of those rare plants that blooms once in a lifetime. But I can’t help but feel it’s no coincidence that he roused himself just after Scalia died. While the conservatives on the court had a solid majority he was content to just sit back and let Scalia and Roberts do the heavy lifting, but now that the balance has tilted a little to the left he’s got to step up.
Of course, the questions he did ask had nothing much to do with the issue at hand, but at least he’s trying.
I just hope that when the Republicans reject Obama’s nominee as unqualified, someone will respond, “Compared to who? The Madame Tussaud’s wax figure that your side picked?” |
Front-end developers and engineers are familiar with Less, Sass, or Stylus for their CSS processing needs. CSS as a language is iterative and constantly changing. CSS 3 brought with it a host of changes and interactions previously only possible with JavaScript.
There's a new tool out there to help with CSS magic and it's called PostCSS. Simply put, it's a tool for transforming styles using JavaScript. But it's much more than that. Its modular structure enables front-end developers to create complex workflows. PostCSS is not meant to replace Less or Sass. It can either work alongside those pre-processors or work independently too. You can look at PostCSS as a more powerful Sass.
Some of the Major Benefits of Using POSTCSS are:
It is modular and hence, more lightweight. It uses a single responsibility principle at its core, which means you can choose what you actually want to use in your project workflow. It enables faster processing. The compilation of projects, both small and large is speedy.
There are more than 200 PostCSS plugins available for web application development in Drupal. Let’s take a look at the examples outlined below to incorporate a PostCSS plugin into your Drupal 8 theming workflow.
#1 – Stylelint PostCSS Plugin:
While working with large development teams and codebases, you need to first establish good coding standards. Coding standards help in maintaining clean and consistent code. And Stylelint is a PostCSS plugin that enforces a clean and consistent CSS rules.
Stylelint Configurations:
var stylelintConfig = { "rules": { "block-no-empty": true, "indentation": 2, "color-no-invalid-hex": true ... ... } };
Stylelint has over you can choose from. Here we have covered an example of setting up Stylelint using Gulp:
var postcss = require('gulp-postcss'); var reporter = require('postcss-reporter'); var stylelint = require('stylelint'); var scss = require("postcss-scss"); gulp.task('lint:css', function() { return gulp.src('src/**/*.scss') .pipe(postcss( [ stylelint({ /* options */ }), reporter({ clearMessages: true }) ], { syntax: scss } )); });
#2 – CSSNext PostCSS Plugin:
CSSNext is another PostCSS plugin you can use with CSS syntax. With this plugin, you need not wait for the browser support. Below is an example of using CSSNext plugin in Drupal 8:
// CSS Input :root { --red: #d33; } a { &:hover { color: color(var(--red) a(54%)); } }
// CSS Output a:hover { color: #dd3333; color: rgba(221, 51, 51, 0.54); }
Some of the additional PostCSS plugins you can use in your workflow include CSSnano modular CSS minifier, Style Guide, and PostCSS pxtorem. As mentioned earlier, you can use these plugins or its parts you really need in your workflow.
Using PostCSS Within Your Drupal 8 Theming Workflow
There are a few things you require to get started with PostCSS:
Node.js or NPM
Grunt, Gulp, Webpack or whatever task runner you prefer
Add PostCSS packages using npm install package_name --save-dev
Incorporating PostCSS into your workflow does not necessarily need to be Drupal specific. It is easily accessible in Drupal 8 theme. The only thing that matters is that you need to fetch some additional Node packages and update your Gulp file.
PostCSS is a powerful tool you can easily customize to suit your project requirements. It is modular, extendable and fast. It has a large ecosystem of plugins, you can use to either replace the preprocessor setup or use it alongside. Have you incorporated any PostCSS plugin within your Drupal 8 theming project? Let us know in the comments below. |
America recently got to see a whole other side to jokester Jack Black.
In support of Red Nose Day, the funny man traveled to Uganda and took a glimpse into the impoverished life of Felix -- a homeless 12-year-old who relies on collecting and returning recyclables off the street for money.
In the video above -- which was broadcast during last Thursday's telethon event on NBC -- Felix told Black that his mother died and he never met his father. He has siblings, but has no idea where they are.
"It's unfathomable," Black, who was among many A-listers supporting the cause, said to the camera. He noted Felix sleeps near strangers and garbage every night, using a rock to rest his head. "This is not a place for a 12-year-old boy to be sleeping alone. This is his life."
As Felix explained, the most important thing to him is learning -- something Red Nose Day fought to make happen.
A project that helps connect street kids like Felix to learning opportunities was one of the beneficiaries of Thursday's event, which reportedly raised more than $21 million to help impoverished communities in the U.S. and abroad.
Several charities were helped by Red Nose Day, including Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Save the Children and United Way. The televised event was launched in the U.K. in 1988, as CNN reported, and had raised over 78 million British pounds, or about $122 million, before last night's telethon.
Several global humanitarian efforts -- including the fight against AIDS, ending domestic violence and helping children access education -- have benefited from Red Nose Day.
To learn more about Red Nose Day, visit the event's website here. |
MY CROPS WON’T GROW!!!
Capitalists hate the winter time. They hate it because they can’t make as many agricultural profits. This is because, like in real life, you are severely limited in your crop production during the Winter in Stardew Valley. The lack of profits to be earned from crops may be incredibly daunting, but Winter serves as down time. Perhaps Spring-Fall was incredibly breakneck and stressful for you in Stardew Valley? Perhaps there are a lot of things you were unable to complete or do because you were stressed by the ever-looming passage of time. I certainly was, and with this post, I will help guide you through Winter in Stardew Valley, and show you how it can be fun and productive.
Think of the Future
If crops are truly on your mind, then rearrange your farm. You should have a high enough farming level to craft a quality sprinkler. I highly recommend crafting as many of these as you can during Winter. In year 1 of Stardew Valley, there were likely many things you were unable to complete, because your schedule was so packed. You were also likely to have a farm that was a complete mess because you were pressured to make some money in the first few impoverished days in Stardew Valley. Therefore, it is imperative to make a mental map of your farm layout for Spring of Year 2.
A person with a farm like this:
didn’t get this immediately. Clearing your farm out in Year 1, and establishing a massive plot like this is nearly impossible. So don’t be discouraged if your farm isn’t as nearly as profitable as you would like to be! Winter is a time to evaluate your plot, whether you would like to grow grass for your animals, where you would place your sprinklers and your crops, and where you would like trees and decorations. Would you like a farm that’s decorative and pretty? Or would you prefer a farm that maximizes profits? You have options.
What I have done so far, is mine for the materials needed for quality sprinklers, and lay them out on my farm prematurely. This means that when Spring Day 1 rolls around, you can buy as many seeds as you need, and not have to worry about taking the entire day up watering. They will all water themselves automatically, and you can focus on other tasks like fishing, mining, or making new friends!
Save Every Last Dime
So now you know to lay your farm out for a massive Spring harvest. Only, there’s a slight problem: you need money to buy seeds and resources. There is no point to planning your farm if you cannot enact that plan. Therefore, do whatever you can to scrounge up as much Winter money as you can. Forage for Winter crops and sell those. Forage for Winter Crops and bring them to the community center to get Winter Seeds and sell those. You will need that cash to afford the seeds in Spring. Don’t be afraid to sell the not-so-fancy gems you find in the mine. Hold onto the diamonds and emeralds because those make fantastic gifts, but don’t hesitate to sell Jade, Amethyst, or Topaz.
Furthermore, if you missed out on planting trees and the Community Center is mocking you for it, then now is the time to save for them. They take a very long time to grow, so to get them ready on the first day of Spring would make a monumental difference for your profits. Do not go overboard with multiple trees, however. One of each should be fine. Perhaps you have even designated a place on your farm for trees to grow.
It is tempting to buy more animals to generate a profit off of them, but unless you are ready for a long-term investment, I would say hold off until massive profits in Spring. If you already have a few animals, then I believe you should coast on that amount for a while. Because you have to buy a heater, which takes 2000g for the Winter time, buying expensive animals could be costly for the short-term Winter saving plan. Also, I would say hold off on upgrading your Barn and Coop. While they are being upgraded, you can still access your animals, so you don’t have to wait for a specific time to do that.
Homies and Recreation
The Community Center is an integral piece of Stardew Valley that should not be ignored. Not just because completing bundles gets you awesome rewards, but because fully completing the Community Center is how you complete the game’s main quest! Obviously, you can’t complete everything in a single year if you didn’t keep track of it (or use the Wiki). That’s why Winter is a time for you to plan and assess how to fill the center up quickly. Planning will take you 20 minutes, but it will honetly be a life-saver for you. Don’t do what I did, and sell all your pumpkins in Fall, forgetting that you need to give it for the Community Center, and wait three in-game seasons for my chance again.
Also, if you planted tons of seeds in Fall, you should have a decent amount of cash. Don’t be afraid to budget your earnings for gifts. Building relationships in Winter is a great activity, and it can spruce the otherwise dead season with more lively cutscenes and stories. Building friendships and seeing people’s stories are one of the most interesting aspects of Stardew Valley, and seeing their demeanor change from cold and abrasive to warm and welcome is so rewarding. At 0 hearts, Shane says “Do I know you? Leave.” At 5 hearts, he says “I’m surprised anybody wants to talk to me, I appreciate it.”
THE OFFICIAL STARDEW VALLEY CHECKLIST FOR ACTIVITIES:
Make friends
Prepare the farm with Sprinklers and designs
Go to the community center and plan what you need from Spring-Fall
Save dat cash
Never talk to Pierre, the scumbag. |
Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who was recently relocated to the US from India by an NGO after death threats by Islamists radicals, on Wednesday took to Twitter to announce that she is not leaving India permanently.
"I often go to USA.To give lectures & to see my family.I haven't left India permanently. Indian govt always provides security. Pet cat is waiting", Nasreen tweeted.
Human rights activist Nasreen even emphasised that she has full faith in Indian government as it provides security. The outspoken writer even said that her pet cat is also waiting for her in India.
The 52-year-old writer was taken to the United States by an NGO, claiming that it is providing Nasreen safety amid death threats from Islamic radicals. According to a press release by the US-based Center for Inquiry, Nasreen reached New York on May 27. A fund has also been established to assist her.
The Center for Inquiry has established an emergency fund to assist freethought activists whose lives are under threat by Islamic radicals linked to Al Qaeda in countries such as Bangladesh, where three secularist bloggers have been murdered since February, the statement said.
Taslima is from Bangladesh has been living in exile since 1994 in the wake of death threats by Muslim fundamentalist outfits. She is now a citizen of Sweden.
She has also been continuously getting Indian visa since 2004. She has lived in the US, Europe and India in the last two decades. However, on many occasions, she has expressed her wish to live in India permanently, especially in Kolkata. |
Keywords: french concept comic book graphic novel artist writer jean henri gaston giraud revolutionary concept artist author for film comic books movies the incal john difool the airtight garage arzach wordless stories illustrations drawings moebius one of the greatest artists of all time
It is super hard for me to believe that Mobeius is gone. Jean Henri Gaston Giraud passed away at the age of 73 on March 10, 2012. I remember reading The Incal graphic novels by EPIC and thinking that he had some of the best compositional flow of any artist that I've ever read. I also remember that a lot of his technical stuff was so amazingly simple and complex at the same time. Just searching for his art on the web made me realize what an incredible amount of work he has produced in his lifetime. I know there was a time when Katsuhiro Otomo and him were discussing making an animated version of The Airtight Garage , which I was so freakishly stoked on. Unfortunately, that never happened but I am thrilled he left so many works behind for us to enjoy and I can't wait to discover them all. Thank you so much! Your work will live on to inspire generations of artists forever. Pour Moebius... Merci beaucoup pour le voyage. |
“Yes we can!” – “¡Sí se puede!” – is the deafening chant that closes the rallies. Except they feel less like political meetings and more like rock concerts. On Sunday, millions of Spaniards will vote in their country’s general election – not since the death of Franco has Spain faced such a dramatic political transformation.
Podemos – Spanish for “we can” – is a party less than two years old, but a combination of discontent and optimism means the party and its allies could win dozens of seats in the Spanish parliament, a political ascent lacking precedent in postwar western Europe. A combination of economic crisis, a brutal programme of cuts, and disillusionment with a political elite widely regarded as corrupt and venal spurs on its support. This election matters – not just for Spain, but for Europe too.
Travelling across Spain – and full disclosure, I’m here to support Podemos – reveals a country with a huge level of political engagement. In A Coruña, Galicia, hundreds of young people cram into a room, debating violence against women, the democratisation of the economy, and workers’ rights.
Spaniards new democracy Franco's long shadow Read more
I meet the mayor, Xulio Ferreiro, who was swept to power along with other Podemos-backed candidates in many cities in May’s local elections. Dressed in casual jeans, jumper and shirt, he is a far cry from the opulence of the city hall. It is a reminder that protesters have become rulers. In Asturias – where miners in 1934 revolted against a rightwing government before the civil war – thousands of people waving purple balloons chant “remontada”, or “comeback”, referring to Podemos’s apparent upturn in the polls. In a working-class district of Barcelona, supporters of Podemos’s allies En Comú Podem cheer Ada Colau, their new crusading mayor, who came to prominence as an anti-eviction champion.
Given what has happened to Spain, it would perhaps be more surprising if this political convulsion had not taken place. Unemployment peaked at a quarter of the workforce in 2013, and remains above 20%. The crisis was particularly ruinous for young people, nearly half of whom remain out of work, a total only eclipsed in the European Union by austerity-ravaged Greece. Many of those driven into the ranks of the unemployment were stripped of benefits, leaving them destitute.
For many of those in work, life is increasingly defined by precariousness and insecurity. According to the Financial Times, only 7% of new work contracts signed in July were for permanent jobs; before the crash, it was closer to 12%. In June, over a quarter of new fixed-term employment contracts lasted a week or less, up from just under 16% before the crash. This is the lot of middle-class and working-class Spaniards alike.
In 2014, nearly a hundred families were thrown out of their homes every day. The economic recovery has been accompanied by booming child poverty: according to the EU, one in three Spanish children now risk poverty or social exclusion. Services have been decimated too: Madrid cut 13.6% of spending on health between 2009 and 2013.
You might expect PSOE – Spain’s equivalent of the Labour party – to be the beneficiaries, but this technocratic outfit was in power when the crisis hit and began the process of cutting. PSOE shows the same signs of morbidity afflicting European social democracy: the fragmentation of its traditional base, and its acceptance of market economics and austerity at the expense of supporters.
Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias on why he’s like Jeremy Corbyn: ‘He brings ideas that can solve problems’ Read more
Election speeches here are peppered with references to the indignados, a huge movement against the entire political elite which took to the streets in the run-up to the 2011 election that evicted PSOE. The movements had two major political outcomes: the creation of Podemos at the beginning of 2014, which went on to take five seats in the European parliament just four months later; and sweeping gains for anti-austerity movements in last May’s local elections, with so-called “mayors of change” taking power in cities across the country. Podemos’s rise was meteoric: months after its foundation, some polls put the party in first place.
The first thing you notice about a Podemos rally is a rejection of the style of the old left: no red flags, no speeches peppered with socialism. As one candidate for En Marea, an ally of Podemos in Galicia, put it to me, she doesn’t answer the problems of farmers by whipping out a copy of Das Kapital. The Podemos strategy appeared to be vindicated.
But the party suffered a number of setbacks. When Syriza swept to power in Greece at the beginning of 2015, Podemos’s leader, Pablo Iglesias, forged a close alliance with Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras. EU leaders were aware that any success for Syriza would boost similar movements elsewhere, and in Spain most of all – which partly explains their determination to impose a humiliating austerity agreement. The Greek capitulation damaged Podemos.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The election campaign has transformed Podemos’s fortunes.’ Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP
Then there is the backlash against the burgeoning Catalan independence movement. Like David Cameron stirring anti-SNP hostility so successfully in Britain’s general election, so the Spanish government has tapped into anti-Catalan resentment, damaging the pro-referendum (though not pro-independence) Podemos.
After years of economic trauma, any sign of recovery undoubtedly benefits the incumbent government. And Podemos’s role as the new, fresh outsiders was robbed by the rise of Ciudadanos (Citizens), led by the telegenic Albert Rivera, who first came to prominence when he appeared naked in a campaign poster, cupping only his manhood.
Originating in Catalonia as a vigorously anti-independence movement, the party attracted derisory support in national opinion polls at the beginning of the year. Although portrayed as centrist equivalents of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, Ciudadanos blends free-market ideology and libertarianism on drugs and sex work, while in Catalonia it proposed banning the burqa. Some of its leading figures and candidates have suggested limiting abortion rights and removing healthcare from immigrants. Ciudadanos subsequently became the darlings of the mainstream media and surged past Podemos, apparently consigning Iglesias’s then-flagging party to fourth place.
Yet the election campaign has transformed Podemos’s fortunes. The latest polls put Podemos on 20%, four points ahead of Ciudadanos and just five points behind the ruling party, an indication of how much Spanish politics has fragmented. Though we must treat polls with scepticism, the old party system is on course to be dealt a crippling blow, even if a weakened Popular party clings on to power, possibly propped up by Ciudadanos.
Even if Podemos only wins, say, 13%, it would be a dramatic breakthrough for a party founded only last year. Let’s not get swept away: Syriza was the great hope of the left at the start of 2015. But Spain is not Greece, and Podemos shows there’s life in the movement yet. Europe’s rulers should take note. |
Shifted EXTRA: Causality
Some time before Epilogue:Redemption
Crim sat weak and unfocused in a normal cell. All of his magic had been drained, and the only power left to him was his immortality. He'd lost track of the days, and wouldn't be surprised if the universe had aged a hundred years or more in his absence. It mattered not. His cell wasn't even locked. He posed no threat. His connection to the Cauldron, the source of all magic in the universe, had been severed. He couldn't even Shift anymore.
And he could feel that he'd aged. He had no mirror, though they would probably provide him with one if he ever asked. His once pitch black hair had grown long and grey during his time here. His body was thinner, and he could see the bones in his body poking at his skin. He just didn't have the energy to do anything. No, that's wrong. He could get up and do something, but he didn't have the drive. Nothing mattered anymore.
His thoughts drifted to the days long since passed, and a faint smile spread across his lips. He remembered all those years ago when he and seven other Shifters masked their existences and hid themselves away from Eudelus Nacht and his Salvation. Crim had cleverly manipulated the other seven into serving him, and none of them were any the wiser until Lia Merca's forces overran then at Purgatory. Even after they discovered his covert and ancient betrayal, he still adored them. They were the closest things he'd ever had to a family.
Criston Marr was strong and determined. He held an air of authority about himself, and his thunder magic was nearly unrivaled until he met the great Nik Stoll. The Battle for Purgatory lasted for several days, and every second was that Marr and Nik fought was a terrifying display of destructive beauty. Thunder had rolled across the battlefield, frightening both armies, and the lightning was so mighty that it cracked the ancient angelic ruins of Paradise that rested below the false moon Purgatory.
Althea Vollz terrified everyone. She had been cursed over ten thousand years ago with a strange case of eternal youth. While her body remained young and beautiful, her mind and soul would age horribly. Even her voice was hoarse and distasteful, making her sound like a very old woman. She had been forced to live alone until she awakened as a Shifter, and then she sought the same goals as Crim; the destruction of all magic to avenge the curse placed upon her. He almost regretted sacrificing her. Almost.
Xeno Crius, the sword master. Crim was very fond of him. He was the first piece to move in their game against Salvation. He snuck onto the world of Eden, and seemingly crippled a group of mortals who served Salvation. Darkstar, Cyril, and Aqua were three of the mightiest to serve the organization, and Xeno effectively destroyed their spirits. He murdered Aqua, who was married to Cyril and thus eliminated the two of them in one fell swoop. Darkstar proved more difficult, but he ultimately cut the scythe user's eyes out and rendered him useless. The War of Dogma was started, and three pawns were removed from play it seemed. Sadly, this was not the case. The two mean had a strong determination for revenge, and they found Xeno on the battlefield. Darkstar died in the battle, but Cyril ultimately put a bullet though Xeno's skull.
Atra Miles, Aevitus, and Blossom held little value sadly. Atra felt no ambition, and he defected as soon as the tides of war shifted against him. Aevitus was too ambitious, and she destroyed herself in the pursuit of power. Blossom was the most tragic. Solstice, the half-elf servent of Arletha, has a strong resentment for vampires, and when Blossom revealed herself, she sealed her doom. He hunted her down for sport before the war was concluded.
Then his thoughts drifted to the seventh and final member of his motley crew; Calm. He never gave his real name, but his name had special meaning. He could control whether a person was emotional or not, and he generally preferred everyone to feel calm. "It gives little distraction on the battlefield when your mind isn't clouded by anger or sorrow," he'd said once. Crim saw Calm as his closest ally. He even loved the man in a way he'd never thought he could love. So when Calm's betrayal became apparent, Crim was heartbroken. But he couldn't be angry. He wanted so badly to hate Crim and be angry with him, but that bastard wouldn't let him. He kept calming Crim down.
Calm now works for Salvation. As does Marr. The two saw opportunities to meet their own personal goals as soon as Crim's goals failed, and they took those chances. He didn't blame the two men, but he did feel responsible. Five of Dogma's eight were dead, one was a prisoner, and two were turn cloaks. Some war I waged, he thought.
The sound of footsteps on the stone floor of the Thoughtspire dragged him back to the present. He glanced up to the open door of his cell and waited. Who is it today? Lucia? Arletha? Marr?
"Are you sure about this?" came the voice of...he smiled; Rose Gordon. What an unexpected surprise. "He's a bit...unpleasent."
"I don't mind, Ms. Gordon." came a voice that he actually didn't fully recognize at first. "I've been meaning to do this for the last hundred years. It's about time I stop procrastinating."
The two individuals rounded the corner, and Crim saw the two women before him. Rose opened the door and stepped in first. "Hello, Crim."
"Hello, Black Rose," he said mockingly. "Love the nick name."
Her eyes narrowed. "I earned it in your war," she shot back.
"How quaint. Was it because you picked up your lover's scythe and continued fighting after Xeno had killed him?"
Anger shot across her face. She kicked him in the ribs, and Crim coughed in pain before chuckling a little. "Don't you dare mention Darkstar."
"Ms. Gordon," the other woman said. "Please."
Rose nodded. "Sorry. Go ahead." She stepped aside, and the other woman approached.
Crim looked up and swore he recognized her. That dress...the orange hair and green eyes...ah, I see. "You're the android from the Longest Night possibility, aren't you?" He smiled. "Well, you wouldn't know about anything from that possibility, I suppose, since it didn't actually happen. Not in this universe at least. So, you've gone and grown up on old Mama Remnant, have you? Now you're an eternal protector. Good for you."
Her eyes narrowed. "He is unpleasant," she said flatly. "You...you cursed my friend, didn't you?"
Crim frowned. "I don't know if Ms. Black Rose has told you, but my connection the Cauldron was ripped from me quite some time ago. I couldn't curse a fly."
"Not recently," the girl added. "It was well over a hundred years ago. In fact, it's the reason that your magic was taken from you."
"Ah, so you were friends with that little girl. Ruby Rose was her name, correct?"
The girl glared at him. "You don't have the right to say her name."
He laughed. "Between her and Darkstar, I've got a whole plethora of taboo names on me, don't I?" He met her gaze. "So, what do you want?"
"Penny," Rose said. "It's not worth your time. He's just a shell now. You don't need to do this."
"I do," Penny said. She knelt down in front of Crim and stared into his eyes. "Why? Why did you curse her?"
"Didn't Black Rose tell you? For fun! I was stuck in sealed cell with no windows. Not even a bucket to shit in."
"You're immortal. You don't eat, so you don't shit," Rose retorted.
"Semantics! The important part of the story is that I got bored. I needed something to pass the time."
Penny nodded. "Explain to me what the curse was."
"Penny!" Rose exclaimed.
Crim smiled. "Why? Looking to learn it?"
Penny smiled a cruel smile. "Maybe."
He laughed. "The commoners that work here, and even my former collegues called it the Cycle, but I had a better name for it: Temporal Causality of Predetermined Phenomenon."
"So, Cycle for short," Penny jabbed. Rose smiled; Penny had gotten more human as she got older. Crime was annoyed by the insult.
"Basically, you set a time frame, and create a temporal reoccurrence...a time loop. But with each loop, a randomized algorithm changed things ever so slightly. Not enough to matter initially, but the small changes give way to much larger variations. A Butterfly Effect."
"What sort of changes."
"Oh, it could be anything. What shoes you put on, what cereal you eat for breakfast, which route you took to get to work, who you spoke too. Small changes on the first day that ultimately create large ripples in time space later down the line. In the case of Ruby Rose, she would make little changes in her efforts to save lives, ultimately leading everyone down a path that could destroy everything. In almost every Causality, she died."
Penny raised an eyebrow. "And what happened in the end?"
"Nik broke the Law of No Interference and destroyed the Harbinger comet, completely preventing the next Longest Night Causality. Then Valentine broke the curse, and my magic was stripped. The world of Remnant returned to a world of absolutes, and there have been no temporal distortions in the universe since...presumably."
"You broke that law first," Rose added.
"I didn't alter the fate of the world like he did. I just made poor Ruby Rose live though the same crisis over and over again."
Penny was lost in thought before she posed the next question. "How many times?"
"Pardon?"
"How many iterations did Ruby live through?"
He smiled. "One hundred fifteen thousand four hundred and fifty two."
Penny's eyes went wide. "Mother of God," she whispered.
"And she wasn't even cursed for all of them!" Crim yelled.
"What?!" the two women shouted.
"I was exhausted for two reasons. Yes, the anti-magic barrier was masking me, but I had alot of pent up Magicae that I had been saving up. I've successfully cast the Temporal Causality of Predetermined Phenominon three times, and partially cast it once. The once was for Ruby, thus why she could only remember the most recent iteration. A successful casting allows the target to remember every iteration. One of the successes was on myself, where I waited for Fear to be destroyed. He destroyed this universe one billion, four hundred thirty-six million, two hundred six thousand, seven hundred twenty-nine times before Lia stopped him. The second was on Lia herself. She's still cursed, and can't be cured, but she hasn't died yet so she's only physically seen this one timeline, but in tandem with her power of foresight, she can no longer predict the future because she can see every single possible outcome, and still not know which one to expect. The third..." he smiled. "Is still in place as well."
"Who did you curse, Crim!" Rose yelled.
His smile widened as he looked at Penny. "When my magic was stripped of me, I lost the ability to see her timelines. But rest assured, she's still caught in her Causality Loop. This timeline, the one we're currently in, is the only one where her life wasn't in a great deal of danger. Well, not like the other loops at least."
"Who did you curse, damn it!" Rose yelled again.
Staring deep into Penny's mechanical eyes, he whispered a name. A name that only Penny knew. "Weiss Schnee."
Her eyes widened. She stood to her feet and turned to leave. "I have a mission I must attend to," she said flatly.
Rose gasped. "But, Penny! You're friend is still caught in a time loop!"
"She's already dead in this timeline!" Penny snapped. "She died of a hereditary cancer when she was seventy-eight years old! I can't help her now. Now here."
"There must be something we can do!"
Penny stopped and turned around, staring straight into Crim's dark, insane eyes. She raised a hand and pointed it at him. "Connection to the Cauldron established. Performing mathematical determination: code word LAMBDA. Creating new file: Temporal Causality of Predetermined Phenomenon. Equations found and processed. Establishing barrier."
Rose jumped back, startled as a transparent green sphere erupted around Crim; it was covered in magic circles and mathematical symbols. "Hey! What the hell are you doing?" He studied the barrier and recognized the algorythm: it was his Causality spell. "You're going to trap me in a time loop? Ha! You'll never do it! Look!" He pointed at some of the equations on the barrier. "You don't even have the formula right!"
"I assure you," Penny said coldly. "I already know your method. I've simply improved upon it."
He spat. "So what? I put myself under a timeloop before, remember? I lived through the same ten thousand years over a billion times! That means I've seen ove-"
"Over 1.4362067e+13 times. I'm a machine, remember? I did the math in point-zero-zero-three seconds. But now its different. You have no way to control it, as I'm the caster. And I've mixed magic with science: something no other shifter has ever done before. My Causality curse is unbreakable by anyone but me. And, I'm going to send you to a separate plane of existence." She smiled. "You might like it. It's a mixture of reality and virtual reality. I have several digital copies of myself waiting for you there, ready to let you find out what it means to be in Hell."
Crim's face went pale with fear. "You wouldn't?"
"And I'll be standing here in your cell after every death you experience, completely oblivious to the timeloop that you're in. You'll beg me to break the curse, but I won't listen. I'll let you suffer for all of time." She smiled once again. "Goodbye." A rainbow flame enveloped Crim, and space popped as it was ripped asunder. When the flames died away, he was gone.
"Penny..." Rose began. "What have you done?"
"Nothing that Lia doesn't already know about," she said. Pausing for a moment, she added, "It's almost that time of year. I can't tell Ruby what I've done. I know she wouldn't approve. She'd have wanted me to forgive Crim. I'll tell her that he was so pitiful that I couldn't raise my hand to him. I'll say...that he's been punished enough." She nodded, turning to leave as she finished speaking. "I'm sorry for the trouble I've caused you, Rose."
"No...its...fine, I suppose." She sighed. If Lady Lia approved of this action, then I suppose I can't really say anything. "Where are you off to?"
"To Anima. Fortis should be waiting for me. Arletha is sending us to eliminate an outbreak of Wraiths. It's to be a covert mission."
"Ah, so its a mission for the Agents of Nacht." Rose nodded. "I understand. And tell Rune that I still want to join."
"If I see him, I'll let him know." With those parting words, she Shifted away to the world of Anima. The day after, she'd finish her mission, report to Lia, and then visit Remnant to see the graves of team RWBY. It was her tradition.
But on top of all that, she had a new delimma. Weiss is stuck in a time loop, she thought. I need to find a way to break her out of it, but first...
"I need to find her." |
Netflix has selected its next original series. The streamer announced Monday that it has ordered a psychological thriller from the creators of Damages.
The 13-episode run, produced by Sony Pictures Television, hails from Todd A. Kessler, Daniel Zelman and Glenn Kessler (KZK). It joins House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, Hemlock Grove and the rebooted Arrested Development on Netflix's growing roster of originals.
Still untitled, the series focuses on a family of adult siblings whose secrets and scars come to light with the return of their black sheep brother.
"We were spellbound after hearing Todd, Glenn and Daniel's pitch and knew Netflix was the perfect home for this suspenseful family drama that is going to have viewers on the edge of their seats," said Netflix original content vp Cindy Holland. "Their work on Damages was truly ahead of its time and we're proud to be bringing our viewers this upcoming series."
PHOTOS: Exclusive Portraits of Netflix's Stars
Netflix began its rollout of original programming earlier in 2013. The Emmy-winning House of Cards scored a two-season order off the bat, while subsequent efforts Hemlock Grove and Orange Is the New Black earned renewals after their respective premieres. Arrested Development, revived at Netflix for a fourth season years after its conclusion on Fox, was only ordered for its recent summer run -- though both creator Mitch Hurwitz and Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos have spoken optimistically about doing more.
"We are absolutely thrilled to be creating an original series for Netflix -- a company committed to cutting-edge storytelling in a vibrant, new space," said the trio of co-creators in a joint statement. "We're equally excited about our relationship with Sony Pictures TV, which continues to provide us with unwavering creative support. We've always wanted to put our spin on a family saga and examine universal themes of family in a way that has never been seen before on television. The series is a tightly wound thriller that explores the complex bonds between parents and children, brothers and sisters, and the rivalries, jealousies, and betrayals at the core of every family."
"The guys worked so hard to come up with the right idea after the success of Damages," added Sony TV president of programming and production Jamie Erlicht. "It took almost a year to fully develop the pitch, and their patience paid off with the incredible reaction in the community, especially at Netflix, the perfect home for this show."
Damages, which launched on FX in 2007 and aired three seasons there before moving to DirecTV for its final two, was a critical smash -- despite relatively low ratings after its inaugural run. It earned 20 Emmy nominations over the course of five seasons, including two lead drama actress wins for star Glenn Close.
The news series is set to begin production in early 2014. |
US President Barack Obama has been accused of doing Downing Street's bidding - after he said the UK would be at "the back of the queue" for American trade deals if it left the EU.
Mr Obama was criticised by pro-Brexit campaigners after he warned of the consequences of the UK leaving the EU.
UKIP's Nigel Farage said Mr Obama was "talking down Britain", while Tory Liam Fox said his views were "irrelevant".
Mr Obama, on a three-day UK visit, will meet Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn later.
In a speech in London, the US president urged young people to "reject pessimism and cynicism" and to "know that progress is possible and our problems can be solved".
"Progress is not inevitable," he said and must be fought for. "Take a longer, more optimistic view of history."
Mr Obama's intervention on the EU issue came on his first full day in the UK and comes just weeks ahead of the 23 June in-out referendum.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday, Mr Obama said the US "wants Britain's influence to grow - including within Europe".
"The UK is at its best when it's helping to lead a strong European Union. It leverages UK power to be part of the EU.
"I don't think the EU moderates British influence in the world, it magnifies it."
Image copyright Kensington Palace Image caption Prince George, who was dressed in his pyjamas and slippers, stayed up to meet Mr and Mrs Obama at Kensington Palace on Friday evening
Image copyright PA Image caption The young prince gave his parents' dinner guests a demonstration of his riding skills
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Prince Harry joined the two couples for the evening
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said Mr Obama's message on trade was "very blunt" and "really upped the ante" in the referendum debate.
Leave campaigner Mr Farage drew attention to the US president's terminology, saying his use of the phrase "back of the queue" rather than the more common American vernacular "back of the line" suggested Mr Obama was doing the prime minister's "bidding".
"I think that's shameful," he added.
Mr Fox said Mr Obama would be leaving the White House soon, and therefore his comments were "largely irrelevant".
New markets
Conservative MP Dominic Raab labelled Mr Obama a "lame-duck American president doing an old British friend a political favour".
Downing Street rejected suggestions that any lines had been fed to Mr Obama, saying the US president spoke for himself.
Sir Andrew Cahn, a former chief executive of UK Trade & Investment, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Britain would "miss out on something very important and valuable" if it left the EU and was not part of a proposed trade deal between the bloc and the US.
Former foreign secretary Lord Owen said "Britain needs to create new markets away from the EU".
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption London Mayor Boris Johnson has said that he finds the US's "lectures" on EU referendum "paradoxical [and] very odd"
Meanwhile, another prominent Leave campaigner - former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith - has tried to move the referendum debate on to immigration.
In an article in the Daily Mail, he says the introduction of a national living wage - a move he supported while in government - will "surely lead to another stampede to our borders".
He adds: "To make the Living Wage work for British people, we need to be able to control the number of people coming in."
Image caption Mr Obama (far left) watched actors at the Globe perform scenes from Hamlet
Earlier on Saturday, Mr Obama visited the Globe Theatre, where celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death are taking place.
He watched actors perform several scenes from Hamlet, later joining them on stage.
"That was wonderful. I didn't want it to stop," he said.
Later, he will hold talks with Labour leader Mr Corbyn.
EU referendum: In depth
Image copyright Reuters
The UK's EU vote: All you need to know
EU for beginners: A guide
Is Britain safer in or out of the EU?
A-Z guide to EU-speak
Who's who: The Vote Leave team
Who's who: The Remain campaign |
OKLAHOMA CITY -- The family of a man accused of attempting to detonate what he believed was an explosives-laden van outside an Oklahoma bank says he is a paranoid schizophrenic and that the FBI knew it.
Clifford and Melonie Varnell, of Sayre, Oklahoma, issued a statement late Tuesday that questions the tactics undercover FBI agents used to arrest 23-year-old Jerry Drake Varnell. He was taken into custody early Saturday for the alleged plot to detonate a vehicle bomb in an alley adjacent to BancFirst in downtown Oklahoma City.
Varnell, who lives with his mother and stepfather in Sayre, about 130 miles west of Oklahoma City, is jobless due to his schizophrenia and does not have the resources to carry out such an act alone, according to the family's statement.
Oklahoma man accused of plotting U.S. bomb attack in custody
"The FBI came and picked him up from our home, they gave him a vehicle, gave him a fake bomb, and every means to make this happen," the statement said, adding that authorities "should not have aided and abetted a paranoid schizophrenic to commit this act."
FBI spokeswoman Jessica Rice in Oklahoma City and Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Williams declined comment Wednesday.
Varnell "has suffered through countless serious full-blown schizophrenic delusional episodes and he has been put in numerous mental hospitals since he was 16 years old," the family's statement said. It added that his parents are his legal guardians and do all they can "to keep him safe and functional."
"The mental health system has consistently failed us due to the lack of establishments and health care coverage for a person like him," the statement said. Varnell takes medication "but he will never be completely functional in life," it said.
The Varnells say their son is easily influenced and they believe a confidential informant who tipped FBI agents off to the alleged plot may have helped inspire it.
A criminal complaint says the FBI sent an undercover agents posing as an explosives expert who could help Varnell after being tipped off to the alleged plot by the confidential informant, the complaint says. Varnell allegedly claimed to have experience making small bombs, but was convinced by an undercover agent that the agent should provide the supplies.
Ultimately, officials say Varnell was provided with faux bomb making materials. Varnell was monitored closely for months as the alleged bomb plot developed during a long-term domestic terror investigation, federal prosecutors say.
The complaint says Varnell initially wanted to blow up the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, D.C., with a device similar to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, because he was upset with the government.
Varnell allegedly later identified BancFirst in downtown Oklahoma City as his target, according to federal prosecutors. When asked why he switched to BancFirst instead of the government building he originally planned, he said, "Well I don't wanna kill a bunch of people," the complaint said.
Varnell allegedly referenced the movie "Fight Club" when he discussed wanting to "take down a government facility or other structures."
Varnell allegedly claimed to embrace the "Three Percenter" ideology, referring to a far-right anti-government group that has rallied against gun control efforts and pledges resistance to the federal government over the infringement of constitutional rights.
In a series of text messages exchanged with the FBI's informant, Varnell "claimed to have a bunker for when the world collapsed" and indicated he was trying to build a team, the complaint states.
"I'm out for blood," the complaint quotes Varnell's texts as stating. "When militias start getting formed I'm going after government officials when I have a team."
The complaint says Varnell prepared a statement to be posted on social media after the explosion, helped assemble what he thought was the explosive device, and helped load it into what he believed was a stolen van. Varnell then allegedly drove the van to BancFirst, parked it in an alley next to the building and dialed a number on a cellphone he believed would trigger the explosion.
A federal detention hearing for Varnell is scheduled on Aug. 22. If convicted of attempting to use explosives to destroy a building in interstate commerce, Varnell could receive five to 20 years in prison.
His court-appointed defense attorney, Terri Coulter of Oklahoma City, declined comment. |
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton looks on during a campaign rally at Sacramento City College on June 5, 2016 in Sacramento, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Hillary Clinton was one of the many women to respond to the Senate’s approval Tuesday of a Hillary Clinton was one of the many women to respond to the Senate’s approval Tuesday of a bill requiring women to register for the draft when they turn 18. Clinton told The Huffington Post that she supports the measure, though she continues to favor an all-volunteer military, which the U.S. has had since 1973.
“I am on record as supporting the all-volunteer military, which I think at this time does serve our country well,” Clinton told The Huffington Post. “And I am very committed to supporting and really lifting up the men and women in uniform and their families.”
Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, said after the vote that “it’s just a matter of time” until women are treated equally in the military. The reaction from women outside of politics, including commenters on Women in the World’s Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, said after the vote that “it’s just a matter of time” until women are treated equally in the military. The reaction from women outside of politics, including commenters on Women in the World’s Facebook page , was decidedly more diverse.
“Equal pay and Full Control of our bodies. Then we can talk,” Luna Kelley wrote on Facebook.
“Not until the military starts taking sexual assault cases seriously. We shouldn’t have a draft anyways,” Gabrielle Morrow said.
Brandy Naugle said that if a draft were enacted and women were forced to serve, “the US government would be forced to confront the realities of the female body, mind, and possibilities.”
“I think this would be a big step toward real female empowerment and also a general change in attitude toward the quickness in going to war. I see this as potentially a very good thing,” Naugle wrote.
Read the full story at The Huffington Post and see all of the comments at Women in the World on Facebook .
Related: |
Photo-illustration: Colin Anderson/Getty Images We’re not going to be able to prevent autonomous armed robots from existing. The real question that we should be asking is this: Could autonomous armed robots perform better than armed humans in combat, resulting in fewer casualties on both sides?
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Yesterday, an open letter was presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, calling for a “ban on offensive autonomous weapons.” A bunch of people signed it, including “more than 1,000 experts and leading robotics researchers.” And I mean, of course they’d sign it, because who would seriously be for “killer robots?”
I am.
Here’s the letter in full:
Autonomous Weapons: an Open Letter from AI & Robotics Researchers Autonomous weapons select and engage targets without human intervention. They might include, for example, armed quadcopters that can search for and eliminate people meeting certain pre-defined criteria, but do not include cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems is — practically if not legally — feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms. Many arguments have been made for and against autonomous weapons, for example that replacing human soldiers by machines is good by reducing casualties for the owner but bad by thereby lowering the threshold for going to battle. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity. There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans, especially civilians, without creating new tools for killing people. Just as most chemists and biologists have no interest in building chemical or biological weapons, most AI researchers have no interest in building AI weapons — and do not want others to tarnish their field by doing so, potentially creating a major public backlash against AI that curtails its future societal benefits. Indeed, chemists and biologists have broadly supported international agreements that have successfully prohibited chemical and biological weapons, just as most physicists supported the treaties banning space-based nuclear weapons and blinding laser weapons. In summary, we believe that AI has great potential to benefit humanity in many ways, and that the goal of the field should be to do so. Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.
The main point in the body of this letter seems to be that unless we outlaw autonomous weapons right now, there will be some sort of arms race that will lead to the rapid advancement and propagation of things like autonomous “armed quadcopters,” eventually resulting in technology that’s accessible to anyone if they want to build a weaponized drone.
The problem with this argument is that no letter, UN declaration, or even a formal ban ratified by multiple nations is going to prevent people from being able to build autonomous, weaponized robots. The barriers keeping people from developing this kind of system are just too low. Consider the “armed quadcopters.” Today you can buy a smartphone-controlled quadrotor for US $300 at Toys R Us. Just imagine what you’ll be able to buy tomorrow. This technology exists. It’s improving all the time. There’s simply too much commercial value in creating quadcopters (and other robots) that have longer endurance, more autonomy, bigger payloads, and everything else that you’d also want in a military system. And at this point, it’s entirely possible that small commercial quadcopters are just as advanced as (and way cheaper than) small military quadcopters, anyway. We’re not going to stop that research, though, because everybody wants delivery drones (among other things). Generally speaking, technology itself is not inherently good or bad: it’s what we choose to do with it that’s good or bad, and you can’t just cover your eyes and start screaming “STOP!!!” if you see something sinister on the horizon when there’s so much simultaneous potential for positive progress.
“What we really need is a way of making autonomous armed robots ethical, because we’re not going to be able to prevent them from existing”
What we really need, then, is a way of making autonomous armed robots ethical, because we’re not going to be able to prevent them from existing. In fact, the most significant assumption that this letter makes is that armed autonomous robots are inherently more likely to cause unintended destruction and death than armed autonomous humans are. This may or may not be the case right now, and either way, I genuinely believe that it won’t be the case in the future, perhaps the very near future. I think that it will be possible for robots to be as good (or better) at identifying hostile enemy combatants as humans, since there are rules that can be followed (called Rules of Engagement, for an example see page 27 of this) to determine whether or not using force is justified. For example, does your target have a weapon? Is that weapon pointed at you? Has the weapon been fired? Have you been hit? These are all things that a robot can determine using any number of sensors that currently exist.
It’s worth noting that Rules of Engagement generally allow for engagement in the event of an imminent attack. In other words, if a hostile target has a weapon and that weapon is pointed at you, you can engage before the weapon is fired rather than after in the interests of self-protection. Robots could be even more cautious than this: you could program them to not engage a hostile target with deadly force unless they confirm with whatever level of certainty that you want that the target is actively engaging them already. Since robots aren’t alive and don’t have emotions and don’t get tired or stressed or distracted, it’s possible for them to just sit there, under fire, until all necessary criteria for engagement are met. Humans can’t do this.
The argument against this is that a robot autonomously making a decision to engage a target with deadly force, no matter how certain the robot may be, is dangerous and unethical. It is dangerous, and it may be unethical, as well. However, is it any more dangerous or unethical than asking a human to do the same thing? The real question that we should be asking is this: Could autonomous armed robots perform better than armed humans in combat, resulting in fewer casualties (combatant or non-combatant) on both sides? I believe so, which doesn’t really matter, but so do people who are actually working on this stuff, which does.
In 2009, Ronald C. Arkin, Patrick Ulam, and Brittany Duncan published a paper entitled “An Ethical Governor for Constraining Lethal Action in an Autonomous System,” which was about how to program an armed, autonomous robot to act within the Laws of War and Rules of Engagement. h+ Magazine interviewed Arkin on the subject (read the whole thing here), and here’s what he said:
h+: Some researchers assert that no robots or AI systems will be able to discriminate between a combatant and an innocent, that this sensing ability currently just does not exist. Do you think this is just a short-term technology limitation? What such technological assumptions do you make in the design of your ethical governor? RA: I agree this discrimination technology does not effectively exist today, nor is it intended that these systems should be fielded in current conflicts. These are for the so-called war after next, and the DoD would need to conduct extensive additional research in order to develop the accompanying technology to support the proof-of-concept work I have developed. But I don’t believe there is any fundamental scientific limitation to achieving the goal of these machines being able to discriminate better than humans can in the fog of war, again in tightly specified situations. This is the benchmark that I use, rather than perfection. But if that standard is achieved, it can succeed in reducing noncombatant casualties and thus is a goal worth pursuing in my estimation.
One way to think about this is like autonomous cars. Expecting an autonomous car to keep you safe 100 percent of the time is unrealistic. But, if an autonomous car is (say) 5 percent more likely to keep you safe than if you were driving yourself, you’d still be much better off letting it take over. Autonomous cars, by the way, will likely be much safer than that, and it’s entirely possible that autonomous armed robots will be, too. And if autonomous armed robots really do have at least the potential reduce casualties, aren’t we then ethically obligated to develop them?
If there are any doubts about how effective or ethical these systems might be, just test them exhaustively. Deploy them, load them up with blanks, and watch how they do. Will they screw up sometimes? Of course they will, both during testing and after. But setting aside the point above about relative effectiveness, the big advantage of robots is that their behavior is traceable and they learn programmatically: if one robot does something wrong, it’s possible to trace the chain of decisions that it made (decisions programmed into it by a human, by the way) to find out what happened. Once the error is located, it can be resolved, and you can be confident that the robot will not make that same mistake again. Furthermore, you can update every other robot at the same time. This is not something we can do with humans.
“I’m not in favor of robots killing people. If this letter was about that, I’d totally sign it. But that’s not what it’s about; it’s about the potential value of armed autonomous robots, and I believe that this is something that we need to have a reasoned discussion about rather than banning.”
I do agree that there is a potential risk with autonomous weapons of making it easier to decide to use force. But, that’s been true ever since someone realized that they could throw a rock at someone else instead of walking up and punching them. There’s been continual development of technologies that allow us to engage our enemies while minimizing our own risk, and what with the ballistic and cruise missiles that we’ve had for the last half century, we’ve got that pretty well figured out. If you want to argue that autonomous drones or armed ground robots will lower the bar even farther, then okay, but it’s a pretty low bar as is. And fundamentally, you’re then placing the blame on technology, not the people deciding how to use the technology.
And that’s the point that I keep coming back to on this: blaming technology for the decisions that we make involving it is at best counterproductive and at worst nonsensical. Any technology can be used for evil, and many technologies that were developed to kill people are now responsible for some of our greatest achievements, from harnessing nuclear power to riding a ballistic missile into space. If you want to make the argument that this is really about the decision to use the technology, not the technology itself, then that’s awesome. I’m totally with you. But banning the technology is not going to solve the problem if the problem is the willingness of humans to use technology for evil: we’d need a much bigger petition for that.
I want to be very clear about this: I’m not in favor of robots killing people. If this letter was about that, I’d totally sign it. But that’s not what it’s about; it’s about the potential value of armed autonomous robots, and I believe that this is something that we need to have a reasoned discussion about rather than banning. I’m open to the fact that I might be quite wrong about every point that I’ve made here, but the important thing is to be able to reach an informed decision rather than just demanding to outlaw “killer robots.”* |
Sports teams looking to play on the Halifax Wanderers Grounds this summer will have to move elsewhere as the city looks to revamp the playing field.
The city put out a tender Thursday for irrigation and turf improvements, including players benches, a new scoreboard, sod and fencing.
The work on the field nestled between the Public Gardens and Citadel Hill is supposed to begin this spring. The city wants work completed by Sept. 1, said city spokeswoman Tiffany Chase.
"Certainly the quality of the field at the Wanderers Grounds has been identified as requiring improvements, and so that's why it has been on the list for capital upgrades," she said.
"The project is slated to move forward this season in 2017, and so we will be looking for those turf improvements, and [to] improve irrigation that should provide a higher quality surface."
In 2015, an international rugby match on the Wanderers Grounds had to be moved to a different field. At that time, the match organizer said there was not enough grass to make it safe for the players after a harsh winter left bare patches of soil.
The field is often used by football, rugby and ultimate Frisbee teams, which won't be able to book field time during construction.
"Of course we're going to be losing a good portion of this season because we're going to be having construction underway on that field. So we wanted it to reopen as soon as possible so groups can book that facility," said Chase. |
Catcalls and sexual harassment have always been a woman’s burden, but now men can experience the terror of being the opposite sex from the safety of a controlled environment. A group of feminists have developed WatchOut, a virtual reality experience that allows men the opportunity to experience misogyny for ten horrifying minutes at a time.
Feminist activist Susan Carr developed WatchOut as a tool to help bridge the gender divide when it comes to public harassment. “I don’t think men realize that being a woman in public is like living under the Gestapo, and I speak for all women” said Carr. “The virtual experiences we have created are not easy, but I think it’s an excellent way to spread awareness about the state of women’s rights in the Western world.”
WatchOut is designed to simulate real-world situations that women encounter through the use of VR headsets and a fully immersive audio system. Male participants are asked to remove their shoes and put on tight-fitting high heels before entering the simulation to complete the experience of being a middle-class female college student. Multiple scenarios can be pre-selected by the user, including walking past a 7-Eleven at midnight, not smiling while snacking at an office party and texting “where is this going?” to a guy after the first date.
“The insults sounded so real – I felt like I was really there,” said Tommy Bronner, a college student who learned about WatchOut in a Gender Studies class. “The virtual black guys were calling me ‘snow-white’ and trying to give me their phone numbers, and I was just minding my own business trying to order an apple martini.”
Another WatchOut user, football player Marcus Freeman, was impressed by the realism of the experience. “I picked the one night stand simulation and was blown away by how realistic it was. After we had sex, the guy said he was tired and that I couldn’t use his phone charger on my dead phone because he ‘needed it.’ Then he asked me to leave and, of course, I started my period a week early while walking home.”
WatchOut is still under development, but Carr hopes that her creation will find a distributor in the coming months. “I want all elementary school boys to see the impact of catcalling and slut shaming while they’re still young, so I’m hoping WatchOut will one day be incorporated into the public school curriculum.”
Carr has also said that she will be adding new scenarios to both enhance the simulations and attract a broader audience. “I challenge men who think sexism is dead to put on a sexy dress and walk past a group of hispanic construction workers.”
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Aside from getting to the net, the winger also recorded 33 assists that year, helping lead St. Louis to the Western Conference Final. There, he would top off his dream season with a game-winning overtime goal against Colorado for the only win the team saw in third round.
Unforgettable - that's the best way to describe Scott Young's 2000-01 campaign. That's the season Young became a 40-goal-scorer - an individual accomplishment the Blues wouldn't see again for another six seasons.
The three-time-Olympian was acquired by the Blues in 1998, initially spending four seasons with the club before returning for his final season in 2005. In total, he tallied 253 regular season points in the Blue Note.
We caught up with Young from his home in Boston to reflect on his epic season and find out how he's gotten back to his roots since retirement.
BLUES: Not many players achieve a 40-goal season. What was that 2000-01 campaign like for you?
YOUNG: It's a year I'll never forget, because we had a heck of a hockey team. And of course to reach that individual goal was great. I really clicked with Pierre Turgeon. He was a heck of a playmaker. I just remember having to get my stick on the ice and he was going to find me. We just had great chemistry, and it's something I'll always look back on and be proud of.
BLUES: St. Louis is where you spent a good portion of your professional career. It's also where you had your best individual season and where you retired from the game. Do you have a favorite memory from your time here?
YOUNG: There are so many good memories there. The people I met outside of hockey were tremendous people. And the support from the fans…I'm from Boston where the fans are pretty harsh to their own players. I hear it on the radio every day. St. Louis was just different… very supportive through thick and thin. And even though it isn't a great memory because it was tough, the fact that we got so close playing against Colorado in the Conference Final…we felt like we really had the team that year to win the Stanley Cup. The feeling in the city that season was just electric.
BLUES: You're now an assistant coach at Boston University, where you played collegiate hockey. What's it like to be coaching where it all started?
YOUNG: It's really a lot of fun. It's extremely busy…there's a lot that assistant coaches have to do in college hockey, because it's not like pro hockey where scouters scout and coaches coach. Coaches scout, breakdown film and coach. They deal with players and their grades, behavior and admissions. But it's really a lot of fun to work with these players and watch them get better. They're elite players. We have four first-round draft picks on our team right now. So you know that these players have a really good chance of playing in the NHL, so to be able to work with them and develop the relationships is extremely rewarding.
BLUES: With most of your focus on college hockey, do you still keep up with the Blues?
YOUNG: I do, but it can be difficult with how busy we are, but I do pull for the Blues. I brought my son out to Game 5 last year in Chicago and got to see [Kelly Chase] the night before, and a lot of the staff. Obviously they won that series, and I was pulling for them to win the Cup. I'm dying to see the Blues win the Cup. No fan base deserves it more, especially now that the Cubs fans got theirs!
BLUES: Now that you've been coaching for a while, how do you think will it feel to switch roles and be a player again at the Winter Classic Alumni game?
YOUNG: I can't wait for it! I love playing still. Anytime I can play for charity or anything like that I do. I even sometimes suit up for the Bruins Alumni out here even though I never played for the Bruins. I just love playing and getting back with the guys and back in the locker room. Being a big event like this….it's going to be a blast. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it! |
Note: Before we began our drive from NYC to Argentina, we considered completely skipping over Mexico because we were terrified by endless news reports of constant violence. Our plan was to fly to Guatemala, buy a car, and start driving from there. After speaking to some travelers, we decided to start our drive in NYC and pass through Mexico. We thought it would only take days, but Mexico hooked us in. These are just a few things we learned after a month in this amazing country.
1. Hole in the wall restaurant owners may also be former luchadors (Mexican professional wrestlers) and regale you with stories from their times in the ring… you don’t know until you ask.
2. Baby goat, cabrito, is a popular dish in northern Mexico. If you ask, you might be able to help prepare one (i.e., chop one in half with a meat cleaver).
Find these tacos in Guanajuato. Whatever it takes. No matter the cost. It will be worth it.
3. The 8 peso (50 cent) tacos from a street stall will be the best tacos you’ve ever had. If you’re spending more than that on a taco you’re getting ripped off (try out the taco stall, Taco’s Campeon, across from the Santa Fe tunnel in Guanajuato for the best ones we’ve come across).
4. You do not get instantly murdered or kidnapped when you cross the Mexican border. In fact, despite what you read in the news, there’s almost a 0% chance of this happening - hundreds of thousands of people do it every day.
Absolutely magico
5. A stroll through Zacatecas at night will be one of the most enchanting walks of your life. Golden lights bathe the colonial era buildings, creating a cityscape unlike anywhere else in the world.
6. Mexico City is infinite, containing a piece of every type of world in this one city. But in general, it is more modern than many American cities.
7. Burritos are an American obsession. Tacos, tortas and quesadillas dominate the cheap food landscape south of the border.
8. Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos, Tulum… these are all amazing destinations, but they don’t tell the full story of Mexico. There is another side of Mexico outside of the resort, a Mexico with a different type of unimaginable beauty, awaiting you with open arms and delicious tacos. Check out Guanajuato, San Cristobal de Las Casas, or the small beaches of Oaxaca for incredibly unique and authentic experiences. |
Edit 2016/4/29 I have written a follow-up piece to this blog post.
As many of you probably know, I am a professional programmer. I started my professional career with WordPress and PHP development, and now I find myself doing a lot of Ruby work. I am still in the very early stages of my professional career — I have only been doing this for about 5 years. There are people who are much more experienced than I am, and there is a whole world of things that I have yet to learn and experience.
Until recently, I’ve been relatively reluctant to change. I just wanted to get something done, using the tools I’m most familiar with. In the first few years of my career, that was PHP. After learning and getting used to Ruby and Rails, that’s been my go-to language and framework.
However, I’ve decided to throw caution in the wind, and choose a new language that I’m going to be using going forward: Elixir.
Every programming language has something that irks somebody. The thing that irks me about Ruby is its lack of a really robust concurrency model. There have been experiments in EventMachine — evented I/O like Node, Rubinius and JRuby — real threads, Unicorn — forking (!). But none of these solutions are particularly elegant. Relying on forking for concurrency, even with copy-on-write, is not efficient at all. (Read more about concurrency and Ruby: Matz is not a threading guy)
Enter Elixir. Elixir is a language that runs on top of the Erlang VM. The Erlang environment is something special, I think. It’s built from the ground up with concurrency and reliability in mind (it was developed for use in telecom systems). Originally a proprietary language at Ericsson for a little over 10 years, it was open-sourced in 1998. Elixir builds on this very mature ecosystem, and makes it accessible enough for “mere mortals” to build high-performance applications.
When I first tried Elixir out to build a web app, like you would with Rails, I was pretty surprised. If you’re used to Rails, you’ve seen this log message:
This is the Elixir / Phoenix framework equivalent:
170ms down to 5ms. And that’s in development mode. Switch it to production mode, and this is what you see:
5ms down to 300 microseconds.
Granted, this is a very simple page. It’s basically a “Hello World” benchmark, but it certainly piqued my interest. This amount of performance, coupled with the ability to maintain it even under immense load, is one of the factors going in to my choice of Elixir.
The other factor is, what I believe, the direction of the Internet. We’re moving away from servers rendering static HTML and sending that over the wire, and to more dynamic content powered by client-side JavaScript or native code on mobile devices. Elixir and Erlang handle this beautifully — dutifully keeping thousands and thousands of open WebSocket sessions alive without breaking a sweat. You should take a look at how Whatsapp uses one machine running their chat backend on Erlang to service more than 2 million simultaneous connections.
By investing my time now in Elixir and Erlang, I believe that I’m essentially getting ready for the next 20 years of the Internet. And I’m excited.
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Note that, as a backer, your credit card will only be billed if/when Identity reaches its Kickstarter campaign goal.
Identity is a modern-day open-world MMORPG for PC and Mac with complete freedom to do almost anything you can imagine at any time in first or third person views. Live as an honest civilian, a criminal, police officer, paramedic and many more. There are no levels or skill grinding, but talent and perk progression so that it’s the actions of you, not your character, which matter most.
An enormous online and persistent world controlled in almost every aspect by the players living within it.
Player-driven gameplay and economy with dozens of jobs and epic careers.
Action and fun around every corner with a player police force, gangs, cartels, businesses and more.
More casual games than we can list, from karaoke and cinemas to paintball matches and more.
Play on the official servers or host your own with your own rules and options.
No subscription fees and never pay-to-win.
Identity has been under development by only a few people and only for a few months. In that time we've gone far and done things that have never been seen in a video game before; Identity is already revolutionary, and we're excited to see how far we can take the technology and gameplay when we have the support of you as a backer!
While Identity is a very ambitious project, it's right up John's alley in terms of systems and design. Two of John's past and current game projects, Mortal Online and Altis Life, together have already overcome many of the technical hurdles Identity's development faces.
Mortal Online was the first MMORPG created on the Unreal Engine and Identity's Unreal Engine 4 is ten years further developed still. Asylum's Altis Life is the most popular game and server-set of its kind in the world, and acts as the inspiration for Identity.
For years now, MMORPGs have lost their way. What was once a genre about exploring and living in a new world has now become a treadmill to keep you playing the same game over and over again. Identity is changing things.
Gone are all artificial restrictions keeping you away from the content you want to play! Instead of levels and character skills dictating what you can do, Identity focuses on your actions and building a character around what you find fun. Jump into the world and start making a name for yourself in any way you choose.
As a citizen you can start a business, join gangs and control territory, own real estate or even become governor and set your own laws. With minimal AI, it’s you players who control every aspect of society including law enforcement.
While a game with fun being the top priority, many elements like weapons, health and vehicles function with exceptionally high realism and fidelity.
Identity is all about fun, freedom, social interaction and so much to do that you’re never left bored.
It's still early for Identity, but we have quite a bit to talk about already and we'll be giving more details on new epic features regularly!
A massive, dynamic world
The world in Identity is huge with all sorts of landscapes from large busy cities to small rural towns, farms, forests and more. Set in a fictional region of the United States, you'll find enough variety that there's almost always something new to see.
The environment will be changing often as gangs capture territories, real estate is bought up and crops are grown.
VOIP communication
Why are other MMORPGs still using old technologies? While the option to communicate by text will always be there, Identity brings voice-over-IP (Internet) technology to the forefront, allowing you to speak as your character. Anything you say will come from your character in the game world, complete with moving mouth and lips.
That's only the beginning, too! With this you'll find working telephones, radios, megaphones, microphones and more. Communication should be fun!
Vehicles and transportation
With such a huge world to live in, you'll need all sorts of vehicles to get around quickly and safely!
Vehicles range from common and inexpensive, such as a bicycle, to supercars and luxury yachts for those of you building your empires.
All vehicles are being made with painstakingly realistic physics and high fidelity.
Many vehicles can be considered an investment, too! A large transport truck can earn its value back by running goods, so long as you don't run into bandits. Most vehicles have trunk space to fill up with equipment, resources, drugs, and so on.
Guns and other weapons
Like vehicles, weapons in Identity are made to feel and function as close to their real-world counterparts as possible, as is the damage they deal!
Firearms aren't easy to come by as a civilian and high-powered rifles are incredibly rare as they require you meet an arms dealer who knows their stuff.
Weapons aren't limited to guns, either. You'll find knives, bats, or even boxing gloves!
Own a piece of the world
Every home in the world can be purchased by a player, and apartment buildings can house hundreds of people. A house in the world is unique, and can only have one owner at any given time, while an apartment is always available to those with the cash! Houses and apartments can range from a small studio to a massive penthouse.
New homes are empty and it's up to you to fill it with furniture from stores or crafted by players. Furniture includes useful tools like a television or computer, or something to add a little flair for the party you plan on throwing.
Designers can create furniture in thousands of style combinations making something suited to tastes, or even paint on a canvas to sell or hang on your walls.
Do you want a job or do you want a career?
You'll find dozens of jobs as you travel the land. There's never a shortage of work for those willing to put in the effort! Unlike a career, jobs are small tasks that can be completed to earn some cash and they're always available (but not always legal). Examples of jobs include harvesting, fishing, hunting, and so on.
Careers are much more in-depth. Work as a police officer, a firefighter, a freight runner and more. Each career has its own character progression branches and often ranking and specialities as well.
For example, imagine a group of friends has just robbed a small store in your town and they got away before police arrived. As a cop who made it to the detective ranks, it could be up to you to find fingerprints or other evidence.
We all have to make a living, somehow
With risk, comes reward. If you can manage to pull off a heist and get away with it, you could find yourself with a lot of quick cash. The problem with crime is that there are those who want to keep the streets clean. Once you're wanted, it might be a matter of time before you find yourself behind bars!
The skilled might also find some easy money at the casino or by playing the lottery.
Frequent micro updates
Because Identity is an MMORPG, albeit not much like any other, we're going to be continuously updating the game with new content and features years after release.
Since our focus is on improving the game and not making money off big expansions, we're instead going to be releasing updates at a very fast and steady pace. You'll be getting new toys and fixes nearly every single week so that you've always got something new to look forward to!
We can't do this without you. Every backer brings us closer to not only making Identity a reality in the near future, but to expand beyond our current scope and make something awesome even better. But, we can't do this without you! |
The latest entry in the journal of Bloggin' Rick Pitino came Thursday morning when he penned a 2015-16 preview of his team on RickPitino.net.
As you might have expected, before Pitino got into talking about his individual players, he had a message for the U of L fan base.
To our loyal fans, First, above all, I'm sorry we all have to endure the pain of these allegations. I so appreciate your support and friendships. I will not resign and let you down. Someday I will walk away in celebration of many memorable years but that time is not now. I do not fight these accusations by others but rather turn the other cheek. Couldn't do it at 33, but at 63 it's the wise thing to do. Let's let the investigators do their job and we will play basketball. I am really excited with our ball team. Their attitude and willingness to learn is the best I've witnessed as a coach. We have the potential to be a very explosive offensive team. We must defend like past years. That will come when they come together as a unit.
Pitino then got into talking a little bit about his individual players, reserving a pair of exclamation points for Deng Adel, who Pitino says "probably will start at the wing."
You can read the entire post from Pitino right here. |
Supporters of President Donald Trump are calling on authorities to investigate violence against them under state civil rights laws, after clashes erupted over the weekend at pro-Trump rallies in Hollywood and Huntington Beach.
“They threw bottles at us,” Matthew Woods, a Hollywood protest organizer, said Thursday. “We were surprised at the violence directed against us … and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
Woods claimed some of the Trump supporters were victims of hate crimes when they were confronted by angry counter-protesters Saturday on Hollywood Boulevard and at Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach.
The rallies coincided with a series of nationwide “Make America Great Again” — or MAGA — marches in support of the Trump administration.
But the California events turned ugly.
In Orange County, what was dubbed as a family friendly gathering, devolved into a violent brawl between marchers and counter-protesters for about 30 minutes.
• RELATED STORY: Fight breaks out at Pro-Trump Hollywood MAGA rally; 2 arrested
Videos have since surfaced of angry counter-protesters punching and cursing at marchers, leaving those who were assaulted asking why police didn’t step in to stop to the violence.
Authorities charged three males with felony illegal use of pepper spray and one woman with misdemeanor assault and battery.
Meanwhile in Hollywood, as Trump supporters marched from the Pantages Theatre to the president’s star on the Walk of Fame, they were met by counter-protesters shouting anti-Trump expletives. The event never fully descended into chaos, but it had its moments, including a fist fight that broke out on the sidewalk when a man grabbed a Trump supporter’s hat. Woods said someone also spat on a woman during the march.
Los Angeles police officers on bicycles detained two men for possible assault after the fist fight. It was unclear if they were charged.
Ahead of a news conference Thursday in Hollywood, Woods called on the district attorneys in Orange and Los Angeles counties to enforce the Ralph Civil Rights Act and the Bane Civil Rights Act, which “protects people from continued violence or the threat of violence based on grounds such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, political affiliation, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability or position in a labor dispute,” according to state law.
• RELATED STORY: Trump march in Huntington Beach turned into 30-minute violent brawl with ‘a lot of people punching’
The Los Angeles Police Department defines a hate crime as “any criminal act or attempted criminal act directed against a person or persons based on the victim’s actual or perceived race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, disability or gender.”
Woods praised the LAPD for preventing the Hollywood march from getting out of control.
While he welcomed the debate in a nation divided under Trump’s presidency, he said some counter-protesters went too far, and the Trump supporters were victims.
“Anyone can be subject to a hate crime,” he said. |
A North Park resident backed her Mustang into a neighbor’s apartment building Sunday Morning, San Diego Police said.
The incident occurred shortly before 9 a.m. Sunday at an apartment complex on Texas Street.
San Diego Police said the woman may have accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake.
The vehicle broke through the living room of Benjamin Bulanadi, the man living in the apartment. Bulanadi was not home when the incident occurred.
“Luckily I stayed over at a friend’s house last night,” Bulanadi said. “It was pretty intense to come home to that.”
Bulanadi said if he was in his living room, he could have been hit by his dresser or TV.
Bulanadi rents the apartment through Airbnb. The owner was on the scene Sunday morning and exchanged information with the Mustang driver. Bulanadi is looking for another place to stay. |
Facebook, the online networking system mammoth is considering another element which will permit users to acquire cash from posts and would give them a chance to include a ‘‘tip-jar ‘.
A survey by an FB user, implied at different ways whereby cash might be made by users even a cause can be advanced on the site, when they included ‘tip-jar ‘content. After this, they can take commission from the promotion income that is earned by Facebook from the post.
This survey likewise approached users for showing interest about call to action’ button, catch, a simple strategy by which adherents will make donations and create ‘sponsors market place’for coordinating the users with advertiser, included the report.
In any case, it’s not by any means clear with respect to whether this element will be taken off to all or any users or and afterward confirmed ones. As of now, promotions might be sold just by distributors, inside the component of ‘Moment Articles’and recently, Facebook cleared up tenets that empower posts which can be sponsored by brands for sharing on confirmed pages.
Advertisements are progressively being tried by Facebook, inside recommendations which appear after video is viewed by users, imparting cash to distributers.
A representative from Facebook expressed “|It’s still early, yet we’re centered on making reasonable, long haul adaptation models for the accomplices and we’re listening to input,” |
For a few years now, certain anarchist individuals or groups and the ICC have overcome a number of barriers by daring to discuss in an open and fraternal way. Mutual indifference or rejection between anarchism and marxism have given way to a will to discuss, to understand the positions of the other, and to honestly define points of agreement and disagreement.
In Mexico, this new spirit made it possible for a joint leaflet to be signed by two anarchist groups (GSL and PAM[1]) and an organisation of the communist left, the ICC. In France, recently, the CNT-AIT in Toulouse invited the ICC to make a presentation at one of its public meetings[2]. In Germany as well links are being made.
On the basis of this dynamic, the ICC has begun working seriously on the history of internationalism in the anarchist movement. During the course of 2009 we published a series of articles under the heading ‘Anarchists and imperialist war' [3]. Our aim was to show that with each imperialist conflict, part of the anarchists was able to avoid the trap of nationalism and defend proletarian internationalism. We showed that these comrades continued to work for the revolution and for the world working class despite being surrounded by chauvinism and the barbarity of war.
When you know the importance that the ICC attaches to internationalism, which is a real frontier separating revolutionaries who genuinely fight for the emancipation of humanity from those who have betrayed the proletarian struggle, these articles were not only an intransigent critique of the pro-war anarchists but also and above all a salute to the internationalist anarchists!
However, our intentions were not always well perceived. For a while this series met with a frosty reception in some quarters. On the one hand, some anarchists saw the articles as an outright attack on their movement. On the other hand, some sympathisers of the communist left and of the ICC did not understand our efforts to find a "rapprochement with the anarchists"[4].
Aside from certain errors in our articles which may have irritated some people[5], these apparently contradictory criticisms actually share the same roots. They reveal the difficulties in seeing the essential elements which bring revolutionaries together, above and beyond their disagreements.
Going beyond labels
Those who identify with the struggle for the revolution have traditionally been classed in two categories: the marxists and the anarchists. And there are indeed important divergences between them:
- Centralism/federalism
- Materialism/idealism
- Period of transition or ‘immediate abolition of the state'
- Recognition or denunciation of the October 1917 revolution and of the Bolshevik party
All these questions are certainly very important. It is our responsibility not to avoid them, and to debate them openly. But still, for the ICC, they do not demarcate "two camps". Concretely, our organisation, which is marxist, considers that it is fighting for the proletariat on the same side as the internationalist anarchist militants and against the ‘Communist' and Maoist parties which also claim to be marxist. Why?
Within capitalist society, there are two basic camps: the camp of the bourgeoisie and the camp of the working class. We denounce and combat all the political organisations which belong to the former. We discuss, often in a sharp but always a fraternal manner, and seek to cooperate with, all the members of the second. But under the same label of ‘marxist' there are genuinely bourgeois and reactionary organisations. The same goes for the ‘anarchist' label.
This is not just rhetoric. History is full of examples of ‘marxist' or ‘anarchist' organisations who have claimed with hand on heart to be defending the proletariat, while in reality stabbing it in the back. German social democracy called itself ‘marxist' in 1919 when it was assassinating Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and thousands of workers. The Stalinist parties bloodily crushed the workers' uprisings in East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956 in the name of ‘communism' and ‘marxism'(in fact, in the interests of the imperialist bloc led by the USSR). In Spain, in 1937, the leaders of the CNT, by participating in the government, served as a cover for the Stalinist murderers who repressed and massacred thousands of ...anarchist revolutionaries. Today, in France for example, the same name ‘CNT' covers two anarchist organisations, one which defends authentically revolutionary positions (CNT-AIT) and another which is purely ‘reformist' and reactionary (the CNT ‘Vignoles')[6].
Identifying the false friends who hide behind labels is thus a vital task.
But we should not fall into the opposite trap and believe that we are alone in the world, the exclusive holders of ‘revolutionary truth'. Communist militants are still very thin on the ground today and there is nothing more harmful than isolation. We therefore have to fight against the tendency to stand up for your own ‘chapel', your own ‘family' (whether marxist or anarchist), against the shop-keeper's spirit which has nothing to do with the politics of the working class. Revolutionaries are not in competition with each other. Divergences, disagreements, however profound they may be, are a source of enrichment for class consciousness when they are discussed openly and sincerely. Creating links and debating on an international scale are absolute necessities.
But for this to happen, we have to know how to distinguish between revolutionaries (who defend the perspective of the overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat) and reactionaries (those who, in one way or another, help to perpetuate this system), without fixating on the label of ‘marxist' or ‘anarchist'.
What unites marxists and internationalist anarchists
For the ICC, there are fundamental criteria which distinguish bourgeois from proletarian organisations.
Supporting the combat of the working class against capitalism means both fighting exploitation in an immediate way (during strikes for example) while never losing sight of what's at stake in this struggle on the historical level: the overthrow of this system of exploitation by revolution. To do this, an organisation must never give its support, even in a ‘critical' or ‘tactical' way, or in the name of the 'lesser evil', to a sector of the bourgeoisie - whether the ‘democratic' bourgeoisie against the ‘fascist' bourgeoisie, or the left against the right, or the Palestinian bourgeoisie against the Israeli bourgeoisie, etc. Such an approach has two concrete implications:
1. Rejecting any electoral support or cooperation with parties which manage the capitalist system or defend this or that form of this system (social democracy, Stalinism, ‘Chavismo', etc)
2. Above all, during any war, it means maintaining an intransigent internationalism, refusing to choose between this or that imperialist camp. During the First World War as during all the imperialist wars of the 20th century, all those organisations who supported any of the warring camps abandoned the terrain of internationalism, betrayed the working class and were definitively integrated into the camp of the bourgeoisie[7].
These criteria, outlined here very briefly, explain why the ICC sees certain anarchists as comrades in the struggle, why it wants to discuss and cooperate with them while virulently denouncing other anarchist organisations. For example, we have cooperated with the KRAS (the section of the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers' Association in Russia), by publishing and welcoming its internationalist declarations on war, notably the war in Chechnya. The ICC considers that these anarchists, despite our differences with them, are an authentic part of the proletarian camp. They clearly demarcate themselves from all the anarchists and ‘Communists' (like the Communist parties, the Maoists or Trotskyists) who defend internationalism in theory but oppose it in practice by defending one belligerent against the other in imperialist wars. We should not forget that in 1914, when the First World War broke out, and in 1917, when the Russian revolution took place, the majority of the ‘marxists' of social democracy took the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, whereas the Spanish CNT denounced the imperialist war and supported the revolution. During the revolutionary movements of the day, anarchists and marxists worked sincerely for the proletarian cause, and despite their disagreements found themselves on the same side. There were even efforts to develop an organised and wide scale cooperation between the revolutionary marxists (Bolsheviks in Russia, Spartacists in Germany, Dutch Tribunists, Italian abstentionists etc) who had separated from the degenerating 2nd International, and a number of internationalist anarchist groups. An example of this process is the fact that an organisation like the CNT envisaged the possibility of joining the Third International, although it rejected this in the end[8].
To cite a more recent example, in many parts of the world today there are anarchist groups and sections of the IWA who not only maintain an internationalist position but who also fight for the autonomy of the proletariat against all the ideologies and currents of the bourgeoisie:
- these anarchists call for direct and massive class struggle and self-organisation in general assemblies and workers' councils;
- they reject any participation in the electoral masquerade and any support for political parties who take part in this masquerade, however radical they claim to be.
In other words, they stick to one of the main principles of the First International: "the emancipation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves". Those comrades are part of the struggle for the revolution and a world human community.
The ICC belongs to the same camp as these internationalist anarchists who really defend working class autonomy. Yes, we consider them as comrades with whom we want to debate and cooperate. Yes, we also think that these anarchist militants have more in common with the communist left than with those who, under the label of anarchism, actually defend nationalist and reformist positions and are thus really defenders of capitalism.
In the debate which is slowly developing between all the revolutionary groups and elements on the planet, there will inevitably be mistakes, animated debates, clumsy formulations, misunderstandings and real disagreements. But the needs of the proletarian struggle against a capitalism which is becoming increasingly unbearable and barbaric, the indispensable perspective of the world proletarian revolution, a precondition for the survival of humanity, make this a vital and necessary effort, a duty in fact. And today, when we are seeing the emergence of revolutionary proletarian minorities in many countries, who refer either to marxism or anarchism (or who are open to both), this duty to discuss and cooperate should meet with a determined and enthusiastic response.
Future articles in this series will deal with our difficulties in debating and the way to overcome them. We will also look in more detail at the Anarchist Federation in Britain, which we have mistakenly labelled as a leftist group in the past.
ICC 30/6/10
[1] GSL: Grupo Socialista Libertario (http://webgsl.wordpress.com); PAM: Proyecto Anarquista Metropolitano (http://proyectoanarquistametropolitano.blogspot.com)
[2] There was a very warm atmosphere throughout this meeting. Read the report on it written on website: ‘Réunion CNT-AIT de Toulouse du 15 avril 2010: vers la constitution d'un creuset de réflexion dans le milieu internationaliste'
[3] See ‘Anarchism and imperialist war', World Revolution numbers 325-328. All available online, beginning here: https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/325/anarchism-war1
[4] In particular, some comrades were initially uneasy about the joint GSI/PAM/ICC leaflet. We tried to explain our approach in a Spanish article entitled ‘What is our attitude towards comrades who are part of the anarchist tradition?' (https://es.internationalism.org/node/2715)
[5] Some anarchist comrades rightly pointed out certain imprecise formulations and even historical errors in these articles. We will return to this. However, we do want to rectify the most glaring errors here:
- On various occasions, the series ‘Anarchism and imperialist war' asserts that the majority of the anarchist movement fell into nationalism during the First World War while only a handful of individuals risked their lives to defend internationalist positions. The historical elements brought to the discussion by members of the IWA, and confirmed by our own researches, show that in reality a large number of the anarchists opposed the war from 1914 onwards (sometimes in the name of internationalism or anationalism, or under the banner of pacifism)
- The most embarrassing mistake (which up till now no-one has pointed out) concerns the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. We wrote in WR 326 that "When the workers of Barcelona rose up in May 1937, the CNT were complicit in the repression by the Popular Front and the government of Catalonia" - the French version used "anarchists" instead of the CNT, but the ambiguity remains in the English version, since in reality, it was the militants of the CNT or the FAI who made up the majority of the insurgent workers in Barcelona and were the principal victim of the repression organised by the Stalinist hordes. It would have been much more accurate to denounce the collaboration in this massacre of the CNT leadership rather than the "the anarchists". This in any case is the real content of our position on the war in Spain, as defended in particular in the article ‘Lessons of the events in Spain' in no. 36 of the review Bilan (November 1936)
[6] Vignoles is the name of the street where their main HQ is located. ‘AIT' stands for Association Internationale des Travailleurs - in English the International Workers' Association
[7] However, there were groups and elements who were able to break away from organisations which had gone over to the bourgeoisie, for example the Munis group or the group which gave rise to Socialisme ou Barbarie in the Trotskyist Fourth International
[8] See ‘History of the CNT (1914-19): The CNT faced with war and revolution', International Review 129, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/129/CNT-1914-1919 |
More on: North Korea
North Korea has been relatively straightforward in revealing both its aspirations and perceived constraints as it tries to improve its economy while strengthening its nuclear “deterrent” through its dual policy (the byungjin line), announced by Kim Jong Un at a Korean Workers’ Party meeting in March 2013. The policy prioritizes the nuclear and munitions industrial sector; the electric power, coal, metal and railway transport sectors; and new applications of science and technology, while also rejecting that it must make a “strategic choice” for denuclearization as a primary means of survival, as the Obama administration has insisted. Thus, North Korea’s welcome emphasis on improving its economy could also be a “breakout” strategy by which North Korean leaders may believe they can survive as a nuclear weapons state.
If we look at the means by which North Korea intends to pursue its economic strategy, it appears that there are focused efforts to enhance effectiveness of economic management, including possible steps toward reform. In fact, North Korean decisions to widely cover a foreign academic seminar on special economic zones organized by the University of British Columbia and held in Pyongyang in October 2013 in the state newspaper Rodong Shinmun suggest that North Korea is actively seeking foreign investment, and entering a reform-oriented phase not different from the one pursued in the early 2000s.
First, Kim Jong Un has called for “socialist enterprise management methods in which all enterprises carry out their management activities independently with initiative.” This statement is intriguing because it could suggest a step away from central planning and a devolution of decision-making authority to the firm level. However, this directive may simply be a reflection of the central government’s already limited capacity to effectively implement central planning and guidance to individual firms.
Second, North Korea seeks diversification of foreign trade as a means by which to “smash the sanctions and blockade maneuvers of hostile forces and open an advantageous phase in the construction of an economically powerful state.” This statement suggests that North Korea’s renewed push to attract foreign investment is not only a priority of the leadership, but also that the leadership believes increased international economic activity would provide a safety valve against pressure from sanctions. The relative success or failure of North Korean efforts to attract foreign capital despite sanctions may prove to be a decisive factor that will influence both North Korea’s economic prospects and its ability to avoid international pressure on denuclearization.
Third, North Korea is pursuing the promotion of tourism and economic development zones in all provinces. The opening to tourism suggests that the North Korean leadership perceives this sector as a proven means by which to earn foreign capital for state purposes at relatively minimal risk to political control within North Korea. Similarly, North Korea may believe on the basis of its experience at the Kaesong Industrial Zone and elsewhere that it can use the zones as a means by which to earn foreign currency while controlling the effect of outside influences on the local populations. But the location and focus of these zones suggests a potentially greater seriousness of purpose and desire to more effectively utilize special economic zones as an instrument by which to enhance productivity of the economy.
These decisions make it clear that the North Korean government primarily places importance on pursuing pathways to prosperity that avoid loss of political control and that do not involve denuclearization. The pursuit of this “dual progress” policy constitutes a primary obstacle to the international community working toward North Korea’s denuclearization. The policy will test the ability of China and the United States/ROK to coordinate not only political strategies but also economic strategies toward Pyongyang. Moreover, the commitment of North Korea to this policy directly calls into question the sincerity of Vice Minister Kim Kye-gwan’s calls for restarting the Six Party Talks last September in Beijing. Given the commitment of the Korean Workers’ Party to simultaneous nuclear and economic development, North Korean leaders will need to deliver a more authoritative statement of willingness to pursue denuclearization (backed by accompanying actions) as a prerequisite for the resumption of Six Party Talks. |
A GROUP of Amish men is being investigated for allegedly breaking into Ohio family homes and chopping their victims' hair and beards off, The Wheeling Intelligencer reports.
The Amish hair-cutting gang is being investigated by four different sheriff departments in Ohio. They face charges of burglary and felonious assault.
The group refers to itself as part of the Bergholz clan, a nearby Amish community led by bishop Sam Mullet, which was the subject of a disputed child custody raid in 2007 amid allegations of sexual abuse.
The spate of attacks began around three weeks ago and targeted other Amish community members, the newspaper said.
One of the victims in Holmes County described how the gang of between 20 to 30 men dragged him from his house by his beard. Others said they were accosted inside their homes before their hair was cut off.
Holmes County sheriff Timothy Zimmerly told reporters the victims also included a 13-year-old girl and a 74-year-old man.
The gang's alleged getaway vehicle - a truck and horse trailer - was searched for evidence by police in Jefferson County.
Clumps of hair from the victims were sent to the sheriff's office for analysis.
Originally published as Police hunt Amish hair-cutting gang |
From renderings to reality, changes are coming to Cleveland's skyline.
Billions of dollars are being spent on construction in the city ahead of the Republican National Convention this summer.
But the upgrades, renovations and development projects won't end when the convention leaves town.
Here's a look at some of the projections that may change Cleveland in the next four years:
Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic Health Education Campus
What: The 485,000 square-foot building will house students from Case Western Reserve's schools of medicine, dental medicine and nursing.
Location: East 93rd Street between Euclid and Chester Avenues
Timeline: Completion expected in summer 2019
Rendering of Health Education Campus
Hilton Cleveland Downtown
What: The hotel will feature a 28-story tower with 600 guest rooms.
Location: 100 Lakeside Avenue East, Cleveland, Ohio
Timeline: The hotel will start accepting reservations for arrival on June 15, 2016.
RELATED: Hilton breaks ground for Convention Center hotel
Hilton Cleveland Donwtown rendering
Huntington Bank Building
What: Renovation ideas include a high-end hotel, apartments, office space and rooftop restaurant and bar.
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Where: 905 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio
Timeline: Renovation completion expected in 2018
RELATED: Big plans for one of Cleveland's most historic buildings
Huntington Bank Building
Nautica Waterfront District
What: Changes include an additional 664 residential units, a 150-room hotel, a 15-story office building and 3,175 new parking spaces.
Location: 2014 Sycamore Street, Cleveland, Ohio
Timeline: The project has a seven-year development plan. It's set to break ground in 2018.
RELATED: Major expansion announced for Cleveland's Nautica waterfront
Nautica rendering.
NuCLEus
What: A $300 million project that includes a 30-story office tower, parking garage, 500 apartments, shopping and restaurants.
Location: 501 High Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio
Timeline: Completion expected early 2017
RELATED: New nuCLEus Project would change Cleveland's skyline
Jan. 9, 2015: Image rendering of the nuCLEus project in downtown Cleveland. The project will be at E. 4th, Prospect and Huron with a 30-story office tower, retail space, residential units, parking and more. It could be complete by 2017.
515 Euclid
What: The project will add approximately 200 apartments above an existing parking garage and retail space.
Location: 515 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio
515 Euclid
Public Square
What: A $50 million project to increase the square's green space, close it to traffic except for buses and open a cafe at the site.
Location: Near 91 Public Square, Cleveland, Ohio
Timeline: Completion expected on June 1, 2016
RELATED: Public Square renovation progress one year later
PHOTOS | Public Square renovation renderings
Terminal Tower
What: Plans include turning the building's lower floors into 300 apartments.
Location: 50 Public Square, Cleveland, Ohio
Timeline: Construction could begin as early as 2018
RELATED: Company plans apartments in Terminal Tower
Terminal Tower
Restaurant Additions
Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville
Location: Front Avenue across from Punch Bowl Social
Timeline: Set to open in late 2016
RELATED: Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville coming to Cleveland's Flats
Nuevo Modern Mexican Restaurant & Tequila Bar
Location: East 9th Street Pier, Cleveland, Ohio
Timeline: Expected to open in July 2016
RELATED: Cleveland Rising: Lakefront development begins
Rascal Flatts Restaurant
Location: Flats East Bank, between Crop's On Air Studio and Beerhead Bar & Eatery
Timeline: Expected to open in 2016
RELATED: Rascal Flatts opening restaurant/bar in Cleveland's Flats
MOBILE USERS: Click here for locations on map |
NHL.com's Q&A feature called "Five Questions With …" runs every Tuesday. We talk to key figures in the game and ask them questions to gain insight into their lives, careers and the latest news.
NEW YORK -- Ryan McDonagh's minutes are up this season, and both he and the New York Rangers are thriving because of it.
McDonagh is 12th in the NHL with an average ice time of 24:36 per game, up from 22:21 last season. He is second in the League with eight assists, including at least one in a career-high seven consecutive games, the longest streak for a Rangers defenseman since Brian Leetch 20 years ago.
McDonagh has played 23 or more minutes in seven of the Rangers' nine games (77.8 percent), with New York going 5-2-0 in those games. He played 23 or more minutes 38 of 73 games last season (52.0 percent).
"I've loved it so far," McDonagh said. "Any time you get those high-minute games the plays just happen a lot quicker for you. You see the ice continually throughout the game. Your rhythm stays there the whole game. That responsibility you have playing in a lot of situations, you want to step up for your teammates and be a big part of hopefully a win. I've played a lot here these first few games and the body is feeling really good, and the mind is right there with it."
It helps that the Rangers have been one of the NHL's better possession teams this season. They are third in the League in shots on goal (31.8) and have allowed the fourth-fewest shots per game (26.0). They are 13th in even-strength shot-attempts percentage (50.95).
"We're not spending as much time in our zone so hopefully that can continue because those are the minutes that really drag on you, when you're defending hard," McDonagh said. "If that continues I don't see why those minutes will be a problem."
McDonagh would love to keep playing big minutes, more than 25 per game if possible. That would seem to benefit the Rangers too considering they are 22-1-2 in games when he has played 25 or more minutes since Oct. 16, 2014. They are 2-1-0 in such games this season.
However, Rangers coach Alain Vigneault isn't enamored with the idea of McDonagh playing 25 minutes per game. It's fair to wonder how much longer he'll average more than 24 minutes per game. He hasn't gone over 23:29 in the past four games.
"I know our record is real good when he plays 25 minutes or more, but I think if you look at the 82-game schedule, how condensed it is in certain areas, I think that's a lot of minutes for any defenseman in this league," Vigneault said. "So I'd probably prefer to keep him around that 23-, 24-minute area. But he's a guy that can log can tons of minutes. He's just a horse. He loves to play. He's a great skater. Guys that skate well can play a lot of minutes and he's one of those guys that can do that.
McDonagh spoke more about the Rangers' start to the season with NHL.com.
Here are Five Questions with … Ryan McDonagh:
You mentioned that after the first few games that one of the best things about the start to the season is how quickly the Rangers found their identity as a speed team. What has the benefit of that been through nine games now?
"We just know what's expected from each one of us, how you have to prepare in order to go out and execute in that fashion team-wise. We know the plays that are expected to be made and have to be made in order for us to play that style and give ourselves a good chance to win. It's nothing fancy. It's just a simple approach."
Do you think this team is better than it was last season as a result?
"I would say I guess yes because of the way this team has looked so far, the commitment we have both offensively with our speed and skill, and using that speed and skill defensively too. We're using it both ways. You see guys having good back pressure, backchecking really well, quick to contact in our zone and able to jump on loose pucks and get going right away. With all those things I think we have a better chance of winning right now.
"A lot of the time last year we were chasing the puck. I felt like we've had the puck a lot more this year. At times last year it felt like we were just chasing, couldn't sustain any offensive-zone pressure. They would make one or two plays and were out of our zone. Especially in the Pittsburgh series [Eastern Conference First Round] we weren't able to sustain pressure or put a lot of pucks on net. So far we've been getting a lot of offensive looks this season. Over the course of a season it takes a lot of work and preparation to make that happen, but hopefully over the course it creates a winning record."
Let's talk about a few players, starting with Brady Skjei. He got some time last season, including in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but of late he's made some plays that stand out, including one against the Arizona Coyotes and another against the Tampa Bay Lightning that led directly to goals. What stands out to you about him?
"I think he's just making the right reads. His strength is his skating ability and obviously he knows that. He's a good skater. He can keep up in this league both forward and backward. When he has the puck on his stick he's making the right reads for when it's the right time to make a rush and create things or defensively when it's the time to step up and be aggressive and use his skating ability there. I think he's been real good in his reads in understanding when it's time to be patient and when it's time to be aggressive and make something happen. As a young player that's a fine line. You want to go out and make an impression and gain confidence. But I think as defenseman sometimes you have to wait for it a little longer than a forward would. It's not an easy league to break into as a defenseman. There are only six spots on most nights so the numbers are against you, and it's obviously very tough now with the rules and speed of the game. I like the fact that he's understanding what his strengths are early on in his career with us and finding the right time to utilize them."
Every time I watch Jimmy Vesey play I keep thinking he reminds me of Zach Parise and the way he plays. Is that a fair comparison?
"The biggest thing I've said anytime someone asks me about Jimmy is his strength on the puck. He's strong when he has it. It's tough to get it away from him, tough to push it off of him. One thing for sure with Zach, he's low to the ground, and Jimmy might be taller and bigger but he seems like he's lower to the ground and he plays like he's underneath guys when has the puck. That's a tough thing defensively to try to push him away from it. When you think of Zach he's also strong on the puck, tough to get it away from him. He's real good below the hash marks and Jimmy is displaying that. He has those cutbacks and the ability to make those little passes to support and be able to get a shot off in the tight area too, which is something Zach has made a living doing."
Mika Zibanejad has had an impact with the Rangers so far, similar to the impact Derick Brassard had when he first arrived to New York. But how different has Zibanejad made the lineup with the impact he's had, the skill he's brought, the chemistry he's had with Chris Kreider and for a few games Pavel Buchnevich, and the fact that he's a righty too?
"It's been huge, just that different look with that right-handed shot. I've never really played with any right-handed centers with that kind of skill besides Step [Derek Stepan]. Now we've got two of those guys and it gives you a totally different dimension added to our team's offense, both power play situations and 5-on-5 stuff. His length and his reach are huge for him, passing around guys and getting to pucks. Obviously he's a great playmaker, but he's a threat to shoot and that makes him a dual threat. As a defenseman you know he can shoot so you may take the lane away, but then he's passing off to someone else who is open. He's got a great chemistry going with some guys and it's been exciting to see. I think that size is a big advantage for him too. He uses it to protect pucks on the wall and to create space for himself. He's gained confidence here pretty quick in understanding he's a big part of our team." |
There are not many repaints of Carenado’s Cessna Centurion for X-Plane so it’s time to take action.
Out there, there are a lot of good repainters and if you’re one of them, then this is your chance.
If you want to get your shot, the rules are pretty simple:
Repaint the Cessna Centurion by Carenado Upload your livery to X-Plane.org Tweet your livery to @simcodersdotcom including the #realityexpansionpack hashtag
On September 1st, X-Plane’s users will be able to choose the livery they like more and we’ll reward it with a free copy of the Reality Expansion Pack for the Cessna T210M Centurion.
Few rules of thumb for a good repaint
A repaint:
Should be based upon an existing livery (take a look at http://www.airliners.net) Must be as detailed as possible Should use the mipmaps correctly May contain more versions of the livery (for example, one with and one without the registration number) Must be free
Where to get the blank livery
To get the blank livery you must already own the Cessna Centurion by Carenado. Their zip contains the original blank livery from which you should start from.
So come on folks! It’s time to repaint! |
Terry Firma
In Troy, NY, a part-time child-care worker for the Troy Housing Authority, Willie Bacote, said he hurt his back on the job two years ago. Bacote began drawing worker’s comp insurance.
But the State Insurance Fund thought there might be something fishy about Bacote’s claim, and had investigators keep an eye on him.
They monitored Bacote at his other job; he is also a pastor of Missing Link AME Zion Church, and runs a flea market at the church to support its operations. There, the insurance team repeatedly observed and video-recorded Bacote lifting and schlepping objects like couches, chairs, and heavy boxes.
The state reviewed his case and ruled that the pilfering pastor has to pay back the workman’s comp money.
While lesser men would have been given additional fines (most thieves don’t claim the mantle of godly goodness), the state of New York decided to let Bacote off lightly.
It appears from the video evidence that he is making valuable efforts on behalf of his community,
the ruling noted. |
A leopard entered a couple's hotel room in Nainital.
Highlights Leopard smashed window pane to get into hotel room Room was occupied by Meerut couple vacationing in Nainital As the leopard walked into the washroom, the couple locked it in
Imagine being locked inside a hotel room with a leopard for company.A couple from Meerut vacationing in the sylvan surroundings of Nainital was chilled to the bones when they found a leopard pacing about their room early in the morning.The big cat smashed the window pane to get into the room as Mr. Sumit Rathore and his wife Ms. Shivani cowered behind the bed to escape its notice.As the animal leisurely walked into the washroom, Mr. Sumit plucked some courage and bolted the door from outside and locked in the big cat and raised an alarm, Ranger Pramod Tiwari said.A forest department team arrived with a cage and tranquiliser gun to trap the leopard but it jumped out of the washroom ventilator and vanished in the nearby forest, he said.Apparently, the one-and-half-year-old leopard had sought refuge in the hotel room after being chased by wild dogs, the ranger said.The hotel where the incident took place is located in Tallital area.Earlier this month, a black Himalayan bear was spotted roaming the streets of Nainital in the wee hours.It broke the window pane of a hotel room where some tourists were staying leaving them aghast.After an alarm was raised, it walked down the lanes, descended into the lake and swam across it, before disappearing into the Ayarpatta jungle. |
Rangers and Hearts have both suffered insolvency
Scotland's senior football clubs have voted to stiffen the punishments for becoming insolvent.
Any club that enters administration will receive an immediate 15-point deduction, with a five-point deduction the following season.
And, if there's a second case within five years, the penalties would be 25 points straight away, with 15 deducted the following season.
Presently, there is a 15-point loss for a first instance and 25 for a second.
The latter applies should it occur within a five-year period.
The Scottish Professional Football League said that the amendment to its rules "was approved overwhelmingly by clubs" at its meeting at Hampden Park.
Dundee, Dunfermline Athletic, Hearts, Livingston and Rangers have all entered administration during the last six years.
Previous to that, Airdrieonians, Clydebank, Greenock Morton, Gretna and Motherwell have also suffered financial problems since 2000.
Dundee and Livingston have both been in administration twice. |
Beijing asked to free HK from torture convention
Ambrose Lee said Beijing should consult the SAR government on whether Hong Kong should be released from its obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture. Photo: RTHK
Former security secretary Ambrose Lee has asked China’s top legislative body to start the process of withdrawing Hong Kong from the United Nations Convention Against Torture, citing the ‘high number’ of torture claimants here.
Lee – a member of the National People’s Congress (NPC) – proposed that Beijing can consult the SAR government on whether the territory should be released from the international convention, even though China will stay on as the signatory of the UN treaty. Lee made the proposal on Friday during the ongoing NPC plenary session in Beijing.
He said the flood of torture claimants in Hong Kong has added to the city’s financial and security burden, and freeing the city from its obligations under the convention would be one ‘drastic’ way to deal with the problem if it's not possible to stop the claimants from seeking asylum here
The Chief Executive, CY Leung, had in January suggested that Hong Kong could unilaterally withdraw from the torture convention if necessary, sparking concerns from legal experts and human rights groups.
Lee conceded the move would affect Hong Kong's international image a "little bit". However, he warned that action needs to be taken before the problem grows out of control, citing the example of some European countries who’ve slammed their doors on asylum seekers after being overwhelmed by a flood of refugees. |
I saw an argument posited online recently saying there is no chance Donald Trump can win the Republican nomination because he is drawing only a fraction of Republicans in current polls.
Ignoring the fact that (at least for now) he is drawing a higher fraction of Republicans than the other candidates, the argument went on to say that because only “a handful” of states are allocating delegates “winner-take-all” this time around, no delegates will vote for him who are not required to, therefore somehow launching some other candidate to the nomination.
This may well be true, but I wanted to test it using what we know about the nomination process.
What we know:
For the GOP, states will allocate delegates in proportion to the popular vote for all states through March 31. States voting/caucusing starting April 1 will allocate delegates winner-take-all. We know the number of delegates per state (assuming no penalties are levied) and we know the schedule (with a few exceptions).
Now, this could all change soon as at least some people think Trump is starting to slide in the polls. But, as of today, averaging Trump’s numbers across the major polls, he is reported to be the top choice of about 24% of Republican voters.
How this works:
Enter Trump’s poll number below. Using what we know right now about the primary schedule and the number of delegates per state, the form below will spit out the number of delegates The Donald will bring to the GOP convention. For proportional primaries, he will be awarded the percentage of delegates that match his poll number (rounded down, just to be conservative about it.) For winner-take-all states, he will be awarded all of the delegates for that state under the assumption that no other candidate is polling higher. |
Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort helped a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine secretly funnel more than $2 million to two lobbying organizations in Washington, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Citing unidentified sources with knowledge of the effort, the AP reported that the $2.2 million in payments was concealed in order to mask the party’s efforts to influence U.S. lawmakers.
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Manafort's ties to Ukraine have come under heavy scrutiny, with critics questioning whether he has played a role in Trump's favorable statements about the Russian government and its president, Vladimir Putin.
Lobbyists in the U.S. are required by law to register with the Justice Department as “foreign agents” if they receive funding from foreign governments or the leaders of other nations.
The requirements, which are much more stringent than other lobbying requirement, fall under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) — a law passed during World War II due to fears that the Nazis could influence U.S. policy and public opinion.
From 2012 to 2014, Podesta Group and Mercury earned $2.2 million from the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a non-profit organization based in Brussels, according to domestic lobbying disclosure records required under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA).
A legal memo drafted for the firms stated that registration with the Justice Department, and under FARA requirements, was not needed.
The two firms lobbied on several policy issues, including against a resolution that would have slapped sanctions “tailored against persons responsible for the capture of Crimea” and another resolution “condemning the illegal Russian aggression in Ukraine.”
The European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, which has labeled itself as a non-profit research organization, was founded with close ties to the then-ruling party of Viktor Yanukovych and at least one of his primary donors.
Leonid Kozhara, a former foreign minister for Yanukovych’s government, was one of the Centre’s first leaders, according to The Daily Beast.
The Centre was initially governed by a board that included parliament members from Yanukovych's party, according to the AP report.
The amount of funding or backing the non-profit received from a foreign government or its leaders determine whether an advocate must register as a foreign agent.
Lobbyists in the United States who represent private entities — such as companies and non-profits — that are based abroad do not have to file under FARA, unless those entities receive financial support or influence from foreign leaders or governments.
The AP report cites a legal opinion drafted for Mercury that said that while the Centre could be considered a “foreign principal” under the law, disclosing the work to DOJ was not necessary.
“If counsel had determined FARA was the way to go, we would have gladly registered under FARA,” the firm told AP and The Hill.
Podesta Group confirmed the authenticity of the legal opinion, which was drafted jointly with its in-house counsel and Mercury’s in-house and outside counsel.
Kimberley Fritts, the Podesta Group’s CEO, said the non-profit signed a statement testifying to its independence from Ukraine's government.
“The firm has a formal process in place, led by in-house counsel, to ensure that we follow the law, which includes determining whether our work for a given client would best be registered and reported under the Lobbying Disclosure Act or the Foreign Agent Registration Act,” Fritts said in a statement to The Hill.
“To further ensure legal compliance, our agreement with the Centre included a signed attestation that ‘none of the activities of the Centre are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized in whole or in part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party,’” she added.
That might not be enough to skirt a FARA violation, if it is found that the client misrepresented the level of its ties.
“The U.S. entity may still be liable for some violation of FARA if the principal lied to it, but it’s unlikely there would be a criminal prosecution or jail time as long as the U.S. entity did its due diligence,” said Joshua Ian Rosenstein, a partner at Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock and expert in lobbying compliance.
However, if Manafort or Rick Gates — another Trump campaign strategist who had worked with Yanukovych’s party — had advised the Centre on what U.S. lobby firms to hire at the time, that may also have triggered disclosure for them under FARA.
Prosecutions under FARA are exceedingly rare, in part because the enforcement system favors voluntary compliance. If a firm or individual has not properly disclosed, in other words, simply correcting the disclosures can be sufficient in some cases.
“We were not aware that Rick Gates was a Party of Regions consultant at the time he introduced us to the Centre,” Fritts told The Hill in the emailed statement. “Our assumption was that he was working for the Centre, as we were hired to do.”
In the AP report, Podesta principal John Ward Anderson issued a similar statement.
The report cites Gates as saying that “he and Manafort introduced the lobbying firms to the European Centre nonprofit and occasionally consulted with the firms on Ukrainian politics.”
He characterized the actions as “lawful,” according to the AP, and said there was no effort to get around registering under FARA.
The New York Times reported earlier this week that Manafort’s name was found in a secret ledger in Ukraine, which listed more than $12 million in cash payments to the political operative, which he has since denied receiving.
Manafort did not register under FARA for any of his activities in Ukraine, but the PR giant Edelman did. The firm subcontracted with Manafort’s firm in 2008 to “develop and execute a media campaign” that pumped up Yanukovych in the United States. Edelman billed $35,000 at the start of the contract, and an additional $35,000 per month for its services, according to disclosures.
While it’s unclear if Manafort’s firm ever did work necessitating a registration with the Justice Department, he could have avoided disclosure if he operated solely in the Ukraine.
- This story was updated at 11:40 a.m. |
According to the latest NBC/WSJ poll, President Obama had a five-point lead when survey participants were asked who they would vote for, and 42 percent of those surveyed believe the economy will get better under Obama. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.
Fueled by increased optimism about the economy and nation’s direction, President Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney by 5 points among likely voters and now sees his job-approval rating reaching the 50 percent threshold for the first time since March, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
The survey – which was conducted after the two party conventions and the political firestorm over last week’s U.S. Embassy attacks, but before Romney’s controversial comments about the 47 percent of the country “who are dependent on government” – shows the percentages believing that the country is headed in the right direction and thinking that the economy will improve at their highest levels since 2009.
In the presidential horse race, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden get the support of 50 percent of likely voters, while Romney and running mate Paul Ryan get 45 percent.
National Review and Bloomberg View's Ramesh Ponnuru, Roll Call's Shira Toeplitz and The Hotline's Reid Wilson take a look at the latest numbers out of the NBC, Wall Street Journal and Marist poll and talk about how battleground states may play out for the presidential candidates.
NBC/WSJ poll: Obama's approval on foreign policy drops
Among a wider sample of registered voters, the president’s lead is 6 points, 50 percent to 44 percent – up from Obama’s 4-point edge last month, 48 percent to 44 percent.
“It’s clear to me that Barack Obama has moved a … step ahead,” says Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff.
Evan Vucci / AP President Barack Obama waves as he boards Air Force One on Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012 in Andrews Air Force Base, Md.
Yet Hart cautions, “It’s a step and only a step.”
Read the full poll here (.pdf)
For his part, McInturff adds that the presidential race may very well have seen an inflection point. “The president is in a stronger position than he was before the convention.”
But noting similarities between the current numbers and those from the 2004 George W. Bush vs. John Kerry race, he urges that this contest could be just as competitive.
“If you look at ’04 as a model, ’04 was really close. And that’s how we should continue to think about the campaign.”
Economic optimism on the rise
According to the survey, 39 percent of registered voters say the country is on the right track, versus 55 percent who say it’s on the wrong track.
The Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd reports on a statement that may significantly damage Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.
That right-track number is a 7-point increase from August, and it’s the highest percentage on this question since Sept. 2009.
Forty-two percent of voters also believe the economy will improve in the next 12 months, which is a 6-point jump from August, and a 15-point rise from July.
NBC/WSJ poll: Optimism in Obama presidency increases
What’s more, 47 percent of registered voters approve of the president’s handling of the economy – up 3 points from last month. Obama’s overall job-approval rating stands at 50 percent for the first time since March.
And 38 percent say the country is better off than it was when he became president, which is a 7-point increase from August. But a plurality of voters – 41 percent – maintain that the country is worse off; 21 percent say it’s in the same place.
Obama vs. Romney on the issues
While none of these numbers is ideal for a president facing re-election, Obama is now tied with Romney (43 percent to 43 percent) on which candidate would be better on the economy. In July, Romney held a 6-point advantage on this question.
Hart, the Democratic pollster, says this finding is potentially ominous for Romney. “Simply put, if Romney doesn’t win on dealing with the economy, he doesn’t win.”
On other issues, Obama leads Romney on dealing with taxes (45 percent to 39 percent) and on dealing with Medicare (47 percent to 37 percent).
And the president is ahead of his Republican challenger on three character traits – being a good commander in chief (45 percent to 38 percent), dealing with issues of concern to women (54 percent to 26 percent), and looking out for the middle class (53 percent to 34 percent).
NBC's Chuck Todd says, "Mitt Romney is not a good campaigner" and still must answer questions regarding his comments that were caught on tape. A Morning Joe panel then debates whether Team Romney needs a campaign shakeup.
Comparing 2012 to 2004
Although Obama enjoys these advantages over Romney, the numbers in the NBC/WSJ poll bear a striking resemblance to those from 2004, when Bush narrowly beat Kerry.
And that has McInturff, the GOP pollster, cautioning that this year’s race could be equally close, despite Obama’s current lead.
Read the full poll here (.pdf)
Indeed, in the Sept. 2004 NBC/WSJ poll, 39 percent believed the country was on the right track (versus 39 percent now); 43 percent thought the economy would improve in the next year (versus 42 percent now); and Bush led Kerry by three points among likely voters (versus Obama’s 5-point edge now).
The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Sept. 12-16 of 900 registered voters (including 270 by cell phone), and it has margin of error of plus-minus 3.3 percentage points. In that sample, the survey also identified 736 likely voters, and the margin of error there is plus-minus 3.6 percentage points. |
(Stillness in the Storm Editor) The key data point to take away from this story is that the outbreak of Chickenpox occurred in vaccinated children. But how can this be the case? According to vaccine theorists, a vaccinated person can't contract the disease they are vaccinated for, nor can they transmit it to others, known as herd immunity. But clearly this is another myth pushed by the deceptive medical industry, as this outbreak at the
Mariposa School occurred in vaccinated kids.
While some temporary immunity can be gained from vaccines, the cost is mind-boggling, and the bottom-line is, they just don't work as advertised. So whether you're an activist or not, isn't it just good sense to recognize that a product is faulty?
Vaccines are arguably one of the worst products in history, incredibly ineffective, and the side effects are horrific . There's far better ways to impart immunity that don't bypass the bodies natural processes. For more see the links below.
- Justin
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Close to one-quarter of students at a California elementary school have been directed by school officials to stay home for three weeks due to a small onset of chickenpox cases that began in March. The chickenpox outbreak at Mariposa School of Global Education in Augora Hills, California is unique because the first case of chickenpox discovered at the school was found in a student who had been fully vaccinated.Daniel Stepenosky, the superintendent of Las Virgenes Unified School District that includes the Mariposa School, acknowledged to CBS Los Angeles that three students were found to have chickenpox. “A kindergartener, a first-grader, a third-grader. The first case happened around mid-March. The student was immunized, however still contracted chickenpox.”According to local newspaper The Acorn, Stepenosky noted that “(It’s) interesting . . . the first of three cases was a student that was fully immunized. . . . He was the vaccinated one.”This student was reported to have contracted the disease back in March. After two more cases were found, the school district took action to keep the unvaccinated students out of school for three weeks.While individual school policies vary according to state laws, it’s typical for school officials to notify parents who do not vaccinate their children when an outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease occurs. About 400 students attend Mariposa School of Global Education. Around ninety of those students have not been vaccinated for chickenpox, and on May 1st the parents of those students were ordered to keep their children home for 21 days.“Given that there were three cases, given that they were in three different grades, the health department gave the directive to exclude students who are not immunized,” said Stepenosky.Vaccination rates at the Mariposa School have risen greatly in recent years. In 2015, it was reported that about 40% of the students were current on vaccinations; following changes in state law, that number is up to 80%.In 2016, the state of California halted the allowance of personal and religious exemptions for vaccinations, and currently, only medical exemptions issued by licensed doctors are allowed.“There are legitimate medical waivers,” Stepenosky said. “For example, a student with a compromised immune system, which could be for any reason, is often because they are fighting cancer.”The chickenpox vaccine has been reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be 90% effective if an individual has received two doses.The CDC also notes that “some people who are vaccinated against chickenpox may still get the disease. However, it is usually milder with fewer blisters and little or no fever.”_________________________ |
The total number of customers who selected by Dec. 5 was 1,383,683 plans. They were split nearly evenly between people renewing health coverage, or 52 percent, and the remaining 48 percent being new customers. For the enrollments to take effect, people must pay their first month's premiums.
HealthCare.gov serves 37 states. The data released Wednesday does not include enrollments from the 14 exchanges run by individual states and the District of Columbia.
The number of applications on HealthCare.gov also surged in the third week, growing to 974,018 applications submitted, up from 520,427 the week before.
Read MoreGruber: Move past 'misguided' Obamacare comments
The site's telephone call center handled over 982,000 calls, more than double the 484,867 made in the prior week.
"Open enrollment's momentum is building, and I've seen that firsthand as I traveled the country and talked to people, from Florida to New Jersey to Pennsylvania to Texas," said Sylvia Burwell, secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. "With less than a week left to sign up for coverage that starts Jan. 1, we're encouraging new and returning consumers to visit HealthCare.gov, call the call center, or get in touch with a local assister by Dec. 15."
This Obamacare open enrollment season, the second so far, runs through Feb. 15. Most Americans are required under the Affordable Care Act to have some form of health insurance coverage by that day or be subject to a tax penalty equal to up to 2 percent of their adjusted gross income next year.
Just before open enrollment began, there were about 6.7 million people enrolled in Obamacare plans nationally. Burwell has said she expects there to be about 9.1 million Obamacare enrollees by the end of 2015.
Many of those enrollees are likely to come from current customers. HHS this year is instituting a program that will automatically renew most existing customers in their current health plans unless they select another option.
While that program would support Obamacare enrollment tallies, Burwell and other officials have repeatedly urged existing customers to review their plan options on the government-run exchanges because of the chance they will find a less-expensive option than the one they have, or a plan that better suits their health needs.
Another issue that concerns officials is that a customer's current subsidy that helps them pay for their premiums could be reduced if they accept re-enrollment without shopping for another plan. Those subsidies are tied to the price of certain plans on Obamacare exchanges, and if that benchmark plan changes, it could lead to changes in the value of the subsidies. |
TYPES OF ABUSE Domestic Violence comprises a wide range of types of abuse. Incidents are not generally a one-off event, but can be seen as forming part of a coercive pattern of controlling behaviour. This list includes some of the ways in which a person experiencing domestic violence might be abused: not all of these behaviours would necessarily fall within the criminal law. Slapping Insisting on having sex whenever he wants it Restricting her movements Making her put things back in an exact order Threats of physical violence Smacking Having sex with her when she doesn't want it Preventing her from keeping appointments Finding endless trivial tasks for her to do Threats of future physical violence Smacking in the face Refusing to have sex with her Timing her movements Making her continually redo tasks after finding fault with what she has done Threats of sexual violence Pushing Having affairs to humiliate her Accompanying her everywhere Making her polish the soles of his shoes Threats of future sexual violence Shoving Having sex with others in front of her Following her everywhere Enforcing a routine Threats with weapons or objects Pushing downstairs Denying her sexuality Making decisions for her Only letting her use the bathroom or toilet at certain times of day Threats to kill her Punching Expecting to have sex with her after having physically assaulted her Making her work long hours Preventing her from sleeping Threats to harm or kill her children Kicking Using objects during intercourse against her will Preventing her from working Making her sleep on the floor Threats to take her children away Hitting Forcing her to watch or engage in pornography Isolating her from her friends and family Preventing her from eating Threats to harm or kill another loved one Hitting her with objects Enforcing sado-masochistic activity Making her family and friends too scared to contact her Making her eat inedible food or disgusting things Threats to harm or kill pets Holding her against the wall Forcing her to perform sexual acts in front of her children Turning her family and friends against her Preventing her from getting or keeping her job Threats to self harm or commit suicide Holding her down Forcing her to perform sexual acts in front of other people Getting his family or friends to intimidate her Preventing her from studying Threats to have her deported Banging her head against the floor Forcing her to perform sexual acts with other people Isolating her from her community Destroying her work Threats to report her to the authorities Banging her head against the wall Forcing her to perform sexual acts with animals Telling her no-one else cares about her Taking her money Threats to destroy possessions Bruising Refusing access to contraception Taking away her documents and papers Refusing her money Threats to burn down her home Blacking eyes Refusing to let her have an abortion Removing her passport Refusing her economic independence Threats to exclude her from her family or community Biting Making her have an abortion Preventing her from learning the local language Demanding receipts for all spending Threats to make her lose her job Breaking bones Assaulting her when she is pregnant Having others believe him over her despite evidence to the contrary Making her ask or beg for money Threats to expose things she is ashamed of to others Burning Prostituting her against her will Telling her children lies about her Keeping her misinformed about her entitlements Exposing things she is ashamed of to others Burning her with cigarettes Refusing to practice safe sex Telling others lies about her Incurring debts and expecting her to pay them Saying things he knows are deeply hurtful Burning her with acid Sexually abusing her children Making her tell lies for him Incurring debts in her name Using racism against her Setting fire to her Sexual name calling Manipulating her children Forcing her to commit acts of fraud Using her sexuality against her Scalding Forcing her to engage in sexual practices she does not like Telling her children things she doesn't want them to know Shouting at her Using her disability against her Shaking Making her afraid by looks, actions, gestures Turning her children against her Screaming at her Telling her her reactions are irrational Strangling Breaking objects Harassing her after separation Swearing at her Telling her there is no escape Suffocating Breaking valued possessions Using child contact to harass her Insulting her Telling her he will find her is she does escape Choking Driving dangerously whilst she is in the car Having her children taken away from her Undermining her Physically preventing her escape Throwing her Driving the car at her Getting information about her from her children Telling her what to wear Withdrawing affection Throwing objects at her Driving the car at her children Sending her unwanted gifts Criticising her appearance Ignoring her Attacking her with a weapon Being violent to others as a lesson to her Being obsessionally possessive Criticising her abilities Refusing to talk to her Stabbing Hurting her in front of her children Being obsessionally jealous Criticising her sexual performance Repeatedly interrogating her Stripping her of clothing and making her stand there Hurting her children Watching her at home or work Criticising her work or housekeeping Behaving unpredictably Forcing her to hurt herself Hurting her children in front of her Destroying her letters Making her do housework in the middle of the night Keeping her constantly on edge Forcing her to drink alcohol Telling stories about how he has hurt others Sending threatening letters Making her lick the dinner plates clean Making her afraid to go to sleep Forcing her to take drugs Telling her how he would like to hurt her Phoning her and making her feel afraid Criticising her in front of others Making her afraid to wake up Withholding medication Locking her out Not letting her use the phone Telling her she is mad Continually breaking promises Withholding care if she is ill, disabled or elderly Keeping her locked in Cutting off the phone Telling her she is ugly Making her do things she doesn't want to do to prove her love Holding her head underwater Keeping her locked in a room Mocking or humiliating her Telling her she is stupid Telling her nobody else would want her Drowning Keeping her locked in a cupboard or under the stairs Mocking or humiliating her in front of others Telling her she is a disgrace Telling her no-one would believe her Attempted murder Taking away her possessions Abusing her in front of others Telling her she is a slut Telling her that his behaviour is normal Murder Destroying her possessions Intimidating others so that they do not intervene to help her Telling her she is useless Making her accept that his behaviour is normal Rape Taking away her clothes Allowing her no privacy Telling her she is worthless Telling her he only abuses her because he loves her Forced oral sex Destroying her clothes Spitting on her Telling her she is a failure Minimising the harm that he has caused Forced anal sex Saying 'next time it will be you' Urinating on her Telling her she is a bad mother Denying that any abuse has taken place Sexual assault Vandalising her home Degrading her Doing so in front of her children or others Telling her that it is her fault Having sex with her when she is asleep Setting fire to her home Brainwashing her Making her think she is mad, ugly, stupid, a disgrace, a slut, useless, worthless, a failure, a bad mother Making her believe that it is her fault
REFERENCES, LINKS & FURTHER READING
This list was developed from: A risk assessment and safety planning tool prepared for the Council of Europe Police and Human Rights Programme, by Prof Liz Kelly (Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit, University of North London)
St Helen's & Knowsley Working together for Safer, Healthier Families 'Domestic Violence Prevention Training Toolkit
Harwin, N (1997) Understanding Women's Experience of Abuse in Bewley, S., Friend, J. & Mezey, G Violence Against Women London: RCOG |
Martinez led Wigan to their first FA Cup trophy win, beating Manchester City in 2013
Former Everton, Wigan and Swansea manager Roberto Martinez has been appointed as the new head coach of Belgium.
Spaniard Martinez, 43, was sacked by the Toffees in May after three years in charge at Goodison Park.
He succeeds Marc Wilmots, who left his post last month, two weeks after the Euro 2016 quarter-final defeat by Wales.
The vacancy was advertised online by the Belgian Football Association.
It wanted a "strong and open communicator" who has a "proven track record in transmitting tactical and strategic knowledge" to top players.
BBC presenter and former England striker Gary Lineker gives his reaction on Twitter
In a statement, the Belgian FA said it was "delighted and proud to have found a coach at this level so quickly".
Martinez will hold a news conference at 11:30 BST on Thursday and his first match is against Spain on 1 September.
At Everton, Martinez managed Belgium internationals Marouane Fellaini, Romelu Lukaku and Kevin Mirallas. |
The AFL was planning to announce the landmark event of the August 16 broadcast on May 12, the day of an annual industry event that recognises the importance of women to the game and the challenges they face. Tayla Harris taking a big grab in 2014. Credit:Getty Images Though still in the early planning stages from a broadcast perspective, the women's match will air at 12:30pm live in Melbourne and will also be broadcast nationally on Channel Seven. Channel Seven issued a statement late on Thursday to say it is in "pre-production with the AFL" for what will be "a history-making AFL television first in Australia". The network said it would have more details about the broadcast in "coming weeks".
This is the first year the AFL has sanctioned two women's matches involving players from all over Australia who nominated for a draft. The third, and most recent, women's draft in early April received poor mainstream exposure after it was publicised by the AFL the day before it occurred. But it saw 34 of Australia's most outstanding female footballers selected by the Bulldogs (to be coached by former Collingwood and Brisbane Bears player Craig Starcevich this year) and the Demons (to be coached by pioneer Michelle Cowan). A revamp of the women's draft saw a selection of players, including one of the best, and best-known, female footballers, Daisy Pearce, retained by the clubs they have previously represented. In Pearce's case, that club is Melbourne. Only last week Alberti questioned the AFL's commitment to women's football, telling Fairfax after attending the female footballers' draft: "Let's just say I believe that far much more could be done. "The recognition that these women deserve right here and now is just not happening."
Alberti also said she believes that if the AFL was to achieve its vision of establishing a national female competition by 2017 - McLachlan brought the target in from the initial goal of 2020 – it may need a dedicated executive on the job. Presently, the women's football project largely falls under the remit of the AFL's Dorothy Hisgrove, its general manager of people, customer and community. But Alberti wondered last week if Hisgrove's broad-ranging brief meant women's football was not getting the attention it deserved. "I think she's been working incredibly hard to try [to] bring women's football to the forefront," Alberti said of Hisgrove, who she met with in the off-season. "Perhaps they need to give a bit more support and help to Dorothy. She appears to me to be working under the pump. She's a dynamo of a woman, but maybe she needs some more resources and support to be able to do this." Loading
According to AFL research, women's football at Auskick, under-nines, club and school level has grown in the past year by about 15 per cent, and it's estimated there are 194,000 participants. There were 268 nominations for this year's women's draft. |
SALT LAKE CITY – The University of Utah today announced plans for a feasibility study to expand the south end zone at Rice-Eccles Stadium. This review will include a market analysis, cost estimates and funding models. The study is a critical first step in determining a business plan that supports potential changes to the stadium's south side."Understanding the market, costs and feasibility will help us better prepare for the future of the stadium," said President David W. Pershing. "There's still much work to be done before taking steps toward renovation. We have to know if the market will support this kind of expansion."The study will provide the University valuable data in evaluating demand and determining potential revenue sources, including private donations and possibly increased ticket revenue.The south end zone is the only area unchanged since the stadium opened in 1998. A reconstruction could include replacement of locker rooms, equipment storage and media rooms, and space for medical services and hospitality opportunities. The study will consider the feasibility of additional suites, loges, fan interaction and concession areas, including connecting the east and west concourses.Rice-Eccles Stadium currently seats 45,807, and every football game since the 2010 season opener has sold out. Of those 38 sellouts, 35 have overflowed into the standing room sections. For the past seven years, Utah has had a 98-percent renewal rate for its football season tickets."We want our football team to be successful and our fans to have the best experience possible," said Athletics Director Chris Hill. "This feasibility study will help us better understand how we continue to do all of that in the future." |
Fire crews work on still-smoldering debris from Emeryville complex
Firefighters stamped out pockets of burning debris Sunday from the still-smoldering remains of a massive building project in Emeryville gutted by fire.
Neighbors along the 3800 block of San Pablo Avenue stopped to stare at the twisted heap of metal and blackened lumber as investigators began working to determine the cause and origin of the inferno.
“It’s a little scary — fires are dangerous,” Valerie Jackson said as she sipped her morning coffee along a fence near where smoke still billowed from the charred heap.
Still on her mind were several major fires in the East Bay, including a blaze that destroyed the very same construction project in July.
A massive fire broke out at a building on the 3800 block of San Pablo Ave. in Emeryville, Saturday, May 13, 2017. A massive fire broke out at a building on the 3800 block of San Pablo Ave. in Emeryville, Saturday, May 13, 2017. Photo: Jessica S. Oh Photo: Jessica S. Oh Image 1 of / 53 Caption Close Fire crews work on still-smoldering debris from Emeryville complex 1 / 53 Back to Gallery
“It’s crazy,” she said. “It’s almost as if someone didn't want it up.”
The building’s developer seemed to agree and is convinced two fires in less than a year isn’t a coincidence. Investigators, though, will wait until their weeks-long probe is complete before drawing any conclusions about how the fire started.
The fire, which was reported at 4:58 a.m. Saturday, engulfed the $35 million housing and retail development known as the Intersection near Interstate 580 and the Oakland border. It spread to nearby buildings, forcing evacuations and causing additional damage, officials said.
At least 35 residents from 15 units were evacuated from the neighboring block of Adeline Street because officials worried that the partially burned crane at the construction site would collapse. Alameda County Fire Department tweeted early Sunday that crews safely removing the crane overnight under the supervision of agents from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Between 80 and 100 firefighters responded from the Alameda County and Oakland fire departments to battle the huge blaze, with firefighters using cranes to dump water on the fire as black smoke billowed into the sky.
The Oakland Fire Department deployed 15 engines, three trucks and three battalion chiefs, while Alameda County sent four engines, a truck, two battalion chiefs, a fire captain and a public information officer, said Oakland Battalion Chief Zoraida Diaz.
There were no reports of injuries, though some security guards said they suffered some smoke inhalation.
The cause was under investigation, but Rick Holliday of Holliday Development, the company developing the site, said he doesn’t believe that two major fires within 10 months of each other could happen by chance.
“This is obviously arson,” he said, frustrated. “This is an attack on housing.”
Diaz said investigators don’t know yet where the fire originated within the building. When fire crews arrived, the entire building was already engulfed, with each individual floor “fully involved.”
“We don’t know if it was intentional because it’s still under investigation,” she said.
The upscale residential and commercial development is being built in a rapidly changing part of Emeryville.
The neighborhood, just north of Interstate 580, is a mix of retail strip malls, old storefronts and warehouses along San Pablo Avenue and sleek new multistory apartment and condominium buildings erected over the past few years.
To the south and west, the site is flanked by mostly older single-family houses, many of them badly in need of repair.
The fire damaged more than just the construction site on Saturday, with flames jumping to some of the townhomes on nearby Apgar Street.
Orly Zamir, 26, who moved into one of the town houses in January, said her roommate woke up first and ran to get her.
“‘Get up, the building is on fire, we have to run out,’” she said her roommate told her. “I opened my eyes, and all I saw was orange.”
Zamir’s window faced out toward the construction site, and she could feel the heat from the growing flames as they reached toward her home.
“We have a sunroof between our bedrooms, and it was melting,” Zamir said, her voice shaking. “Everything is gone.”
Fire crews had to be sent to other nearby residential areas, as strong winds carried embers blocks away, threatening homes and charring vegetation. On Market Street between 34th and 35th streets, neighbors said embers the size of grapefruits fell from the sky onto buildings, blackening tall trees and covering the area with ash.
Just before 9 a.m. Saturday, the roof of a house near 34th Street caught fire, but firefighters were able to keep the flames from spreading to other homes.
Jie Tang, 56, said through a translator that he woke to the crackling of flying embers. When he looked outside, he saw flames rising from the Intersection project. He watched as an ember fell on the roof of an abandoned house next to his.
“Big fire, embers everywhere, the whole sky,” he said. “Cars moving and all the embers following the cars everywhere. It was so scary.”
Ira Gibson, 40, said he woke to an ember flying into his home on 36th Street, a block from the big fire. He grabbed a hose and started spraying down his backyard and roof.
Firefighters told residents to evacuate and helped escort out some of his neighbors, he said. Other neighbors said firefighters helped douse rooftops and porches with water.
American Red Cross workers were on scene to provide assistance.
The mixed-use project at the intersection of five streets was to include 105 residential units and 21,000 square feet of retail, and was supposed to open this year. But in less than a year, the project has now been hit twice by devastating fires.
On July 6, firefighters battled a blaze at the site that sent dozens fleeing as it spread to at least five nearby homes, an auto shop and cars along San Pablo Avenue. That fire, which caused no injuries, started about 2:45 a.m.
The San Francisco Business Times reported in March that investigators had determined that the first fire was probably caused by youths lighting fireworks on the unfinished fifth floor of the building, which then consisted of wood framing. However, the official cause of that fire is still under investigation. No arrests have been made, but several neighbors shared the developer’s suspicions that the fires were just too similar to be just bad luck.
“It’s the same exact pattern,” said Mike Dyels, 49, who owns a warehouse across the street. “Last time, the crane burned down and then the building. And that happened this time.”
Holliday Development installed 12 security cameras and hired two armed security guards, Rick Holliday said.
The Intersection project was first approved in August 2013. Permits for groundbreaking on the site were issued in June 2015, and construction began soon afterward.
Holliday Development promoted the building’s easy access to transportation, electric car charging stations and other environmentally friendly features.
After the first fire, developers Rick and Nancy Holliday wrote on their website, “While saddened by the fire that scarred the buildings at the corner of 39th and San Pablo, we want to take a moment and express our deep and heartfelt gratitude to all who came to fight the fire and deal with this event.”
They said they were “pained for those who were inconvenienced and suffered losses along with us. ... Focusing forward, Holliday Development has its sights set on putting this tragedy behind us, as best we can, and rapidly rebuilding this project to bring beautiful housing, office space, restaurants and more to the community as soon as possible.”
The last fire set construction back, but they were scheduled to finish in October, Rick Holliday said. He said Saturday’s fire will set development back by at least nine months.
“I don’t know why someone is burning houses down, but they need to stop,” Holliday said. “It’s horrible. We will be fine as developers, but this is just a mess. Words can’t even describe how horrible this is.”
He said as frustrated as he felt, he wasn’t going to let the fires deter the development.
“It won’t stop us from building housing,” Holliday said.
Michael Cabanatuan, Sarah Ravani, Vivian Ho and Evan Sernoffsky are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. Twitter: @ctuan, @SarRavani, @VivianHo, @EvanSernoffsky |
Hello everyone,
Thomas here to catch you all up on what's been happening. We were a bit quiet last month, and part of the reason for that is Adam Heine, Colin McComb and I were all at the inXile office for a week of discussions, meetings, and just hanging out. These occasional get-togethers really help us connect and make it easier working together remotely. Plus for Adam and me, it was our first time meeting George Ziets in real life—an awesome bonus! And after a productive day we'd stick around in the office to play one of Jesse's many board games – such as a few interesting games of Avalon where each and every time everyone was convinced Colin was one of the evil guys (I suspect it's the goatee).
A Design Review of one of the Bloom areas. (Clockwise from left: George Ziets, Thomas Beekers, Colin McComb, Steve Dobos, Jesse Farrell, Adam Heine, Kevin Saunders, Matt Findley. Photo by Brian Fargo)
Before we get onto other stuff, I'd like to point you all to our website again, especially if you haven't registered yet (please do!) We're continuing to enhance the site and our backer system, and there's two improvements in particular I want to point out:
First, with thanks to Monte Cook Games, you can now spend your Torment points on a variety of digital and physical Numenera and The Strange pen and paper books, from the Corebook to Sir Arthour's Guide to the Numenera. Opting for these rewards provides you with a coupon code to use at the MCG store, and supports both us and them!
We also added the capability to gift points to other people. If you have enough excess points in your account (the minimum is 500 points, equivalent to $5), you can change these points into a gift code in our system, give this code to a friend and they can claim the points on their own account and use them to select their own rewards! As the holidays are almost here, perhaps spreading a little Torment to your loved ones is just what the season calls for?
New Team Members
Kevin here. Over the last couple months, our highest priority has been ramping up Torment’s new team members and welcoming them over from their duties on Wasteland 2. While both games are single-player RPGs and built in Unity, there are major differences between them in all facets: animation, art, design, programming, sound, visual effects, and even elements of the production process. So while moving ahead creating content, we are taking some time to cross-train, acclimating our team with Numenera and the Torment project, while also infusing Torment with expertise gained throughout the development of Wasteland 2.
While we’re still keeping inXile a small and focused company, we’ve staffed up a bit to better meet the requirements for Torment and our planned future endeavors. Two new environment artists have joined us, and the Torment team. The first is Damien Evans, who actually began his game industry career in Quality Assurance at Interplay, where he was a QA lead on Planescape: Torment. InXile gave Damien his first art-related position many years ago, and we’re thrilled we’ve been able to lure him back with Torment.
After receiving a paintover pass, this 2D render (artist: Damien Evans) will serve as the background for an in-game Scene, where visual effects and possibly 3D props would be added.
The second, Paul Fish, joins us at the end of this month, driven by his love for Planescape: Torment and his excitement about the Numenera setting. Aaron Meyers, Torment’s Lead Artist, had the honor of extending Paul’s first game industry job to him about 7 years ago, and since that time Paul has mostly worked at Obsidian Entertainment, where his efforts included some of the Pillars of Eternity environment art. Although we’ve adjusted some aspects of the environment art pipeline we’ve licensed from the PoE team, enough is the same that Paul will be able to hit the ground running.
If you are interested in more details related to our production, you might check out our official Torment forums. One of our environment artists, Jon Gwyn, and Josh Jertberg, our Lead Animator, both have threads there in which they discuss and occasionally give updates on those aspects of the game.
Alpha Systems Test
Early-ish next year, we intend to have the first alpha systems test (AST). These are not exactly a common part of current game development, so I wanted to explain them a bit. Each AST will be a very limited build (version of the game) that highlights particular elements and is released to our alpha systems testers for their feedback. For example, the first one will likely focus on the Conversation UI. It won’t include any actual game world or characters. What it will have is a reasonably complete implementation of the Conversation UI, along with a single conversation that will be fairly involved, but still only take a couple minutes to play through.
The ASTs will hopefully be interesting for the testers, but they are by no means game demos or beta tests. To be blunt, these ASTs are for the benefit of the game, not those who play it. Alpha systems testers should expect them to be be ugly (or, more accurately, bland), with clearly placeholder graphics for anything that’s not central to the AST. (For example, the Conversation UI AST will have candidate final art for that interface, since its aesthetics contribute to the overall conversation gameplay experience.) They may have some bugs, though in general we're looking more for the alpha systems testers to be providing feedback, not finding bugs.
Because of the development goals of the ASTs, we’re not planning to announce them in advance – while we have our own internal deadlines for these things, I don’t want the team to feel compelled to make compromises to meet publicly announced expectations or deadlines. I want the ASTs to be whatever they should be, whenever they should be, as will be best for Torment. Also, while we’ll be mentioning the ASTs a bit in these Kickstarter Updates, we will generally communicate more about them through Tumblr and directly to the eligible backers (i.e., those whose tier included AST access (Artifact Collector and higher Tiers), or who chose it as an add-on).
Kevin out.
Adam here! For once, I'm going to tell you about something other than game mechanics: the history of the Oasis of M'ra Jolios.
Well, not the whole history. The underwater city of M'ra Jolios has existed since the beginning of recorded time, and possibly much longer than that—but no one knows who built it or why.
It is home to the Ghibra Ny'kul, the collective name for a variety of water-breathing races from all over the Ninth World. The Ghibra believe M'ra Jolios was created by their god, and that they were placed in the Ninth World to bring "water and life" to the Ninth World. It was this worldview that guided their meeting with the first Jerboans hundreds of years ago.
Concept art of the Ghibra (artist: Rebecca On)
The Jerboans were (and mostly still are) humans, refugees from the surrounding lands. The Tabaht still held sway in much of that region, enslaving some and driving many from their homes. Hundreds crossed the mountains into a vast desert valley with a sparkling dome at its center (its exact center, by the way, which is a point of interest among those who study M'ra Jolios). Thinking it to be an oasis, and having nowhere else to turn, these refugees hazarded the enormous wasteland in hopes of a safe haven.
Most of these migrants were never heard from again. The wasteland surrounding M'ra Jolios is called the Lost Sea for a reason. It's more than just an enormous desert; ripples in space-time make it nearly impossible to traverse. You could walk in a straight line for weeks on end and find that you were still exactly where you started. Or you might end up on the other side of the valley without ever having gone near M'ra Jolios. Or you could wake up every morning in a different place than where you slept, never able to escape even if you went back the way you came. But with the right numenera (or a lot of luck), people could sometimes get through. That's how the first Jerboans arrived at M'ra Jolios.
Some say the Ghibra greeted the weary travelers and helped them establish the air-breather town outside the Oasis. Others say a man, who somehow lived among the Ghibra, welcomed the refugees and helped them survive with the aid of the Oasis. Still others suggest the founding Jerboans themselves taught the Ghibra about the world outside their bubble and proposed an alliance.
Regardless, the two towns—Jerboa and M'ra Jolios—have grown together for centuries. More refugees from other conflicts and disasters have come to Jerboa Town since, growing Jerboa’s population much faster than M'ra Jolios, and as different methods have been found to safely traverse the Lost Sea, they have attracted a strong tourist trade. M'ra Jolios has grown more slowly, protecting their culture by controlling traffic into their environment. They also provide Jerboa with potable water, without which, the Jerboans would perish.
Today, most Jerboans view their relationship with the Oasis as a symbiotic one. The Ghibra give the Jerboans the means to survive—literally giving them water and life—but the Jerboans bring significant trade and tourism to the Oasis, making the Ghibra exceedingly wealthy. Many in M'ra Jolios agree that their relationship is mutually beneficial, and though the Ghibra are leery about giving Jerboans permanent access to their waters, they have come to Jerboa's defense on more than one occasion over the centuries.
But as the Jerboans bring more and more attention to the Oasis, the air-breathers are becoming increasingly discontent with being forced to live outside in the hot desert, allowed to enter the Oasis only with a guide holding their hand. The Ghibra are mixed in response to this, and there are rumors the Oasis hides an éminence grise, a shadowy figure who works behind the scenes to maintain M'ra Jolios's seclusion for his own purposes.
The tranquility of this desert paradise is wavering, and in the brewing storms are opportunities for the daring (or devious) to exploit the conflict for their benefit.
Denizens of the Oasis (artist: Rebecca On)
Adam out.
Visual Effects Artist Sought
Thus far, our Kickstarter Updates have helped us discover two great talents (Jason Dora, our web programmer and the mastermind behind the new backer site; and Nathan Fabian of Longshot Studios, who is a contract programmer responsible for the lion’s share of the Conversation UI implementation) and so we’re reaching out to you all yet again. We seek a mid- or senior-level (Tier 3+ ;) ) visual effects artist to aid Charlie Bloomer, Torment’s Art Director and Lead VFX Artist, and Jon Sanders, a talented but fledgling VFX artist, in helping Torment look spectacular. If you, or someone you know, is interested and qualified, please check out the full description on our jobs page. (An underwater city like the Oasis of M’ra Jolios isn’t going to make itself, after all!)
Our Good Friends
Our friends at Monte Cook Games are doing a one-time exclusive Numenera boxed set edition only available by backing this Kickstarter, with just a few days to go. It's been a huge success and the amount of support is allowing them to put a bunch of extras into the boxed sets. Well worth it for the collectors amongst you!
inXile is very happy to support Patrick Rothfuss and Worldbuilders in raising money for charity by offering copies of Wasteland 2 as one of the item's for offer on Pat's Tinker's Packs site. You can read Pat's thoughts on this on his blog, particularly this post. We're over $500,000 raised for charity, with all profits of these sales going to Worldbuilders charities, so let's keep it rolling!
And finally, one of our writers, Brian Mitsoda, with his team at DoubleBear, recently released their own cRPG title: Dead State. One of the early successful Kickstarters, Dead State is a zombie apocalypse survival game with strategic turn-based combat and base-building mechanics -- the game is very story-driven and is not your typical zombie fare. Our congratulations go to Brian and his team! You can check it out on Steam or GOG.com.
Thomas Beekers
Line Producer |
The AMD Radeon Fury X powered by Fiji XT has just smiled to the camera for one more time ahead of its launch next week. Yesterday we managed to confirm the specifications for AMD’s upcoming “ultra-enthusiast” Fury line of graphics cards. The AMD Radeon Fury X and Radeon Fury powered by AMD’s largest, most powerful and most advanced GPU to date code named Fiji.
At this point we know pretty much everything about the upcoming arrivals from the red team. Needless to say these newcomers will be AMD’s fastest graphics chips to date. The Fiji GPU, both the XT and Pro variants, form the foundation of AMD’s new ultra enthusiast “Fury” brand. There are several reasons as to why AMD decided to resurrect the “Fury” brand name with Fiji. Chief among which is that with Fiji AMD will be introducing the world’s first GPU featuring 3D stacked High Bandwidth Memory, otherwise known as HBM. Another reason is the sheer performance of the chip, which AMD has proclaimed to be the fastest in the world. To crown these achievements AMD decided that a simple numerical product name will not do this chip justice and thus they brought back Fury.
More AMD Radeon Fury X Pictures – Liquid Cooling, Backplate And Red LED Lit Radeon Logo
Today we’re sharing with you a few more photos of Fury showing off the back of the card as well as the led lit Radeon logo and the liquid cooling unit designed by Asetek. Something which we have exclusively pointed out many moons ago.
In the photo above we ca see an illuminated red “Radeon” which is engraved into a metal plate. Slightly above that there’s a dual BIOS switch. Which can come in handy whilst overclocking or when flashing the BIOS.
The length of the card is 19cm or 7.5inches and in terms of width the card is a dual-slot design but will occupy slightly less than two PCIe slots. Finally the card is rated at a 300W TDP as we had disclosed yesterday and is powered by two 8pin PCIE power connectors.
The compact design of the card can be better appreciated in the photo above. We can also see on the left side the opening where the tubing as well as the pump and fan wires come out. If we look at the PCIE x16 connector we can also tell that the PCB is matte black, which would look quite sharp on its own even without a backplate. Despite that AMD decided to go ahead and include a full clean black backplate anyway, which I think many gamers will appreciate.
In this image we can appreciate the compact design even better. We can also see that he radiator is actually of standard thickness. Included with the radiator is a Scythe Gentle Typhoon fan. One of the absolute best radiator fans both in terms of static pressure and noise. In this picture we can also see that the tubing has been sleeved to look like power supply cabling. Which should allow the tubing to blend in with the rest of the system’s interior. Adding to that clean homogeneous look with the card is installed.
You can check out the full specs of Fury X and Fury here and the estimated performance of Fury X here.
WCCFTech AMD Radeon R9 Fury X2 AMD Radeon R9 Fury X AMD Radeon R9 Nano AMD Radeon R9 Fury AMD Radeon R9 290X GPU Fiji XT x 2 Fiji XT Fiji XT Fiji Pro Hawaii XT Stream Processors 8192 4096 4096 3584 2816 GCN Compute Units 128 64 64 56 44 Render Output Units 128 64 64 64 64 Texture Mapping Units 512 256 256 224 176 GPU Frequency TBA Up to 1050Mhz Up to 1000 MHz Up to 1000 MHz 1000Mhz Memory 8GB HBM (4 GB Per Chip) 4GB HBM 4GB HBM 4GB HBM 4GB GDDR5 Memory Interface 4096-bit x 2 4096bit 4096bit 4096bit 512bit Memory Frequency 500Mhz 500Mhz 500 MHz 500Mhz 1250Mhz Effective Memory Speed 1Gbps 1Gbps 1Gbps 1Gbps 5Gbps Memory Bandwidth 1024 GB/s 512GB/s 512GB/s 512GB/s 320GB/s Cooling Liquid Liquid, 120mm Radiator Air, Single Fan. Custom AIB Solutions Later Air, Custom AIB Solutions Air, Single Blower Fan Performance (SPFP) 17.2 TFLOPS 8.6 TFLOPS 8.19 TFLOPS 7.2 TFLOPS 5.6 TFLOPS TDP TBA 275W 175W 275W 250W Power Connectors Dual 8-Pin Dual 8-Pin 8-Pin Dual 8-Pin 6+8 Pin GFLOPS/Watt TBA 31.3 47.1 26.2 19.3 New Prices TBA $649 $499 $549 $299 (Retail) Launch Date Early 2016 24th June 2015 7th September 2015 10th July 2015 24th October 2013 |
Jason Giambi will be 43 years-old next season and he has not been a full-time player since he left the Yankees following the 2008 campaign. But, unlike so many younger guys (and unlike a lot of better hitters) Giambi will not have to search around for a roster spot next spring. Indeed, on Monday both Indians general manager Chris Antonetti and manager Terry Francona said they’d love to have him back:
“We would like to continue our relationship with ‘G’ probably as long as he would like to,” Francona said Monday . . . If Giambi for whatever reason does decide to hang it up, Antonetti stated he will have a spot to come back and be a part of the Indians in a coaching capacity. “If Jason, once he gets to that point where he no longer wants to play we’d love to have him with this organization,” Antonetti said.
Antonetti added, though, that he knows Giambi wants to play and that that’s fine with him.
Even last spring, when he was new to the Indians, you could tell that Terry Francona and the coaching staff loved having Giambi around. Francona and Nick Swisher both told me when I visited Indians camp that Giambi was like having another coach around. A coach who could, on occasion, hit walkoff home runs in the midst of a pennant race. Not a bad combo.
Of course that doesn’t mean that Giambi is the wisest use of a roster spot purely in terms of production. Despite his occasional heroics he hit just .183/.282/.371 in 216 plate appearances. That wouldn’t fly with most players, but it would seem that what Giambi brings in terms of mentorship, veteran presence and those sorts of things continue to make him valuable in the eyes of Antonetti and Francona. Their team, their call.
But whatever his merits, I continue to marvel at Giambi’s late career. It’s so rare to see guys who were once MVP-caliber players transform into role players — very narrow role players — as thoroughly as Giambi has. If he plays next year it will be his seventh as a bench bat/DH type in what will by then be a 20-year major league career. Who else has done that?
He obviously doesn’t need the money. And nothing he is doing now is going to lead to much more than fleeting fame or glory as a ballplayer (those days have passed). He’s just doing it, it seems, because he loves (and maybe needs) baseball. And because everyone around him values him and wants him around too. And there’s something fantastic about that. |
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan recor-ded a substantial decrease in terrorist activities last year, with 45 per cent fewer attacks and 38pc fewer deaths reported in the year than in the previous year, according to the report of the ‘Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2016’.
This is the second consecutive year in which Pakistan has seen reduction in terrorist activities. Terrorism in the country is now at its lowest level since 2006, says the report released by the US-based Institute for Economics and Peace, an independent think-tank.
The GTI is based on data from the Global Terrorism Database which is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a department of the Homeland Security Centre of Excellence led by the University of Maryland.
Pakistan had the third largest decline in deaths. There were 677 fewer deaths in Pakistan. As a result, Pakistan had the lowest number of deaths from terrorism since 2008, said the report released on Thursday.
The reduction in deaths from terrorism is in part explained by Zarb-i-Azb military operation being carried out by Pakistan Army. The operation focused on removing militant safe havens in North Waziristan.
Pakistan continued to see decline in its levels of terrorism due to infighting within the largest active group, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), as well as to the operations of the army in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Although the TTP reduced the number of attacks in Pakistan, it was still responsible for the most attacks, according to the report. In 2015 the group was responsible for 36pc of the deaths, totalling 240 people. This was down from 59pc of the deaths, totalling 544, in 2014, representing a sharp year-on-year reduction.
Although the number of attacks declined, terrorist activities was spreading across the country. It moved from the border region with Afghanistan to many other parts of the country, especially the Punjab province in the east which is the most populated area of Pakistan. A total of 429 cities experienced terrorist attacks in 2015, up from 17 in 2000. This may create a much more difficult situation for the Pakistani government in the coming years.
The Global Terrorism Index said that 76 countries improved their GTI scores compared to 53 countries where they worsened; the overall global GTI score declined by 6pc since the previous year as many moderately affected countries experienced record levels of terrorism. The year 2015 saw the total number of deaths decrease by 10pc, the first decline since 2010.
The year 2015 appeared to be a plateau year for terrorism, reversing the steep increasing trend of the three prior years. As the number of deaths decreased by 10pc, after an 80pc increase in 2014, the number of countries suffering more than 250 deaths decreased by one, down to 16 countries.
At least six countries saw very significant deterioration in their GTI scores in 2015, leading to large rank changes from the previous year. This accounted for the overall deterioration in the global GTI score of 6pc as these falls outweighed the substantial gains in Nigeria and Iraq. These countries included France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Tunisia and Burundi.
The five countries at the top of the GTI — Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria — accounted for 72pc of all deaths from terrorism in 2015. This was despite the fact that Iraq, Nigeria and Pakistan all had at least a 30pc decline from 2014. Afghanistan, on the other hand, had an increase in deaths of 18pc.
Except for Pakistan, in each of these countries there was a prominent group which was responsible for the majority of deaths.
The global economic impact of terrorism in 2015 was broadly comparable to the previous year, costing the global economy $89.6 billion. This amount was only 1pc of the total global economic impact of violence which reached $13.6 trillion in 2015. Only in situations of intense terrorist activity like Iraq were the costs of terrorism very significant. The cost of terrorism to the Iraqi economy was equivalent to 17pc of its GDP in 2015.
Published in Dawn November 20th, 2016 |
The 49ers practice Monday for the first time since their exhibition-opening, 27-17 win at Kansas City on Friday. Here are the top three things to watch:
1. Jimmie Ward’s status: After straining a hamstring 18 days ago in a conditioning test, projected starting safety Jimmie Ward is expected to start practicing this week. But first he must pass a series of tests, and according to Monday’s injury report, he remains on the physically unable to perform list.
“If we don’t feel 100-percent great about it, we’re not going to risk Jimmie getting out there and re-injuring it, setting him back,” Kyle Shanahan said. “If we don’t get a 110-percent positive report, then we’ll just push it another few days.” Like our San Francisco 49ers Facebook page for more 49ers news, commentary and conversation.
Ward transitioned in the offseason program to the free safety “eraser” role, having played cornerback last season and nickel back his first two years. Jaquiski Tartt did not play Friday because of a rib issue, and the 49ers started rookie Lorenzo Jerome at free safety.
Others not practicing Monday: defensive tlinemen DeForest Buckner (ankle) and Ronald Blair (groin); safety Chanceller James (knee), wide receiver Aaron Burbridge (hamstring), lineackers Jayson DiManche (hamstring) and Donavin Newsom (concussion).
Limited Monday are cornerback Dontae Johnson (concussion; no contact), tight end George Kittle (hamstring) and linebacker Brock Coyle (rib).
2. Rookie receiver’s momentum: Kendrick Bourne helped his case to seize an unlikely roster spot with his showing Friday. Bourne admitted afterward he hasn’t had a sharp training camp trying to learn the system, having missed all but the final day of the offseason program because it conflicted with Eastern Washington’s academic calendar.
“I was definitely kind of struggling and messing up routes during camp. Mike was kind of not trusting me,” Bourne said of receivers coach Mike LaFleur. “There was stuff I couldn’t remember. I was busting routes.” For complete 49ers coverage follow us on Flipboard.
Bourne had four receptions for 88 yard, and he tied the score at 17 with a 46-yard touchdown catch and ensuing two-point conversion on C.J. Beathard’s fade to the right side. (Yes, a right-side fade finally came through in the clutch, when the stakes weren’t quite as high as the Super Bowl.)
“I was locked in and ready to go,” Bourne said. “I studied real hard because I knew I’d be in the game, so I didn’t want to make mistakes today. That’s what practice is for, to make mistakes.”
Bourne’s 6-foot-1 frame makes him one of the team’s taller targets, so he’ll have to repeatedly prove that on a corps likely to include Pierre Garçon, Marquise Goodwin, Jeremy Kerley, Aldrick Robinson and Trent Taylor. Is there room for a sixth wide receiver?
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Decision reached in collusion grievance brought by Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid against the NFL 3. Details and discipline: Drawing 21 penalties – 17 were accepted – is an astounding amount. Illegal formation and false start issues are most troubling. Shanahan said: “We definitely got the attention of our players now and I would be surprised if you guys saw the same thing next week.”
Competition will intensify this week as the Denver Broncos arrive for joint practices Wednesday and Thursday in advance of Saturday’s exhibition. |
Rookies are always tricky to evaluate because they can look great one week and then completely fall apart the next. With some big name call-ups sticking around, what can we make of their initial success? More importantly, we need to figure out if these players are best used as keepers or trade bait.
Scouting players who may be undervalued and re-assessing players who may be overvalued is a weekly exercise that you should pursue. Fortunately, I have you covered. Here are a few players who are good buy or sell candidates based on their current performance compared to ownership levels. This could mean scooping them off waivers if possible or actively seeking a trade to acquire or discard certain players in order to maximize value.
I will include one player at each key position group (Infield, Outfield, Pitcher). Ownership levels are taken from Yahoo! Fantasy Sports.
All you early birds can get a full-season MLB Premium Pass. Our Draft Kit, In-Season tools and over 200 days of Premium DFS. Sign Up Now!
Underrated Players - Week 9
Ian Happ (2B/OF, CHC) - 42% owned
Happ was thought to only stick around for a couple of days while the Cubs sorted out injuries in their infield, but low and behold he's still here. He owns a slash line of .268/.375/.561 with two home runs and five RBI in 41 at-bats. The 33.3% K% is a bit concerning, but his minor league averages are a full 10 points lower so the strikeouts should reduce with time and experience. He has shown a good eye by walking 14.6% of the time.
Happ is in a great situation to drive in and score runs in the Chicago lineup, but the most encouraging thing is that he's been batting fourth or fifth nearly every game. We're not talking about a rookie who is filling a void in the eighth spot for a team lacking better options. Happ has a legit opportunity to stick in the most favorable of positions for fantasy opportunity. He needs to be owned in the majority of mixed leagues by now.
Gregory Polanco (OF, PIT) - 80% owned
Giving up on a young, budding star two months into the season isn't a wise thing to do. I've seen people selling low and even dropping Polanco in competitive leagues out of sheer frustration. It's downright shocking to think that someone who was a consensus top-20 outfielder worth a fifth or sixth round pick this year isn't even owned in 1/5 of leagues right now.
Polanco came off the 10-day DL in the minimum allotted time and then smacked a home run in his first game back on Friday. He's not a 40-HR talent, nor is he necessarily a 20/20 guy, but if he stays healthy the rest of the way, you should be looking at 20+ homers, 80+ RBI and double-digit steals easily. If someone in your league is willing to part ways cheaply, then strike now before he starts heating up.
Jose Berrios (SP, MIN) - 80% owned
How can a player who was the hottest waiver add of the last two weeks be underrated? Berrios went from a virtually non-existent ownership level (outside of a few deep keeper leagues) to being owned in as many leagues as Gregory Polanco. Three wins in three games and 22 strikeouts in 21 2/3 innings will do that. Berrios was a hot name last year around this time too, but it didn't go over nearly as well with an atrocious 8.04 ERA and 5.4 BB/9 over 14 starts.
This time it looks like he's figured things out and last year's line in the majors is a major outlier in his profile, as he traditionally walks less than the league average. This might be a good time to swing a deal for Berrios because he gave up three homers in his last start against Baltimore. Other owners might think to sell high before he invariably implodes, but that doesn't seem likely to happen.
Overrated Players - Week 9
Trevor Story (SS, COL) - 91% owned
This might come back to bite me, as it did last preseason when I predicted Trevor Story would be a spring training wonder only... Story came off the DL and homered in his second game back on Thursday, which was a huge relief for his disgruntled owners. The buy-low window on Story is closed now that he's back on the field, but in my opinion he isn't worth buying at all.
We know he's going to strike out a ton (32.2% K% with Colorado) but we're perfectly fine with that if he's mashing 30 home runs. The problem is that he's still hitting .190 on the year and must prove he can get up to speed with his averages to compete with the likes of Francisco Lindor, Carlos Correa, or Corey Seager. If I'm looking for an elite SS that I'd have to pay a pretty penny for in a money league, I'll take any of those three first.
Jose Bautista (OF, TOR) - 93% owned
Are we finally seeing the return of Joey Bats? Bautista went deep again on Saturday, giving him nine on the season. He's approaching the top-10 HR rank among outfielders, but his average still sits at .237. Bautista may have a good run coming, but when it's all said and done he will probably still finish with disappointing totals.
We can't ignore the fact that his strikeout rate has risen the last three season, up to 24.9% this year. If anything, he's actually bound for a dip in his .284 BABIP that's 17 points higher than his career mark, so the AVG could get worse. Finally, his 31.5% hard contact rate is also down, which is never a good sign for a slugger. If you already own him, you probably won't get enough return on value to flip him unless there's still someone out there that believes he will return to the glory days at age 36.
Masahiro Tanaka (SP, NYY) - 94% owned
I'm giving up. Tanaka should have been one of the safest, most predictable SP picks in 2017 drafts. Some reputable baseball analysts in the national media even made him their preseason Cy Young pick. It took one Opening Day start to squash those dreams, as he lasted just 2 2/3 innings, allowing two home runs against the not-so-vaunted Tampa Bay lineup. It simply hasn't gotten better ever since then.
Other than a complete game gem against the Red Sox, Tanaka has been getting pounded. Just in the last two weeks, he gave up six runs to Houston and then eight to his new nemesis Tampa. A 3.87 SIERA suggests Tanaka is pitching far better than his ratios look and his plate discipline stats don't look much different than the last couple of years. The problem that won't go away is the long ball. Tanaka has given up 13 HR this season and he plays in one of the most hitter-friendly parks, just three-hundredths of a point behind Chase Field in ballpark factor for home runs. For a pitcher who doesn't strike out a ton of batters, there may not be enough upside to chase if he is going to keep walking hitters at a higher rate and letting the ball leave the yard. Don't give up on him completely if you already own him, but don't go chasing him in the trade market either.
More Risers and Fallers
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“I’ve been poor my whole life, like a disease passing from generation to generation. But not my boys, not anymore.”
When we look back at the cinema of 2016 there will be a collective ‘meh’. It’s been far from a bad year, in fact we’ve had brilliant blockbusters like Captain America: Civil War, Jason Bourne, and Star Trek Beyond. But compared to flops like Warcraft, Ghostbusters, and The BFG, or over-hyped and underwhelming franchise films like Suicide Squad, Independence Day: Resurgence, Alice Through the Looking Glass, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows; the good blockbusters start to look few and far between. But look away from the big budget flicks and you’ll find 2016 has actually been a pretty excellent year for film. To find the best films though, you’ll need to start looking at the mid to low budget end of the spectrum. Smaller studio fare and independent films have had a great year, with films like High Rise, Green Room, The Shallows, The Nice Guys, and Deadpool all achieving critical success. Hell or High Water, the latest film to join this growing list is perhaps the best of the bunch.
Directed by David Mackenzie (Starred Up) and scripted by Taylor Sheridan (best know for writing Sicario and, weirdly, playing Sheriff Hale on Sons of Anarchy), Hell or High Water is a taught and violent neo-western full of heart and exceptionally well written characters. Chris Pine and Ben Foster play Toby and Tanner Howard, brothers brought together to make a better life for the future Howard’s. Pine’s Toby is a divorced dad of two who after his mother dies is left with the family farm, which recently struck oil, and unlike his brother has lived his life on the right side of the law. Pine is awesome in this, perfectly embodying the struggles of a man forced into doing something dangerous for the sake of his family. His performance is a million miles away from his (also great) performance as James T. Kirk and hopefully it opens doors to other serious dramatic roles. Ben Foster’s Tanner is the younger and much more violent brother who’s lived a quarter of his life in prison. The supremely underrated and always awesome Foster is once again fantastic in this. His character is a violent product of the system, who has been forced to live through some terrible things, but he also loves and would do anything for his older brother, a duality Foster plays perfectly. The brothers’ plan to wrestle control of the family farm back from the hands of the banks is to attempt a series of small scale bank robberies over the course of a week and then pay off the bank before they foreclose on the farm, leaving the farm and the goldmine of an oil reserve to Toby’s kids. Despite the robberies being deliberately careful and well planned (mainly by the level headed Toby) Tanner’s violent streak threatens to capsize the whole thing. As well as this the bothers are being pursued by an ageing Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) looking for one last adventure to stave off the upcoming years of boredom once he retires. As per usual Bridges is terrific, with his character Marcus being the best character in a film of best characters. His fear of retirement, of the banal life that awaits him, is incredibly real and his constant bickering and gentle mocking of his partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) is at once funny and sad as it masks his pain of being forced out of the Rangers.
The story is perhaps a little heavy handed with it’s hatred of the banks but it’s not for a minute untrue, and the characters motivations are always believable. Sheridan’s excellent script is also very funny, meaning Hell or High Water is no where near as bleak as his last effort, the brilliant Sicario. The pairings of Pine/Foster and Bridges/Birmingham are all fantastic and they both have great chemistry. When it comes to these characters being in life and death situations you genuinely care for each of them, and when they come face to face you are left in the confusing place of rooting for both sides, although you have the feeling at least one person isn’t going to make it out whole. The direction is also frequently stunning, employing an enjoyably relaxed pace right up until a burst of ultra-violence shatters it. Through MacKenzie’s direction the world these character inhabit is shown to be a desolate wasteland with people struggling to survive in the shadow of the banks. In this world people idolise the bank robbing anti heroes and they still have to fight against the pull of nature. In this sense the landscape of West Texas makes Hell or High Water as much a traditional western as it is a contemporary one like No Country For Old Men. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ score to Hell or High Water is also brilliant, with it managing to add to the emotion in a scene without being big and over the top, similarly to their work on the John Hillcoat western The Proposition.
The bottom line: Hell or High Water is one of the best films of the year. Everyone in it turns in what are almost certainly up there with the strongest performances of their careers, and that’s no small feat when you have a catalogue of acting credits like Jeff Bridges. It’s closet comparison is probably the Coen Brothers masterpiece No Country For Old Men, but even then it’s entirely it’s own thing. It’s definitely a must watch; it’s funny, thrilling, heartbreaking and unfortunately probably going to slip under the radar of most people.
Reviewed by Tom |
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