text
stringlengths 627
100k
|
|---|
Because indoor skydiving wasn’t cool enough already.
Skydiving is arguably one of the more dangerous activities a human being can possibly participate in. However it can also be one of the most intense, life altering moments you’ll ever have the pleasure to experience.
So wouldn’t it be cool to feel the magic of free falling 120 miles per hour without the chance of becoming a pancake on the street? As someone who loves skydiving while at the same time appreciates the value in staying alive, I certainly would.
Enter Tunnel Vision, a brand new experience launched by Virgin Experience Days at Twinwoods Adventure, Bedford, that combines a VR headset with indoor skydiving. Founded by Cody Russell and Tristan Hampson as part of the tech incubator EvoNexus, the immersive new experience creates an intense level of realism by using both VR and actual indoor wind tunnels to accurately simulate the physical sensations of free falling.
A custom-made headset provides high definition 4k, 360-degree video via a private Tunnel Vision app managed and updated directly by the company remotely. Based on the video provided it appears as though the Samsung Gear VR is the primary component of the set-up. Each video displayed on the headset is perfectly synced to the physical jump with the 360 visuals beginning as soon as you enter the wind tunnel. As the flight ends, the software shuts down, revealing the external environment as they exit.
“Tunnel Vision recreates the skydiving environment of jumping out of an airplane with breathtaking views while in the safety of a wind tunnel by using virtual reality. Virtual reality allows people of all ages and risk adversities the chance to experience what it is like to jump out of an airplane while under a coach’s’ supervision in a wind tunnel, making it a safe environment that can be enjoyed year round. When a customer goes to a local wind tunnel they will now have the option to upgrade to the Tunnel Vision™ experience. The customer will then wear a specially designed full-faced helmet with an integrated virtual reality headset and can chose to virtually skydive anywhere in the world!”
Like many before them, the Tunnel Vision team had a few unique speed bumps to overcome before opening the experience to the public. One of the biggest concerns was making sure the VR headset was secured firmly enough to withstand the intense wind speeds within the wind tunnel. The answer to this riddle is a patent pending head-mounted display that utilizes a ratchet system to safely and comfortably secure the VR headset to a larger helmet.
Another concern was the safety of participants while they are flying “blind” in the tunnel. To combat this potential hazard, all jumpers are accompanied by an instructor who remains attached at all times in order to assist with spatial awareness as well as tunnel entrances and exits. I’m also willing to bet they’ll be having some fun at your expense while you’re flying blind. After all, who could resist rapidly spinning an unsuspecting jumper and then watching their reaction as they make a sudden 360 move while in VR? I couldn’t, but maybe I’m just evil.
Tunnel Vision is currently supported by only two locations. The first at Airborne San Diego in California and the second at Twinwoods Adventure in the UK. However according to Russell, “We are targeting the European market first, with plans to expand into 8 tunnels within the Next 6-12 months.”
So how good is the experience exactly? Why not listen to what the British Army’s Parachute Regiment display team, The Red Devils, had to say after trying it out themselves with Virgin Experience Days: |
Copyright by WPRI - All rights reserved
Rochelle Lefebvre - PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - More than a quarter of a million people braved the harsh winter to attend events in Providence.
The Rhode Island Convention Center Authority says the Rhode Island Convention Center, The Dunkin' Donuts Center, and Veterans Memorial Auditorium saw more than 355,000 event-goers this year.
"We are pleased with the number of events and people we have had in the buildings this winter." said James McCarvill, Executive Director of RICCA. "Our staff worked diligently to keep the sidewalks cleared and accessible, keeping the parking facilities open and despite it all we only had to reschedule one hockey game, one basketball game and a performance at The VETs."
The three facilities hosted more than 80 events from January 1 to March 25.
"When you have that many people coming downtown to attend our events that means the restaurants, retail owners, and parking garages are busy as well," McCarvill continued. "The weather just didn't cooperate but thankfully people still came downtown to enliven the city."
Some of this year's events included the Auto Show, Spring Flower & Garden Show, the Home Show, Festival Ballet Providence, the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, the PC Friars and the U.S. Synchronized Skating Championships. |
- Kane and his wife have started a new insurance company in Knoxville, TN called The Jacobs Agency. They offer auto, home, motorcycle, RV, boat, life and commercial insurance, as well as retirement planning.
Kane has told people in the area that he's been planning on retiring from WWE for some time now but it's hard to walk away from the money, so he's going to continue wrestling while he can still make the big money.
There's also a feeling locally in the political world that at some point Kane would be interested in running for public office as a Libertarian party candidate.
Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter
Subscribe to The Wrestling Observer by clicking here. Each issue has coverage and analysis of all the major news, plus history pieces. New subscribers can also receive free classic issues. |
Wales's four regions will join Premiership Rugby and create an Anglo-Welsh league for a minimum of five years if agreement on the future of the Heineken Cup is not reached by the end of January.
The regions met in Cardiff on Tuesday morning having been given a deadline of midnight by the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) to continue a participation agreement that would tie them to the governing body for the next five seasons without an increase in funding in real terms.
The regions said that, as there will be no Heineken Cup next season as things stand while Italy has yet to commit to remaining in the RaboDirect Pro 12, they faced losing 10 fixtures and more than half the income they receive from tournaments. The unanimous decision was that continuing the agreement would bankrupt them.
"The WRU do not and could not run their business in such circumstances and neither can the regions," said the four in a statement that was issued shortly after office hours at 5pm, having waited to see if the union would make a late approach for talks.
"The WRU hold full responsibility under the participation agreement for the competition platform and television rights of the regions and it is astonishing that they have put the four businesses in this position as a result of failing to fulfil their obligations under the agreement, despite having almost two years to resolve the issues."
The regions said they remained committed to working with the WRU to secure a sustainable and competitive future for professional rugby in Wales, pointing out that clubs in England and France are increasing their spending after securing lucrative deals.
"We have had no choice but to consider every alternative to secure a truly sustainable future for regional rugby in Wales," the statement continued. "Therefore we reaffirm our commitment to the Rugby Champions Cup under the aegis of Six Nations, which will generate a guaranteed £12m additional funding across the four regions over the next three years and help reduce the funding gap with the French, English, Irish and Scottish clubs.
"A solution must be reached by the end of January 2014. Should this not be possible, the regions will have no choice but to pursue further competition options immediately."
The Rugby Champions Cup was the tournament announced by the English and French clubs in the autumn as a replacement for the Heineken Cup. It was to be run by clubs but the French sides pulled out under pressure fromtheir union, whose plan for a five-nation tournament without the English next season collapsed at an acrimonious meeting in Dublin.
The meeting was held under the auspices of the current tournament organisers, European Rugby Cup Ltd (ERC). The president of the French Rugby Federation, Pierre Camou, walked out when he failed to persuade a majority of the other unions that the Heineken Cup should be controlled by Fira, the organisation that represents the smaller unions in Europe.
The WRU protested when ERC's independent mediator, Graeme Mew, revealed he had spoken to the Welsh regions the day before the meeting and it will take a remarkable swing to achieve consensus about governance within a month. Telephone conversations continued over the holiday period, but if the Celtic unions maintain their opposition to clubs running the commercial side of the tournament, talks between the Welsh regions and English clubs over a 16-team Anglo-Welsh league are so far advanced it would take little more time to set up.
The WRU issued a statement that said it was confident professional teams from Wales would take part in "sanctioned" league and cup competitions, that it envisaged the Heineken Cup continuing under ERC's banner and that it supported the International Rugby Board's regulation that stipulated cross-border tournaments could only take place with the consent of the relevant unions.
The WRU's board meets on Thursday when it will consider its options, including offering central contracts to players such as Leigh Halfpenny, whose regional deal ends this summer, and creating new professional teams to take the place of the regions.
The statement pointed out that the regions had chosen, from next season, not to maintain their contractual right to be the WRU's nominated teams in sanctioned competitions and the battle looks destined for court. |
Watching the debate in this country over public safety, you’d think some people wish to live securely, while others welcome Armageddon. Conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly recently went after “liberal politicians” in Chicago and San Francisco, noting crime in those cities and saying, “The situation is out of control and a disgrace, and that’s what happens when incompetent politicians demand the police stop enforcing laws.”
The truth is, we all want to be safe. The struggle isn’t about outcomes, it’s about methods. Should law enforcement have ready access to everyone’s phone location-tracking data? Should police be required to undergo deescalation training before being authorized to use force?
These aren’t questions to be resolved by free-for-alls on cable news channels. They require facts and analysis. And yet, although the United States shells out well over $100 billion each year for public safety, we have remarkably little idea whether that money is well spent. It’s possible that any given policing tactic or technology — from Tasers to facial-recognition systems to body cameras — is a fine or poor idea. But we really don’t have much sense of which tactics and tools work, or whether they are worth the cost. We don’t know how much money we may be wasting, or whether we are compromising civil liberties, or harming people or property, without good reason.
Throughout the rest of government, we use cost-benefit analysis to answer these sorts of questions. (Many economists prefer to call it benefit-cost analysis, or BCA, rightly asking: Why worry about the costs until we know if there are any benefits?) Whether it is environmental regulation, workplace safety, financial rules or the provision of health care, BCA is pervasive. But as a 2014 report by the Vera Institute of Justice pointed out, BCA has not been widely taught or used in criminal justice. That’s a stark understatement when it comes to policing.
Take ShotSpotter, a technology that uses sound waves to pinpoint where a gun has been fired. The product is marketed as allowing police to know about gunshots and respond quickly, especially in neighborhoods where people aren’t inclined to call the cops. ShotSpotter leases the technology to cities at a cost of $65,000 to $95,000 per square mile per year. This is serious money for cash-strapped cities, so the question naturally is: Is it worth it? To answer this, we’d want to see good data on whether the technology is helping cops nab shooters, whether there are fewer shots fired when it is in place or whether gun violence is down. And we’d then want to know if the technology is more effective than an alternative, such as hiring more officers.
Unfortunately, it is harder than it should be even to get data to do BCA around policing. The reasons for this are many. An unnecessary cloak of secrecy envelops too much policing. Law enforcement’s instinct is to give no information beyond what is necessary, making democratic engagement with policing extremely difficult. Additionally, the technologies for police data collection are in many ways primitive, as anyone who has watched a police officer filling out incident reports in duplicate on the back of a cruiser knows. There are about 18,000 departments, and aggregated data would be useful, but we often don’t have it.
In ShotSpotter’s case, though, the problem is different. Much of policing technology is being privatized, and private vendors — claiming trade secret protection — shield data from the public and researchers. We can’t evaluate policing technologies unless we can connect the use of those technologies with results.
In the modern era of deterrent-based policing, assessing the benefits of law enforcement has become both more important and more difficult. Rather than simply chasing bad guys, policing has put more focus on discouraging crime in the first place. Take airport security: Anyone who carries a bomb through a checkpoint will be arrested. But the point of the fortune we spend on airport security is to prevent people from even contemplating such an attack. The same may be said of closed-circuit TV cameras that peer down at us all over our cities and the deployment of many other technologies. The goal is to deter crime entirely.
It is one thing to count crimes that did happen; it is quite another to count crimes that didn’t. We can, of course, compare crime rates before and after a new technology or tactic is put in place, but it is hard to establish the cause of any trends. Did crime go down because of that new tactic, or did it decline for other reasons? For low-incident crimes such as terrorism, we can’t measure a meaningful before-and-after anyway.
Law enforcement agencies often are unclear about the specific crime-fighting benefits they hope to achieve when adopting technologies. Those technologies tend to spread by word of mouth: If Department A has a new tool, then Agency B wants it, too — officials don’t always put much thought into the precise purpose of a tool or whether something else (maybe something they already have or something cheaper) could achieve the same thing.
A good example is the curious case of automatic license plate readers: fixed cameras, or cameras installed on police cars, that capture and digitize images of license plates. Initially, LPR technology was sold as a way to reduce car theft. But with auto theft declining anyway, and at $10,000 or more for each mobile unit and $100,000 per fixed unit — not including maintenance, upgrades, and data storage and retrieval systems — it was hard to justify the cost. Then it occurred to departments that they could store the data and call it up in investigations; if they are looking for a van with a certain plate number, stored records may indicate where that van travels frequently or even where it parks. One hears anecdotes about LPR helpfully deployed this way. And yet, success stories tend to rely on randomness: A police car happened to drive by the van at some point and dumped that data into the system. The benefits of what is basically random enforcement are likely to be small.
The latest emerging justification for LPR is as part of policing for profit. A private vendor, Vigilant Solutions, gives LPR technology to departments for “free” and incorporates all plate captures into its database. Vigilant then uses that data to create an extensive “hot list,” composed, in particular, of vehicles with outstanding traffic fines. When cops get a ping they can pull a car over; police cruisers in some jurisdictions even are being equipped with credit card machines for instant payment. What’s in this for Vigilant? It gets a 25 percent “processing fee.”
Even if the benefits of certain policing tactics can be assessed, figuring out the full costs of any given tactic or technology is essential, albeit difficult. We can calculate the price tag of the technology itself, or perhaps the cost of more officers or new training. But what about the curtailing of civil liberties? What about the social costs? How do you put a price on public dissatisfaction with the way the police are doing their jobs? What about a potential loss of community trust?
Use of stop-and-frisk has been on the decline in some major cities, in part because of litigation (a cost in and of itself), but Donald Trump revived the debate with a shout-out during his presidential campaign. The evidence on whether stop-and-frisk works is thin. A 2008 study found that more police stops led to fewer robberies, burglaries, vehicle thefts and homicides — but did not reduce assaults, rapes or grand larceny. A 2014 study took the earlier study’s methodology to task and called into question the robbery and burglary results. One review of the empirical evidence suggested that during the height of stop-and-frisk in New York, fewer youth were carrying guns. Still, that study’s author conceded that the “strongest argument that New York City’s aggressive policing strategies … contributed to its plummeting crime rate” was “the absence of alternative explanations.” That’s not social science, it’s conjecture. And, of course, New York has since dramatically reduced stop-and-frisk, and crime continues to fall.
Even if stop-and-frisk were effective in curtailing gun violence (putting constitutional arguments to one side), we would still have to look at the social costs of the practice. We’d want to put a value on a loss of trust in the police, contributing to an environment in which some people in some neighborhoods don’t call the cops when shots are fired. That’s why ShotSpotter is appealing in the first place. We should also consider the physical violation, the loss of time and liberty, the psychological costs of stop-and-frisk. Suppose the cost of being stopped out of the blue, put against a wall and having hands run over your body is $100, which does not seem entirely unreasonable. In New York in 2011 there were more than 300,000 stop-and-frisks, at a cost of more than $30 million using this estimate. That gives a sense of what the benefits would have to be in order to justify those costs.
The challenges of calculating the costs and benefits of policing should not dissuade us. If BCA can be applied to complicated and controversial subjects such as environmental regulation, such calculations can be applied to public safety.
It would help if public safety agencies and contractors were more forthcoming with their data. When trade secrets are a concern, private companies such as ShotSpotter and Vigilant could make their data available for researchers but require nondisclosure agreements. A ShotSpotter board member was quoted in Forbes as saying it would be beneficial to have an independent study. Companies that believe in their products should be willing to undergo outside testing. Tech companies could also lend their expertise to help police departments modernize their data collection and analysis efforts.
Government could play a big role here. Indeed, although there is debate and confusion over the role of the federal government in local law enforcement, dollars spent by the federal government in assessing what keeps us safe, and what is plain wasteful, are likely to be dollars well spent.
Not-for-profits have a part, too. They can team up with policing agencies to run BCA evaluations on tactics and tools such as vehicle pursuits and deescalation training.
Public safety is foundational in society. We spend a fortune on it. It seems that it’s not too much to ask that we devote resources to figuring out what works and what does not, and whether we could do better.
Barry Friedman is a professor at New York University School of Law and the director of its policing project.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by e-mail or mail. |
Here comes Abita Brewing again with yet another new release beer. I think in the past few months I’ve seen about 8 or 10 new and different beers from Abita, both on tap and in the bottle. That’s a good thing, as it’s nice to see the evolution of Abita bearing fruit with some very tasty beers indeed. To be sure, Abita has had a full line of seasonals for decades now, and they have been doing an “Abita Select” series of specialty draft brew, too. Of late, though, they’ve really begun to bottle more one-offs and new seasonals, too.
Abita is no newcomer to the brewing industry, having opened their doors in the early days of the craft brewing movement back in 1986. They are more of a regional brewer and not at all a microbrewer, since their current production of 151,000 barrels a year is about 10 times the microbrewery limit. To those beer enthusiasts today who pooh-pooh regionals like Abita in favor of the latest “whale”, I can only say that you don’t know what you’re missing.
Case in point: Abita Imperator Black IPA. I picked up a bottle a few weeks ago at Sherlock’s in Marietta, Georgia and as they only had it in the cold case, tossed it in the fridge and drank it the next evening. Here’s what the brewery says about Imperator from the painted bottle label:
In ancient times, The Imperator was the supreme commander who led his troops to victory, just as today’s Mardi Gras lieutenants kick off the carnival parades. Abita Imperator is a robust, black IPA brewed with pale, caramel, chocolate and black malts. It commands your attention with an intense hop flavor and aroma provided by Apollo, Cascade, Centennial, Citra, Mosaic and Amarillo hops. With a mighty malt flavor and intense black color, the Abita Imperator reigns supreme.
Abita Imperator Black IPA has an alcohol content of 8% by volume, which actually make it a double India Dark Ale in my book. I do prefer the term India Dark Ale to black IPA after all, since how can a beer be black and pale at the same time? Be that as it may, the beer has 90 IBUs and I paid just $5.99 for my 22-ounce bomber bottle. The painted label bottle is so neat, too, I’m having a hard time recycling it.
Abita Imperator Black IPA pour to a dark brownish to light black color with a thick creamy tan head and a rich deep piney resiny nose. Taking a sip, the beer has some smooth chocolate pudding notes up front followed by lots of pine and resin in the aroma and flavor. I’m hard to please on this style, and I don’t want too much body (or you get a stout) but this one gets it right in that category. It’s delicious in the finish with lots of pine and citrus and a long dry bitter finish, too. I really love the light roastiness and the piney citrusy hop aroma here folks. It even has decent hop burps.
Another winner from Abita that you’ll definitely want to try my friends.
And remember, try a new beer today, and drink outside the box . *Pricing data accurate at time of review or latest update. For reference only, based on actual price paid by reviewer. (B)=Bottled (D)=Draft
|
Spread the love
Cumberland County, NJ — Gerald Sykes, 76, and his wife, woke up Friday night to their dogs barking and flashlights shining through their windows. Sykes immediately grabbed his shotgun and proceeded to the living room to defend his home. Sykes is now fighting for his life in a New Jersey hospital after he was shot by these intruders.
The intruders were cops.
Sykes had done nothing wrong that night and was shot because of police incompetence. According to police, two state troopers were investigating a 9-1-1 hang up call when they responded to Sykes’ residence. However, after police put the innocent man in the hospital, the attorney general’s office said Saturday it was discovered later that cops went to the wrong house.
Sykes never made a 9-1-1 call — until after he was shot by cops.
According to the police report, Sykes fired a single round through the sliding glass door to his home thinking he was the victim of a home invasion. He was correct, unfortunately.
During the incident, police officers fired four rounds. Three of those rounds struck Sykes.
Sykes was then airlifted to Cooper University Hospital in Camden where he was reported in critical but stable condition, officials said.
He ‘felt intruders were trying to get in and he was yelling to his wife to call 911,’ Rich Kaser, longtime family friend, and attorney told NJ.com.
Sykes ‘thought there were bad people out there,’ the friend added.
The police report states that Sykes fired first. However, Kaser said the family told him it was one of the two state troopers who fired first at the elderly man after seeing him standing in the living room with a shotgun.
When looking at the photo of the bullet holes, it appears to back up the family’s story.
Sykes was hit with three rounds. In the above image, we can see three bullet holes grouped closely together with a single 4th round away from those. If the officer fired all four rounds together, they likely would have been grouped together — but it is clearly not the case.
As NJ.com reports,
According to Kaser, Sykes himself, despite being seriously wounded, also called 911 for help. Kaser said Sykes was ordered to come out of the house. His shirt now soaked in blood, his attorney said, he was helped out by his wife and then ordered to lay face-down on the ground and was handcuffed. Sykes’ family was told Sykes was under arrest, according to Kaser, and the elderly man was then taken in handcuffs to be treated.
According to the report, one of the troopers was hit with broken glass or by a portion of the shotgun round. He was treated and immediately released.
Sykes, on the other hand, was not so lucky. His family members are hoping that he pulls through.
Sadly, police responding to the wrong home and hurting or killing innocent people and their pets is common. In June, Georgia cops went to the wrong home and killed William Powell.
Last month, on two separate incidents, cops responded to the wrong home and shot two dogs. One of the dogs was killed in front of multiple children at a 5-year-old boy’s birthday party.
Last September, Georgia cops broke into an innocent couple’s home as they watched a movie on the sofa. During the gross act of negligence, the officers shot the homeowner, killed his dog, and then shot each other!
The list goes on. |
Sep 26, 2016; New Orleans, LA, USA; New Orleans Saints defensive back Roman Harper (41) is called for a horse collar tackle penalty as he tackles Atlanta Falcons running back Tevin Coleman (26) is during the first quarter of a game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
The NFL is through 4 weeks now with an abundance of former Indiana Football players getting opportunities. How are they fairing this season?
Football school? Not quite, but some of the standouts from Indiana’s Football program are getting their opportunities of late. In total, there are eight former Hoosiers on current NFL rosters across the league. Here is how they are doing so far:
Jordan Howard, Running Back – Chicago Bears
Jordan Howard has been an extremely pleasant surprise in his rookie year with the Chicago Bears. Drafted in the 5th round this year, Howard was overlooked by an abundance of other teams in the NFL. The struggles the Bears faced after an 0-3 start to the season in combination with nagging injuries to Jeremy Langford and Kadeem Carey paved an opportunity for Jordan Howard to start on Sunday.
Howard took that opportunity and ran with it, literally.
The rookie running back posted 111 yards on the ground in 23 attempts while catching 3 passes for 21 yards in the Bears route to their first home win in almost a calendar year. Howard had the chance to get on the field in the first few games but nothing to the magnitude of week 4.
Coach John Fox said post-game, “We noticed pretty early on. Jordan is a big back and we knew that when he came out of Indiana University. The thing we didn’t know is the quickness of his feet and the vision he has. I think he’s outstanding and we will ride him pretty good going forward.”
Howard was the first running back to post 100 yards or more since Matt Forte in Week 1 in 2015 against the Green Bay Packers.
Tevin Coleman, Running Back – Atlanta Falcons
Second year running back Tevin Coleman had an impressive career at Indiana, leading the team in rushing in his junior year with 2036 yards on the ground before being drafted in the 3rd round of the 2015 NFL Draft.
Coleman played in 12 games in his rookie year but struggled for the better part of the 2015 campaign. He fell on the depth chart to Devonta Freeman who had a breakout year for the Falcons.
2016 has been a year of new opportunities for Tevin Coleman though, who stepped into a dynamic role with Freeman. The two backs have combined for 693 yards on 114 attempts with 6 touchdowns. 4 of the 6 touchdowns coming from Tevin Coleman.
Coleman has shown major improvement in being able to catch the ball out of the backfield, opening up plenty of opportunities for quarterback Matt Ryan to expand on the offense. The diverse transition from Freeman being the main back to a dynamic duo of Coleman and Freeman has served well for the Falcons as they are off to a 3-1 start.
Tevin Coleman might not play this week against the Denver Broncos though. He carries the sickel cell trait which a unique blood disorder that can cause complications when under extreme physical and environmental conditions. With the Broncos playing nearly a mile above sea level, it can become a very tricky situation for the running back and the team. We will continue to monitor his situation as it develops.
Jason Spriggs, Offensive Tackle – Green Bay Packers
The Green Bay Packers have been known to invest in their young guns, especially on the offensive side of the ball. It becomes no different when they decided to move up in the 2nd round of the 2016 NFL Draft to select All-American Jason Spriggs with the 48th pick.
Spriggs in large part was one of the most successful tackles Indiana has ever produced, giving the offensive reason to be noted in last year’s bowl run.
The Packers seemed so devoted to allowing their rookies, especially Spriggs, have opportunities to develop that they released 3-time Pro Bowler Josh Sitton right before the fourth pre-season game this season. It has left unanswered questions as to who might step up for the Packers line.
Spriggs has played in all four games so far this season and will continue to see a starting role until further notice. Being the guy that Aaron Rodgers relies on to give him time in the pocket could serve extremely beneficial for Spriggs progression. I see plenty of Pro Bowl potential in Jason Spriggs as he continues his NFL career.
Darius Latham, Defensive Tackle – Oakland Raiders
Darius Latham went into the 2016 NFL Draft with high expectations, hoping he would get the shot to continue his career as a dynamic defensive back in the NFL. After the first 5 rounds, his name was uncalled. Another 100 picks went by without hearing his name called. He later signed a contract with the Oakland Raiders and made the opening day roster.
A great turn around for a player who seemed to be avoided in the draft because of his March DUI arrest. Latham has proven on the field that he has the talent to be a quality defensive back and help improve a already quality Raiders defensive. While Latham has not recorded a tackle yet in 2016, he has 4 assists in the first 4 games.
Cody Latimer, Wide Receiver – Denver Broncos
A standout season in his junior year with Indiana back in 2013 sent Cody Latimer straight to the NFL draft. 1096 receiving yards and 9 touchdowns was good enough for him to be selected in the 2nd round of the 2014 NFL Draft.
Unfortunately, it has been difficult for Latimer to see any playing time in his first three seasons in the NFL. He backs up behind two stand out receivers in Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders who see the bulk of the targets. Interestingly enough, Latimer is listed as the third receiver on the depth chart, but seemingly Josh Norwood has been seeing more targets than Latimer.
One bright side to Latimer is that he has been able to play with one of the best quarterbacks to ever step on the field in Peyton Manning in his first two seasons. He learned the ropes of how to be a successful wideout from Thomas, Sanders and could play a key role moving forward.
Let’s not forget he also has a Super Bowl ring at the age of 25. Not too shabby.
Tracy Porter, Cornerback – Chicago Bears
Tracy Porter is a veteran of the NFL playing in his 9th season with his 4th team. Drafted in 2008 in the 2nd round to New Orleans Saints he has become an essential part of the Chicago Bears defense.
Porter signed a one year deal last year with the Chicago Bears and then a three year extension after quite the impressive showing. While the Bears have been desperate for talent in the cornerback position, Porter provides veteran leadership to a defense filled with new faces.
Other notables: Nate Sudfeld, Quarterback – Washington Redskins; Rodger Saffold, Guard – Los Angeles Rams |
Rev. Ellen Di Giosia of the First Baptist Church of Jefferson City, Tennessee.
The Tennessee Baptist Convention affirmed on Tuesday a decision to ban the First Baptist Church of Jefferson City from voting at the conservative organization’s annual meeting.
WBIR News reported the decision was based on a resolution stating “a church whose office of pastor is held by a woman is not a cooperating church.”
Following a 17-month process by a nine-member search committee and vote of the congregation during two Sunday services, Rev. Ellen Di Giosia was named pastor of First Baptist in June.
“It wasn’t a surprising decision, it’s sad. It’s sad because we believe that cooperation is a hallmark of Baptist life,” Rev. Di Giosia told WBIR. “Although one of our Baptist affiliations has changed, FBC Jefferson City is the same congregation we were yesterday. We will still gather to worship, study, and pray.”
In 2015, Di Giosia told Baptist Women in Ministry of the challenges she had faced as a female pastor.
“Even in churches that hire and affirm women in ministry, there are still pockets of patriarchal weirdness,” Rev. Di Giosia explained. “I’ve been told to always wear jackets so that my elbows don’t show, have received official church correspondence addressed to ‘Mrs. [husband’s name],’ and listened as colleagues said that we couldn’t invite a woman to preach because ‘we just had one last month.’”
Rev. Di Giosia was at the time an associate pastor in Texas, and explained the intense pain she had experienced.
“In one case, it became too difficult to stay, and in another, I chose to ride out an intense storm. Using family systems theory has been helpful in these cases. Asking questions such as what does it mean to bear the anxiety of a system? How can I be the presence of Christ when that anxiety has begun swirling around me?,” Di Giosia explained. “But even when you identify things academically, it is still intensely painful.”
The Tennessee Baptist Convention is the Southern Baptist Convention’s state affiliate with 3,200 affiliated churches.
“It is regrettable when one of our churches makes a decision that results in a broken confessional relationship with our TBC network of churches,” Tennessee Baptist Mission Board President and Executive Director Randy C. Davis told the Knoxville News Sentinel.
The First Baptist Church traces it’s origins to the 1830s. After 140 years of partnership with the Tennessee Baptist Convention, the church says all ties have now been severed.
“This is an opportunity for [the convention] to be clear about who they are, and so we have made it an opportunity for us to be clear about who we are as a congregation,” Pastor Di Giosia told WVLT News. |
Sega is bringing a collection of its finest retro video games to iOS and Android devices via a new service called Sega Forever. Unlike its past mobile releases—which include the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog and Football Manager Mobile—the entire Sega Forever line-up is free-to-play and supported by ads. Players can optionally remove the ads via an in-app purchase for £2 (~$2.50).
There are five games in the Sega Forever launch line-up, consisting of the original Sonic the Hedgehog, RPG Phantasy Star II, beat 'em up Comix Zone, platformer Kid Chameleon, and the original Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) pack-in game Altered Beast. An iOS and Android version of the classic Dreamcast game Crazy Taxi launched in May, which is also free-to-play. Additional games are promised to launch every two weeks.
Although the launch line-up is exclusively made up of Mega Drive games, the Sega Forever Twitter feed has teased shots of other consoles, including the SG 1000, Dreamcast, and Saturn. How Sega tackles the Saturn will be particularly interesting given the difficulty developers have had creating a working emulator for the console's classically esoteric hardware.
While some Sega Forever games have previously been released on mobile, Sega has promised that all have been updated with modern features including cloud saves, controller support, and leaderboards. All games are also playable offline, regardless of whether users are playing the ad-free or ad-supported version. iOS players will receive a free iMessage sticker pack alongside each game.
Sega's previous retro catalogue has been largely well-received on mobile, but some games have suffered from performance issues. This is largely down to the use of emulators—which mimic original hardware and play Mega Drive ROMs—rather than ports made specifically for Android and iOS devices. For instance, an early emulated version of Sonic the Hedgehog was replaced by a superior port in 2013 alongside a port of Sonic CD. Christian Whitehead, the fangame developer behind the ports, has since moved in-house at Sega, developing the upcoming Sonic Mania for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch.
Update: Sega Forever "will include both official emulations and ported games that span all Sega console eras." Sega has confirmed to Ars Technica that SG-1000, Master System, and Mega Drive/Genesis games will be run via an emulator, while Saturn and Dreamcast games will be direct ports.
The first set of Sega Forever games launches shortly on iOS and Android. Further games will launch every two weeks. |
Çeşme, Turkey a coastal Turkish town with houses in regional style and an Ottoman Castle
The town of Mecca in the Arabian Peninsula, before its inflation, in 1880.
The historical town of Skalica in Slovakia
Portugal) The Marian town of Fátima
Rural towns like Monett , dot the American landscape.
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages but smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish them vary considerably between different parts of the world.
Origin and use [ edit ]
The word town shares an origin with the German word Zaun, the Dutch word tuin, and the Old Norse tun. The German word Zaun comes closest to the original meaning of the word: a fence of any material. An early borrowing from Celtic *dunom (cf. Old Irish dun, Welsh din "fortress, fortified place, camp," dinas "city").
In English and Dutch, the meaning of the word took on the sense of the space which these fences enclosed. In England, a town was a small community that could not afford or was not allowed to build walls or other larger fortifications, and built a palisade or stockade instead. In the Netherlands, this space was a garden, more specifically those of the wealthy, which had a high fence or a wall around them (like the garden of the palace of Het Loo in Apeldoorn, which was the model for the privy garden of William III and Mary II at Hampton Court). In Old Norse tun means a (grassy) place between farmhouses, and the word is still used in a similar meaning in modern Norwegian.
In Old English and Early and Middle Scots, the words ton, toun, etc. could refer to diverse kinds of settlements from agricultural estates and holdings, partly picking up the Norse sense (as in the Scots word fermtoun) at one end of the scale, to fortified municipalities. If there was any distinction between toun (fortified municipality) and burgh (unfortified municipality) as claimed by some[who?], it did not last in practice as burghs and touns developed. For example, "Edina Burgh" or "Edinburgh" (called a city today) was built around a fort and eventually came to have a defensive wall.
In some cases, "town" is an alternative name for "city" or "village" (especially a larger village). Sometimes, the word "town" is short for "township". In general, today towns can be differentiated from townships, villages, or hamlets on the basis of their economic character, in that most of a town's population will tend to derive their living from manufacturing industry, commerce, and public services rather than primary industry such as agriculture or related activities.
A place's population size is not a reliable determinant of urban character. In many areas of the world, e.g. in India at least until recent times, a large village might contain several times as many people as a small town. In the United Kingdom, there are historical cities that are far smaller than the larger towns.
The modern phenomenon of extensive suburban growth, satellite urban development, and migration of city dwellers to villages has further complicated the definition of towns, creating communities urban in their economic and cultural characteristics but lacking other characteristics of urban localities.
Some forms of non-rural settlement, such as temporary mining locations, may be clearly non-rural, but have at best a questionable claim to be called a town.
Towns often exist as distinct governmental units, with legally defined borders and some or all of the appurtenances of local government (e.g. a police force). In the United States these are referred to as "incorporated towns". In other cases the town lacks its own governance and is said to be "unincorporated". Note that the existence of an unincorporated town may be legally set out by other means, e.g. zoning districts. In the case of some planned communities, the town exists legally in the form of covenants on the properties within the town. The United States Census identifies many census-designated places (CDPs) by the names of unincorporated towns which lie within them; however, those CDPs typically include rural and suburban areas and even surrounding villages and other towns.
The distinction between a town and a city similarly depends on the approach: a city may strictly be an administrative entity which has been granted that designation by law, but in informal usage, the term is also used to denote an urban locality of a particular size or importance: whereas a medieval city may have possessed as few as 10,000 inhabitants, today some[who?] consider an urban place of fewer than 100,000 as a town, even though there are many officially designated cities that are much smaller than that.
Age of towns scheme [ edit ]
Australian geographer Thomas Griffith Taylor proposed a classification of towns based on their age and pattern of land use. He identified five types of town:[1]
Infantile towns , with no clear zoning
, with no clear zoning Juvenile towns , which have developed an area of shops
, which have developed an area of shops Adolescent towns , where factories have started to appear
, where factories have started to appear Early mature towns , with a separate area of high-class housing
, with a separate area of high-class housing Mature towns, with defined industrial, commercial and various types of residential area
By country [ edit ]
Afghanistan [ edit ]
In Afghanistan, towns and cities are known as shār (Dari: شهر, Pashto: ښار).[2] As the country is an historically rural society with few larger settlements, with major cities never holding more than a few hundred thousand inhabitants before the 2000s, the lingual tradition of the country does not discriminate between towns and cities.
Albania [ edit ]
In Albania "qytezë" means town, which is very similar with the word for city ("qytet"). Although there is no official use of the term for any settlement. In Albanian "qytezë" means "small city" or "new city", while in ancient times "small residential center within the walls of a castle".
Arab [ edit ]
The center is a population group, larger than a village, and smaller than a city. Though the village is bigger than a hamlet
Australia [ edit ]
In Australia, towns or "urban centre localities" are commonly understood to be those centers of population not formally declared to be cities and having a population in excess of about 200 people.[3] Centers too small to be called towns are generally understood to be a township.[citation needed]
In addition, some local government entities are officially styled as towns in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and before the statewide amalgamations of the 1990s in Victoria some local government entities were styled as towns, but now towns are only localities that contain an urban centre with a population greater than 200.[citation needed]
Austria [ edit ]
The Austrian legal system does not distinguish between villages, towns, and cities. The country is partitioned into 2098 municipalities (German: Gemeinden) of fundamentally equal rank. Larger municipalities are designated as market towns (German: Marktgemeinden) or cities (Städte), but these distinctions are purely symbolic and do not confer additional legal responsibilities. There is a number of smaller communities that are labelled cities because they used to be regional population centers in the distant past. The city of Rattenberg for example has about 400 inhabitants. The city of Hardegg has about 1200 inhabitants, although the historic city core − Hardegg proper without what used to be the surrounding hamlets − is home to just 80 souls.
There are no unincorporated areas.
Of the 201 cities in Austria, 15 are statutory cities (Statutarstädte). A statutory city is a city that is vested, in addition to its purview as a municipality, with the duties of a district administrative authority. The status does not come with any additional autonomy: district administrative authorities are essentially just service centers that citizens use to interact with the national government, for example to apply for driver licenses or passports. The national government generally uses the provinces to run these points of contact on its behalf; in the case of statutory cities, the municipality gets to step up.
Bulgaria [ edit ]
Bulgarians do not, in general, differentiate between 'city' and 'town'. However, in everyday language and media the terms "large towns" and "small towns" are in use. "Large towns" usually refers to Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas, which have population over 200,000. Ruse and Stara Zagora are often included as well due to presence of relatively developed infrastructure and population over 100,000 threshold. It is difficult to call the remaining provincial capitals "large towns" as, in general, they are less developed and have shrinking population, some with as few as 30,000 inhabitants.
In Bulgaria the Council of Ministers defines what constitutes a settlement, while the President of Bulgaria grants each settlement its title. In 2005 the requirement that villages that wish to classify themselves as town must have a social and technical infrastructure, as well as a population of no fewer than 3500 people. For resort settlements the requirements are lower with the population needing to be no fewer than 1000 people but infrastructure requirements remain.
Canada [ edit ]
The legal definition of a town in Canada varies by province or territory, as each has jurisdiction over defining and legislating towns, cities and other types of municipal organization within its own boundaries.
The province of Quebec is unique in that it makes no distinction under law between towns and cities. There is no intermediate level in French between village and ville (municipality is an administrative term usually applied to a legal, not geographical entity), so both are combined under the single legal status of ville. While an informal preference may exist among English speakers as to whether any individual ville is commonly referred to as a city or as a town, no distinction and no objective legal criteria exist to make such a distinction under law.
Chile [ edit ]
In Chile, towns (Spanish: pueblos) are defined by the National Statistics Institute (INE) as an urban entity with a population from 2001 to 5000 or an area with a population from 1001 to 2000 and an established economic activity.
Czech Republic [ edit ]
In the Czech Republic, the word město (city) is used for very wide variety of municipalities, ranging from Prague, the largest and capital city with approximately 1.2 million inhabitants, to the smallest, Přebuz, with just 74 inhabitants. Technically, a municipality must have at least 3,000 inhabitants to be granted the město title, although many smaller municipalities, especially some former mining towns, retain the title město for historic reasons. Currently, approximately 192 of the 592 města have less than 3,000 inhabitants.
Some municipalities have been amalgamated together, such that the whole is considered as a město.
Statutory cities (statutární město), which are defined by law no. 128/2000 Coll.,[4] can define their own self-governing municipal districts.. There are 25 such cities, in addition to Prague, which is a de facto statutory city.
In 2006, the legal concept of a town (městys, or formerly městečko) was reintroduced. Currently, around 213 municipalities hold the title městys.
Municipalities which do not qualify as a město or a městys default to the title of obec (a municipality) or, unofficially, a vesnice (village), even though they may consist of one or more villages.
Denmark [ edit ]
In Denmark, in many contexts no distinction is made between "city", "town" and "village"; all three translate as "by". In more specific use, for small villages and hamlets the word "landsby" (meaning "country town") is used, while the Danish equivalent of English "city" is "storby" (meaning "large town"). For formal purposes, urban areas having at least 200 inhabitants are counted as "by".[5]
Historically some towns held various privileges, the most important of which was the right to hold market. They were administered separately from the rural areas in both fiscal, military and legal matters. Such towns are known as "købstad" (roughly the same meaning as "borough" albeit deriving from a different etymology) and they retain the exclusive right to the title even after the last vestiges of their privileges vanished through the reform of the local administration carried through in 1970.
Estonia [ edit ]
In Estonia, there is no distinction between a town and a city as the word linn is used for both bigger and smaller settlements, which are bigger than villages and boroughs. There are 30 municipal towns (omavalitsuslik linn) in Estonia and a further 17 towns, which have merged with a municipal parish (vallasisene linn).
France [ edit ]
From an administrative standpoint, the smallest level of local authorities are all called "communes". However, some laws do treat these authorities differently based on the population and different rules apply to the three big cities Paris, Lyon and Marseille. For historical reasons, six communes in the Meuse département exist as independent entities despite having no inhabitant at all.
For statistical purposes, the national statistical institute (INSEE) operates a distinction between urban areas with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants and bigger communes, the latter being called "villes". Smaller settlements are usually called "villages". The French term for "town" is "bourg"[citation needed] but in fact, the French laws do not really distinguish between towns and cities which are all commonly called "villes".
Germany [ edit ]
Germans do not, in general, differentiate between 'city' and 'town'. The German word for both is Stadt, as it is the case in many other languages that do not differentiate between these Anglo-Saxon concepts. The word for a 'village', as a smaller settlement, is Dorf. However, the International Statistics Conference of 1887 defined different sizes of Stadt, based on their population size, as follows: Landstadt ("country town"; under 5,000), Kleinstadt ("small town"; 5,000 to 20,000), Mittelstadt ("middle town"; between 20,000 and 100,000) and Großstadt ("large town"; over 100,000).[6] The term Großstadt may be translated as "city". In addition, Germans may speak of a Millionenstadt, a city with over one million inhabitants (such as Munich, Hamburg and Berlin).
Historically, many settlements became a Stadt by being awarded a Stadtrecht in medieval times. In modern German language use, the historical importance, the existence of central functions (education, retail etc.) and the population density of an urban place might also be taken as characteristics of a Stadt. The modern local government organisation is subject to the laws of each state and refers to a Gemeinde (municipality), regardless of its historic title. While most Gemeinden form part of a Landkreis (district) on a higher tier of local government, larger towns and cities may have the status of a kreisfreie Stadt, combining both the powers of a municipality and a district.
Designations in different states are as diverse as e.g. in Australian States and Territories, and differ from state to state. In some German states, the words Markt ("market"), Marktflecken (both used in southern Germany) or Flecken ("spot"; northern Germany e.g. in Lower Saxony) designate a town-like residential community between Gemeinde and Stadt with special importance to its outer conurbation area. Historically those had Marktrecht (market right) but not full town privileges; see Market town. The legal denomination of a specific settlement may differ from its common designation (e.g. Samtgemeinde – a legal term in Lower Saxony for a group of villages [Dorf, pl. Dörfer] with common local government created by combining municipalities [Gemeinde, pl. Gemeinden]).
Greece and Cyprus [ edit ]
In written speech, Greeks use the word πόλη (póli) to express 'city' and the word κωμόπολη (komópoli) to express 'town', both with a feminine grammatical gender. For Greeks, a town (komópoli) is a human settlement with a population of 2,000–9,999. If a settlement has a lower population, it is considered a village (χωριό, chorjó). For the cities, Greeks, use the word 'póli', whereas for bigger cities with a population above 1 million, they usually use another name, μητρόπολη (mitrópoli), in English Metropolis. In the Greek speaking world (Greece and Cyprus) only Athens and Salonica can be described as "metropoleis".
In spoken speech, Greeks use the word for village to refer both to villages and towns and the word for city to refer to both cities and metropoleis.
Hong Kong [ edit ]
Hong Kong started developing new towns in the 1950s, to accommodate exponential population increase. The very first new towns included Tsuen Wan and Kwun Tong. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, another stage of new town developments was launched. Nine new towns have been developed so far. Land use is carefully planned and development provides plenty of room for public housing projects. Rail transport is usually available at a later stage. The first towns are Sha Tin, Tsuen Wan, Tuen Mun and Tseung Kwan O. Tuen Mun was intended to be self-reliant, but was not successful and turned into a bedroom community like the other new towns. More recent developments are Tin Shui Wai and North Lantau (Tung Chung-Tai Ho).
Hungary [ edit ]
In Hungary there is no official distinction between a city and a town (the word for both in Hungarian is: város). Nevertheless, the expressions formed by adding the adjectives "kis" (small) and "nagy" (large) to the beginning of the root word (e.g. "nagyváros") have been normalized to differentiate between cities and towns (towns being smaller, therefore bearing the name "kisváros".) In Hungary, a village can gain the status of "város" (town), if it meets a set of diverse conditions for quality of life and development of certain public services and utilities (e.g. having a local secondary school or installing full-area sewage collection pipe network). Every year the Minister of Internal Affairs selects candidates from a committee-screened list of applicants, whom the President of Republic usually affirms by issuing a bill of town's rank to them. Since being a town carries extra fiscal support from the government, many relatively small villages try to win the status of "városi rang" nowadays.
Before the fall of communism in 1990, Hungarian villages with fewer than 10,000 residents were not allowed to become towns. Recently some settlements as small as 2,500 souls have received the rank of town (e.g. Visegrád, Zalakaros or Gönc) and meeting the conditions of development is often disregarded to quickly elevate larger villages into towns. As of middle 2013, there are 346 towns in Hungary, encompassing some 69% of the entire population.
Towns of more than 50,000 people are able to gain the status of "megyei jogú város" (town with the rights of a county), which allows them to maintain a higher degree of services. (There are a few exceptions, when towns of fewer than 50,000 people gained the status: Érd, Hódmezővásárhely, Salgótarján and Szekszárd)[7] As of middle 2013, there are only 23 such towns in Hungary.[8]
Iceland [ edit ]
Ireland [ edit ]
The Local Government act 2001 provides that from January 1, 2002 (section 10 subsection (3) Within the county in which they are situated and of which they form part, there continue to be such other local government areas as are set out in Schedule 6 which – (a) in the case of the areas set out in Chapter 1 of Part 1 of that Schedule, shall be known as boroughs, and – (b) in the case of the areas set out in Chapter 2 of Part 1 and Part 2 of that Schedule, shall be known as towns, and in this Act a reference to a town shall include a reference to a borough.
These provisions affect the replacement of the boroughs, Towns and urban districts which existed before then. Similar reforms in the nomenclature of local authorities ( but not their functions) are effected by section 11 part 17 of the act includes provision (section 185(2)) Qualified electors of a town having a population of at least 7,500 as ascertained at the last preceding census or such other figure as the Minister may from time to time prescribe by regulations, and not having a town council, may make a proposal in accordance with paragraph (b) for the establishment of such a council and contains provisions enabling the establishment of new town councils and provisions enabling the dissolution of existing or new town councils in certain circumstances
The reference to town having a population of at least 7,500 as ascertained at the last preceding census hands much of the power relating to defining what is in fact a town over to the Central Statistics Office and their criteria are published as part of each census.
Planning and Development Act 2000
Another reference to the Census and its role in determining what is or is not a town for some administrative purpose is in the Planning and Development act 2000 (part II chapter I which provides for Local area plans)
A local area plan shall be made in respect of an area which —(i) is designated as a town in the most recent census of population, other than a town designated as a suburb or environs in that census, (ii) has a population in excess of 2,000, and (iii) is situated within the functional area of a planning authority which is a county council.
Central Statistics Office criteria
These are set out in full at 2006 Census Appendices.
In short they speak of "towns with legally defined boundaries" ( i.e. those established by the Local Government Act 2001) and the remaining 664 as "census towns", defined by themselves since 1971 as a cluster of 50 or more occupied dwellings in which within a distance of 800 meters there is a nucleus of 30 occupied houses on both sides of the road or twenty occupied houses on one side of the road there is also a 200 meter criterion for determining whether a house is part of a census town.
India [ edit ]
A street in Paravur town, India
The 2011 Census of India defines towns of two types: statutory town and census town. Statutory town is defined as all places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee. Census towns are defined as places that satisfy the following criteria:
Minimum population of 5,000 At least 75% of male working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits Density of population at least 400/km2. (1,000 per sq. mile).
All the statutory towns, census towns and out growths are considered as urban settlements, as opposed to rural areas.[9]
Iran [ edit ]
In contemporary Persian texts, no distinction is made between "city" and "town"; both translate as "Shahr" (شهر). In older Persian texts (until the first half of the 20th century), the Arabic word "Qasabeh" (قصبه) was used for a town. However, in recent 50 years, this word has become obsolete.
There is a word in Persian which is used for special sort of satellite townships and city neighborhoods. It is Shahrak (شهرک), (lit.: small city). Another smaller type of town or neighborhood in a big city is called Kuy (کوی). Shahrak and Kuy each have their different legal definitions. Large cities such as Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Tabriz, etc. which have millions of populations are referred to as Kalan-shahrکلانشهر (metropole).
The pace in which different large villages have gained city status in Iran shows a dramatic increase in the last two decades.
Bigger cities and towns usually are centers of a township (in Persian: Shahrestan (شهرستان). Shahrestan itself is a subdivision of Ostan استان (Province).
Isle of Man [ edit ]
There are four settlements which are historically and officially designated as towns (Douglas, Ramsey, Peel, Castletown); however
Peel is also sometimes referred to as a city by virtue of its cathedral.
Onchan and Port Erin are both larger in population than the smallest "town", having expanded in modern times, but are designated as villages.
Israel [ edit ]
Modern Hebrew does provide a word for the concept of a town: Ayara (עיירה), derived from Ir (עיר), the biblical word for "city". However, the term ayara is normally used only to describe towns in foreign countries, i.e. urban areas of limited population, particularly when the speaker is attempting to evoke nostalgic or romantic attitudes. The term is also used to describe a Shtetl, a pre-Holocaust Eastern European Jewish town.
Within Israel, established urban areas are always referred to as cities (with one notable exception explained below) regardless of their actual size. Israeli law does not define any nomenclature for distinction between urban areas based on size or any other factor – meaning that all urban settlements in Israel are legally referred to as "cities".
The exception to the above is the term Ayeret Pituakh (עיירת פיתוח, lit. "Development Town") which is applied to certain cities in Israel based on the reasons for their establishment. These cities, created during the earlier decades of Israeli independence (1950s and 1960s, generally), were designed primarily to serve as commercial and transportation hubs, connecting smaller agricultural settlements in the northern and southern regions of the country (the "Periphery") to the major urban areas of the coastal and central regions. Some of these "development towns" have since grown to a comparatively large size, and yet are still referred to as "development towns", particularly when the speaker wishes to emphasize their (often low) socio-economic status. Nonetheless, they are rarely (if ever) referred to simply as "towns"; when referring to one directly, it will be called either a "development town" or a "city", depending on context.
Italy [ edit ]
Although Italian provides different words for city (città), town (paese) and village (villaggio, old-fashioned, or frazione, most common), no legal definitions exist as to how settlements must be classified. Administratively, both towns and cities are ruled as comuni/comunes, while villages might be subdivisions of the former. Generally, in everyday's speech, a town is larger or more populated than a village and smaller than a city. Various cities and towns together may form a metropolitan area (area metropolitana). A city, can also be a culturally, economically or politically prominent community with respect to surrounding towns. Moreover, a city can be such by Presidential decree. A town, in contrast, can be an inhabited place which would elsewhere be styled a city, but has not received any official recognition. Remarkable exceptions do exist: for instance, Bassano del Grappa, was given the status of "città" in 1760 by Francesco Loredan's dogal decree and has since then carried this title. Also, the Italian word for town (paese with lowercase P) must not be confused with the Italian word for country/nation (Paese usually with uppercase P).
Japan [ edit ]
In Japan city status (shi) was traditionally reserved for only a few particularly large settlements. Over time however the necessary conditions to be a city have been watered down and today the only loose rules that apply are having a population over 50,000 and over 60% of the population in a "city centre". In recent times many small villages and towns have merged in order to form a city despite seeming geographically to be just a collection of villages.
The distinction between towns (machi/chō) and villages (mura/son) is largely unwritten and purely one of population size when the settlement was founded with villages having under 10,000 and towns 10,000–50,000.
Korea [ edit ]
In both of South Korea and North Korea, towns are called eup (읍).
Latvia [ edit ]
In Latvia, towns and cities are indiscriminately called pilsēta in singular form. The name is a contraction of two Latvian words: pils (castle) and sēta (fence), making it very obvious what is meant by the word – what is situated between the castle and the castle fence. However, a city can be called lielpilsēta in reference to its size. A village is called ciemats or ciems in Latvian.
Lithuania [ edit ]
In Lithuanian, a city is called miestas, a town is called miestelis (literally "small miestas). Metropolis is called didmiestis (literally "big miestas).
Malaysia [ edit ]
In Malaysia, a town is the area administered by Municipal Council (Malay: Masjid Perbandaran).
Netherlands [ edit ]
Before 1848 there was a legal distinction between stad and non-stad parts of the country, but the word no longer has any legal significance. About 220 places got "stadsrechten" (city rights) and are still so called for historical and traditional reasons, though the word is also used for large urban areas that never got such rights. Because of this, in the Netherlands, no distinction is made between "city" and "town"; both translate as "stad". A hamlet ("gehucht") usually has fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, a village ("dorp") ranges from 1,000 up to 25,000 inhabitants, and anything above the latter can call itself either village or city, mostly depending on historic reasons or size of the place. As an example: a large city like The Hague never gained city rights, but because of its size - more than half a million inhabitants - it is regarded as such. Staverden, with only 40 inhabitants would be a hamlet, but because of city rights it may call itself a city.
For statistical reasons, the Netherlands has three sorts of cities:
"kleine stad" (small-sized cities): 50,000 — 99,999 inhabitants
"middelgrote stad" (medium-sized cities): 100,000 — 249,999 inhabitants
"grote stad" (big, or large cities): 250,000 and more
Only Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht are regarded as "grote stad".
New Zealand [ edit ]
In New Zealand, a town is a built-up area that is not large enough to be considered a city. Historically, this definition corresponded to a population of between approximately 1,000 and 20,000. Towns have no independent legal existence, being administered simply as built-up parts of districts, or, in some cases, of cities.
New Zealand's towns vary greatly in size and importance, ranging from small rural service centres to significant regional centres such as Blenheim and Taupo. Typically, once a town reaches a population of somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 people, it will begin to be informally regarded as a city. One who regards a settlement as too small to be a town will typically call it a "township" or "village."
Norway [ edit ]
In Norway, "city" and "town" both translate to "by", even if a city may be referred to as "storby" ("large town"). They will all be part of and administered as a "kommune" ("municipality").
Norway has had inland the northernmost city in the world: Hammerfest. Now the record is held by New Ålesund on the Norwegian island Svalbard
Philippines [ edit ]
In the Philippines, the local official equivalent of the town is the municipality (Filipino bayan). Every municipality, or town, in the country has a mayor (Filipino alkalde) and a vice mayor (Filipino bise alkalde) as well as local town officials (Sangguniang Bayan). Philippine towns, otherwise called as municipalities, are composed of a number of villages and communities called barangays with one (or a few cluster of) barangay(s) serving as the town center or poblacion.
Unique in Philippine towns is that they have fixed budget, population and land requirements to become as such, i.e. from a barangay, or a cluster of such, to a town, or to become cities, i.e. from town to a city. Respectively, examples of these are the town of B.E. Dujali in Davao del Norte province, which was formed in 1998 from a cluster of 5 barangays, and the city of El Salvador, which was converted from a town to a city in 2007. Each town in the Philippines was classified by its annual income and budget.
A sharp, hierarchical distinction exists between Philippine cities (Filipino lungsod or siyudad) and towns, as towns in the country are juridically separate from cities, which are typically larger and more populous (some smaller and less populated) and which political and economic status are above those of towns. This was further supported and indicated by the income classification system implemented by the National Department of Finance, to which both cities and towns fell into their respective categories that indicate they are such as stated under Philippine law. However, both towns and cities equally share the status as local government units (LGU's) grouped under and belong to provinces and regions; both each are composed of barangays and are governed by a mayor and a vice mayor supplemented by their respective LGU legislative councils.
Poland [ edit ]
Similarly to Germany and Sweden, in Poland there is no linguistic distinction between a city and a town. The word for both is miasto, as a form of settlement distinct from following: village (wieś), hamlet (przysiółek), settlement (osada), or colony (kolonia). Town status is conferred by administrative decree, new towns are announced by the Government in a separate Bill effective from the first day of the year. Some settlements tend to remain villages even though they have a larger population than many smaller towns. Town may be called in diminutive way as "miasteczko", what is colloquially used for localities with a few thousand residents. Such localities have usually a Mayor (burmistrz) as a chief of town council.
Cities are the biggest localities, generally must be bigger than 100 thousand of residents, they are ruled by President (prezydent) as a chief of City Council. There are bare a few (mainly historic or political) exemptions which have allowed towns lesser than 100 thousand of people, to obtain President title for their Mayors, and to become recognized as Cities that way. Just to name a few: Bolesławiec, Gniezno, Zamość.
Portugal [ edit ]
Like other Iberian cultures, in Portugal there is a traditional distinction between towns (vilas) and cities (cidades). Similarly, although these areas are not defined under the constitution, and have no political function (with associated organs), they are defined by law,[10] and a town must have:
at least 3,000 inhabitants
at least half of these services: health unit, pharmacy, cultural centre, public transportation network, post office, commercial food and drinking establishments, primary school and/or bank office
In this context, the town or city is subordinate to the local authority (civil parish or municipality, in comparison to the North American context, where they have political functions. In special cases, some villages may be granted the status of town if they possess historical, cultural or architectonic importance.
The Portuguese urban settlements heraldry reflects the difference between towns and cities,[11] with the coat of arms of a town bearing a crown with 4 towers, while the coat of arms of a city bears a crown with 5 towers. This difference between towns and cities is still in use in other Portuguese speaking countries, but in Brazil is no longer in use.
Romania [ edit ]
In Romania there is no official distinction between a city and a town (the word for both in Romanian is: oraş). Cities and towns in Romania can have the status either of oraş municipiu, conferred to large urban areas, or only oraş to smaller urban localities. Some settlements remain villages (communes) even though they have a larger population than other smaller towns.
Russia [ edit ]
The town of Reutov is separated from the city of Moscow just by the MKAD highway
Unlike English, the Russian language does not distinguish the terms "city" and "town"—both are translated as "город" (gorod). Occasionally the term "город" is applied to urban-type settlements as well, even though the status of those is not the same as that of a city/town proper.
In Russia, the criteria an inhabited locality needs to meet in order to be granted city/town (gorod) status vary in different federal subjects. In general, to qualify for this status, an inhabited locality should have more than 12,000 inhabitants and the occupation of no less than 85% of inhabitants must be other than agriculture. However, inhabited localities which were previously granted the city/town status but no longer meet the criteria can still retain the status for historical reasons.
Singapore [ edit ]
In Singapore, towns are large scale satellite housing developments which are designed to be self contained. It includes public housing units, a town centre and other amenities.[12] Helmed by a hierarchy of commercial developments, ranging from a town centre to precinct-level outlets, there is no need to venture out of town to meet the most common needs of residences. Employment can be found in industrial estates located within several towns. Educational, health care, and recreational needs are also taken care of with the provision of schools, hospitals, parks, sports complexes, and so on. The most populous town in the country is Bedok.
Bishan , one of Singapore's towns is the 38th biggest in terms of geographical size and the 21st most populated planning area in the country.
South Africa [ edit ]
In South Africa the Afrikaans term "Dorp" is used interchangeably with the English equivalent of "Town". A "town" is a settlement that has a size that is smaller than that of a city.
Spain [ edit ]
In Spain, the equivalent of town would be villa, a population unit between a village (pueblo) and a city (ciudad), and is not defined by the number of inhabitants, but by some historical rights and privileges dating from the Middle Ages, such as the right to hold a market or fair. For instance, while Madrid is technically a villa, Barcelona, with a smaller population, is known as a city.
Sweden [ edit ]
The Swedish language does not differentiate between towns and cities in the English sense of the words; both words are commonly translated as stad, a term which has no legal significance today. The term tätort is used for an urban area or a locality, which however is a statistical rather than an administrative concept and encompasses densely settled villages with only 200 inhabitants as well as the major cities. The word köping corresponds to an English market town (chipping) or German Markt but is mainly of historical significance, as the term is not used today and only survives in some toponyms. Some towns with names ending in -köping are cities with over 100 000 inhabitants today, e.g. Linköping.
Before 1971, 132 larger municipalities in Sweden enjoyed special royal charters as stad instead of kommun (which is similar to a US county). However, since 1971 all municipalities are officially defined as kommun, thus making no legal difference between, for instance, Stockholm and a small countryside municipality. Every urban area that was a stad before 1971 is still often referred to as a stad in daily speech. Since the 1980s, 14 of these municipalities brand themselves as stad again, although this has no legal or administrative significance, as they still have refer to themselves as kommun in all legal documentation.
For statistical purposes, Statistics Sweden officially defines a stad as an urban area of at least 10,000 inhabitants. In the Swedish language the term for a major city is storstad (literally "big town"), but there is no clear definition as to when a stad should be called a storstad. Most Swedes would only call Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö storstäder, i.e. "major cities", although Uppsala fulfills the definition of "municipality with a population that exceeds 200 000 inhabitants".[13]
Ukraine [ edit ]
Fire station in town of Bohorodchany
In Ukraine the term town (містечко, mistechko) existed from the Medieval period until 1925, when it was replaced by the Soviet regime with urban type settlement.[14] Historically, town in the Ukrainian lands was a smaller populated place that was chartered under the German town law and had a market square (see Market town). Today informally, town is also referred to cities of district significance, cities with small population, and former Jewish shtetls.
United Kingdom [ edit ]
England and Wales [ edit ]
A traditional English town centre at Rugby
In England and Wales, a town traditionally was a settlement which had a charter to hold a market or fair and therefore became a "market town". Market towns were distinguished from villages in that they were the economic hub of a surrounding area, and were usually larger and had more facilities.
In parallel with popular usage, however, there are many technical and official definitions of what constitutes a town, to which various interested parties cling.
In modern official usage the term town is employed either for old market towns, or for settlements which have a town council, or for settlements which elsewhere would be classed a city, but which do not have the legal right to call themselves such. Any parish council can decide to describe itself as a town council, but this will usually only apply to the smallest "towns" (because larger towns will be larger than a single civil parish).
Not all settlements which are commonly described as towns have a "Town Council" or "Borough Council". In fact, because of many successive changes to the structure of local government, there are now few large towns which are represented by a body closely related to their historic borough council. These days, a smaller town will usually be part of a local authority which covers several towns. And where a larger town is the seat of a local authority, the authority will usually cover a much wider area than the town itself (either a large rural hinterland, or several other, smaller towns).
Additionally, there are "new towns" which were created during the 20th century, such as Basildon, Redditch and Telford. Milton Keynes was designed to be a "new city" but legally it is still a town despite its size.
Some settlements which describe themselves as towns (e.g. Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire) are smaller than some large villages (e.g. Kidlington, Oxfordshire).
The status of a city is reserved for places that have letters patent entitling them to the name, historically associated with the possession of a cathedral. Some large municipalities (such as Northampton and Bournemouth) are legally boroughs but not cities, whereas some cities are quite small — such as Ely or St David's. The city of Brighton and Hove was created from the two former towns and some surrounding villages, and within the city the correct term for the former distinct entities is somewhat unclear.
It appears that a city may become a town, though perhaps only through administrative error: Rochester in Kent had been a city for centuries but, when in 1998 the Medway district was created, a bureaucratic blunder meant that Rochester lost its official city status and is now technically a town.
It is often thought that towns with bishops' seats rank automatically as cities: however, Chelmsford was a town until 5 June 2012 despite being the seat of the diocese of Chelmsford, created in 1914. St Asaph, which is the seat of the diocese of St Asaph, only became a city on 1 June 2012 though the diocese was founded in the mid sixth century. In reality, the pre-qualification of having a cathedral of the established Church of England, and the formerly established Church in Wales or Church of Ireland, ceased to apply from 1888.
The word town can also be used as a general term for urban areas, including cities and in a few cases, districts within cities. In this usage, a city is a type of town; a large one, with a certain status. For example, central Greater London is sometimes referred to colloquially as "London town". (The "City of London" is the historical nucleus, informally known as the "Square Mile", and is administratively separate from the rest of Greater London, while the City of Westminster is also technically a city and is also a London borough.) Camden Town and Somers Town are districts of London, as New Town is a district of Edinburgh – actually the Georgian centre.
Scotland [ edit ]
A town in Scotland has no specific legal meaning and (especially in areas which were or are still Gaelic-speaking) can refer to a mere collection of buildings (e.g. a farm-town or in Scots ferm-toun), not all of which might be inhabited, or to an inhabited area of any size which is not otherwise described in terms such as city, burgh, etc. Many locations of greatly different size will be encountered with a name ending with -town, -ton, -toun etc. (or beginning with the Gaelic equivalent baile etc.).
A burgh (pronounced burruh) is the Scots' term for a town or a municipality. They were highly autonomous units of local government from at least the 12th century until their abolition in 1975, when a new regional structure of local government was introduced across the country. Usually based upon a town, they had a municipal corporation and certain rights, such as a degree of self-governance and representation in the sovereign Parliament of Scotland adjourned in 1707.
The term no longer describes units of local government although various claims are made from time to time that the legislation used was not competent to change the status of the Royal Burghs described below. The status is now chiefly ceremonial but various functions have been inherited by current Councils (e.g. the application of various endowments providing for public benefit) which might only apply within the area previously served by a burgh; in consequence a burgh can still exist (if only as a defined geographical area) and might still be signed as such by the current local authority. It should be noted that the word 'burgh' is generally not used as a synonym for 'town' or 'city' in everyday speech, but is reserved mostly for government and administrative purposes.
Historically, the most important burghs were royal burghs, followed by burghs of regality and burghs of barony. Some newer settlements were only designated as police burghs from the 19th century onward, a classification which also applies to most of the older burghs.
United States [ edit ]
Since the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution largely leaves local-government organization to the individual U.S. states, the definition (if any) of "town" varies widely from state to state. In some states, the term "town" refers to an area of population distinct from others in some meaningful dimension, typically population or type of government. The characteristic that distinguishes a town from another type of populated place — a city, borough, village, or township, for example — differs from state to state. In some states, a town is an incorporated municipality; that is, one with a charter received from the state, similar to a city (see incorporated town), while in others, a town is unincorporated. In some instances, the term "town" refers to a small incorporated municipality of less than a population threshold specified by state statute, while in others a town can be significantly larger. Some states do not use the term "town" at all, while in others the term has no official meaning and is used informally to refer to a populated place, of any size, whether incorporated or unincorporated. In still other states, the words "town" and "city" are legally interchangeable.
Small town life has been a major theme in American literature, especially stories of rejection by young people leaving for the metropolis.[15]
Since the use of the term varies considerably by state, individual usages are presented in the following sections:
Alabama [ edit ]
In Alabama, the legal use of the terms "town" and "city" is based on population. A municipality with a population of 2,000 or more is a city, while less than 2,000 is a town (Code of Alabama 1975, Section 11-40-6). For legislative purposes, municipalities are divided into eight classes based on population. Class 8 includes all towns, plus cities with populations of less than 6,000 (Code of Alabama 1975, Section 11-40-12).
Arizona [ edit ]
In Arizona, the terms "town" and "city" are largely interchangeable. A community may incorporate under either a town or a city organization with no regard to population or other restrictions according to Arizona law (see Arizona Revised Statutes, Title 9). Cities may function under slightly differing governmental systems, such as the option to organize a district system for city governments, but largely retain the same powers as towns. Arizona law also allows for the consolidation of neighboring towns and the unification of a city and a town, but makes no provision for the joining of two adjacent cities.
California [ edit ]
In California, the words "town" and "city" are synonymous by law (see Cal. Govt. Code Secs. 34500–34504). There are two types of cities in California: charter and general law. Cities organized as charter cities derive their authority from a charter that they draft and file with the state, and which, among other things, states the municipality's name as "City of (Name)" or "Town of (Name)." Government Code Sections 34500–34504 applies to cities organized as general law cities, which differ from charter cities in that they do not have charters but instead operate with the powers conferred them by the pertinent sections of the Government Code. Like charter cities, general law cities may incorporate as "City of (Name)" or "Town of (Name)."
Some cities change their minds as to how they want to be called. The sign in front of the municipal offices in Los Gatos, California, for example, reads "City of Los Gatos", but the words engraved on the building above the front entrance when the city hall was built read "Town of Los Gatos." There are also signs at the municipal corporation limit, some of which welcome visitors to the "City of Los Gatos" while older, adjacent signs welcome people to the "Town of Los Gatos." Meanwhile, the village does not exist in California as a municipal corporation. Instead, the word "town" is commonly used to indicate any unincorporated community that might otherwise be known as an unincorporated village. Additionally, some people may still use the word "town" as shorthand for "township", which is not an incorporated municipality but an administrative division of a county.
Hawaii [ edit ]
The Hawaiian Island of Oahu has various communities that may be referred to as towns. However, the entire island is lumped as a single incorporated city, the City and County of Honolulu. The towns on Oahu are merely unincorporated census-designated places.
Illinois [ edit ]
In Illinois, the word "town" has been used both to denote a subdivision of a county called a township,[16] and to denote a form of municipality similar to a village, in that it is generally governed by a president and trustees rather than a mayor.[17] In some areas a "Town" may be incorporated legally as a Village (meaning it has at large Trustees) or a City (meaning it has aldermen from districts) and absorb the duties of the Township it is coterminous with (maintenance of birth records, certain welfare items). Evanston, Berwyn and Cicero are examples of Towns in this manner. Under the current Illinois Municipal Code, an incorporated or unincorporated town may choose to incorporate as a city or as a village, but other forms of incorporation are no longer allowed.[18]
Louisiana [ edit ]
In Louisiana a "town" is defined as being a municipal government having a population of 1,001 to 4,999 inhabitants.[19]
Maryland [ edit ]
While a "town" is generally considered a smaller entity than a "city", the two terms are legally interchangeable in Maryland. The only exception may be the Independent city of Baltimore, which is a special case, as it was created by the Constitution of Maryland.
Nevada [ edit ]
In Nevada, a town has a form of government, but is not considered to be incorporated. It generally provides a limited range of services, such as land use planning and recreation, while leaving most services to the county. Many communities have found this "semi-incorporated" status attractive; the state has only 20 incorporated cities, and towns as large as Paradise (186,020 in 2000 Census), home of the Las Vegas Strip. Most county seats are also towns, not cities.
New England [ edit ]
In the six New England states, a town is a municipality and a more important unit than the county. In Connecticut, Rhode Island and 7 out of 14 counties in Massachusetts, in fact, counties only exist as map divisions and have no legal functions; in the other three states, counties are primarily judicial districts, with other functions primarily in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. In all six, towns perform functions that in most states would be county functions. The defining feature of a New England town, as opposed to a city, is that a town meeting and a board of selectmen serve as the main form of government for a town, while cities are run by a mayor and a city council. For example, Brookline, Massachusetts is a town, even though it is fairly urban, because of its form of government.
New Jersey [ edit ]
A "town" in the context of New Jerseyan local government refers to one of five types and one of eleven forms of municipal government. While Town is often used as a shorthand to refer to a Township, the two are not the same. The Town Act of 1895 allowed any municipality or area with a population exceeding 5,000 to become a Town through a petition and referendum process. Under the 1895 Act, a newly incorporated town was divided into at least three wards, with two councilmen per ward serving staggered two-year terms, and one councilman at large, who also served a two-year term. The councilman at large served as chairman of the town council. The Town Act of 1988 completely revised the Town form of government and applied to all towns incorporated under the Town Act of 1895 and to those incorporated by a special charter granted by the Legislature prior to 1875.
Under the 1988 Act, the mayor is also the councilman at large, serving a term of two years, unless increased to three years by a petition and referendum process. The Council under the Town Act of 1988 consists of eight members serving staggered two-year terms with two elected from each of four wards. One councilman from each ward is up for election each year. Towns with different structures predating the 1988 Act may retain those features unless changed by a petition and referendum process. Two new provisions were added in 1991 to the statutes governing towns, First, a petition and referendum process was created whereby the voters can require that the mayor and town council be elected to four-year terms of office. The second new provision defines the election procedure in towns with wards. The mayor in a town chairs the town council and heads the municipal government. The mayor may both vote on legislation before council and veto ordinances. A veto may be overridden by a vote of two-thirds of all the members of the council. The council may enact an ordinance to delegate all or a portion of the executive responsibilities of the town to a municipal administrator. Fifteen New Jersey municipalities currently have a type of Town, nine of which operate under the town form of government.
New York [ edit ]
In New York, a town is similarly a division of the county, but with less importance than in New England. Of some importance, a town provides a closer level of governance than its enclosing county, providing almost all municipal services to unincorporated communities, called hamlets, and selected services to incorporated areas, called villages. In New York, a town typically contains a number of such hamlets and villages. However, due to their independent nature, incorporated villages may exist in two towns or even two counties (example: Almond (village), New York). Everyone in New York who does not live on an Indian reservation or a city lives in a town and possibly in one of the town's hamlets or villages. (There are no towns in the five counties – also known as boroughs – that make up New York City.) What is a "town" in New York is called a township in some other states.
North Carolina [ edit ]
In North Carolina, all cities, towns, and villages are incorporated as municipalities. According to the North Carolina League of Municipalities,[20] there is no legal distinction among a city, town, or village—it is a matter of preference of the local government. Some North Carolina cities have populations as small as 1,000 residents, while some towns, such as Cary, have populations of greater than 100,000.
Pennsylvania [ edit ]
In Pennsylvania, only one municipality is incorporated as a "town": Bloomsburg. Most of the rest of the state is incorporated as townships (there are also boroughs and cities), which function in much the same way as the towns of New York or New England, although they may have different forms of government.
Texas [ edit ]
In Texas, although some municipalities refer to themselves as "towns" or "villages" (to market themselves as an attractive place to live), these names have no specific designation in Texas law; legally all incorporated places are considered cities.
Utah [ edit ]
In Utah, the legal use of the terms "town" and "city" is based on population. A municipality with a population of 1,000 or more is a city, while less than 1,000 is a town. In addition, cities are divided into five separate classes based on population.[21]
Virginia [ edit ]
In Virginia, a town is an incorporated municipality similar to a city (though with a smaller required minimum population). But while cities are by Virginia law independent of counties, towns are contained within counties.[22]
Washington [ edit ]
A town in the state of Washington is a municipality that has a population of less than 1,500 at incorporation, however an existing town can reorganize as a code city.[23] Town government authority is limited relative to cities, the other main classification of municipalities in the state.[24] As of 2012 , most municipalities in Washington are cities. (See List of towns in Washington.)
Wisconsin [ edit ]
Wisconsin has Towns which are areas outside of incorporated cities and villages. These Towns retain the name of the Civil Township from which they evolved and are often the same name as a neighboring City. Some Towns, especially those in urban areas, have services similar to those of incorporated Cities, such as police departments. These Towns will from time to time incorporate into Cities, such as Fox Crossing in 2016 from the former town of Menasha.[25] Often this is to protect against being annexed into neighboring cities and villages.
Wyoming [ edit ]
Wyoming statute indicates towns are incorporated municipalities with populations of less than 4,000. Municipalities of 4,000 or more residents are considered "first-class cities".
Vietnam [ edit ]
In Vietnam, a district-level town (Vietnamese: thị xã) is the second subdivision, below a province (tỉnh) or municipality (thành phố trực thuộc trung ương). A commune-level town (thị trấn) a third-level (commune-level) subdivision, below a district (huyện).
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
Hillary Clinton tied Donald Trump’s campaign to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in a new web ad released Thursday -- the latest move in the Democratic nominee’s crusade connecting Trump with white supremacist ideologies.
The minute-long web video begins with a soundbite from a man in the full white robes of a KKK member, who the spot identifies as the “Imperial Wizard of the Rebel Brigade, Knights of the KKK.”
“The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in,” he says, as consecutive images flash on-screen of the confederate flag, Donald Trump, and a man at a Trump rally raising his right hand (presumably in a Nazi salute). Over the video, the text reads: “These people support Trump because they believe Trump supports them.”
The ad then plays footage from various news interviews with radical nationalists touting Trump’s political philosophies.
Clinton calls Trump's campaign part of a "hate movement"
“Sending out all the illegals, building a wall, and a moratorium on Islamic immigration -- That’s very appealing to a lot of ordinary white people,” says one man, identified by CNN as the American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor, a white supremacist defending his support for Trump.
In another clip, David Duke, a former grand wizard of the KKK, says: “Voting against Donald Trump… is really treason to your heritage.”
The lengthy spot then features a February interview with CNN, where Trump is asked by “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper: “Will you unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you don’t want his vote or that of other white supremacists?”
“I don’t know anything about white supremacists,” Trump replies. “So I don’t know.”
Trump and his campaign have repeatedly disavowed Duke’s comments and the KKK since that interview earlier this year.
The web video also hits Trump’s new campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, who runs the controversial Breitbart News website, a safe haven for so-called “alt-right” ideologues. It describes the group using a pundit’s commentary: “The alt-right is the sort of dressed-up-in-suits version of the neo-nazi and white supremacist movements.”
The spot ends on an ominous promise: “If Trump wins, they could be running the country.”
Clinton sent a tweet with the video Thursday. You can watch it in full here:
There's a reason the most hateful fringe of the right wing is supporting Donald Trump.https://t.co/AqB3DM2m0N — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 25, 2016
The video was released just before Clinton delivered a speech in Reno, Nevada linking Trump to alt-right firebrands -- and just as the GOP nominee is ramping up his own efforts to court African American and Hispanic voters by painting Clinton as a “bigot”
The Trump campaign has denied that it has any affiliations with the alt-right, despite Bannon’s tacit embrace of the philosophy through Breitbart.
Asked if the Trump campaign served as a platform for the alt-right, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told “CBS This Morning”: “No, not at all.”
“We’ve never even discussed it internally,” she said in an interview Thursday. “It certainly isn’t a part of our strategy meetings. It’s nothing that Mr. Trump says out on the stump.”
On Thursday afternoon, the Trump campaign condemned the KKK web video, blasting out a statement from Mark Burns, an African American pastor and devout Trump surrogate.
“Hillary Clinton and her campaign went to a disgusting new low today as they released a video tying the Trump Campaign with horrific racial images,” Burns wrote. “This type of rhetoric and repulsive advertising is revolting and completely beyond the pale. I call on Hillary Clinton to disavow this video and her campaign for this sickening act that has no place in our world.” |
Meeting the Revenant and experiencing the new direction of Guild Wars 2
Last week, I had the good fortune of visiting Seattle to see ArenaNet and spend some hands-on time with their upcoming Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns expansion. For many veteran players, the Heart of Thorns announcement at PAX South in January was a long time coming, and effectively revitalized an already deeply faithful community with promises of new regions, PVP modes, and a ninth character class, the Revenant.
Guild Wars 2 has never been particularly conformative, thanks to the forward thinkers over at ArenaNet, which might be why the game boasts one of the friendliest, most absurdly optimistic communities known to online gaming. This was more or less the same attitude that permeated throughout the day-long affair, during which ArenaNet introduced some of their key developers -- including the ever-photogenic Colin Johanson -- and gave us a rundown on the Heart of Thorns content we would be playing.
The World Is Changing
The demo was split into two parts, allowing us time with both early PVE and the new Stronghold PVP mode. Of course, Revenants were available to try out, and that's what just about everyone did. Before we get much further into that, something worth noting is the expansion's focus on the open world. Yes, Guild Wars 2 already has that, but the dev team pointed out that much of the story content in Heart of Thorns will actually be moved into the open world, instead of playing out in contained instances as the Living Story has been.
That's not to say the expansion completely does away with instances. Certain steps in the story will still require players to leave the open world, such as the starting mission I played, which seemed to immediately follow the last cutscene in Season 2. The Pact ships are scattered all around the new Verdant Brink zone, mostly as flaming wreckage rather than actual functioning airships, with very few survivors to speak of. While Destiny's Edge 2.0 is arguing with Canach, I notice my character is actively participating in the conversation, mainly by moving her head to address NPCs and actually contributing to ongoing dialogue. ArenaNet later pointed out this little detail as part of their efforts to create a more immersive player experience in Heart of Thorns, one that does away with the somewhat stale one-to-one exchanges we see in Guild Wars 2's current cutscenes.
Dynamism appears to be the overall theme in Heart of Thorns, with how the open world has taken priority over instances (or cutscenes). In terms of gameplay, more complex mechanics you would expect to find in dungeons have been integrated into the open environment and story progression. These latter two elements will see overlap as well, meaning more large-scale cooperative content. As an example, the Wyvern mini-boss is encountered in the world as part of the expansion's primary storyline, thus allowing players on the same quest to drop into the fight at any given time, regardless of whether someone else is already in combat with the beast. It's a very obvious and welcome deviation from the old Living Story setup ArenaNet has been utilizing.
If you thought the Mordrem were bad before, consider the new Mordrem baddies walking on two legs. During the demo we played, these sentient monsters of plant matter joined the fight with their more familiar brethren, like the Modrem Husks and vines. Acting as commanders within Mordremoth's army, they lack the overwhelming strength in numbers wielded by the lesser Mordrem, but make up for it with intelligence.
For lore junkies out there, some of the new enemy lines suggest that Mordremoth can convert races other than sylvari into his minions. Scary.
The Revenant Goes Old School
ArenaNet previously gave the Revenant class an in-depth introduction, delving into the mechanics of the profession's combat style, weapons, and unique Legendary Stances. The demo included only the three weapons that were previously confirmed: hammer, mace, and axe. Depending on your weapon choice, the Revenant acts as a melee to mid-range fighter, possessing abilities that can either put you closer to enemies or keep them at a distance.
For fans of the original game and its expansions, the Revenant's energy resource is reminiscent of how professions used to be handled. Energy management becomes a huge factor in playing a successful Revenant, with all skills being governed by energy consumption -- as opposed to cooldowns, which most existing Guild Wars 2 professions fall back on. Mindless facerolling or careless spamming will only put you in unnecessarily risky situations, where you might end up having to dodge roll for several seconds waiting for that energy regen to pick up.
The Revenant really doesn't play like any other class currently found in Guild Wars 2, and I'd even go as far as suggesting it boasts a higher learning curve due to the element of resource management. Not to mention the Legendary Stances add another layer of depth, reminiscent of the Dervish in Guild Wars Nightfall. Granted, the Revenant doesn't exactly channel the Six, but the implementation of different forms based on iconic characters is an interesting take on the old mechanic. Similar to the Dervish's avatar forms, every stance will change the Revenant's appearance and drastically alter your play style on the fly. Choose those stances wisely, because different situations will undoubtedly call for different stances and abilities.
Visually, the class is set apart from its peers by blindfolds and a red-on-black color scheme. Don't worry though, because Revenant don't actually need to stay blind, and the blindfolds are simply the class-specific option found during character creation. As to how any of this fits into Rytlock's story and his return from the Mists remains a mystery, though, and when I spoke briefly to dev director Kristen Bornemann, she wasn't willing to talk too much about the lore. No one wanted to confirm swords as a Revenant weapon either, despite how many times this question was asked.
Stronghold, Where Roles Matter
When ArenaNet announced the Stronghold PVP mode during their big Heart of Thorns reveal, there existed a spark of hope that this might be the new Guild vs. Guild, what with Guild Halls also confirmed for imminent release. Well, that particular connection was already debunked by the devs themselves, when they released their big feature on Stronghold and its first map, the Battle of Champion's Dusk.
Stronghold would not be the new GvG. My personal interest in the mode dipped after this.
Even so, my impressions of the upcoming sPVP mode came out fairly positive following the several rounds I was able to play at ArenaNet's studios. For those unaware, this mode pits two teams of five against one another in a heavily MOBA-inspired setup, where resources are needed to buy units, and units need to be escorted to the enemy's fortified keep.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Stronghold is the greater need for team cooperation, as players will inevitably discover the value of different roles beyond just straight DPS or bunker. Support tactics actually become more viable when NPCs require defending from enemy units and players. Utility-heavy classes like Engineers can be made into effective supply runners and oft-defenders when the rest of the team is away.
In the end, I can honestly say Stronghold still feels very much like Guild Wars 2 PVP, only with more factors woven in. It might provide a welcome variation from sPVP's current Conquest-heavy playlist, but I'm not entirely certain how the PVP community will accept new mode and ultimately put it into play.
As for the brief mention I made above regarding Guild Halls, ArenaNet wasn't quite prepared to discuss them, though Kristen did note they were working to integrate the halls into every aspect of gameplay -- and making it a pretty neat place to just hang out in.
PAX East attendees will get their shot at demoing the same content this coming weekend. As of now, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns still has no official release window or pricing.
Follow Lydia on Twitter @RabidChinaGirl or check out her news and reviews every day here on Neoseeker. |
A Wikileaks envoy today claims he personally received Clinton campaign emails in Washington D.C. after they were leaked by 'disgusted' whisteblowers - and not hacked by Russia.
Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, told Dailymail.com that he flew to Washington, D.C. for a clandestine hand-off with one of the email sources in September.
'Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,' said Murray in an interview with Dailymail.com on Tuesday. 'The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.'
His account contradicts directly the version of how thousands of Democratic emails were published before the election being advanced by U.S. intelligence.
Craig Murray (left), former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (right), told the Dailymail.com that he flew to Washington, D.C. for a clandestine hand-off with one of the email sources in September
Murray is a controversial figure who was removed from his post as a British ambassador amid allegations of misconduct. He was cleared of those but left the diplomatic service in acrimony.
His links to Wikileaks are well known and while his account is likely to be seen as both unprovable and possibly biased, it is also the first intervention by Wikileaks since reports surfaced last week that the CIA believed Russia hacked the Clinton emails to help hand the election to Donald Trump.
Murray's claims about the origins of the Clinton campaign emails comes as U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly confident that Russian hackers infiltrated both the Democratic National Committee and the email account of top Clinton aide John Podesta.
In Podesta's case, his account appeared to have been compromised through a basic 'phishing' scheme, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
U.S. intelligence officials have reportedly told members of Congress during classified briefings that they believe Russians passed the documents on to Wikileaks as part of an influence operation to swing the election in favor of Donald Trump.
But Murray insisted that the DNC and Podesta emails published by Wikileaks did not come from the Russians, and were given to the whistleblowing group by Americans who had authorized access to the information.
'Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,' Murray said. 'The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.'
He said the leakers were motivated by 'disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders.'
Murray said he retrieved the package from a source during a clandestine meeting in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C. He said the individual he met with was not the original person who obtained the information, but an intermediary.
Murray claims he met with the person who passed the emails over in a Washington, D.C. part near American University
His account cannot be independently verified but is in line with previous statements by Wikileaks - which was the organization that published the Podesta and DNC emails.
Wikileaks published the DNC messages in July and the Podesta messages in October. The messages revealed efforts by some DNC officials to undermine the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was running against Hillary Clinton.
Others revealed that Clinton aides were concerned about potential conflicts and mismanagement at the Clinton Foundation.
Murray declined to say where the sources worked and how they had access to the information, to shield their identities.
He suggested that Podesta's emails might be 'of legitimate interest to the security services' in the U.S., due to his communications with Saudi Arabia lobbyists and foreign officials.
Murray said he was speaking out due to claims from intelligence officials that Wikileaks was given the documents by Russian hackers as part of an effort to help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidential election.
'I don't understand why the CIA would say the information came from Russian hackers when they must know that isn't true,' he said. 'Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that.'
Murray was a vocal critic of human rights abuses in Uzbekistan while serving as ambassador between 2002 and 2004, a stance that pitted him against the UK Foreign Office.
He describes himself as a 'close associate' of Julian Assange and has spoken out in support of the Wikileaks founder who has faced rape allegations and is currently confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Assange has similarly disputed that charges that Wikileaks received the leaked emails from Russian sources.
'The Clinton camp has been able to project a neo-McCarthyist hysteria that Russia is responsible for everything,' Assange told John Pilger during an interview in November.
'Hillary Clinton has stated multiple times, falsely, that 17 US intelligence agencies had assessed that Russia was the source of our publications. That's false – we can say that the Russian government is not the source.'
Murray suggested that John Podesta's emails might be 'of legitimate interest to the security services' in the U.S., due to his communications with Saudi Arabia lobbyists and foreign officials
The Washington Post reported last Friday that U.S. intelligence agencies had 'identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails.'
The paper said U.S. senators were presented with information tying Russia to the leaks during a recent briefing by intelligence officials.
'It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,' a senior U.S. official familiar with the briefing told the Post. 'That's the consensus view.'
The paper said U.S. senators were presented with information tying Russia to the leaks during a recent briefing by intelligence officials.
'It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,' a senior U.S. official familiar with the briefing told the Post. 'That's the consensus view.'
The Obama administration has been examining Russia's potential role in trying to influence the presidential election. Officials said Russians hacked the Republican National Committee, but did not release that information in a deliberate effort to damage Clinton and protect Donald Trump.
Several congressional committees are also looking into the suspected Russian interference.
While there is a consensus on Capitol Hill that Russia hacked U.S. political groups and officials, some Republicans say it's not clear whether the motive was to try to swing the election or just to collect intelligence.
'Now whether they intended to interfere to the degree that they were trying to elect a certain candidate, I think that's the subject of investigation,' said Sen. John McCain on CBS Face the Nation. 'But facts are stubborn things, they did hack into this campaign.'
President elect Donald Trump raised doubts about the reports and said this was an 'excuse' by Democrats to explain Clinton's November loss. |
Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi is a species of spider in the family Euctenizidae,[1] described in 2007 by East Carolina University professor of biology Jason E. Bond and Norman I. Platnick, curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It is named after Canadian rock musician Neil Young.[2]
Bond & Platnick described the male holotype and female paratype, which were collected in Jefferson County, Alabama,[3] in 1998. While specimens have been collected repeatedly since 1940, it was only in 2007 that they were recognized as a new species.[2] He co-wrote a paper revising the genus with Norman I. Platnick, describing this and several other new species.[4]
M. neilyoungi is widely distributed throughout Alabama, with one known locality from northwestern Florida.[2]
Bond received $750,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation in 2005 and 2006 to classify the species of the family Cyrtaucheniidae and contribute to the foundation's Tree of Life project.[4]
Bond opted to name the spider after his favorite musician,[5] Neil Young, whose music and activism on peace and justice he appreciates.[4] |
FCC Blocks Law Enforcement Inquiry Into Fake Neutrality Comments
The FCC is refusing to aid a law enforcement investigation into who submitted millions of fake comments in support of the FCC's planned rollback of net neutrality rules. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been conducting an investigation into the millions of fake comments (some belonging to dead people) submitted in support of the FCC's attack on net neutrality. In an open letter several weeks ago, Schneiderman's office said that despite 9 inquiries made during a six month period, the FCC refused to aid his office's inquiry in any capacity.
On Monday of this week, Schneiderman's office issued a statement indicating that the FCC Inspector General's office might cooperate in the wake of public pressure.
But on Thursday FCC general counsel Thomas Johnson sent a letter to Schneiderman refusing to hand over any data, server logs or API details that could help the investigation shine a light on the identity of the culprit(s).
Johnson stated that "while your letter suggests that the public comment process was somehow 'corrupted' by the alleged submission of comments under false names, you offer no evidence that this activity affected the Commission’s ability to review and respond to comments in the record."
Critics have charged that the FCC failed to investigate or hinder bogus comments because the fraud undermined trust in the validity of the comment process, helping to downplay and discredit the massive genuine opposition to the FCC's plan. If the fake comments were the work of an ISP-tied think tank or policy organization (such activity is certainly historically within their wheelhouse), the industry-cozy FCC also likely has a vested interest in not aiding anybody trying to document such a connection.
The FCC similarly refused to do anything when I filed a formal complaint about the fact that someone used my name and the name of DSLReports.com to support killing the popular rules.
Needless to say, Schneiderman's office isn't particularly impressed.
"Today the FCC make[s] clear that it will continue to obstruct a law enforcement investigation," said Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for Schneiderman’s office. "It’s easy for the FCC to claim that there’s no problem with the process, when they’re hiding the very information that would allow us to determine if there was a problem."
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel similarly blasted the FCC's refusal to cooperate.
"This letter shows the FCC’s sheer contempt for public input and unreasonable failure to support integrity in its process," said Rosenworcel. "To put it simply, there is evidence in the FCC’s files that fraud has occurred and the FCC is telling law enforcement and victims of identity theft that it is not going to help. Moreover, the FCC refuses to look into how nearly half a million comments came from Russian sources. Failure to investigate this corrupted record undermines our process for seeking public input in the digital age."
Expect the comment fraud, and the FCC's refusal to aid investigations into it, to play a starring role in the inevitable lawsuits coming in the new year. |
About
"Imagine a world full of limitless scientific advancements, immense magical power, and the unfettered potential of the human body and mind.
In this world, you choose. You can be the one to step up and save the day; the hero who strives to protect the city and the people who inhabit it.
Or you can be the one to cut a swath of destruction through the populace; the villain who rules the world with an iron fist.
Or perhaps you’re something in between?"
Welcome to Valiance Online, a new superhero MMO born from the death of City of Heroes. Like many of you, we too were shattered when our beloved City of Heroes was taken away. But now is our time to rebuild. Our time has come to rise up, and build a stronger foundation against the forces of evil, or a more menacing threat to world order. Help us make City of Heroes one of the only games in history to launch several successful spiritual successors. Be the part of our story that says indie developers can, instead of indie developers can't. We can make a successful superhero MMO, standing on the shoulders of the giants, but we need your help to go all the way!
In 2049, the villainous superhuman organization known as Leviathan first revealed itself to the world. As their armies marched forth, countless cities were ravaged and countries torn asunder. Never before had the world witnessed the horrific might wrought by super-powered beings. Fortunately there were those willing to oppose the terror, and assist the armies of the world in this battle. Heroes arose to fight evil, to protect their people, their cities, their world. Leviathan was driven back and the world began to rebuild in a new era of peace.
On the west coast of the United States, the city of San Cielo was devastated by the double hammer blows of war and earthquake. Its citizens could easily have abandoned the ravaged city to seek out new homes, but instead they chose to rebuild, to see their city once again reach to the sky and serve as a beacon of hope.
Now, at the end of the Twenty First Century, San Cielo faces new challenges, her citizens caught in the immortal struggle between morality and villainy. On one side, the forces of Valor, led by the legendary Paramount, fight to protect the city from rapidly strengthening gangs, rising crime and other unknown evil forces. Meanwhile, the mysterious Magistor directs a resurgent Leviathan, intent on reshaping the world into his vision.
Looming above it all is The Trinity, a group of megacorporations that have introduced world-altering scientific and technological breakthroughs. Thanks to their efforts, ordinary people can now be born with, or acquire, superhuman powers, or use advanced technology to achieve the same effects. As humanity’s abilities grow, The Trinity reaps massive profits.
Currently we have a working pre-alpha version of Valiance up and running. It’s been a labor of love for the team over the past year, but with your help it could be so much more! Right now we have a group of passionate gamers building VO, all of whom have volunteered their time and creative energies in the belief that together we can create a new superhero MMORPG for everyone to enjoy.
We are nowhere near finished bringing our vision to life. We will be adding many features to enhance the Valiance experience, such as:
- An evolving game world tied to character choices.
- An open world environment with continuous no-loading between zones.
- Semi-Freeform character build options
- A choice through action system for character alignment- Player run stores and a decentralized market system.
- Additional travel powers including fan favorites like swinging, acrobatics and flash stepping.
- Powers customization options
- A flexible and customizable UI
- Multitudes of costume choices
- Over 25 zones planned, ranging from futuristic city, to island fortress, to Atlantis, to subterranean maze, and all the way into space.
- Player created content
We are gamers, just like yourself, who know and love games. How can we say this? Our talent pool consists of former members of such companies as Zenimax, Origin Systems Inc, Turbine, Image Comics, Bethesda Softworks, FASA, Ubisoft, Hewlett Packard, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Sony, IBM, Cryptic, Disney, Adult Swim, Coca-Cola, GSN, and yes, even NASA. Our writers have many decades of experience between them, and multiple degrees. Our sound and music department has credits that include The Last of Us: The Fireflies, and the recently produced Nightwing web series. We have access to MMO and server technology that has been 8 years in development and combined we have decades of experience in designing, building, running and playing games. We are volunteers, but make no mistake, we are not amateurs. We were brought together not only by the loss of our beloved City of Heroes, but by a common goal: not simply to resurrect a lost game with cheap cut and paste tactics, but instead to give you what you deserve: a game that will honor the memory of what was lost, while living up to the promise of what our City could have been if given time.
Now, you may be wondering “If you’re such heavyweights, why are you on Kickstarter?” The simple answer is because, on average, it costs most companies $10 million to develop an MMO from conception to launch. We’ve made it halfway into production with $3,700, and a tremendous amount of time, patience and effort from everyone involved. Unfortunately, we’re reaching the end of what we can do on such a miniscule budget, so now we need your help.
The short answer is, if it’s part of game development, these funds will help pay for it. Specifically, we need to pay for servers so that you all have a place to play. We need to hire a dedicated team of programmers, artists, animators and modelers to create the world you’ll belong to. We need to license software in order for the team to build the world and upgrade hardware so we can push our creation further. We need to pay our writers so they can fill the world with immersive content.
ADD ON REWARDS!!
In Tune - $10 - Download the Valiance Online Musical Score by John Scigulinsky
Decked out - $10 - Get the Exclusive Kickstarter Cape Design
In like Flynn - $10 - Guaranteed Beta Access
Immigrant - $15 One Month Citizen Access
Shiny! - $20 - Get the Exclusive Kickstarter Aura and the cape
Mascot - $25 - Vanity Pet |
The Breakdown explains what's behind Southern California business and economic news. It describes the effects the headlines have on you: whether you're an investor, a business owner, an employee, homeowner, consumer or just someone who wants to know how to save a buck.
Some thoughts from Fred Wilson's blog:
So it seems to me and my colleagues...that an alternative currency with roots in peer to peer networks and based on an algorithm that is transparent to everyone is an idea whose time has come. The question remains if the Bitcoin algorithm or some other algorithm (possibly a derivative of the Bitcoin algorithm that deals with some of Bitcoin's weaknesses?) will ultimately win out. That's an important issue that has a lot to do with when this space becomes investable. But Bitcoin or something else, I'm confident we'll see the emergence of currencies that are not controlled by nation states in my lifetime. Whether that is a good thing or not remains to be seen. I think it is, but there are significant ramifications that will result from the decoupling of currencies from governments. And one of them is an interesting investment opportunity that we hope to participate in.
This idea is extremely attractive to folks in the tech realm. I had a long argument with a smart, tech-y person at about the time that Bitcoin was at its peak, insisting that it would be impossible to control a crypto- or cybercurrency in terms of inflation. I may have been right in the global sense but exactly wrong in the details, as Bitcoin appears to provoke more worry due to its potential for deflationary illiquidity.
That sounds impenetrable and ultra-wonky, I know. Basically it means that at some point nobody wants the currency because they can't figure out what it's worth, nor predict when massive amounts of it will be introduced and taken out of a market. It loses its utility as a storehouse of value, as Tim Worstall explain here in Forbes.
Currency trading will make your head hurt in a hurry, but essentially what this implies is that if you "buy" a certain number of bitcoins, you could easily lose your ability to exchange those bitcoins for another medium exchange, like dollars, in the future.
Completely. Your bitcoins will become digital scrip, worth exactly nothing.
Part of this may now have something to do with bitcoin's immaturity. To me, it functions — or functioned — more like a dollar derivative that "traded" off the conventional books. And then just like the derivatives that became worthless during the financial crisis, when the underlying subprime mortgage assets were shown to be toxic collateral, it's value, which was largely speculative, collapsed.
The issue for Fred really seems to be potentially investing in a currency that isn't nationally controlled and that tends toward absolute transparency. You don't need a government to back the medium of exchange.
But this is really more political than financial. I don't know, it could come to pass. In fact, it might, if algorithmic maturation in the crypto-currency space happens. But then again, some of these problems could be technologically daunting. Bitcoin's flaws aren't so much technical as they are philosophical. The basic question is, "Can we keep bitcoin liquid?"
And liquidity is the toughest thing in finance to nail down. It's just so esoteric. In fact, it could be the only thing in finance that's of the state of nature — so based in the chaos of human behavior that it just kind of happens. Something is liquid because it's...liquid.
Or else it's purely a meta-concept, something that doesn't exist but stands for a phenomenon that does, like "exchange," with value coming from the movement of goods and services among participants in a market.
I'll admit that liquidity is the one concept in finance that I really struggle to understand. I thought I was just missing some profound chunk of brain matter on this one and figured that I needed to grow extra synapses or something.
But then I read Emanuel Derman's book "Models. Behaving. Badly," the most thought-provoking account of the financial crisis I've yet seen — and a book that I've had a tough time getting out of my head. Derman, in something of an offhand way, confirms that liquidity is a real conundrum:
[T]he shattering risks to firms and systems come from illiquidity and contagion. No one quite knows what liquidity really is, and so there’s no good model of it. (Liquidity is a metaphor based on fluids. People define it by its proxies – bid-ask, average daily volume, market impact etc, which are features of but aren’t actually liquidity itself.)
Derman is a physicist who spent many years at Goldman Sachs, doing "quant" work and applying complex mathematical models to financial products and services. If he says that nobody knows what liquidity is, then I believe him.
When I read Fred's Bitcoin post, I immediately thought of the liquidity question, per Derman. All currencies are sort of combinations of features, but in Bitcoin's case, it's the notion that crypto-currency is somehow controlled in a distributed rather than centralized manner that seems to make up most of its appeal.
In this way, I think it's illiquidity waiting to happen. And of course illiquidity did doom Bitcoin 1.0.
Any future version that actually works would have to solve this problem. Probably by striking a compromise between distributed and centrally managed value.
But anyway, thanks to Fred for making me think about this. Again.
Follow Matthew DeBord and the DeBord Report on Twitter. |
MONTREAL—First, the Conservatives decided that it was good politics for the prime minister to use a pit stop in Quebec earlier this month to champion a ban on the wearing of face coverings at citizenship ceremonies. No sooner had Stephen Harper announced his government would appeal a Federal court ruling supportive of the right to wear a niqab at such ceremonies that his party set out to raise funds on the issue. If imitation is the sincerest from of flattery, Harper’s brain trust must be feeling pretty good for the Bloc Québécois has now embraced the prime minister’s stance with a passion. In an attack ad launched this week, the sovereigntist party notes that Thomas Mulcair has taken the opposite position and asks whether one must hide one’s face to vote for the NDP. With two of Canada’s federal parties determined to score pre-election points on the back of a practice that is exclusive to a minority of Muslim women at a time when emotions are running high as a result of the actions of Islamic extremists, what could possibly go wrong?
Article Continued Below
For the answer to that question one might ask Rania El-Alloul. The Montreal resident went to court on Tuesday to apply to get her car back after it was seized by the Quebec automobile insurance board and, instead, was scolded for wearing a headscarf. According to justice Eliana Marengo, there is no place for anything religious (save perhaps a Bible?) in a court of law. Moreover, in her book, wearing a hijab to court is as inappropriate as sporting sunglasses. When El-Alloul declined to take her scarf off the judge adjourned her case indefinitely.
The story does not say whether Marengo would have meted out the same treatment to an applicant wearing a Catholic veil or a Jewish kippa. Or whether the sound of official silence that initially greeted this episode would have been as deafening if the plaintiff had been other than Muslim. The chief justice of the Quebec Court, through a spokesperson, stated that there was no ban on religious clothing in her jurisdiction but added that individual judges were free to set a dress code in their courts. Quebec’s minister of justice Stéphanie Vallée took refuge behind a wall of judicial silence. She may have been waiting for her boss, Premier Philippe Couillard, to come out and say that he was “disturbed” by the incident. That happened when he met the media to discuss the latest changes to his cabinet late Friday morning.
Article Continued Below
At that point, almost a day after the story broke, Canada’s normally hyperactive minister for multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, had yet to devote a single tweet to the issue. All that in the face of a strong body of legal expertise that argues a) that justice Marengo did not have a judicial leg to stand on and b) that she likely trampled on El-Alloul’s fundamental rights. For that advice, legal experts can expect to be vilified in many quarters. That’s what happened when Liberal and NDP leaders Justin Trudeau and Mulcair questioned Harper’s decision to jump in front of the anti-niqab parade. On Thursday evening Trudeau was also lambasted for tweeting his dismay at the Quebec court episode. When Harper made his niqab announcement, the application for a mosque by Shawinigan’s local Muslim community had just been turned down by the local city council for fear of a public backlash. Since then, François Legault, the leader of Quebec’s third party, has floated the notion that a police investigation should take place before such applications are granted. The Coalition Avenir Quebec also wants Charter rights to be amended to prohibit the dissemination of “non-Quebec” values. It is not clear who Legault thinks is qualified to determine which values are worthy of Quebec’s stamp of approval. A poll published this week by the COGECO radio network reported that two-thirds of Quebecers do not want a mosque in their neighborhood. At the time of the debate over the Parti Québécois’s charter and its attending imposition of a secular dress code on all public sector employees last year, there was evidence that one of the collateral consequences of the discussion was to inflame anti-Muslim prejudices. It is on those embers that the Conservatives and the Bloc are pouring fuel. Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Read more about: |
The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island is a 1981 made-for-television comedy film. It is the third of three movies that reunited the cast of the 1964–67 sitcom Gilligan's Island. The film aired on NBC on May 15, 1981.
Synopsis [ edit ]
The former castaways own and operate a vacation resort on the formerly-deserted island, called "The Castaways", which was introduced in the previous film, The Castaways on Gilligan's Island. Thurston Howell III has some business in the mainlands and his son Thurston Howell IV came to the island and runs the hotel business, while his father is working. The Harlem Globetrotters, a traveling troupe of merry basketball players, are on a plane ride over the Pacific Ocean when it has engine trouble and they are forced into an emergency landing onto Gilligan's Island. The Castaways heard about the news on Mr Howell's private TV. After a brief time struggling in the jungle, they are discovered by Gilligan and Skipper and welcomed to "The Castaways." The Castaways play a fun game against the Globetrotters, and are soundly defeated, with the Globetrotters thinking to themselves this group has little basketball ability.
Meanwhile, J.J. Pierson, a corporate raider and the worst business rival of Thurston Howell III, has a plan to bamboozle the owners of The Castaways (Gilligan and his friends) into signing over ownership to him, as the island contains "supremium", an ore which provides large sources of energy. He uses a robot to try to scare them away, by various attempts of sabotage, and then tricks most of the castaways into signing the island over to him. Eventually Gilligan and the Skipper uncover the conspiracy, before the signature of Thurston Howell IV is obtained, and Mr. Howell forces Pierson to agree to tear up the fraudulent contracts if the Globetrotters play his team, the New Invincibles, which is a team of robot players. Notable sports broadcasters Chick Hearn and Stu Nahan appear as part of the basketball game scene, with Hearn calling the play-by-play action of the climactic showdown.
The Globetrotters have no idea how to defeat a team of robots. The Professor is at a loss on how to defeat them until Gilligan unknowingly remarks that the Globetrotters have not done any tricks, causing the Professor to give a halftime pep talk to the Globetrotters that the New Invincibles would be caught off-guard. The Globetrotters start scoring against the New Invincibles, but when injuries sideline a couple of the players, the team will forfeit unless they can find replacements, and they need Gilligan and Skipper to serve as substitute players. At the moment before the game expires, Gilligan makes the winning shot. Pierson then remarks the outcome of the game does not matter, for while everyone was watching the game he ordered the supremium removed from the mine and loaded onto his boat. The Professor warns that supremium is a very unstable element outside of its natural surroundings. J.J. Pierson realizes this too late as the supremium explodes and sinks his yacht, leaving him penniless. As everyone celebrates, Thurston Howell III return from his business trip. The elder Howell commends the Harlem Globetrotters for saving the island and the castaways for their teamwork, and gives thanks to the younger Howell for proving himself an adept manager of the resort.
Cast [ edit ]
The Harlem Globetrotters [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
In the original series, the Howells are childless. Despite this, a new character of Thurston Howell IV (the Howells' son, portrayed by David Ruprecht) was added due to the failing health of actor Jim Backus, who was unable to reprise his role. Sherwood Schwartz felt it would hurt Backus too much to recast Thurston Howell III with another actor, so instead, he was written out of the script by saying he was tending to business on the mainland United States and his son was managing the island resort in his place. Schwartz was impressed with Ruprecht's performance in maintaining a Howell-like persona, without being an imitation of Backus. In an effort to keep up continuity, Backus insisted that he felt well enough to make a cameo appearance and he is featured briefly at the end, claiming to have returned from his mainland business. Sherwood Schwartz and Dawn Wells both recalled how emotional it was, on set that day, as Jim filmed his short scene. He was weakened, and very shaky, as Natalie Schafer helped him onscreen, but Jim still dominated his character as before. After he finished, Ruprecht helped him walk offscreen, and he asked Dawn "Was I funny?" Dawn assured him that he was, although it broke her heart to see how weakened he had become, not to be able to tell. As Jim left the set with his longtime wife, Henny, and his caretaker, there was an emotional round of applause for him, from the cast and crew, many of whom were in tears. Jim, also in tears, stopped, and responded to the applause by blowing kisses to everybody, before leaving.
Neither of the previous actresses who played Ginger agreed to reprise their role in this film. Bob Denver's wife, Dreama, having previously appeared on an episode as a cavewoman, appeared as Lucinda, Mrs. Howell's overly-punctual secretary.
This would be the final performance together of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, the husband and wife team best known for their starring roles in Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999. They divorced in 1993.
Like the original sitcom, The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island featured a laugh track. |
Intel intends to invest $300 million in a push for the development of thin and light laptops that can go for days on standby and still sell for under $1,000. The company refers to this class of computers as "ultrabooks," laptops that would be positioned to compete with devices like the MacBook Air or the iPad.
Ideally, this research money would go toward developing computers that are under an inch thick, with robust batteries and very short startup times, Intel says. But the sub-$1,000 price point appears equally as important as the other factors, and it's one that will be difficult to achieve in a device that must necessarily include a solid-state drive if it wants to achieve a quick startup time.
Intel isn't the first to get behind the concept of an ultrabook: Asus showed its 2.4-pound "ultrabook" with a 13-inch screen, U100 SSD, and Core i7 CPU at Computex in May, and pegged the price as sub-$1,000. By the end of 2012, Intel is aiming to convert 40 percent of available laptop models to an ultrabook format, making "mobile computers into the next 'must have' device," Intel Executive Vice President Arvind Sodhani told Bloomberg Businessweek, in evident hopes that the company will be able to pull consumers back from the burgeoning tablet market.
The $300 million fund will be spent over the next three or four years; for its part, Intel will keep creating processors that draw less battery power. But the ultrabook is not far from market; Intel says the first generation will hit shelves by this holiday shopping season. |
In the evenings, Donna Munson liked to sit in front of her picture window and watch the bears amble toward her Ouray County log cabin for dinner.
The 74-year-old woman — who stocked her backyard with dog food, fruit and yogurt — was found dead outside her home Friday, being eaten by a bear.
It was still unknown Saturday whether a bear killed Munson or whether one or more animals consumed part of her body after her death. But people who knew her said she was an eccentric wildlife lover who had been feeding bears, elk, skunks and raccoons for years.
Munson, who rented half of her home in southwestern Colorado to several people over the years, told one of them that “when the time came, she wanted to go out with the bears.”
“She was a very sweet lady,” said Tammy York of Paonia, who rented part of Munson’s house several years ago. “She just loved nature. She probably shouldn’t have been alone out there in her state.”
Colorado Division of Wildlife agents had asked Munson so many times over the past decade to stop feeding bears that she quit taking their phone calls or accepting their certified letters and tried to ban them from her property.
Neighbors complained about a growing number of bears in the hills, ransacking trash cans and even trying to break into houses this summer. Still, Munson kept feeding the bears.
Two of the bruins were shot and killed by Ouray County sheriff’s deputies Friday while they investigated Munson’s death. Deputies said the animals were threatening and had no fear of people.
Two other bears were captured and euthanized in July after a caretaker at Munson’s cabin complained they were too aggressive. Division of Wildlife authorities caught them both the first day they set traps.
“We tried to do everything possible to gain her cooperation,” said Tyler Baskfield, DOW spokesman. “Obviously, this is a situation that everybody feels bad about, but it illustrates what can happen.”
Bears fed by humans lose their instinct to fear people and “they expect that food source to continue,” he said.
“Not only are you putting yourself at risk, you’re putting anyone else who may come in contact with that animal at risk because they are expecting a handout,” Baskfield said.
The night before her death, Munson planned to feed an injured baby bear hard-boiled eggs and yogurt, another former tenant said. And she had planned to swat a large bear that was bothering the baby bear with a broom.
“She didn’t have a chance in hell,” said Connie Barnes, who lived with Munson for five years and never went outside after dark without a spotlight, her husband and his BB gun.
Munson lived in the cabin, which bordered federal land, with her husband, “Ridgway Jack,” until his death about 14 years ago, Barnes said. Jack Munson adopted a baby elk and made their home into an animal sanctuary, even letting a fawn sleep in his bed, Barnes said.
Donna Munson continued caring for animals after her husband’s death, leaving a tub of cat food on her picnic table for critters and tossing food in the backyard and out her windows for bears. The elderly woman, who used a walker, bought giant bags of Ol’ Roy dog food for the bears and had pallets of grain delivered for elk and deer, Barnes said.
“She had skunks that came in her house,” Barnes said. “It sounds ridiculous to people, but you had to know her. She was a very loving woman, so much into animals.”
Two women who cleaned Munson’s home found her being eaten by a bear Friday, Barnes said.
A necropsy performed on a 250-pound male bear was inconclusive. A necropsy on the other bear killed Friday is ongoing. The Montrose County coroner is performing an autopsy on Munson.
Folks in Ouray and Ridgway, two towns near Munson’s house, were upset about the bear deaths and the public safety risk caused by Munson.
“These bears are now not going to be fed and they are going to go to other houses looking for food,” said Kate Singer, owner of Kate’s Place, a cafe in downtown Ridgway. “More bears are going to be killed because of what this woman did. It’s a bad situation, and people are not happy about it.”
Munson had enclosed her porch with wire fencing for protection. York, her former tenant, said Munson had the fence installed when York and her two children, ages 1 and 4 at the time, moved in with her.
The bears would come within 6 feet of the porch and peer in the windows.
“We were in the zoo,” she recalled, saying she moved out after about a year because the animals — especially the skunks — “got to be too much.” While she lived there, a bear busted York’s car window and left bite marks in her seat trying to get some leftover french fries.
Munson would be devastated by the bears’ deaths, York said.
“That’s the worst part,” she said. “That would be horrible for her if she knew what her death had meant to the bears.”
Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593 or [email protected] |
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi today greeted the Muslims at the beginning of the holy month of Ramzan, a move that invited criticism from the Congress, which said, "they will do anything to get votes".
"Happy Ramzan. May this holy month bring joy, peace and prosperity in our lives," Modi wrote on his twitter account, extending warm greetings to the Muslims.
Modi, who has been fighting hard to erase the taint of the 2002 communal riots, was recently elevated as chief of the BJP's Election Campaign Committee and his greetings to the Muslims is being seen as part of his image makeover ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Reacting to Modi's tweet, Gujarat Congress president Arjun Modhwadia, without naming any party or individual, said, "They will do anything to get votes. They will rake up the Ram temple issue and then drop it. They will say that Mohammed Ali Jinnah was secular. They will burn Sachar committee report and they will extend greetings on Ramzan."
Happy Ramzan. May this holy month bring joy, peace & prosperity in our lives. — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 11, 2013
"Yeh janata hai, yeh sab jaanti hai (the public knows everything)," he added.
Modhwadia also took to Twitter to extended Ramzan greetings, saying "Ramzan Mubarak to everyone. May this holy month bring peace and prosperity to all."
ALSO READ CBI sought part RTI exemption, Govt gave it full
Please read our terms of use before posting comments |
Baseball has had its share of colorful characters over the years. Yogi Berra, Bo Belinsky, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. The list goes on and on.
Now we have Joe Biagini. The 25-year-old former 26th-round pick is pitching out of the Blue Jays bullpen after making the team as a Rule 5 pick out of the Giants organization. His personality might best be described as playfully irreverent. Biagini throws mid-90s heat with his right hand, but his quips, which come fast and furious, are straight out of left field.
Biagini shared his atypical story, and some gloriously-sarcastic one liners, when Toronto visited Fenway Park over the weekend.
———
Biagini on his surprising rise to the big leagues: “I think everything up to this point has been a surprise. Right now, it’s a surprise honor to get to speak to you and answer your questions. Honestly.
“When I was in college, I really wasn’t that good of a baseball player. My junior year at (California) Davis, after I transferred from a junior college, and was coming off Tommy John surgery, I had an 11.00 ERA for most of the year. Then I got it way down to 7-something by the end.
“The last day of the season, I came in to pitch and did bad. I got hit around a bunch. It was my birthday. My dad was there and he was looking at my velocity. The radar gun was off — it showed mid-80s — but we didn’t know that. We were like, ‘Ah, man.’
“A scout, Keith Snider from the Giants, came down after the game. I was disappointed — I was all mad — but he was like, ‘Hey, you were throwing pretty well out there.’ I was like, ‘Really? Are you sure you’re talking about me?’ I wondered if maybe there was a guy behind me. It turns out I had been throwing harder than I thought.”
On fixing his mechanics after Tommy John surgery: “I really started throwing harder at the beginning of my junior year. The successful surgery certainly didn’t hurt that — it wasn’t a negative reason I started throwing harder — but the mechanical work I did was more important.
“I’d been really screwed up mechanically. I was caving in my back knee. I was leaning back a lot and then pulling my head off. Basically, I was putting a lot of pressure on my elbow and shoulder. If I hadn’t changed my mechanics — if I hadn’t fixed what caused the first one — I’d have had another one.”
On being drafted by, and signing with, the Giants: “I really didn’t think I was ready to go professional. But I went to the Cape [Cod League] and somehow put together a good Cape. The Giants said, ‘Even though you think you’re not going to sign, we still may draft you.’ That’s what happened. It was pretty cool getting drafted by my hometown team.
“I hadn’t been sure if anybody would be drafting me, let alone who. It was a little bit of a surprise, but at the same time, it wasn’t out of nowhere. It was more, ‘Wow, what was the likelihood of that?’ I was still thinking I’d probably go back to school, but I got an offer that was better than I thought I was going to get. I thought, ‘Well… that’s pretty good.”
On playing in the minor leagues: “I hated it. Just kidding. No, but I went directly to Low-A. I don’t know why. Maybe there was a mix up with the paperwork? Or maybe they thought I was good-looking? So, I pitched part of a season there, did bad, and was sent down to short-season. The next year, I went back to Low-A and didn’t do very good that time, either. The next year, somehow, they gave me a shot in High-A.
“I actually did do a little better my second year [in Low-A]. I felt I was improving. At the same time, I was weak mentally. There wasn’t a lot of good stuff going on. Going into my third year, I really worked on my mindset. I made some improvements, and that’s where things started to pick up for me a little bit.”
On adopting a different mindset: “I’m not a huge cliche fan, but I can’t deny that baseball is 90% mental. Yogi Berra, you know. Honestly, it’s true. It’s so funny. The higher I’ve gotten up, the simpler my mindset and approach have been, the more mentally strong I’ve had to be. I’ve had to be in tune with the mental, because that has a huge effect on the physical.
“I used to be the complete opposite. My first couple of years, I was all about mechanics. I thought if I did all of the mechanics correctly, everything would be great. That’s what I was thinking about on the mound. Ironically, coming off the surgery, I kind of had to.
“I got into this mode where I was stuck in my mechanics. I was always thinking about them, rather than just attacking hitters. After that second bad year in Augusta, I said to myself, ‘I’m sick of this. I’d rather not play than play like this.’ It had become a mental travesty. I didn’t want baseball to not be fun, so I really challenged myself to get into the right mindset.
“I’m really close to my dad with the baseball thing — he played in the minor leagues for the Giants for a couple of years — and he’s been there every step of the way. I talked to him about it. I prayed about it. I read some books about it. My coaches mentioned it, of course, but in the end you have to take ownership.”
On confidence and aggression: “I was never like a hot-head guy. I’m actually trying to get more like that, to be honest. I’m kind of joking, but kind of not. It’s good to be competitive. Not that you want to be a jerk. But I guess I was always very low self-esteem, low confidence, negative, pessimistic, bad attitude about everything. I was taking the glass-is-half-empty approach.
“Combine that with overthinking everything… I still do that in all the other areas of my life, unfortunately. But in baseball, I’ve made an improvement on that, pretty much out of desperation. To actually tap into that simplistic, attacking, aggressive mindset — that’s kind of been my motto the last couple of years.”
On learning that he was selected in the Rule 5: “I went to a palm reader the night before, and she told me… That’s not true either. I’d actually been sleeping. It was early in the morning — we were out in California — but my dad tuned in halfway through the broadcast. The first thing he heard was, ‘Right-handed pitcher from the San Francisco Giants, selected by the Toronto Blue Jays…’ and the other guy said, ‘Can you spell that name?’
“My dad let me know. I wish I could get that kind of wake-up call every day. It would be easier to get out of bed. It was definitely a good way to start a day. It was like a shot of espresso.”
On his big-league debut and pitching at Fenway Park: “Pitching in this environment is something you picture yourself doing. For years, it’s like that, then all of sudden it’s, ‘You made the team. Hey, let’s go.’ Suddenly it’s legitimized.
“[My debut] was boring. No, not really. It was the home opener, so there were something like 50,000 people there. My family was there. I got the game ball and gave it to my dad. But the game itself… I felt something when I walked to the mound. I don’t know what it was. Honestly, the only time I wasn’t nervous was when I was on the mound, actually pitching. I was able to tap into the mindset, that comfortability, that I’ve worked so hard to attain.
“I’m not sure [what it was like pitching at Fenway Park]. I’m not sure if it actually happened or not. It might be a conspiracy, like The Matrix or something. I remember thinking to myself in between batters, ‘I can’t believe I’m out here. How did this team let me on their roster? It’s crazy.’ So yeah, it was cool. This place is kind of like the cathedral of baseball.”
On his major in college: “Finger-painting. Just kidding. I went into college as a political-science major, but changed it to communications. I kind of wanted to do media, TV production type of stuff, but that’s kind of a tough field to get into. I guess you’d know that? I took some sociology and psychology classes, too. I shaded toward those areas a little but. But I’m still not sure what I’m going to do when I grow up. Right now it’s baseball, and hopefully I get to stay here for awhile.” |
RAMSEY COUNTY, MN — Police say a man grabbed a woman's butt cheek and masturbated in front of her and two children while at the Minnesota State Fair's CHS Miracle of Birth Center. The Ramsey County Attorney's Office Tuesday charged Jeffrey Pendzimas, 62, with two counts of criminal sexual conduct in the fifth degree in connection with an incident at the Minnesota State Fair Monday afternoon.
According to the criminal complaint, a woman, 31, who had been watching chickens hatch at the CHS Miracle of Birth Center with her son and nephew, felt a hand reach into her shorts from the bottom. The hand squeezed the skin of the woman's butt cheek in a cupping motion, the complaint states.
The woman turned around and made eye contact with Pendzimas, thinking it was an accident, according to police. Authorities say the woman moved away before she turned and looked at Pendzimas who was standing right behind her.
The woman saw Pendzimas making up and down motion with his hands as if he were playing with himself, according to the complaint. Pendzimas then allegedly lifted his shirt exposing his penis which he actively stroked while it was sticking out of his zipper.
The complaint states the woman covered the eyes of her son and nephew, who had turned in Pendzimas' direction, and screamed at the top of her lungs, "What are you doing? That man has his penis out!" Pendzimas turned around and fled, according to police.
The woman told officers she would definitely be able to identify the man were she to see him again. An officer later turned Pendzimas to face the woman, who said, "Yes, that is the sick f--- that showed me his small penis." The woman later told police that the two children with her had seen Pendzimas masturbating, according to the criminal complaint.
Pendzimas will make his first appearance Wednesday afternoon in Ramsey County District Court in Saint Paul, according to a news release.
Read the entire criminal complaint below:
(For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Minnesota Patch, click here to find your local Minnesota Patch. Also, follow us on Facebook , and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)
Image via Ramsey County Sheriff's Office |
Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
MIDLAND COUNTY, Texas (Local 2/Fox 24) - A festival many look forward to each year had decided to sit out in 2018.
According to a release from Crude Fest, organizers confirm they will not be holding the festival next year.
Organizers cite the economic environment and expenses as the main cause.
The statement reads:
" To our fans: all of us here at Crude Fest thank you and really appreciate your loyal support over the past eight years. Unfortunately, however, the festival will not be returning in 2018. Long story short, it's just become too expensive and too difficult to produce in the current economic environment. That said, we will look at opportunities to return at a different time and location."
The organizers continued in the statement thanking the community for the support and the memories |
Diego Costa (centre) was taken off injured against PSG
Guus Hiddink has confirmed both Diego Costa and Eden Hazard are injury doubts for Saturday's FA Cup quarter-final at Everton, after the pair came off in the second half of Chelsea's 2-1 defeat to Paris Saint-Germain.
Costa was substituted with 30 minutes remaining in the game and went straight down the tunnel to receive treatment, while Hazard came off after 77 minutes.
Hiddink confirmed both players will be assessed by the club's medical staff at Chelsea's training ground on Thursday to see if they stand a chance of playing at Goodison Park.
Oscar of Chelsea comes on as a second half substitute for Eden Hazard (right)
"We'll see if there is big damage tomorrow," Hiddink told reporters after the game. "Diego was desperate to play today although he was not 100 per cent fit.
"I don't know it's worse, we'll see tomorrow. In two days we have to play another game."
Costa, who had been labeled a 'fraud' in a post on one of PSG's official social media accounts in the build-up to the game, scored against his antagonists but it was not enough to keep Chelsea in the competition.
Costa (left) scored an equaliser on the night for Chelsea before his injury
The FA Cup is now the only competition they can win in what has been a nightmare season.
On the prospect of not playing another Champions League game for at least 18 months, Hiddink reflected: "Chelsea is now in a transition period, that's true, it's difficult to get into fourth position now.
"Chelsea must consider it's short-term future now and how to handle this, but they knew that beforehand." |
A video recently uploaded by MDOT offers a glimpse into how the department helped keep the roads clear in the 1930s. (Photo: moodboard/thinkstock)
Winter in Michigan in the 1930s was rough.
Uploaded to YouTube on Feb. 1, the video titled “Winter Comes to Michigan” helps offer a glimpse into what it was like to keep the roads clear more than 80 years ago. At least, that’s how it looks in a recent video shared by the Michigan Department of Transportation.
The video opens with a forward saying, “Winter maintenance is a gigantic task for heroic men and efficient machines. It is a public service fraught with grave responsibilities.”
But it also features some of the fun, with scenes of ice skating, skiing and sledding.
According to the YouTube page, MDOT said the newsreel was “recently discovered by sisters Nancy and Barbara Sleeper of Newberry, whose grandfather, Sanborn Sleeper, was the superintendent of the Luce County Road Commission from 1928 until sometime around World War II.”
MDOT added that the family donated the film to show the time when future Gov. Murray Van Wagoner ran the Michigan State Highway Department from 1933 to 1940.
Watch it here:
Read or Share this story: http://on.lsj.com/1T0BDiT |
7 Shares
Even in the face of an apparent economic recovery, many millions of people are stagnating in their jobs, unable to get a promotion or to move to a more promising position with a competing company. Many more are still unemployed or even under-employed. That may be the reality of our time, but should we sit still and wait for better times? Is that even a strategy?
Cutting living expenses is one way to deal with a comatose employment situation, but I’ve argued in the past that frugality has its limits. When all is said and done, you can only cut your expenses so much before finding new income sources becomes an absolute necessity.
If you aren’t content to continue to just muddle through, and want to make things happen in your life, increasing the number of income streams will be the most constructive way forward. And starting a side business is the single best way to do this.
How can starting a side business build a better future?
Moving forward in an uncertain job market
Job security is a thing of the past. We could write books about how that’s playing out but it’s completely unnecessary. The more important issue is how we deal with that reality?
If jobs are uncertain, the best thing we can do is to prepare ourselves for self-employment. Since most people have never been self-employed, the lowest risk way to do this is to begin a business as a side venture while you’re still employed by your company. You’ll have the cash flow from your job, and that will give you as much time as you need to get your business up and make it profitable.
If you haven’t been promoted in a long time, and there’s little prospect of getting a better job elsewhere, it’s time to get started with a side business now. In time, your business can grow into a full time venture. And even if it doesn’t, and it merely functions as a part time business, it can either supplement your income or be one source among several income streams in the event you lose your primary job entirely.
Coping with the rising cost of living
Despite official declarations of an inflation rate sitting reliably within the 1-4% range, the cost of goods and services that we need—food, energy, utilities, healthcare and education have soared. If you aren’t being promoted, and the raises you get are only of the token variety, you’ll have to increase your income outside your job. A side business is a logical way to do this.
Retirement planning
Will Social Security be there when our turn to retire comes around? I think so, but it will almost certainly be at a level well below what today’s retirees are enjoying. Maybe it will be pushed out to age 70, or maybe it will be means-tested—we can’t know. And as pretty as self-directed retirement plan projections are, none can adequately account for the effects of one or more stock market crashes, or of a prolonged period of unemployment.
A successful side business can provide a workable Plan B against these possibilities. It can be a much needed income stream to supplement a reduced Social Security check and a less than expected return on a 401k. This is real life—even in retirement we’ll need options.
Building up savings and investments
It’s tough enough stretching a paycheck to cover necessary living expenses and—hopefully—a little bit for extras. But savings and investing can be lost in the course of just surviving! There always seems to be yet another bill to pay, another unexpected expense soaking up every extra dollar.
Often, the only way to develop a serious savings and investment plan is to create another income stream to fund it. A side business can provide the source not only for building savings, but also to pay down and pay off debt, and to increase investments for retirement.
Bringing out your “inner entrepreneur”
Do you ever dare to ask yourself ”what do I truly want to do with my life?” It can be a lot of fun, but it often gets short-circuited on the but-I-have-bills-to-pay issue. And yet despite this cold dose of reality, most of us are fascinated by the possibilities. Deep inside, we all sense that we could be more than we are–if only…
Why is it important to be an entrepreneur? If we can’t rely on jobs to provide for our futures, then we need to rely on ourselves! That almost certainly means some form of self-employment. But beyond the question of earning a living, self-actualization is a very real human need. We all want to be the captains of our own ships “some day”, to create our own unique paintings of our lives.
If you don’t feel that that’s happening through your main occupation, a side business gives you another shot. Who do you want to be in your life and your occupation? Maybe the answer to that question is closer than you think. A side business may provide that answer—and a whole bunch of other good things along the way.
If you think that building a side business may be the right path for you, but you don’t know what kind of business to go into, check out my post, The Freelance Blog Writer Side Hustle. Blog writing is one of the most promising side ventures you can enter because it’s growing rapidly and has excellent potential to lead to still more opportunities. Even if you’ve never written professionally in the past, this post can help you get started.
( Photo from Flickr by ObnoxJester ) |
Lemon verbena (Aloysia citrodora) is a fragrant tropical shrub native to Chile and Argentina. It was brought to Europe by Spanish explorers in the 17th century. Its lemon scented oil was used in cosmetics and perfumes until the introduction of lemon grass and its less expensive oil. The Victorians, who were fond of potpourri, loved lemon verbena because its leaves keep their scent for a long time after drying.
Nowadays, the leaves are used in cooking and herbal teas as well as potpourri. The plants can often be found near doorways and close to outdoor living spaces where its foliage releases its refreshing scent each time you brush by.
Lemon verbena is hardy through zone 9. In colder zones, it is often grown in containers and brought indoors during the winter. It grows to a height of 6 feet with a spread of 8 feet in most areas. In tropical gardens, where it never becomes dormant, it can grow to 15 feet. In colder regions, temperatures below 40⁰F cause the leaves to drop and the plant to enter dormancy. Most gardeners wait for the leaves to drop in the fall before bringing their plants indoors. This prevents insects from coming indoors on the leaves as well as the clean-up necessary after the plants drop their leaves from the stress of being transferred into an indoor environment.
Outdoors, lemon verbena likes afternoon shade in tropical areas but full sun in northern areas. Lack of sunlight in colder climates will result in spindly growth and less fragrant leaves. It also does poorly if grown in soil that is not well-drained. Unlike most herbs, lemon verbena should be fertilized regularly during active growth, every four weeks outdoors and every two weeks when grown indoors. It should not be fertilized at all during dormancy.
To successfully grow lemon verbena in a container, you should use a 12-inch pot to allow the roots enough room. After the cold weather sets in and the plant has shed its leaves and entered dormancy, it is best to bring it indoors and place it in a cool dark place. While dormant, you should neither water nor fertilize it. When spring arrives, you can bring your plant outdoors. Sunlight will magically bring your plant back to life and you can resume regular watering and fertilizing.
Lemon verbena has tiny white flowers which grow in sprays at the ends of the branches. They appear in late spring or early summer. They only reliably set seed in the tropics. The flowers each produce 2 seeds. The seeds are not usually viable so propagation is done vegetatively.
To propagate your shrub, you want to take basal cuttings which are cuttings that are made at the base of the shoots where they join the crown of the plant. These type of cuttings root very easily. For best results, you should take basal cuttings while the plant is actively growing in the summer. If you wait until fall when growth is slowing, the cuttings will take much longer to root. |
Venom is coming back to the Marvel Universe in a big way — first in February's Amazing Spider-Man #654.1, then in the new Venom ongoing from writer Rick Remender and artist Tony Moore, debuting in March.
We talked with Remender last month and learned the broad strokes of the title — that it casts Venom as a globetrotting super-spy on black-ops missions for the military — but there's still a lot that we don't know, like who is the latest host for the famous symbiote. While we may not get that question answered, we'll find out a lot more aboutin Marvel's latest "Next Big Thing" conference call with the press, featuring Remender and Marvel senior editor Steve Wacker. The call should be starting soon, and in the meantime, enjoy some new interior pages from issue #1 by Moore — plus some covers, including one for #4 by Mike Deodato. For live coverage of the call, follow along in the box below:cover
by Joe Quesada.
variant
cover by Paulo Siqueira.
cover
by Tony Moore.
cover
by Mike Deodato. |
Machine’s Dominance Continues: 2014 Great Lakes Regional Recap (Men’s)
The top seeds took care of business at Great Lakes Regionals.
WESTCHESTER, OH — As teams descended on Westchester this past weekend for the Great Lakes Regional Championship, the excitement around the tournament, and indeed the country, was muted. Chicago Machine, the overwhelming favorite to win the region, looked to have a stranglehold on the title and the one bid to Frisco.
Yet as Saturday and Sunday dawned, each day windier than the last, and games became close and hard-fought, there was at least some hope for an upset. A few even imagined a possibility of a closely contested game to go to Nationals.
This was not to be the case. Chicago Machine, if anything, only cemented their status as a team to be reckoned with come October.
For the rest, it became about fighting for pride and position as the tournament unfolded.
Upsets Await?
Saturday saw warmer weather than the region had seen in a week, along with bright sunshine, and gusty conditions. The tournament was buzzing early, as in the first round it appeared one of the top teams was going to fall to an upset.
Columbus Madcow was surprised out of the gate by a strong Enigma team from Dayton; in a fierce, mostly upwind-downwind game, Enigma played without fear. They challenged their in-state competitors and hoped to knock them off early. Enigma built a strong lead, mixing zone and man looks and capitalizing on mistakes from Madcow to earn some upwind breaks.
The score stood Enigma 11- Madcow 9 in a game to 12 and most fans thought the wind had already helped create the first upset. But Madcow deserves a ton of credit for their grit and determination. They scored an offensive point going upwind to make the game 10-11 and then broke downwind to tie the game at 11’s, forcing double game point. The final point featured Enigma going downwind on offense, but they made a huck turn and Madcow didn’t lose the disc again, winning 12-11.
Enigma, drained by the game, would lose to a confident Black Market before pulling a one point win away in their final pool play game against Jurassic Shark. They would then win their pre-quarter before facing Machine in quarterfinals and losing to Haymaker in the lower bracket to end their solid tournament.
The upsets — hoped for by many of the second-tier teams — didn’t materialize in the first round. They never really showed up at all.
Taking Care of Business
Later that day, Madcow would have another close call. After beating Jurassic Shark handily, Black Market, the team out of the suburbs of Chicago and recent Sectional champion, went stride for stride with the previous Nationals qualifiers.
Black Market, with some excellent throws from their top handlers, could move the disc well in the wind, hucking even against the gusts–and the cutters were close enough downfield to force turnovers. Black Market broke early on before Madcow recaptured to put it back on serve at half with Black Market leading. Madcow turned it over on almost every offensive point and Black Market got their chances; they had several possessions on the goal line but simply couldn’t put them all in.
This game was tied at 8-8, first to 10, with Black Market receiving the disc and going downwind. Yet Madcow again stormed back to avoid the upset, finishing with a strong upwind huck and then another huck on a downwind point to end the game. Down the stretch, Madcow executed better when it mattered.
Around the other pools, Michigan High Five, while seeming to struggle a bit early, took care of business as their athletes showed their prowess in their second halves. The fourth seed Athens Bro Cats also had tight games early before finishing strong; they went undefeated in pool play as well.
Close matches for the top seeds and the windy conditions made some question whether Machine, who was missing Dave Wiseman and Greg Slover for the tournament, would also struggle to put away their competition, but this simply wasn’t the case.
Machine was dominant on Saturday; besides a few long points where they were forced to a battle (which they almost always won), the players looked polished and confident, despite the conditions. They cruised to three victories with only minimal stress and moved on to quarterfinals and bracket play.
Going to Seed
Close calls and close games on Saturday made things exciting for a brief period of time, but in the end, the top four seeds had all gone undefeated and were guaranteed a bye and a free pass to quarterfinals.
The conditions were even windier on Sunday, becoming more variable and cross-wind for the majority of fields. The closest quarterfinal was Bro Cats’ victory over Beachfront Property of Chicago 12-10. Beachfront played strong on the weekend, avenging a Sectionals final loss against Black Market and took the 5th place game over Haymaker and the Select Flight status that came with it. Besides this close quarterfinal, the other top seeds won very comfortably and the top 4 seeds met in the semifinals.
The semifinal was Machine’s best game of the weekend as they continued to prove how well they could move the disc. Even in these windy conditions, they smashed Bro Cats 15-3 and dominated all phases of the game, forcing turnover after turnover.
High Five, using their athleticism, also pulled away early, having a far easier time than Madcow moving the disc on offense and then putting stifling pressure on Madcow on defense. High Five ruled the skies all weekend long and really did live up to their elite athletic reputation. High Five took the semifinal over Madcow 14-7.
The Championship Game
In the 2013 Regional final, High Five put up a tough fight against Machine before coming up short; High Five then went on to lose their game-to-go to Nationals to Madcow.
This rematch, in 2014, was no contest from the beginning. After a Machine-dominated first half, High Five largely traded points from there on out and the game finished 15-10. Machine is once again Regional Champions and is headed back to Nationals.
“It was very, very windy,” said Machine captain Kevin Kelly in a post-game interview. “We took care of business on offense in the first half and got a couple of breaks early that gave us an arm’s length lead, although there were a couple of long points due to the wind. They (High Five) were very good about cleaning up any throws caught up in the wind. They were hustling and making plays.”
“We have a lot of good throwers on both the O-line and the D-line,” said Kelly. “And we were very smart on offense, able to keep the disc on the high-side and stay smart with it, while defensively forcing the disc to some of their players in high-pressure situations on the trap-side.”
Bob Liu, Tom Annen, and Walden Nelson were especially dominant, moving the disc to the break side early and often. Cutters like Goose Helton, Kelly, and A.J. Nelson also came up with big plays. Consistently, sideline spectators were impressed by the throws coming from both the handlers and cutters given the difficult conditions.
Machine likes to mix it up with man and zone, but preferred using smart man matchups to force the disc out of the hands of High Five’s best throwers. After that, the athletes and defense from Chicago clamped down and got turnovers. Helton, especially, was impressive on defense; he was involved in all six breaks (5 assists and 1 goal).
In the end, Machine was just too much to handle and they won the battle.
As has already been written, High Five was the victim of an arguably flawed ranking bid-allocation system, and came up just short of a second trip to Nationals out of the region. After failing to claim the bid they earned last year, High Five watched a trip to Nationals slip away by a few ranking algorithm points. Still, despite the unfortunate circumstances and the knowledge that their season was probably over even before the tournament started, High Five fought admirably and with determination and pride.
Looking Forward
The top spots in the region still belong to Machine, High Five, and Madcow.
Teams like Enigma and Beachfront have shown they have new ceilings of potential and could be squads to watch in the future. Beachfront took the fifth spot, Haymaker 6th, with Enigma and Cleaveland Smokestack following to round out the top eight.
Bro Cats have asserted themselves as a top four squad in the region; their game for third against Madcow was interesting for its implications. Madcow proved they were still the best team in Ohio, but Bro Cats clearly have talent and could be a force moving forward, especially if they draw some of the younger talent in the state to their banner.
Machine may have silenced a few more doubters this weekend. Madison Club’s victory at Heavyweights indicated that Machine might have been vulnerable in windy zone conditions, but they played strategically and confidently and showed they had no problems this weekend. The depth of this team, in particular, is unparalleled in the Midwest.
They should be the second seed going into the National Championships, but that isn’t their focus. “The seeding honestly doesn’t matter,” said Kelly. “We’ve been a variety of seeds over the last few years and we know that’s not what’s important.”
What Machine is more excited about is the competitive lull leading up to Nationals. “This represents three straight practice weekends for us leading up to Nationals,” he explained. “And we haven’t had more than two straight practice weekends all season long.”
The decision to extend the season for Chicago by joining with Wildfire has has lengthened Chicago’s season considerably. This has advantages — in that the team gets more training time and growth/development time — but also increases risk of burnout and injury, so the team added several off-weekends specifically for this purpose.
Now they’ll have almost the entire team healthy and ready to go, working hard to tune up for their biggest competition in possibly the club’s history; Slover should be the only player out of the lineup come October. Other teams will be preparing in similar fashion, many coming back to refocus after a season featuring a World Championship.
Get ready for October. |
Timex Weekender Collection Women’s Watches
Designed to be comfortable and fashionable
Analog face with high contrasts for easy reading
Strap molds to your wrist and is very comfortable
Indiglo night light
Japanese quartz movement
Stainless steel case and bezel
Strap length: 7.5”
Adjustable strap: yes
Buckle clasp
Water resistant up to 30m
Green, Coral, and Bright Green Strap
Nylon strap
Strap width: 16mm
Case diameter: 31mm
Turquoise and Pink Strap
Nylon strap
Strap width: 18mm
Case diameter: 38mm
Metallic Bronze Strap
Genuine leather strap
Strap width: 18mm
Case diameter: 38mm
About Timex
“It takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” ads for the new Timex watch proclaimed. The mechanical wristwatch starred in every commercial. It was frozen in an ice-cube tray and suspended in the chamber of a vacuum cleaner. It cliff-jumped in Acapulco. It attended a batting practice strapped to Mickey Mantle’s bat. An Air Force sergeant volunteered to crash a plane while wearing the watch. By the end of the 1950s, one in three watches sold in the United States was a Timex.
Today, the 150-year-old brand continues to sell high-performance sports and everyday watches around the world. Innovations abound, such as the interchangeable strap—which turns a single watch face into a wardrobe’s worth of accessories—as well as the Indiglo light-up feature. The timepieces appear in the press more regularly than gossip about the queen’s fallen soufflé—with multiple plaudits in GQ, InStyle, and Elle just this year.
For questions pertaining to this deal, click the Ask a Question button below. For post-purchase inquiries, please contact Groupon customer support.
Goods sold by Groupon Goods. View the Groupon Goods FAQ to learn more. |
THE DOWNSIDE of buying a cheap Windows computer these days is the amount of pre-installed junk it comes loaded with. There is no escaping the third-party “craplets” and “junkware” that litter the screen or taskbar—with free offers for this and that, trial versions of anti-virus software, utilities that promise to speed up the machine, others that offer to make internet searching more secure, even tools for removing unwanted junk (so they can add more of their own).
If their nagging pop-up presence were not bad enough, these unwanted applications—often running silently in the background—can harm the host they infect, by cluttering its memory, grabbing crucial processor cycles, clogging data channels and draining the battery. Some even sneakily track the user’s comings and goings on the internet. Their biggest crime, though, is to slow the infected computer to a crawl.
None of this junkware is there for the user’s benefit. It gets installed in the factory strictly to bolster the maker’s bottom line. Being so cut-throat these days, the commodity computer business has the slimmest of margins. The few pennies the maker receives from software firms for installing their dubious offerings on every machine can add up to a tidy sum. Most consumers accept having either to live with the junk, or to go to the trouble of cleaning up—“decrapifying”—the computer as part of the deal for getting such a relative bargain at so reasonable a price.
Some manufacturers sell “clean” versions of their computers for $20 to $30 more. Others offer to decrapify a purchased machine for an additional fee. Microsoft has adopted a different approach. To show its Windows operating system in the best possible light, it offers junk-free “Signature Edition” versions of many popular PCs through its online store. On average, Signature Edition PCs start up 104% faster and can be shut down 35% quicker than equivalent machines stuffed with the usual junk.
Your correspondent recently bought a Signature Edition of the Hewlett-Packard Stream 7 tablet from the Microsoft Store for an unbelievable $79. The sleek, black HP tablet, running Windows 8.1, came with all the usual complement of cameras, radios, sensors and other features, plus a free year’s subscription for Microsoft Office 365 (worth practically as much as the machine itself) and a $25 gift voucher. The bare tablet alone, without any of the extras, was listed at $99 on Hewlett-Packard’s own website. With its uncluttered start screen and clean memory, the little Windows tablet has proved a paragon of good behaviour.
At the other extreme are PC makers like Lenovo, the Chinese firm that acquired IBM’s personal-computer business back in 2005. As the world’s largest PC maker by volume and one of the industry’s most efficient producers, Lenovo does not need to stoop to such money-grubbing antics. Yet, it does—aggressively so. Or did, until a few weeks ago.
That was when researchers found that some of Lenovo’s laptops sold between last September and this January contained a serious security flaw. The source: a preloaded piece of adware called Superfish—a visual search engine that captures images users see online, and then shows them adverts of similar products. Unfortunately, Superfish replaced the security certificates used by websites with a universal and easily cracked one of its own, allowing attackers to steal users’ credit-card details and other personal information.
Superfish swears its software is safe, blaming an Israeli firm called Komodia that supplies the library of security certificates used by Superfish and other adware developers. Researchers have found at least a dozen other pieces of junkware capable of subverting the familiar HTTPS security protocol used by commercial websites to protect their customers. All, apparently, rely on Komodia’s library of security certificates to function. Some even leave a computer vulnerable after the source of the trouble has been removed.
Lenovo has apologised for causing its customers to become susceptible to attack, and has promised not to pre-install the Superfish visual-discovery software again—though it has not exactly sworn off junkware altogether. In future, the firm says it will publish a full list of the software pre-installed on each PC it sells, so users know what to remove or keep. It has also rushed out tools for removing Superfish and its related files, and arranged for the anti-virus makers Symantec, McAfee and Microsoft to do the same.
The whole sorry Superfish affair raises questions about whether stuffing computers (and, increasingly, mobile phones, too) with junkware can cause more trouble than it is worth for makers. Certainly, Microsoft is winning plaudits by offering customers junk-free products at a fair price, while Lenovo faces an uphill struggle to overcome its seriously tarnished reputation. The brand equity of the two firms could not be heading in more opposite directions.
For computer users, the issues are no less significant. Do they wait around for something like Superfish (or its even uglier cousin, PrivDog) to happen? Or do they take preemptive action immediately after acquiring a new machine? There are those who swear by reformatting the hard-drive and reinstalling the operating system from scratch. While this may be overkill, wiping the hard-drive clean will certainly purge a machine of any unwanted junk. But it will also remove all the useful software as well, all of which will then have to be reinstalled after a clean copy of the operating system has been re-loaded and brought uptodate.
There are easier ways of expunging unwanted junk from a new computer. Providing they do not stick their claws in as deep as Superfish, most of the craplets that get pre-installed by PC makers can be removed by simply using the Windows uninstall feature (found in Control Panel>Programs>Uninstall, or by right-clicking an active tile on the start screen). The task can be automated using a free tool called PC Decrapifier, which will recommend what garbage can be safely removed, and what should be left well alone.
Whether run manually or otherwise, simple uninstall programs (including the one built into Windows) can still leave a lot of detritus in the operating system’s registry. While your correspondent is a firm believer in not tinkering with the Windows registry, he has long relied on a free utility called Revo Uninstaller to dig out all the extraneous files, folders and registry items left behind after a program has been uninstalled. So far, Revo has never let him down—unlike some of the “registry cleaners” that promise to speed up a cluttered computer. These should be avoided at all cost.
A word of warning, though: check carefully all the registry items that Revo identifies as debris before giving it the go-ahead to blast them into oblivion. If a registry link contains the actual name of the uninstalled program, then it is a safe bet that it can be checked off for deletion. Those that have no such reference are best left alone. And should the removal process fail for some odd reason, fear not: Revo automatically makes a “restore point” before setting about its business. If necessary, the registry can then be rolled back to a prior condition.
Finally, a tip for those who think their computer may be harbouring the Superfish certificate that caused all the trouble. Open up the PC’s certificate manager (ie, run the Windows program certmgr.msc) and then click on “Trusted root certificate authorities” in the manager’s left-hand panel. Next, double-click “Certificates” in the main panel, and scan the trusted certificates listed. If the entry “Superfish Inc. Visual Discovery” is present, right-click it and delete it forthwith. If it is not there, rest easy until the next shoddily coded craplet causes mayhem. Alternatively, pay the premium for a Mac, or dump Windows and install a free copy of Linux. Either way, users will sleep easier, free from junkware—which, through no fault of Microsoft, continues to plague the world of Windows. |
friedcat
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 848
Merit: 1001
DonatorLegendaryActivity: 848Merit: 1001 AMHash1: Cost-Effective Mining Contract October 24, 2014, 04:20:32 PM #1
In this contract, the hashrate is provided by ASICMiner, the management is provided by
RockMiner, and the platform is provided by HavelockInvestments.
For updates please view
http://www.amhash.com/
The purchasing site is
https://www.havelockinvestments.com/order.php?symbol=AMHASH1
The forum contact ID is amhash. The email contact is
Introduction
AMHash1 is a mining Fund which has 5 Peta-hash per second or (5,000,000 Giga-hashes per second) in total.
The Fund is divided into 5 million (5,000,000) s each of which represents 1Gigahash per second.
The price of each unit is 1.25 mBTC (0.00125 BTC).
The contract starts at 18:00:00 in November 4, 2014(Beijing Time, GMT+8).
The time is based on forum time.
Duration for the IPO:
IPO Starting Time: 18:00:00, October 24, 2014(Beijing Time, GMT+8)
IPO Closing Time: 18:00:00, November 4, 2014(Beijing Time, GMT+8)
Advantages
1. Higher ROI; low cost on both initial price and maintenance fee.
2. Flexible trading; the contract is fully tradable at the secondary market through Havelock Investments trading platform allowing you to exit your position at any time.
3. Guaranteed profit; Compared to others, AMHash1 Fund will pay you dividends based on hashrate equivalent calculation protecting your earnings and shielding you from hardware maintenance cost and risk.
5. It simplifies the ROI estimations by eliminating the factors involved in constructing a mining farm, such as infrastructure cost, shipping time, repairing, electricity bill and labor.
6. 100% real hasharate; The live photos of mining farm and hashrate monitor platform will be provided and fully disclosed.
Payout calculation
Payouts are done daily.
The payout rate before fee substraction is 25 / (difficulty * 4.295) BTC per unit per second.
The fee is 1.89*10^(-8) USD per unit per second. It will be substracted from the pre-fee payout rate. The exchange rate is based on bitstamp 24h average.
The total seconds of each payout is:
1. in the first payout, 3,600 * 24.
2. During normal payouts, the number of seconds during the most recent payout to this payout.
If there is a difficulty change between two payouts, the due payout will be calculated based on two different difficulties and their corresponding time intervals.
If the calculated payout after fee substraction is less than or equal to zero, the contract will be suspended. If the number of subsequent days suspended reaches 10, the contract terminates.
Risk control
1. Before IPO closes, ASICMiner has the right to buy back at the price of IPO price * 100.5%.
2. During the first 45 days after IPO closes, ASICMiner has the right to buy back at the price of (IPO price - total payouts) * 120%. The notification period is 3 days.
3. If the delay of payment happens, all unpaid payments will be accounted separately on daily basis and increase by 0.02% per day(flat rate based on the initial unpaid payment amount, no compound rate) after three days.
AMHash1 is the first of a series of mining contracts.In this contract, the hashrate is provided by ASICMiner, the management is provided byRockMiner, and the platform is provided by HavelockInvestments.For updates please viewThe purchasing site isThe forum contact ID is amhash. The email contact is [email protected] AMHash1 is a mining Fund which has 5 Peta-hash per second or (5,000,000 Giga-hashes per second) in total.The Fund is divided into 5 million (5,000,000) s each of which represents 1Gigahash per second.The price of each unit is 1.25 mBTC (0.00125 BTC).The contract starts at 18:00:00 in November 4, 2014(Beijing Time, GMT+8).The time is based on forum time.Duration for the IPO:IPO Starting Time: 18:00:00, October 24, 2014(Beijing Time, GMT+8)IPO Closing Time: 18:00:00, November 4, 2014(Beijing Time, GMT+8)1. Higher ROI; low cost on both initial price and maintenance fee.2. Flexible trading; the contract is fully tradable at the secondary market through Havelock Investments trading platform allowing you to exit your position at any time.3. Guaranteed profit; Compared to others, AMHash1 Fund will pay you dividends based on hashrate equivalent calculation protecting your earnings and shielding you from hardware maintenance cost and risk.5. It simplifies the ROI estimations by eliminating the factors involved in constructing a mining farm, such as infrastructure cost, shipping time, repairing, electricity bill and labor.6. 100% real hasharate; The live photos of mining farm and hashrate monitor platform will be provided and fully disclosed.Payouts are done daily.The payout rate before fee substraction is 25 / (difficulty * 4.295) BTC per unit per second.The fee is 1.89*10^(-8) USD per unit per second. It will be substracted from the pre-fee payout rate. The exchange rate is based on bitstamp 24h average.The total seconds of each payout is:1. in the first payout, 3,600 * 24.2. During normal payouts, the number of seconds during the most recent payout to this payout.If there is a difficulty change between two payouts, the due payout will be calculated based on two different difficulties and their corresponding time intervals.If the calculated payout after fee substraction is less than or equal to zero, the contract will be suspended. If the number of subsequent days suspended reaches 10, the contract terminates.1. Before IPO closes, ASICMiner has the right to buy back at the price of IPO price * 100.5%.2. During the first 45 days after IPO closes, ASICMiner has the right to buy back at the price of (IPO price - total payouts) * 120%. The notification period is 3 days.3. If the delay of payment happens, all unpaid payments will be accounted separately on daily basis and increase by 0.02% per day(flat rate based on the initial unpaid payment amount, no compound rate) after three days. The ASICMINER Project
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.0
Elvis Trout
Offline
Activity: 116
Merit: 10
MemberActivity: 116Merit: 10 Re: AMHash1: Cost-Effective Mining Contract October 24, 2014, 05:25:48 PM #5
If the mining rigs were profitable they wouldn't be selling them to you, it's not a charity. Best of luck! As someone who has been burned by mining projects in the past, just want to warn people you will most likely lose money on thisIf the mining rigs were profitable they wouldn't be selling them to you, it's not a charity. Best of luck!
Germican
Offline
Activity: 82
Merit: 10
MemberActivity: 82Merit: 10 Re: AMHash1: Cost-Effective Mining Contract October 24, 2014, 05:36:46 PM #8 Quote from: Elvis Trout on October 24, 2014, 05:25:48 PM
If the mining rigs were profitable they wouldn't be selling them to you, it's not a charity. Best of luck!
As someone who has been burned by mining projects in the past, just want to warn people you will most likely lose money on thisIf the mining rigs were profitable they wouldn't be selling them to you, it's not a charity. Best of luck!
Yes and no. It can be profitable for both as you provide capital upfront that they would have had to wait what ever the contract was to get. This allows faster growth or investment as well as a exact amount of capital for the mining all for the "fee" of the difference between what they raise and what they mine. The investors are taking on the risk of the possibility of not getting the full return however it's possible (and likely if done right) to make a fair profit. But they take on all risk from huge difficulty jumps, legislation making it less profitable, entire company issues such as poor management or hardware failures that they simply can't fix/replace.
All in all yes it's risky and I personally wouldn't invest in it but a reasonable model for the right investor. Yes and no. It can be profitable for both as you provide capital upfront that they would have had to wait what ever the contract was to get. This allows faster growth or investment as well as a exact amount of capital for the mining all for the "fee" of the difference between what they raise and what they mine. The investors are taking on the risk of the possibility of not getting the full return however it's possible (and likely if done right) to make a fair profit. But they take on all risk from huge difficulty jumps, legislation making it less profitable, entire company issues such as poor management or hardware failures that they simply can't fix/replace.All in all yes it's risky and I personally wouldn't invest in it but a reasonable model for the right investor.
Chris_Sabian
Offline
Activity: 896
Merit: 1000
LegendaryActivity: 896Merit: 1000 Re: AMHash1: Cost-Effective Mining Contract October 24, 2014, 09:17:10 PM #9 Quote from: friedcat on October 24, 2014, 04:20:32 PM Risk control
1. Before IPO closes, ASICMiner has the right to buy back at the price of IPO price * 100.5%.
2. During the first 45 days after IPO closes, ASICMiner has the right to buy back at the price of (IPO price - total payouts) * 120%. The notification period is 3 days.
3. If the delay of payment happens, all unpaid payments will be accounted separately on daily basis and increase by 0.02% per day(flat rate based on the initial unpaid payment amount, no compound rate) after three days.
This is very reasonable and fair. Hopefully it won't come to that. This is very reasonable and fair. Hopefully it won't come to that.
chairforce1
Offline
Activity: 317
Merit: 250
Sr. MemberActivity: 317Merit: 250 Re: AMHash1: Cost-Effective Mining Contract October 24, 2014, 11:13:21 PM #14 Quote from: Korbman on October 24, 2014, 11:03:46 PM Quote from: mc_lovin on October 24, 2014, 09:30:04 PM Can I ask why ASICMINER doesn't just point all of the power at existing shareholders? Why launch ANOTHER company? What benefit does this have to actual ASICMINER shareholders?
As a long timer holder of AM1 and AM100 on Havelock, what benefit, specifically, would this new asset bring to us?
As a long timer holder of AM1 and AM100 on Havelock, what benefit, specifically, would this new asset bring to us?
I believe this is just an efficient way of selling hardware. AM can provide better mining conditions than others can. No shipping is needed, no worrying with sending units back and the mining process would be easier for the buyer.
AM is selling 5PH worth of mining equipment, just like friedcat wanted to, and it is being sold in bulk and immediately.
Who knows how it will turn out. I believe this is just an efficient way of selling hardware. AM can provide better mining conditions than others can. No shipping is needed, no worrying with sending units back and the mining process would be easier for the buyer.AM is selling 5PH worth of mining equipment, just like friedcat wanted to, and it is being sold in bulk and immediately.Who knows how it will turn out. Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not. #yolo
-Epicuru $ |
After presenting the wrist-worn No. 16 atomic clock watch about a year ago, Richard Hoptroff is back with the Hoptroff No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 atomic wrist watches that he claims are now “wearable.” What I am actually spending the most time thinking about is how the Number 16 watch came before numbers 1, 2, and 3. But perhaps, that is for a different time. Right now, the focus is on these three new timepieces that contain what Hoptroff claims are the latest in small-sized atomic clock technology.
So what does wearable mean? The Hoptroff No. 16 was almost 84mm wide and looked like two watches welded to one another side-by-side. The Hoptroff No. 1, 2, and 3 atomic watches have a more traditional rectangular case that is clearly shaped as such to contain the electronics inside. The case is available in rhodium-plated brass or 18k yellow gold for each of the watches and is 52mm wide by 42mm tall and rather chunky at 19.5mm thick. Even though these are still quite large measurements, in his typical retro-style, Hoptroff tried to make these interesting and very modern watches look classic. Thank you, British watch designers!
The real difference between the three models is what indicators the dials have. The watches all contain the same small-sized battery-powered atomic clocks but feature varying amounts of indicators on the dial. You’ll pay significantly more for things like “atomic state” as well as the date. The “atomic state” indicator is a $2,600 option. Then again, it is likely worth it to those who are interested in this type of watch to begin with, so that you’ll know if the atomic oven is on or if the microwave resonator is locked.
What type of accuracy are we talking about? Well, consider that in full power mode, the watches are accurate to one second each 1,000 years. Yup, not too shabby. In lower power mode, you are down to a dangerously inaccurate 10 seconds of deviation per 1,000 years. Why even bother with this mode though? It is practically useful for all but the most leisurely of time tracking needs. At least you get three full months of battery life in low power mode – and the watches are USB rechargeable.
Hoptroff thankfully doesn’t ask too much of a premium for the watches in gold, but I am wondering why steel wasn’t an option? That just means he didn’t bother using machines that could cut steel as opposed to brass and gold that are much softer. Nevertheless, these are cool watches and I would easily wear one. Unfortunately these aren’t priced to move, but we are seeing genuine innovation in the atomic clock wrist watch segment and Hoptroff is one of the only ones pushing ahead. Price for the Hoptroff No. 1, 2, and 3 atomic watches starts at $15,400 and goes up to $26,500 (without the VAT). See the full price list after the tech specs below. hoptroff.com
No.1, No. 2, and No. 3 Watch Tech Specs from Hoptroff
– No.1 – Hours, minutes, seconds
– No.2 – Hours, minutes, seconds, atomic state
– No.3 – Hours, minutes, seconds, atomic state, date
– Atomic state indications: Power remaining, Oven on, Oven equilibrium, Laser striking, Laser stable, Microwave resonator on, Microwave resonator locked, Atomic timing locked
– Top pusher: Bluetooth activation
– Bottom pusher: Manual activation of atomic physics unit
– Upper pyramids: Atomic mode indication
– Time setting from NTP: ~30ms accuracy
– Battery life: Est. 3 months in low power mode between USB recharges
– Accuracy: 1.5 seconds per thousand years
– Low power accuracy: Est. 10 seconds per thousand years
– Waterproofing: Splashproof
– Dimensions: 52mm x 42mm x 19.5mm
Price
No.1 – Rhodium brass (pictured) – £12,000 incl EU VAT / $15,400 outside the EU
No.1 – Gold – £18,000 incl EU VAT / $23,100 outside the EU
No.2 – Rhodium brass (pictured) – £14,000 incl EU VAT / $18,000 outside the EU
No.2 – Gold – £20,000 incl EU VAT / $25,700 outside the EU
No.3 – Rhodium brass (pictured) – £15,000 incl EU VAT / $19,250 outside the EU
No.3 – Gold – £21,000 incl EU VAT / $26,950 outside the EU |
Several receiving options remain available on the free-agent market and one big name, the Carolina Panthers' Steve Smith, could become available soon. There are a number of veteran offensive linemen who are still unsigned, while the market at safety and middle linebacker — two positions of need for the Ravens — continues to thin out.
However, in Day 2 of free agency, the Ravens focused on taking care of their own. After officially signing Eugene Monroe and declaring him their left tackle “for many years to come,” the Ravens struck a four-year deal with Jacoby Jones, keeping one of the heroes of the team’s run to the Super Bowl XLVII title in the organization.
The deal for Jones, a proven deep threat and one of the game’s fastest returners, has a maximum value of $14 million if he hits all his incentive clauses, sources said. It also includes $4.5 million in guaranteed money and a $2 million incentive clause based on number of catches.
Jones had spent part of the day visiting with New York Giants officials before his agent hammered out the deal with the Ravens, who place a high value on the 29-year-old’s speed and play-making ability. Jones has 10 touchdowns in two seasons with the Ravens.
Ravens head coach John Harbaugh maintained all along that the team would be aggressive in trying to re-sign its free agents and the organization’s three biggest offseason roster moves so far have been contract extensions for Monroe, Jones and tight end Dennis Pitta.
“To build from Dennis and Eugene now as our first two guys that we signed, two guys on our own team are really lynchpin-type guys for us on offense is really important,” Harbaugh said before the Jones deal was announced. Jones will sign his new contract Thursday.
The Ravens, who watched defensive tackle Arthur Jones sign with the Indianapolis Colts on Tuesday, lost another key defensive player Wednesday as cornerback Corey Graham signed a four-year deal with his hometown team, the Buffalo Bills, that could be worth as much as $20 million.
The Ravens had interest in re-signing Graham, viewing him as an ideal No.3 corner behind Lardarius Webb and Jimmy Smith, and an experienced option in the slot. Graham had a team-leading six interceptions over the past two seasons and was also a standout on special teams. However, the Ravens weren’t able to convince him to return and now they are in the market for another cornerback in either free agency or the draft to compete with holdovers Chykie Brown and Asa Jackson for the No.3 role.
“Early in the free agency process, we identified Corey Graham as a player who would help our football team,” Bills general manager Doug Whaley said in a statement released by the team. “Graham is a smart, physical and tough cornerback who has had success with both the Chicago Bears and Baltimore Ravens. He is a playmaker defensively and on special teams.”
The Ravens valued Jones in a similar manner. Despite missing four games last season after hurting his knee in the season-opening loss to the Denver Broncos, Jones caught 37 balls for 455 yards and two touchdowns. A Pro Bowl-selection in 2012, Jones also remained one of the league’s most dangerous return men, averaging 28.8 yards per kickoff return, plus a touchdown, and 12.5 yards on punt returns.
Jones has four return scores in three seasons with the Ravens, though he’s probably best remembered for his 70-yard touchdown catch on a Joe Flacco heave with 31 seconds remaining to tie the 2012 AFC divisional playoff against the Broncos. Three weeks later, Jones set a Super Bowl record with a 108-yard kickoff return for a touchdown and 290 combined yards and two touchdowns in the Ravens’ 34-31 victory over the San Francisco 49ers.
With new coordinator Gary Kubiak, who coached Jones in Houston, running the offense, the Ravens are hoping to relocate their down-field passing attack, where Jones’ speed is an asset. However, they remain in the market for another possession-type receiver who can work from the slot. |
House File 2054, introduced in the Iowa House of Representatives on January 19, 2016, and referred to the House Committee on Education, would, if enacted, reverse Iowa's decision to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards — and there is reason to believe that part of the motivation is the NGSS's treatment of evolution and climate change.
The lead sponsor of HF 2054 is Sandy Salmon (R-District 63), who in 2015 introduced House File 272, which would have prevented Iowa from adopting the NGSS. She told the Cedar Rapids Gazette (March 2, 2015) that she was "concerned that the standards miss some key math and science concepts, present evolution as scientific fact[,] and shine a negative light on human impacts on climate change." HF 272 died in committee.
The Iowa Board of Education voted unanimously to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards at its August 6, 2015, meeting. HF 2054 would undo that decision, directing the board to adopt the same science standards used during the 2014-2015 school year and requiring further changes to be approved by the legislature and governor. |
The reality-bending popularity and persistence of the zombie craze is interesting, and does lend itself to conspiracy theory pretty nicely. The part that bugs me is that 90% of what zombies do is walk around aimlessly and unarmed not doing very much except looking awful, so if an actual hysteria were to break out over a perceived zombie outbreak, it could lend itself to the massacre of anyone from refugees, to the sick, to the homeless, to rioters, to the slightly dirty or disheveled.
Although I think it is unlikely that the dead will rise from their graves, I could easily imagine the word zombie resulting in dozens or even hundreds of homicides if there were an illness or toxic exposure causing groups of people to become confused or disoriented, even if the victims were not aggressive or dangerous.
The power of a fantasy that takes on a twilight-zoney life of its own the way the zombie things does is great enough that perhaps a conspiracy that was concerned with eventually having to deal with a refugee crisis, disease outbreak, or breakdown in civil order would purposefully encourage the mythology (with things like this FEMA exercise perhaps) so that they could some day use it for their own ends if necessary- and it could be as uncomplicated as FEMA wanting a means whereby they could one day get the uninfected to kill the infected if a pandemic were ever so bad that it was necessary to completely quarantine and/or cull the infected areas of the country.
All that being said, sometimes large organizations try to be cool, and instead you can't tell if it's patronizing or just crazy. Think back to your education and you'll probably understand what I mean. Maybe zombies are just a new Freddy Fish from the government's point of view, and we're all missing the point and afraid that we're actually gonna get smacked in the face with a tuna. |
Legit Reviews We've never seen a 50C load temperature drop by changing the GPU cooler on a video card, so [the Kraken G10 is] very exciting. more..
Pure Overclock We found that NZXT took a great deal of time and manufacturing process to get this item perfect. more..
OverCleX Au final, mérite-t-il de perdre un point ? Je ne pense pas car comme me l'a fait remarquer un collègue, lorsque la carte ne voit pas sa tension modifiée, le refroidissement est parfait comme ce fut le cas avec la R9-290X et de la GTX780 Lightning! more..
Tech Gage NZXT's Kraken G10 might be nothing more than a steel bracket and mounting hardware, but pair it with a compatible AIO CPU water cooler, and you've got the hottest cooling equipment combo ever. more..
Modding.fr NZXT nous a concocté un système simple, nous permettant d'utiliser un AIO sur un GPU et ce sans dépenser une grosse somme! more..
Pro-Clockers The NZXT Kraken G10 is a great release that fills a void in GPU cooling systems. more..
Hi Tech Legion The Kraken G10 brings the potential of significantly better GPU cooling to twenty-seven popular high-end GPUs from both nVidia and AMD. more..
PC Perspective The NZXT G10 allows you to combine what is likely the quietest and coolest option on a GPU that definitely needs it. more..
Overclock3D They say that often the best ideas are the simplest. This is most certainly true of the NZXT Kraken G10. more..
TweakTown They say that often the best ideas are the simplest. This is most certainly true of the NZXT Kraken G10. more..
Anandtech [The Kraken G10] is a product we would highly recommend to anyone who has a proper case and wants better cooling for a high-end graphics card without the cost and complexity of a customized water cooling kit. more..
The Mod Zoo The Kraken G10 / X40 Combo reduced the Max Temps by up to 40%! more.. |
“America has brought the nation and the world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future… And yet we have not learned the simple art of walking the earth as brothers and sisters.”
So said the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years ago on the steps of Sproul Hall as the Vietnam War raged and the campus seethed. He spokeon May 17, 1967, before a rapt, sunstruck crowd of more than 7,000, most of them students.
This Saturday, April 29, in tandem with the Summer of Love 50th Anniversary festival, the ASUC will replay a recording of King’s speech in its entirety, and then re-dedicate a historic photograph of him in his namesake building, the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union.
The event will start on the Sproul Hall steps at 2:15 p.m. with the 75-minute replay of the speech he titled “America’s Chief Moral Dilemma.” The dedication ceremony in the student union will start at 3:30 p.m.
King was invited to speak at Berkeley by the Interfraternity Council. As Dick Beahrs, formerly of the IFC, said of the day: “It was incredibly informal. That was the thing that was wildly striking. There was no security of any kind. We drove in my car. He was very easy to talk to — there was no pretense or preconceptions.”
The crowd came with banners celebrating King and encouraging his run for the presidency. Eighteen years after his speech, the ASUC Student Union’s main building was renamed in his honor, after petitioning by the late Ronnie Stevenson, an early Black Panther Party member, activist, Berkeley alum and staff member.
The photograph of Dr. King was taken by the late Berkeley photographer Helen Nestor, then a Berkeley student. She was allowed close access to King because she used a wheelchair. Nestor said of the event: “It was a warm and special feeling to photograph him… The students were very charged up and very much with Dr. King. It was a special time.”
The portrait was given to the ASUC Student Union by the African American Studies Department in 2002 and found its home in the MLK Jr. Student Union building. The photograph was removed during recent renovations and, after reframing, is making its re-appearance on Saturday.
Dr. King’s speech will be played courtesy of Pacifica Radio Archive. |
What are the odds of that? £40,000-a-week Muslim Premier league star who refused to wear shirt sponsored by loan firm Wonga is spotted GAMBLING in casino
Senegalese Papiss Cisse is refusing to wear shirt with new sponsor
Under Sharia law, Muslims must not benefit from lending money
Cisse has offered to wear a charity brand instead but club are holding firm
Other Muslim players at the club have indicated they have no problem
Now a picture has emerged apparently showing him at a blackjack table
A picture has emerged apparently showing Muslim footballer Papiss Cisse at a casino table.
It comes as the Newcastle striker is at loggerheads with the club over their decision to replace old sponsor Virgin Money with pay-day loan company Wonga.
Cisse, who is one of a number of Muslim players at Newcastle, has told the hierarchy at the club that he is unwilling to wear the shirt as it conflicts with his religious beliefs.
But an image has emerged on Twitter that claims to show the Senegalese forward gambling in a casino. As well as the lending of money, gambling is not permissible in Islam.
Pictured in a casino: £40,000-a-week Muslim footballer Pappis Cisse who refuses to play for Newcastle because shirt sponsor is payday loan firm Wonga 'which compromises his religious beliefs'
Deadlock: Papiss Cisse has refused to wear Newcastle's new strip sponsored by loans company Wonga
Neither the club nor the player's agent were available for comment when approached by MailOnline.
Supporter Andrew McNally, who claims to have taken the photograph at a blackjack table in Aspers casino, said the striker spoke about upcoming Newcastle games as he placed £10 and £20 stakes.
‘Cisse was just placing small bets, £10 or £20 with £5 chips,’ McNally told the Daily Mirror.
‘A number of fans have said that they have seen him in there. You have to say it does undermine his stance on Wonga.'
It comes as the Muslim footballer may be forced to quit Newcastle United because of a row about the club's new sponsorship deal with payday loan firm.
The Senegalese striker, who is estimated to earn in the region of £40,000 a week, trained on his own on his return from his summer break last week after refusing to wear the branded training kit, as well as the match day shirt, because it is against his religious beliefs.
Under some interpretations of Sharia law, Muslims must not benefit from lending money. Interest is not paid on Islamic bank accounts or added to mortgages.
Former West Ham striker Frederic Kanoute - also a Muslim - was allowed by Sevilla to wear an unbranded shirt while they were sponsored by gambling company 888.com.
Newcastle signed a £24million deal with Wonga to replace Virgin Money as Newcastle's sponsors last year. The move provoked anger with some fans who were unhappy with the club being sponsored by a company which charges up to 5,853 per cent annual interest on short term loans.
Cisse has offered to wear charity-branded kit to resolve the dispute but that proposal has so far been rejected. The row has now been rumbling on for a number of weeks leading to speculation that Cisse may even be forced to quit the club. Objections: Payday loan company Wonga charges 5,853 per cent annual interest rates on short term loans Trouble ahead: Newcastle manager Alan Pardew must do without Cisse as the row rumbles on
Papiss Demba Cisse, pictured in January 2012 before signing for Newcastle United, is refusing to wear the club's sponsor's logo
Cisse, who did wear the Northern Rock and Virgin Money logos, made club chiefs aware he was uncomfortable wearing the new Wonga shirts when the controversial deal was announced at the end of last season, although other Muslim players at the club, including Hatem Ben Arfa, have not taken his stance.
The player and club have been involved in lengthy negotiations, even calling in the footballer's union the PFA, to resolve the situation which was hoped to be resolved before the players flew off the Portugal for a week's intensive training.
On Tuesday night, after their opening pre-season win over Motherwell in Scotland, manager Alan Pardew announced he was taking his full squad to Portugal, including Cisse.
But the striker was not on the flight which left Newcastle airport this afternoon and his absence has increased speculation that he could be forced to quit St James’s Park.
Cisse joined Newcastle in a £9million deal from Freiburg in January last year and he was an immediate success in the coveted Newcastle No 9 shirt, scoring 13 goals in 14 games.
While Ba flourished last season, before he quit for Chelsea in the January transfer window, Cisse struggled and he scored just eight league goals last season, although he did add four in Newcastle’s journey to the quarter-finals of the Europa Cup. |
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean Lee Sedol won his first match against a computer program developed by a Google subsidiary on Sunday in the ancient board game Go, denying a clean sweep for the artificial intelligence in a five-match series.
The world's top Go player Lee Sedol reviews the match after the fourth match of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match against Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo in Seoul, South Korea, in this handout picture provided by Google and released by News1 on March 13, 2016. REUTERS/Google/News1
Lee, one of the world’s top players and a holder of 18 international titles, recovered from three consecutive losses against the AlphaGo program developed by DeepMind.
“This win is invaluable and I would not trade it for anything else in the world,” a jubilant Lee told reporters after the match, thanking fans for their support.
The 33-year-old professional player has admitted to underestimating AlphaGo’s skills but also said the program was not perfect, asking supporters to keep watching the contest.
DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis told reporters the loss was a valuable learning tool and would help identify weaknesses in the program that his team needed to address.
“It’s a real testament to Mr Lee’s incredible fighting spirit and he was able to play so brilliantly today after three defeats,” Hassabis said.
Go, most popular in countries such as China, South Korea and Japan, involves two contestants moving black and white stones on a square grid, with the aim of seizing the most territory.
Experts did not expect an artificial intelligence program to beat a human professional for at least a decade, until AlphaGo beat a European champion player last year. Lee was considered a much more formidable opponent, however.
Google executives say Go offers too many possible moves for a machine to win simply through brute-force calculations, unlike chess, in which IBM’s Deep Blue famously beat former world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
Instead, they said, AlphaGo has sought to approximate human intuition, by studying old matches and using simulated games to hone itself independently.
The fifth and final match is scheduled for Tuesday. |
Transgender student reports sex assault at Hercules school
(03-03) 22:21 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- A 15-year-old transgender student reported being attacked and sexually assaulted Monday at the same Hercules school where another transgender student was involved in a fight four months ago, police said.
The latest incident - which is being investigated as a hate crime - was reported at Hercules Middle/High School on Refugio Valley Road about 11 a.m. by a transgender student who identifies as male, said Hercules police Detective Connie Van Putten.
The student said he was leaving the boys' bathroom when in a building on the high school part of campus when he was confronted by three male juveniles, Van Putten said.
The three pushed him into the bathroom's disabled stall, where they physically and sexually assaulted him, police said.
The boy's parents were notified, and he was taken to a hospital, Van Putten said.
Police were interviewing witnesses and had not identified suspects.
On Nov. 13, another transgender student, Jewlyes Gutierrez, 16, got into a fight with several students on campus, with a portion of the confrontation caught by a witness's cell-phone camera.
Gutierrez, who was born male but considers herself female, was charged with misdemeanor battery, but if she successfully completes a conflict resolution program, the allegation will be dropped, a judge said last month.
Charles Ramsey, president of the West Contra Costa County Unified School District board, said of Monday's incident, "I want to tell the parents that my heart goes out to them. I feel really bad for the victim."
Ramsey also sounded a warning to the attackers: "You will be expelled. You will be punished, and what we'll ask is that you are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. You can't assault students on campus, no matter who they are." |
Our daughter Vivian has had a really rough start and as a result we need some help with expenses.
After a low-risk, uneventful pregnancy, Vivian made her debut into our family via emergency c-section in June and spent the first month of her life in hospital in Christchurch Women's NICU.
Vivian suffered perinatal asphyxia at birth from severe meconium aspiration. When she was born she could not breathe on her own and doctors had trouble finding a heartbeat. She received extensive suctioning and was placed on a cooling system for the first three days of her life to protect her brain, intubated, and hooked up to BRAINZ monitors. She suffered some seizures in her early days and has been on anti-seizure medication since then.
Against the odds, Vivian's lungs began working on their own and most of her organs overcame the shock she suffered from oxygen deprivation. She had an MRI done when she was just a week old and it showed damage to most parts of her brain. Despite all of this, she is bright eyed and alert. If you looked at her you wouldn't know anything was different behind her little smile. We won't know a lot of what this means for Vivian until she grows up, but we are hoping that she will continue to surprise the doctors and keep beating odds.
This week Vivian started having some new seizures and doctors have confirmed that it looks like Vivian is having infantile spasms, a pretty rare form of epilepsy that presents in infants. Unfortunately it can be easily missed and we are lucky that we videoed the seizures for doctors to see. We hope to know more soon.
We may need to take a more aggressive approach to treating her condition if her current medication doesn't work. We're not sure at this time what this will entail, or if we will have to travel to Auckland in the near future to pursue private treatment for Vivian on our own, but we expect a long road ahead of us.
While Vivian was in hospital, her father was unable to work, and so we have gone through most of our savings. We're starting this fund to help cover ongoing expenses for medical treatment, transportation, therapy & educational needs she might have in the future.
Thank you so much for reading. |
As a parting gift to fair-housing advocates and low-income citizens, last Thursday City Council unanimously passed (on third and final reading) an ordinance that would ban discrimination based on a renter's source of income. Sponsored initially as a resolution in April by Council Members Bill Spelman, Sheryl Cole, and Laura Morrison, the rule amends city code to include "source of income" as a protected class alongside race, age, sexual orientation, and religion. The proposal is meant to broaden housing opportunities for the working poor, the disabled, veterans, and the elderly by granting a hand up to recipients of child support or government subsidy – such as those in the U.S. Housing and Urban Development's Housing Choice Voucher program (commonly referred to as Section 8). It does not apply to those who own no more than three single-family homes at any one time and do not use a Realtor or broker, or those who own a dwelling that contains no more than four units and maintain and occupy one of the units.
However, potential tenants barely had 24 hours to celebrate – the following day, the Austin Apartment Association filed suit in Travis County District Court seeking an injunction to block the ordinance, set to go into effect on Jan. 12. The lawsuit claims that the new ordinance would force property owners to contract involuntarily with the federal government's "historically troubled" HUD program, and impose complex bureaucratic requirements.
Landlords will be tied to a "one-sided contract" and "bear the burden of mandatory participation" in Section 8, said AAA President Robbie Robinson during a press conference last Friday morning at the association's headquarters. Slamming onto the podium a rulebook of regulations, former Texas Supreme Court Judge Craig Enoch, now representing AAA in the suit, alleged the government would control rents and lease terms. "A small vocal group has clouded any thoughtful approach to Austin's housing issues," said Enoch. "This is another example of government overreach that contributes to [a higher cost of living]."
The city legal department disagrees, and in a statement said the rule has the effect only of prohibiting discrimination, and that the city is "prepared to defend this ordinance against any legal challenges."
According to the Housing Authority of the City of Austin, some 5,800 households receive Section 8 vouchers, but the need is much greater. When HACA reopened the voucher program to new recipients in October (for the first time since 2006), the number of applicants surpassed expectations: HACA received 19,175 applications (including 2,600 homeless applicants) comprising 44,832 residents to fill just 2,500 spots. And the few who do gain entrance into the program could easily be denied a lease.
A 2012 Austin Tenants' Council survey found that 91% of private landlords (544 of 600 across five counties) refused to house Section 8 voucher recipients – often rejecting voucher holders even when the voucher payment is high enough to cover market rents. The survey concluded that landlords' refusal to accept Section 8 "drastically reduces the effectiveness of the program."
Brian McGiverin, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, said the voucher program is meant to grant upward mobility to residents seeking to escape generational poverty. However, Austin housing voucher recipients are typically relegated to "low opportunity areas" (that is, areas with high crime, poorly performing schools, etc.), due to landlords' current ability to reject applicants.
"It's a really important step, because our experience has shown the ordinance is necessary to achieve the goal of the housing voucher program," said McGiverin. "There has been a stark level of discrimination in high opportunity areas of the city – there are virtually no voucher users west of MoPac. I think this ordinance is a really smart and straightforward way to begin to fix that." McGiverin also dismissed the claim that HUD compliance requirements are too onerous: "Once this goes into effect, I believe those who opposed it so vehemently will frankly be embarrassed they took that position."
To date, 12 states, plus Washington, D.C., and more than 30 local jurisdictions – including San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and New York City – have banned source-of-income discrimination, according to the Poverty & Race Research Action Council. While Dallas is moving in that direction under the terms of a HUD investigation settlement, Austin would be the first city in Texas to enact such an ordinance.
The dispute apparently won't end with the AAA lawsuit. David Mintz, of the Texas Apartment Association, said that state legislators plan to file a bill this session seeking to preempt source-of-income discrimination protections. "I can't name the authors, but we do have commitments from them to file in the next couple of weeks," he told the Chronicle. |
Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
The faces of murderers or rapists could be 'recreated' from DNA left at the scene of the crime, according to new research.
Scientists have identified the genes that shape the extraordinary variation in the human face.
Many features, such as nose size and face width, stem from specific mutations, say researchers.
Previous studies have suggested they are controlled by genes , but this is the first to shed light on how variants contribute to the range of different forms we see.
The findings published in PLOS Genetics may also help researchers to learn how facial birth defects arise.
And they could even have applications in forensics, helping police construct more accurate faces of dangerous criminals being hunted for murders, rapes and robberies.
The discovery of the genes that determine human facial shape could provide valuable information about a person's appearance using just DNA left behind at the scene of a crime.
They are based on a DNA analysis of 20 facial characteristics measured from 3D images of 3,118 healthy volunteers of European ancestry and almost a million mutations, or SNPs (single base pair) variations.
(Image: Getty)
Dr John Shaffer, of the University of Pittsburgh , said: "There is a great deal of evidence genes influence facial appearance.
"This is perhaps most apparent when we look at our own families, since we are more likely to share facial features in common with our close relatives than with unrelated individuals.
"Nevertheless, little is known about how variation in specific regions of the genome relates to the kinds of distinguishing facial characteristics that give us our unique identities, e.g., the size and shape of our nose or how far apart our eyes are spaced.
"In this paper, we investigate this question by examining the association between genetic variants across the whole genome and a set of measurements designed to capture key aspects of facial form.
"We found evidence of genetic associations involving measures of eye, nose, and facial breadth.
"In several cases, implicated regions contained genes known to play roles in embryonic face formation or in syndromes in which the face is affected.
"Our ability to connect specific genetic variants to ubiquitous facial traits can inform our understanding of normal and abnormal craniofacial development, provide potential predictive models of evolutionary changes in human facial features, and improve our ability to create forensic facial reconstructions from DNA."
Facial width, the distance between the eyes, the size of the nose and the distance between the lips and eyes all had statistically significant associations with certain SNPs.
The researchers also considered results from two similar studies and confirmed certain previous findings.
Until recently, virtually nothing was known about the genes responsible for facial shape in humans.
(Image: Getty)
Added co author Dr Seth Weinberg: "Our analysis identified several genetic associations with facial features not previously described in earlier genome wide studies.
"What is exciting is many of these associations involve chromosomal regions harbouring genes with known craniofacial function.
"Such findings can provide insights into the role genes play in the formation of the face and improve our understanding of the causal factors leading to certain craniofacial birth defects."
Several of the genetic regions contributing to face shape detected contain genes known to play a role in facial development and abnormalities.
In the future, the scientists hope to identify genetic risk factors that lead to anomalies such as cleft lip and palate.
But they warned it is important to keep in mind these findings likely represent only a small fraction of the genes influencing the size and shape of the human face.
Many of the genes influencing facial features are likely to have small effects, so successfully mapping a large number of these genes will require much greater sample sizes and a more comprehensive approach to quantifying those of interest. |
Many athletes have been moved to comment on race and social justice more frequently in the past year after a series of police shootings of unarmed African-Americans and the support Mr. Trump has received from white supremacists.
Last year, Colin Kaepernick, then a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, began kneeling during the playing of the national anthem, to highlight, he has said, police brutality and racial injustice. He left the team this season and has not worked since, inspiring debate over whether teams are punishing him, while many players have knelt or made gestures in support of him during the anthem.
At the same time, some owners of N.F.L. teams have suggested that players should not take part in political demonstrations during games. None appeared to speak up for Mr. Trump on Saturday, while some of the owners who have donated primarily to left-leaning causes and politicians put out statements critical of him.
“It’s unfortunate that the president decided to use his immense platform to make divisive and offensive statements about our players and the N.F.L.,’’ said Mark Murphy, the president and chief executive of the Green Bay Packers.
Mr. Trump’s outbursts against athletes and their leagues came as he was smarting from yet another setback in his effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and as he worked to stoke enthusiasm among his core supporters in the deeply conservative state of Alabama, where he attended a campaign rally for Mr. Strange, whom many of them regard as an establishment Republican unworthy of their backing. |
She appeared from the confines of her sanctuary, white robe billowing behind her as she strode toward me, and with the air of authority that 30 years of life and a few years of medical school bestowed upon her demanded her patient be taken where she, the physician, ordered.
I stepped out of the elevator and asked my partner to continue toward the ER, which was 100 yards away, in the same building. My patient was having enough problems and did not need to witness a very unprofessional display.
“My protocols are very specific,” I explained to Daughter of Socrates. “The patient is in sinus tachycardia, and the appropriate facility for this patient is here, not there.”
Related article Soundtrack to Saturday night mayhem
“Are you a physician?” she gloated, as 20 now extremely uncomfortable people watched the display, some eager for the elevator doors to open and offer an escape, others amused by the spectacle.
“No, I’m the EMT, and she is now my patient.”
“She’s my patient, and you will take her where I tell you.”
The dispute
What’s next, I wondered.
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
“Is not.”
“Infinity!”
I couldn’t wait for the elevator doors to open so I could get back to MY patient. The doctor fumed. Had she or an informed representative of hers greeted us and explained the situation, and had a continuation of care form and a copy of the EKG and pertinent history been ready — rather than a curt reply from a secretary stating, “it’s in the computer” when I asked for the reason for our summons — things would have gone differently.
The inquisition
“What is your name?” she demanded.
I told her.
“Who is your supervisor?”
I told her. And for good measure I also told her the name of the director of emergency medical services for the State of Rhode Island.
“I want their phone numbers.”
“I’ve got a patient to take care of, go away.”
“There are plenty of people taking care of her,” she replied, referring to the four firefighters and my driver who responded to the 911 call for a female with a rapid heart rate.
We come to this place a number of times every week; the staff refuses to use the hospital’s transport system or a private ambulance company, preferring the speed with which the 911 responders arrive.
Blessed escape
After an eternity, Moses parted the Red Sea, and the elevator doors opened. I jumped into the full car, behind the other passengers, and waited for the doors to close, separating me from the aggressor.
“What is their phone number!” she demanded.
“Call 911, you have that one on speed dial.”
The doors closed.
Looks like I’ve got some typing to do.
I get more respect from people living on the streets, with nothing, no money, no food and no education than I did from that doctor. I think I’m going to put a little extra effort into my report. |
LEGO released its first wave of LEGO Star Wars Rogue One sets in October, but we’ve decided to wait until both our readers and we ourselves have had a chance to see the movie, released in most countries on December 16. We’ll be reviewing all of the current Rogue One sets, starting today with 75152 Imperial Assault Hovertank, which includes 3 minifigs with 385 pieces and retails for $30.
Now that the movie is out, we’ll be talking about the movie’s characters and plot in our Rogue One LEGO set reviews, so come back and read our review later if you want to remain spoiler-free. But if you’re just interested in our recommendation now before you see the movie, this is a great value and I recommend the set heartily to any Star Wars fan.
The build
The set comes in four numbered bags, with an 80-page instruction booklet spanning 133 steps.
Unlike many recent sets, the first bag includes the set’s hero minifig, the blind warrior-monk Chirrut Îmwe. Like most small to mid-sized LEGO sets geared toward the core 7-12 age range, the build is modular, with sections that correspond to the bags.
The first bag includes the parts for the tank’s main body, without the side sections or rear cargo deck. The flick-fire missile shooters are so well-integrated into the build that they’re one of the first bricks you place on the first plates.
It’s a mostly studs-up build, with Technic pin holes to attach future sections from subsequent bags.
The second bag includes the left-hand propulsion section, with its tensor field radiator channels attached as a sub-assembly. Like several of the Force Awakens LEGO sets, the hovertank includes clear Technic flywheels so that the vehicle can appear to levitate (but more on this point later).
The third bag — you guessed it — adds the mirror-image right section, and the tank begins to come together. Bag 3 also includes both of the Imperial tanker minifigs. Both side sections have plenty of detail, including the sponson-mounted laser cannons, and they’re small enough that the pair don’t feel particularly repetitive to build.
The fourth and final bag includes the rear cargo deck and orange kyber crystal transport crate, along with the rear radiator vanes.
The most interesting part of the build, from a technique standpoint at least, is the kyber crystal crate.
The crate is built studs-out, with a removable lid for storage. Obviously to prevent spoilers about the nature of the cargo (kyber crystals to power the Death Star’s primary weapon), the LEGO set designers didn’t include any LEGO crystals in the set. Instead, the lid opens and there’s room to store a blaster and a pair of macrobinoculars.
The finished model
First and perhaps most importantly, the vehicle in the movie is not a hovertank. According to DK’s Star Wars: Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide, the TX-225 “Occupier” combat assault tank comes in two variants — a repulserlift version and one on conventional tracks. The Occupiers in service on Jedha were all GAVAw variants with tracks. (The nod to the GAVr repulserlift variant almost seems like an attempt by the author — head of story development at Lucasfilm — to retcon hovertank toys like this one back into the Star Wars universe.)
Of course, attempting to fit working continuous track into a set that’s pretty close to the right scale would have been essentially impossible for the LEGO designers, so it’s hard to fault the inaccuracy.
The tank has numerous play features, including the sponson-mounted laser cannons, which are integrated nicely into the propulsion sections with arches, and move up and down so Imperials can take out Rebels on terraces above street level.
The interior has space for both of the minifigs, seated behind each other. The forward angled plating doesn’t open on the movie vehicle, but opens so you can place the minifigs.
One major design failure is the roof hatch, which uses a standard 6×8 trapdoor mechanism. While it’s useful for placing the rear minifig, a significant plot point in the movie occurs when the tank commander in his cupola gets shot (preventing him from continuing to fire his antipersonnel blaster), but the old-style trapdoor precludes proper placement of the minifig. If the designers could do it for the Rogue One LEGO AT-ST (75153), I’m confident they could have found a solution here.
Commander cupola conundrums and GAVw/GAVr variant nerdery aside, the finished model looks pretty great, rolls nicely, has well-integrated missile shooters, and includes enough play features to keep the average 11-year-old kid (or 42-year-old Star Wars geek) amused for at least a few minutes.
The minifigures
The set includes three minifigs — Chirrut Îmwe and two identical tank crew Stormtroopers (presumably a driver or gunner and the commander). Chirrut Îmwe carries his lightbow, powerful enough to take down a TIE fighter, as well as his walking stick.
Chirrut’s robes are made from standard LEGO cloth, and wrap around his waist. His back is also fully printed, and he has a dual-sided head with alternate expressions.
The tank crew minifigs also have front and back printing, with a new helmet mold (as well as new designs for their torsos and legs). The head underneath the helmet is the current standard Stormtrooper head.
New Stormtrooper variants are always interesting, if you’re into that sort of thing, but the hero here is obviously Chirrut Îmwe, currently unique to this LEGO set.
Conclusions & recommendation
Like the AT-ST, this set is heavily underpriced for a Star Wars set, at only $30 for 385 pieces and three figs. It’s not a particularly challenging build, and there are certainly flaws in its design from an accuracy standpoint (like the missing tracks and commander’s hatch).
But overall this is actually quite a fun little set, with one of my new favorite Star Wars characters and a final model that’s fun to roll around. Plus, there’s good value for the money, particularly when the set is on sale for even less than $30.
This might not be your cup of tea (or bricks) if you’re not a Star Wars fan, given that there aren’t really any new or especially interesting parts in the set, but if you’ve come to accept your inner Star Wars geek as I have, I can heartily recommend 75152 Imperial Assault Hovertank.
75152 Imperial Assault Hovertank is available now from both Amazon.com (at $27.46 and up from third-party sellers at the moment) and the LEGO Shop (at $29.99). |
By Don Todd
Those of us who believe in free markets are somewhat flummoxed by the fact that the state owned British Broadcasting Corporation continues to put out morally based superior programing while investor based Hollywood continues to pump cultural sewage into our living rooms and town squares.
We should start calling Dreamers what they are: Nightmares.
The Senate recently unanimously passed a resolution condemning white supremacy whatever that is. When you see the Senate do things like that do you think my God what we do without them? No.
We are constantly hearing how illegal aliens pay taxes when the fact of the matter is many of them are paid under the table. It makes sense that people who violate our immigration laws will also ignore our tax and employment laws.
Ever since Steve Bannon let the cat out of the open bag (Hillary is dumb) she has set about on a national tour to prove it. Lately she announced she believes the Electoral College should be abolished. That way a candidate could lose forty-nine states carry one by huge vote fraud and be elected President.
We are not a nation of immigrants we are a nation of citizens.
One way to get back at Hollywood is to go on Rotten Tomatoes web site and trash their product the same way their product trashes America.
If cheap labor led to a manufacturing boom Haiti would be the most industrialized nation in the world.
You know you are getting old when your favorite TV station runs mostly ads touting pharmaceuticals balanced by ads encouraging you to sue pharmaceutical companies.
When is the last time you heard someone say, “I am white and I am supreme”?
Why does the legacy media label various events as demonstrations instead of what they are: riots?
Does the National Socialist Workers Party (Nazi) sound like a right-wing outfit to you?
That Jimmy Kimmel is sure a funny guy. Not.
All these Democrats on their knees kind of reminds you of Monica Lewinski.
Everything the left touches it destroys whether it be healthcare or football.
A fellow who sold dirty pictures for a living and lived a life of debauchery died recently. If you recognize who we are talking about then you agree.
Funny, whenever there is talk of a tax cut Washington types start wringing their hands and fretting over, “How is the government going to pay for this?” When taxes go up those same Washington types never fret over, “How is the taxpayer going to pay for this?”
The diehard never Trumpers are the true bitter clingers.
The core argument against Alabama Senate Candidate Roy Moore seems to be that he holds traditional Christian beliefs. Were he a Muslim challenging his religious beliefs would be unacceptable.
Former President Barack Obama doubled the national debt. That means he added more to the debt than all the Presidents before him from Washington on combined. What a guy! Is it any wonder that the Marxist Stream Media continually tells us how smart he is?
If a cashier at your local supermarket alienated sixty percent of the customers going through their line they would be summarily fired. The question is should millionaire football players be held to the same standard as grocery store cashiers?
Don Todd is President of Americans for Limited Foundation |
My thoughts:
As is often the case, Garak wound up being one of my favorite things in this novel!
Final thoughts:
More about Inferno:
Also by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens:
marks the conclusion of thetrilogy, three books that unironically embody the word "epic." Perhaps it's a cliche that so manyadventures involve the "end of the universe as we know it," and of course we all know that the universe won't really be destroyed. So, fittingly, at the end of the last novel,, all of creation is... destroyed.How do you come back from that?At the beginning of the novel, each of our characters are living their own "personal hell," constructed for them by the Pah-Wraiths. We soon come to understand the unreality of these situations as, one-by-one, they are pulled out into what the multi-verse has become: a sort of strange purgatory, seemingly inside the red wormhole. I'm glad the authors didn't linger too long on each of the characters' vision of hell; Jake Sisko's in particular, in which every word he wrote was being erased, quickly catching up to him as he wrote, was truly horrific. I still shudder visibly when thinking about it.What impressed me the most aboutwas that it answered all of the questions raised in the first two novels in a surprisingly satisfying fashion. While reading the previous book, I got that feeling that's similar to the one I got when first watching "The Best of Both Worlds": how the heck are they going to get out of this? Unlike that famous cliffhanger episode, however, the authors had a clear plan for the resolution of this story going in.I see a number of reviewers online decrying this story as a convoluted mess of time travel, and I can certainly see how someone would come to that conclusion. While most of the time I readfiction as pure escapism, I appreciate a good story that requires you to think. And, if nothing else, requires you to engage your brain and pay attention. It is extremely easy to get lost in the myriad twists and turns, with some of the plot points seeming to come out of nowhere. However, the entire trilogy is meticulously crafted and requires the reader to pay very close attention for it all to make sense. I must admit that some plot points flew light-years over my head the first time, and it took a closer reading to make everything make sense. But eventually, make sense it does.Seemingly minor plot details dropped into the story in the first book pay off with surprising significance in book three, while other moments will make the reader slap his or her head and say, "so *that's* what that meant!" In the end, many of the situations the characters face in the course of the trilogy seem to have been engineered specifically by a particular group who knew how things were "supposed" to play out. This struck me as amusing, as one can cast the authors of these novels in those roles, almost as a sort of "fourth-wall" break.I realize that this review has veered away from a typical discussion of the plot and has become a little more abstract; I suppose that is a reflection of the sort of book this is. It's difficult to discuss elements of the plot in great detail as I feel that would multiply the length of this review significantly. Instead, I will highlight a couple of scenes that stood out to me. First, we get a version of Garak interacting with his future self. I absolutely loved this part of the story, and I would have loved to have seen Andrew Robinson tackle this. One Garak is terrific, while two is very nearly perfection.Also, I have to highlight a scene in which Odo converses with Vic Fontaine on an empty and abandoned. This part was surprisingly touching and poignant, with the two characters reflecting on reality and their ultimate fates. Vic Fontaine, for being a hologram, was a character that brought a lot of humanity to, and his character is used to great effect here.wraps up thetrilogy in a more satisfying manner than I honestly expected. Some readers will certainly be put off by the very complex and interweaving plot twists and turns, but the Reeves-Stevenses have obviously worked very hard to make everything line up correctly. This is a novel (and a trilogy) that requires the reader to pay close attention, as even the smallest plot details end up being significant and play out in unexpected ways. However, even if all aspects of the story aren't completely understood by the reader, I was left feeling thatwas a satisfying conclusion to the overall story. |
Donald Trump’s planned tour of the Laredo Sector of the Texas -Mexico border has been canceled by the national AFL-CIO-controlled union that represents U.S. Border Patrol agents, the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC). Border Patrol agent Hector Garza acted in his role as Local 2455 president to honor Trump by inviting him to see his section of border in Laredo firsthand. Agent Garza confirmed to Breitbart Texas that the national union had stepped in and insisted that the Laredo local back out of honoring Trump with the border tour. Agent Garza said he expected Trump to continue without the participation of the union.
An inside source with knowledge of the internal NBPC discussion over the Trump visit told Breitbart Texas, “The union is about to put out a press release saving face for the local who invited Trump and the union itself by saying they are canceling their participation because Trump said he was “being honored” and that “agents supported him.”
One Border Patrol agent who spoke with Breitbart Texas on the condition of anonymity said, “The union has largely appealed to the public for more attention to the dangers posed by illegal immigrants who cross the border, so it’s strange that the AFL-CIO side would take lead and try to hurt a presidential candidate for saying the same things the union always says. This kind of crap is why I left the union.” The agent continued, “The agents who actually work on the border invited him. This seems contrived.”
To understand the reasons behind Local 2455 inviting Trump to bring attention to what the agents are facing, a brief understanding of the Texas-Mexico border and the Laredo Sector’s struggles are needed.
Texas has five border sectors. from East to West they are the Rio Grande Valley Sector (RGV), the Laredo Sector, the Del Rio Sector, the Big Bend Sector, and the El Paso Sector. Immediately after Breitbart Texas broke the June 5, 2014 leaked images of minors warehoused in RGV Border Patrol facilities, the State of Texas announced an effort to help secure the border. However, in that instance, Texas only sent help to the RGV Sector, largely ignoring the Laredo Sector.
Both the RGV and Laredo Sectors are worse off than most of the other sectors on the U.S.-Mexico border, largely due to the behaviors and characteristics of the specific Mexican cartels operating in these areas. Most of the border has the more professional Sinaloa Federation, an entity very concerned with keeping a low profile and staying out of the public eye. Both the Gulf and the Zetas have had leadership decimated and younger, less professional leaders take over and war with each other. Unlike the RGV Sector that received state help to handle the Gulf cartel, the Laredo Sector has largely been left to fight a losing battle against the Zetas cartel.
Follow Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby on Twitter: @brandondarby
Breitbart Texas has been supportive of both the NBPC and Local 2455 by sponsoring a podcast and helping to bring a voice to the agents they represent. Local 2455 previously honored this writer for such efforts. |
Howard Worth Smith was born on February 2, 1883, in rural Broad Run, Fauquier County . He attended public schools and graduated from Bethel Military Academy in Warrenton, Virginia. After graduating from the University of Virginia , he opened a law practice in Alexandria. During World War I (1914–1918), he served as assistant general counsel to the Federal Alien Property Custodian, which administered claims relating to the seizure of foreign-owned property. From 1918 until 1922, Smith was commonwealth's attorney for Alexandria, before becoming a corporation court judge. As his career in law and politics blossomed, "Judge" Smith also pursued interests in farming, dairying, and banking, as well as part ownership of the Alexandria Gazette. He married Lillian Proctor on November 4, 1913, and they had two children—Howard Jr. and Violett. After his first wife died in the worldwide flu pandemic of 1919, Smith married Ann Corcoran in 1923.
In 1930, Smith won election to the United States House of Representatives from Virginia's Eighth Congressional District and advocated states' rights, fiscal responsibility, and white supremacy. As the Great Depression pushed the federal government to embrace liberal solutions to the fiscal crisis, Smith found himself increasingly at odds with the direction of national policy. His ire was particularly drawn toward Communists, whom he believed were behind the push for social welfare, organized labor, and the civil rights movement.
To fight subversion, Smith wrote the Alien Registration Act, or Smith Act, of 1940, which required aliens to register with the federal government and which made it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the federal government. It was this law that became a crucial weapon in targeting radicals during the Cold War, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court decision Dennis v. United States (1951), which upheld the convictions of several Communist Party leaders. The law remains in effect.
At the same time, Smith tried to redress the balance of power between organized labor and business. He held hearings on the National Labor Relations Board in 1940, which was established under the pro-union Wagner Act of 1935. The well-publicized hearings' recommendations ultimately resulted in the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which outlawed compulsory unionism and secondary boycotts, among other provisions.
Smith used his considerable parliamentary skills to delay, sabotage, or kill legislation for government assistance and civil rights. As an obstructionist, he was an acknowledged master, leading the one-hundred-member conservative coalition of southern Democrats and northern Republicans and chairing the powerful House Rules Committee, which set the conditions under which bills could be considered. So vast was Smith's influence that U.S. president John F. Kennedy supported successful efforts to reduce the powers of the Rules Committee.
When the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 was proposed, the Rules Committee had been largely emasculated. Nevertheless, Smith used every trick at his disposal to try to sink the measure. When passage nevertheless seemed likely, Smith, at the urging of members of the National Woman's Party, volunteered to introduce an amendment to give women, especially white women, equal rights in employment. In this respect, Smith can be called a midwife of the modern feminist movement, although his impact can be considered ironic given the fact that some claim he added the word "sex" to the bill's language as a way to draw votes away from the proposed legislation, which he detested. Smith later insisted that he sincerely supported women's rights, but the Congressional Record notes that there was laughter when Smith introduced his amendment.
In a half-century of politics, Smith lost only two elections. When U.S. senator Carter Glass died in 1946, Smith ran unsuccessfully to replace him. But the Byrd Organization, the state's powerful Democratic political machine to which Smith belonged, threw its weight to a rival candidate, A. Willis Robertson. Smith's long career ended with his second defeat twenty years later. In a shocking upset, the eighty-three-year-old Smith lost his bid for party renomination to George C. Rawlings Jr., a little-known liberal challenger, who in turn lost the general election to Republican William L. Scott.
Smith, a longtime Episcopalian, died on October 3, 1976, and is buried near his ancestral home in Broad Run. |
The old adage “Buy the book before you buy the coin” most certainly applies for those who wish to pursue tokens and exonumia. While there are vast quantities of books which have been published that address U.S. Federal emissions, comparatively very few references exist which address tokens and exonumia.
More and more everyday collectors, as well as esteemed numismatists, are pursuing exonumia. Whether such interests include Civil War Tokens, Mid-19th-Century Merchant tokens, Hard Times, Scrip, or 18th-Century Colonials, having sufficient reference materials is key.
Below are 14 “Must-Have” books which every exonumia enthusiast — whether starting out — or more experienced have on their personal library shelves.
Whitman Encyclopedia of Colonial and Early American Coins
Q.D. Bowers, Whitman Publishing, ©2009 – Hardcover, 332 pages
This book provides listings, illustrations, and attributions for American colonial emissions, including Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, Fugio, and Nova Constellatios.
Other emissions, including English token imports, are also included.
Pricing is organized by grade and by variety.
Bowers introduces his Universal Rarity Scale within this book, and where applicable, rarities are noted for each emission. Standard Catalog of United States Tokens 4th Editioin
Standard Catalog of United States Tokens 1700-1900 4th Edition
Russell Rulau, Krause Publications, ©2004 – Softcover / PDF, 1248 pages
This tome of a reference provides listings for United States tokens beginning from the colonial period, all the way to the turn of the 20th century.
Sections within this guide include Early American, Hard Times, Merchant, Civil War, Patriotic, Cardboard, Trade, and Gay 1890s.
Where known, Rulau provides history and rarity ratings for tokens.
A comprehensive index at the back of the book is an invaluable took for cross-referencing tokens. The book is packed with tokens, and is over 1200 pages in length.
A Guide Book of United States Tokens and Medals, 1st Edition
Katherine Jaeger, Whitman Publishing, ©2008 – Softcover, 288 pages
An introductory guide to the various types of United States tokens and medals, Jaeger gently introduces collectors to exonumia.
Multiple subtopics of tokens, medals, and exonumia are covered, including Transportation, Coal, Scrip, Casino, Transportation, Washingtonia — as well as Early American, Hard Times, Civil War, and Trade.
Valuations and catalog numbers are provided.
The guide is a terrific starter for any collector interested in exploring tokens.
100 Greatest American Medals and Tokens, 1st Edition
Katherine Jaeger & Q.D. Bowers, Whitman, ©2007 – Hardcover, 119 pages
A beautifully assembled and illustrated book, this guide provides readers with superb photographic references for America’s 100 most popular and desired tokens.
In addition to its beauty, this guide provides collectors with high-resolution photographs of many token emissions — a terrific source for vetting tokens and medals before purchase.
Aside from the top 100 tokens and medals, the guide also lists other exonumia contenders which didn’t make the list, but are still worthwhile mentioning.
The Token: America’s Other Money
Edited by Richard G. Doty, American Numismatic Society, ©1994 – Hardcover
This book is more of an assemblance of essays and articles, rather than a front-to-back comprehensive tome.
Within the publication are various articles that discuss counterstamp tokens, Hard Times, Civil War, Encased Postage, and even replicas and copies.
Throughout the book are illustrated examples of various exonumia emissions, including counterstamps.
More importantly, the authors discuss the backgrounds and historical significance of each subcategory of emissions, and provide the overall historical context of the eras for when they were struck.
U.S. Civil War Store Cards, 2nd Edition
George & Melvin Fuld, Quarterman Publications, ©1975 – Hardcover, 652 pages
Literally thousands of Civil War Store Cards were emitted during the United States Civil War.
Facing a dire shortage of minor coinage due to hoarding, merchants and proprietors faced a difficult time conducting commerce during the era.
Their solution was to attain the help of diesinkers and engravers, and have their own coinages struck. Father and son team George and Melvin Fuld, early collectors of Civil War tokens, assembled the guide to provide a single-source reference for all of the various emissions and estimated rarities.
The book is organized by state and town.
Patriotic Civil War Tokens, 5th Revised Edition
George & Melvin Fuld, Civil War Token Society,©2006 – Hardcover, 435 pages
A similar endeavor to the Fulds’ Civil War Store Cards book, this reference provides collectors with a comprehensive catalog of all known Patriotic Civil War token dies.
Unlike Civil War store cards, Patriotic tokens are emissions which did not specifically identify a merchant or proprietor. They were a less costly solution for merchants, because the tokens were struck using stock dies, and did not require custom engraving.
Rarities and illustrations for each of the known patriotic dies, as well as known combinations are provided.
An additional section which discusses the various Civil War engravers provides readers with an appreciation for the craftsmanship that went into making each token.
Merchant and Privately Countermarked Coins
Gregory G. Brunk, World Exonumia Press, ©2003 – Hardcover, 475 pages
Numismatic interest in counterstamped coins is fastly gaining ground. Gregory Brunk’s book is the most comprehensive book to date that attempts to index and identify all known counterstamped coins.
During the 19th century, Merchants began to increasingly counterstamp circulating coinage that passed through their hands. An easy and affordable way to permanently mark coinage, merchants saw this as an opportunity to market and advertise their businesses without having to also undertake the expense of having their own custom storecards or tokens engraved and minted.
The book is an invaluable reference, and contains over 2,000 photographs of countermarked specimens. With over 13,500 unique listings, historical background and reference information is provided wherever possible.
Besides the United States, other countries are also covered, including the UK, Australia, and France.
The Standard Catalog of Encased Postage Stamps, 1st Edition
M.J. Hodder & Q.D. Bowers, Bowers & Merena, ©1989 – Hardcover, 192 pages
During the Civil War, the country experienced a crippling shortage of minor coinage. Due to the uncertainties, people began to hoard all of the United States coinage they could get their hands on.
First gold coins disappeared from circulation. Silver came next. And finally, even copper and brass coinage disappeared.
As with Civil War tokens, merchants began accepting alternative forms of payment for goods and services, including postage stamps.
This book details and lists the various devices used to encase postage stamps, which not only provided a means to protect fragile the stamps, but also provide advertising.
The Atwood-Coffee Catalogue of United States and Canadian Transportation Tokens, 6th Edition, Volume 1
J.M. Coffee & H.V. Ford, American Vecturist Association, ©2007 – Hardcover
Throughout the United States and Canada there exist thousands of various transportation services; many more which have existed and since disappeared over the last 200 years.
Most transportation companies and agencies emitted tokens as a means for passengers and riders to present fare.
This catalogue provides a single reference for all of those token emissions, and include tokens for early coach, omnibus, ferry, turnpike, and streetcar, up to and including those issued in more recent times for subways, trains, and trollies.
Listings are organized by state and province, as well as city and municipality.
Scrip: Trade Tokens Issued by United States Coal Mining Companies & Company Stores
Stuart E. Brown Jr., Virginia Publishing Company, ©1978 – Hardcover
This informative book, written by Stuart E. Brown Jr, discusses the history of coal company scrip and its use within the United States.
Stuart discusses the various varieties of scrip emissions, including those made of paper and cardboard, as well as those struck as metal tokens.
Applicable to all types of scrip, and not limited to coal scrip, a detailed evolution of metal token use in the U.S. is studied. From the time when scrip emerged as simple crude discs, through to their mintage in modern times, where they’ve become patented — replete with trademarks, counting devices, and cut outs.
Edkins Catalogue of United States Coal Company Store Scrip, 3rd Edition, Volumes I & II
B. Williams & S.Ratliff, National Scrip Collectors Association – Hardcover
Donald Edkins in the 1960s endeavored to create a census of all coal scrip produced within the United States. As more and more emissions were documented, the initiative grew and grew.
The hardbound Edkins Catalogue is the output of that endeavor. Organized by state, county, and town, the catalog lists all known coal company scrip emissions, based on company and value.
As more obscure emissions are discovered, new listings are added to the catalog. In fact, the catalog has grown so large that it now consists of two volumes.
Rarity estimates are also provided.
20,000 Coal Company Stores
Gordon Dodrill, Dusquene Lithographing Co., ©1971 – Softcover, 287 pages
A helpful accompaniment to the Edkins Catalogue, this guide provides a cross-referenced index of all known Coal Companies, Coal Company stores, states, towns, and counties.
Over the course of the nations mining history, thousands of fly-by-night coal companies sprang into existence, only to quickly go out of business after a short time.
This book written by Dodrill is the most comprehensive index of coal companies and coal stores known to date. For many researchers and genealogists, this guide is an invaluable tool.
More Adventures with Rare Coins
Q.D. Bowers, Bowers & Merena Publishing, ©2002 – Hardcover, 459 pages
Of the many books which David Bowers has written, this is one of the few which ties history and background to the various coins and tokens covered in the book.
Numismatics is not only the study of coinages and exonumia, but equally important the people, the businesses, and the history tied to them.
Collectors who appreciate the cultural and human aspects of coins and tokens, and their important ties to history, will appreciate this book.
Over time, additional books and references will be added to this section.
Aaron Packard |
Sure, beauty icon Marilyn Monroe had curves, but there is a pop culture myth, propped up by quotes from Roseanne Barr and Elizabeth Hurley, that she was much larger than she really was. It’s all a complicated misunderstanding.
The claim is that Marilyn was a size 16 (which people think of in today’s size standards.) While sometimes Marilyn did appear to have a fuller figure, she almost always looked tiny.
For instance, Chloe Marshall, who was the first size 16 girl to compete in Miss England, is a lovely representation of what a 16 size is today:
Here’s Marilyn Monroe at what was probably her heaviest:
Possibly a size 10 or 12 by today’s sizing, but the truth is during most of her career, Marilyn was more slim than this.
There’s a lot that goes into the confusion about Marilyn’s size and weight. The argument is that our perception of beauty as a society has changed to prefer waif-thin girls over 1950’s hourglass pinup shapes. What’s odd about that is the fact that our population as a whole has gotten much bigger since the 50s, and clothing manufacturers have actually changed the sizes to be more kind to our egos. Maybe at one point Marilyn did wear a size 16 dress, but it was probably more of what a size 12 is today.
Here are the quotes that really pumped up the Marilyn plump myth:
Roseanne Barr:
“I’m more sexy than Pamela Lee or whoever else they’ve got out there these days. Marilyn Monroe was a size 16. That says it all.”
Elizabeth Hurley:
“I’ve always thought Marilyn Monroe looked fabulous, but I’d kill myself if I was that fat…I went to see her clothes in the exhibition, and I wanted to take a tape measure and measure what her hips were. She was very big.”
That’s strange, because many others have also reported back from actually measuring an owning her clothes, and those reports paint a much different story than what Elizabeth Hurley is speculating about.
There’s are also Marilyn’s measurements from her dressmaker:
Height: 5 feet, 5½ inches
Weight: 118-140 pounds (Hollywood studios listed her between 115-120 lbs.)
Bust: 35-37 inches
Waist: 22-23 inches
Hips: 35-36 inches
Bra size: 36D
Hmm, so her waist never got above 23 inches, and her hips never got beyond 36.
When British Journalist Sara Buys actually tried on Marilyn Monroe’s clothes, here’s what she experienced:
Contrary to received wisdom, she was not a voluptuous size 16 – quite the opposite. While she was undeniably voluptuous – in possession of an ample bosom and a bottom that would look at home gyrating in a J-Lo video – for most of the early part of her career, she was a size 8 and even in her plumper stages, was no more than a 10. I can tell you this from experience because a few weeks ago, I tried to try on her clothes.
British sizes are also different from American sizes, as in they are less forgiving. A British size 8 is actually an American size 4, a 10 is a 6.
Daven Hiskey on the website todayIfoundout.com notes that Marilyn’s infamous Seven Year Itch white dress was too small to fit on a size 2 mannequin. He also noted that many times her clothes were so tight she had to be sewn into them. Often she was wearing what would be considered now to be a size 2, when she probably would be more comfortable with a 4.
So why worry about all this? Because the truth behind myths matter, and in a society that’s full of body conscious young women it’s better to know that if you’re a size 16 you’re not going to look like Marilyn Monroe, because she was a size 4. It’s also important to know that Marilyn Monroe was not overweight in any way, and if your body does resemble hers, neither are you. |
Today’s Heritage Foundation event featured conservative evangelicals who are unhappy with other evangelicals who are promoting comprehensive immigration reform. Our “who’s who” of the speakers turned out to be a good guide to what they had to say. Speakers repeatedly (falsely) characterized the Senate immigration bill as “amnesty.”
James Hoffmeier, author of a book on immigration and the Bible, said he objects to people using the Bible to talk about immigration “the wrong way” and “misuse the scriptures to advance a cause.” He argues that undocumented immigrants are not the kind of people referred to in Bible verses about being welcoming to strangers.
Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy griped about mainline denominations demonstrating a lack of concern for border security. He credited evangelicals endorsing comprehensive immigration reform for citing a need for border security, but criticized them for supporting the “mass legalization” in the Senate bill, which he characterized as legalization first, border security later.
Kelly Kullberg organized Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration as a counter to the Evangelical Immigration Table, which energetically backs the Senate bill. She is also, like Tooley, a founder of Christians for a Sustainable Economy (CASE), a group that criticized Christians calling themselves the “Circle of Protection,” who had argued against cuts to federal programs that serve the poor. (In a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders, CASE asked, “Whom would Jesus indebt?” and declared “The Good Samaritan did not use a government credit card.”) Kullberg made similar points about the immigration bill, saying America is a “near-bankrupt welfare state living on borrowed money” and cannot afford “amnesty” and “an influx of foreign labor.” She said “Kindness to foreigners should not be theft or injustice to citizens.” She also said that nowhere in scripture do we see “blanket amnesty or asylum.”
Carol Swain, right-wing author and law professor, argued that Christians should support respect for the rule of law. Swain warned “We’re welcoming people who totally reject who we are as a people,” and said we create problems for ourselves “if we bring in people who are not easily assimilated.” She declared, “There is no place in America for Sharia law in the U.S. Constitution.” But Swain said she favors immigration reform if it is done the “right way” and encouraged people to read her book, Be the People, to find out how. |
The More You Know 2013 logo Production company(s) NBC Universal Release Original network NBC networks Original release September 9, 1989 –
present Chronology Preceded by One to Grow On
(1983–1989) External links Website
The More You Know is a series of public service announcements (PSAs) broadcast on the NBC family of channels in the United States and other locations, featuring educational messages. These PSAs are broadcast occasionally during NBC's network programming.
The spots feature personalities from various NBC shows, as well as other notable figures such as U.S. presidents. Tom Brokaw was the first person to do a The More You Know spot; it aired on NBC in September 1989, succeeding the One to Grow On PSAs that were used from 1983 to 1989.
El Poder de Saber (The Power of Knowledge) is The More You Know's sister campaign on Telemundo. While the other U.S. broadcast networks have similar campaigns, namely CBS Cares and Disney-ABC's Be Inspired, The More You Know is likely the most well known.
History [ edit ]
A senior executive at NBC, Dr. Rosalyn Weinman, developed the campaign and wrote most of the on-air PSAs after putting an advisory council together. She ran the campaign for 10 years. The first 'comet trail' star logo was designed by Steve Bernstein and later produced by Paul Johnson on an animation stand using a slit scan technique at R/Greenberg Associates (now R/GA Digital Studios) in Manhattan. They were later updated using three-dimensional computer graphics. The More You Know program won a Peabody Award in 1993 for serving as "a model national public service campaign to provide a range of useful information to its vast television audience."[1]
The campaign has featured a range of guests over the years including Amy Poehler, Joan Rivers, Jack McBrayer, Steve Harvey, Anjelica Huston, Questlove, and Jimmy Fallon.[2] Several past U.S. presidents have also participated in the campaign, including Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush,[3] and Barack Obama, who encouraged parents to be more involved in their children's education, while First Lady Michelle Obama worked to promote the prevention of childhood obesity.[4] The show has also featured Jonathan Brandis.
On February 24, 2016, NBC announced that it would launch a new Saturday morning E/I block named after the campaign, programmed by Litton Entertainment and replacing its in-house NBC Kids block.[5]
Parodies [ edit ]
The campaign has been widely parodied, with references in Will & Grace, 30 Rock, Family Guy,[6] Drawn Together, Scrubs, recurring parodies on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, a running segment on The Daily Show called "The Less You Know," and an April 2006 series of NBC-produced mock PSAs starring the cast of The Office. A sketch on Saturday Night Live portrayed the sometimes-fatal effects of CPR.[7] A parody was also on MADtv mentioning the "[nonexistent] danger of conga lines", and another one which spouted random obvious facts. Spliced has a parody of public-service announcements in general (and The More You Know in particular), in brief segments called "Knowing is Growing".[citation needed]
During the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show (which itself was broadcast by NBC), Katy Perry closed her performance with a rendition of "Firework" while riding on a shooting star; following the show, comparisons were drawn to the former logo of The More You Know, as captured by user-created edits of photos from the scene.[8]
See also [ edit ]
The More You Know (block)
CBS Cares , a currently running CBS PSA campaign
, a currently running CBS PSA campaign Read More About It, a PSA campaign created by a joint venture between CBS and the Library of Congress |
I am raising money in order to purchase RGO braces. These RGO braces will allow me to walk across the stage for the first time in 4.5 years at my graduation -Spring 2014.
In 2009, on my way to school in Denton, I got into a truck wreck- I broke my neck, shoulder, wrist, ribs, my lungs collapsed twice, my brain hemorrhaged and injured my spinal cord at the lower thoracic spine- leaving me paralyzed from the waist down.
After the wreck I was determined to get my life back on track ASAP. I re-enrolled at the College of Visual Arts & Design at UNT the following August- living independently only 1 year after having been in a coma. In the spring I will be graduating with 2 degrees and a 3.3 GPA. I want to reward my accomplishments with a statement of strength: I will walk across that stage, and I will do it with my chin up because determination and support can accomplish anything.
Help spread the word! Share Tweet 811 total shares total shares |
Microsoft has learned a lot about chatbot technology since the unfortunate rollout of the short-lived “Tay” chatbot one year ago this week, when Internet users were able to teach Tay to make racist and misogynistic remarks. This weekend, the company offered insights on the lessons learned from that experience, as well as the huge amount of artificial intelligence work Microsoft is now undertaking.
With encouragement from CEO Satya Nadella, the company’s artificial intelligence team moved on from Tay and started offering a new chatbot aimed at millennials called Zo late last year. Zo is based on the company’s popular XiaoIce Chinese-language bot (which Microsoft rolled out on WeChat in 2014).
“Tay is gone, Zo is the one we are embracing and supporting,” said Xuedong Huang, Microsoft technical fellow of artificial intelligence, during a presentation on Saturday at the AI NEXT tech conference in Bellevue, Wash. “AI is (about) learning from data. We learned from what happened. (With Tay), we didn’t do a super, super good job. With Zo, we are doing a much better job.”
Microsoft doubled-down on artificial intelligence last fall with the formation of a new 5,000-person AI and Research Group.
Huang demonstrated a number of major applications of Microsoft’s AI and chat technologies, including a new implementation Microsoft is now using on its company-wide support website. He showed how you can just click on the “Get started” button to start an immediate chatbot session. Once in the chat, you can ask questions such as “How do I upgrade from Windows 8?”
In the demonstration, not all the answers provided the best possible resolution to the question, but Huang says it is a work in progress and does demonstrate the promise of the technology — and the way Microsoft is committed to using bots to meet mainstream enterprise business requirements.
Li Deng, Microsoft’s chief scientist of artificial intelligence, told the conference that today’s AI and chat solutions are the culmination of several decades of evolution in artificial intelligence — with each stage of AI marking a new generation of solutions.
Deng said that the first generation of AI lasted from the early part of the 1990s until almost the turn of the decade, and was primarily centered on rules and templates.
Such systems offered limited function in terms of the inputs allowed and the outputs provided (think of early voice-based train schedule information systems) and relied on those with expert domain knowledge to design them. They were hard to scale to more than one area of expertise, or domain. You couldn’t, for example, use the framework for a flight-booking system to architect a telephone banking system. Data was only used to design the rules that created the system — not to learn and evolve the way the system operated.
“The problem was this approach was that it was very brittle,” he said. “There are still many systems today based on this approach because it’s easy to interpret the results.”
The next generation of AI came in the late 1990s and was based on “data-driven, shallow learning” and used in conjunction with speech recognition, he said. Its goals were really about using data to reduce the cost of hand-crafting complex dialogues and making systems less sensitive to speech recognition errors. It also did try to leverage data a lot more.
“If you have a lot of data, you automatically learn a lot of things,” he said. “It pushed the state of the art in a very nice direction because it was data-driven.”
But Deng explained that this second generation of AI produced results that were not always easy to interpret or debug — and these systems were hard to update. They also didn’t really replace first-generation systems, but rather ran in parallel with them.
All of that leads to today’s third generation of artificial intelligence, from which Microsoft’s current chat solutions came. Deng says that in these systems, the key difference is data-driven deep learning.
Deng says this deep learning approach powers today’s conversational bots into four categories: social chatbots (such as Microsoft’s Zo and XiaoIce); InfoBots (aimed primarily at retrieving information); task completion bots (that are all about helping you accomplish a particular task, such as booking a flight or troubleshooting a technical issue); and personal assistant bots (which can combine informational retrieval and task completion with recommendations — such as suggesting the best Italian restaurant near you).
Microsoft faces tough competition in all of the above categories for use of bot technology — and notably AI driven by voice. Deng acknowledged the broad field by identifying Amazon’s Echo, Apple’s Siri, Google Now, VocalIQ and IBM Watson Analytics as competitors that play in the same space as Microsoft’s Cortana.
Deng also talked about how Microsoft has combined AI with speech recognition and machine translation technologies. By taking speech recognition technology to turn spoken words into text, Microsoft can then use its machine translation tools to translate those words from one language to another.
Speech synthesis technology then allows those newly-translated words to be converted into spoken words in another language. All of those functions have now been rolled into the latest features for Microsoft Translator, which rolled out late last year for Android, Amazon, iOS and Windows devices. |
By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net
Doda (Jammu) : The holy month of Ramadan can be a testing period for teenagers. But for Shahnawaz Ahmed, a 13-year-old boy from Koti Basti Village in Doda district of J&K, it is the time of the year when he spends his entire day in a local madrasa reading chapters of Holy Quran. And for good reason too: every evening, he recites the Quran while while leading the ‘Taraweeh’ prayer in a local mosque in the evening.
Shahnawaz was 12 when he became Hafiz Quran after studying in Anwar-ul-Uloom Madrasa in Akramabad, Doda for four years.
Despite his age, Shahnawaz leads ‘Taraweeh’ prayers in Masjid Hamza, in Samalen locality of Doda. He takes 80 minutes to read one Juz (part) of holy Quran in 20 Rakats of ‘Taraweeh’
“Alhamdulillah, I feel so happy that Allah gave me chance to lead the prayers at this age,” says Shahnawaz.
Support TwoCircles
Asked if he doesn’t get tired spending the whole day in memorizing and evening in reciting Quran, he quickly adds, “Instead it refreshes me. It gives me peace at heart.”
He finished reciting the last chapter of Quran (chapter number 114) on the night of Lailat-ul-Qadr.
“On an average, I recite one Juz in 20 Rakats every day. Sometimes, it extends to one and a half Juz. I had made the schedule in such a way, so that I can complete the last chapter of Quran on the night of Lailat-ul-Qadr,” he said.
Shahnawaz was just a few months old when his mother died. As he grew up, affording school education was a distant dream as his father, a laborer by profession hardly earned enough means to meet the ends. He was admitted in Madrasa at the age of eight.
“Initially, I couldn’t settle in the environment of Madrasa, which was totally different for a village boy like me, who didn’t knew anything about Islam. But gradually with the help of my new friends and the realization of essence of Islam in the life of Muslim, I totally gave myself into the study of Quran,” he told TwoCircles.net
Even though he is happy at what he is doing, after joining an Islamic Seminary he also developed a desire to study in a school, where he could learn Maths, Science and most importantly, English.
“When I came to Madrasa, every morning, I see children of different ages in my neighbourhood in school uniforms waiting for their school buses. Those images would revolve around my mind for next couple of days and the desire of being one among them is still there,” he says and adds after a pause, “Still, I am happy with what Allah has given me, because he is the biggest planner.”
He is very happy these days: the people in the neighborhood of Masjid Hamza collected money and bought him new clothes for Eid and gave him Rs 1,800 in cash, which he proudly carries in his pocket.
“This money will last almost three months,” he says.
He is going to stay in the madarasa for another year and then migrate to another madarasa in Jammu, where he plans to do a course in ‘Alamiyat’ for next nine years and another two years to become a ‘Qari’ (reciter) in a madarasa at Srinagar.
When asked about his plans after completing all his courses, Shahnawaz says, “I want to become a teacher and teach students in Islamic seminary,” he says.
After Eid, he will rejoin his madrasa and finish his remaining one year education, before he moves to Jammu to study there for almost a decade. |
Four more Filipinos have been shown to have contracted the Ebola Reston virus, a finding that increases the likelihood that pig-to-human transmission took place, health officials said Friday.
Philippine Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said there now are five known cases of possible pig-to-human transmission of the virus after a backyard hog raiser from a northern Manila suburb became the first confirmed case this month.
An initial report said that none of the five men wore protective clothing and all were exposed through direct contact with sick pigs, according to Duque.
The rare virus - first discovered among monkeys south of Manila in 1989 - has not been known to cause serious illness among humans. At least 25 people in the Philippines have been infected with the virus by monkeys, but only one victim exhibited mild flu-like symptoms.
Three of the Ebola virus' five subtypes are associated with deadly hemorrhagic fever in humans; two other subtypes, including the Reston, are not, according to the World Health Organization.
WHO's Dr. Julie Hall said the five cases in the Philippines "increases the likelihood" of pig-to-human transmission of the virus, but investigators were not yet certain. She said all five people are now virus-free.
"They are not infectious to others, they therefore do not need to be quarantined," she said.
While the virus appears to pose low risks to humans, Hall said the government must implement strict measures such as quick reporting of sick or dying pigs and prevention of the sale of illegally slaughtered meat to keep the virus from spreading among the swine population.
The Philippine government invited experts from WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Organization for Animal Health early this month to conduct a study on the health risks of the virus, first found in pigs in the Philippines in October.
The discovery not only marked the first time the virus has been found outside of monkeys, but also the first time it has been found in swine, a food-producing animal.
Health officials were trying to locate anyone who may have had contact with the five men. |
The Royals once had a farm system the envy of baseball, and while not all of those prospects panned out, many became the nucleus of a club that would win two pennants and a championship, validating the hard work of the scouting department. However the Royals have failed to re-stock that farm system effectively, at least, according to experts like ESPN’s Keith Law. Law began his rankings of organizational talent this week and ranked the Royals 26th in baseball, ahead of only the Diamondbacks, Marlins, Mariners, and Angels.
The Royals have had their farm system depleted due to graduations (Raul Mondesi), trades (Sean Manaea), and injuries (Kyle Zimmer), but it is also clear they have had some poor drafts of late. Despite this, there are a few rays of light to hold out hope for, and Law admits that the Royals could move up quickly with some high upside prospects.
Of all of the systems down here on the bottom rung, none has the untapped upside of the Royals’ organization, with more guys whose scouting reports start with “if…” than any other.
Law mentions the high upside of Zimmer, who has been ravaged by injuries in his career, but continues to show “ace”-quality stuff when healthy. Zimmer underwent thoracic outlet syndrome surgery last fall after missing the entire season. Law also mentions the high upside of pitcher Josh Staumont, who some are calling the best prospect in the Royals system. Staumont flashes a 100 mph fastball, but has shown very little command in his career and could end up in the bullpen.
Pitcher Garrett Davila and shortstop Marten Gasparini also get singled out as players who have high upside if they can figure things out. Davila posted a 2.77 ERA in 65 innings in low Rookie ball for Burlington at age 19 last year. The Italian-born Gasparini struggled mightily in Low A Lexington, hitting .191/.256/.293, but was very young for the level, and he held his own the year before that in Advanced Rookie ball at Idaho Falls.
Law notes that the Royals have employed a “swing for the fences” strategy in amateur scouting that proved fruitful for years, but has come up empty more recently. The Royals have steadily dropped in his organizational rankings, ranking 11th in 2013, 7th in 2014, 15th in 2015, and 23rd in 2016.
Keith Law, who once worked in the Toronto Blue Jays front office, will unveil his full organizational rankings over the next few days. Next week he will unveil his Top 100 prospects, of which the Royals are not expected to land many (if any) prospects. |
Have you ever had the opportunity to pass on a childhood dream? From the sounds of it, that is what former Syracuse Orange shooting forward James Southerland did Thursday in the middle of the 2013 NBA Draft.
According to Syracuse.com, the NBA's runner-up, the San Antonio Spurs, an organization that has been praised for years about how it is run, wanted to pick Southerland with its second-round selection (No. 58-overall) but Southerland and his agent said no thanks. Why? Because the Spurs wanted him to play in Europe to develop his game.
Now, to each their own. One has to make the best decision for one's self. That is why I am not going to write a column on whether or not this was a bad career move for J-South.
However, with that said: If your dream is to get drafted by a NBA franchise -- especially one as good as the Spurs, who in the NBA Finals proved they use shooting forwards very well and showed interest in you before the draft -- and one tells you they want you but you need to do this, this and this; I personally would have a tough time saying, "Ahhhhh. No thanks."
So far, Southerland has yet to sign a contract with a NBA team, though, it is expected he will get a chance to. (Keyword: chance.)
Honestly, I hope it all works out for him but, man, that is a tough decision to support. |
Winston-Salem trounced Durham 10-0 without an exchange of blows Tuesday after a bench-clearing brawl Monday left one player hospitalized.
Ten players were ejected following the brawl Monday night, which was “Strike Out Domestic Violence” night at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.
Warthogs pitcher Glen Cullop lost several teeth and was knocked unconscious during the brawl. He was listed in stable condition Tuesday at Durham Regional Hospital.
League president John Hopkins said it was still too early to discuss what action the league will take.
“I’ve only just received the report from the umpires,” Hopkins said. “I’ll be there tonight to talk to the teams. We’ll just have to see what happens after that.
“I will say this - both managers are extremely concerned about the incident and I have confidence that they will use their influence to try to prevent a recurrence.”
Winston-Salem’s Curt Lyons pitched seven innings for the victory Tuesday, and Gulls left-hander Del Mathews took the loss.
Monday’s brawl began after Durham’s John Knott was hit by a pitch from Jason Kummerfeldt and charged the mound with two out in the bottom of the third.
Kummerfeldt already had hit Danny Magee in the first and had given up consecutive homers before hitting Knott on the left arm. In the top of third, Bulls pitcher Jamie Arnold had hit Aaron Boone of Winston-Salem.
“They had it coming,” Knott said. “I could tell that the guy intentionally threw at Danny Magee in the first inning.”
Kummerfeldt denied hitting the Bulls intentionally.
“I had no control and no command of my pitches,” he said. “I kept trying to go inside. I hate the fact that I hit three or four batters, or whatever it was.”
Hopkins said a similar incident prompted by batters being hit with pitches occurred last year in a game between Wilmington and Salem.
“There were fines and suspensions for those involved, as there probably will be in this case,” he said. “I just don’t know who was involved and to what degree.”
Hopkins said the minimum penalty for a player who leaves his position and becomes involved in a confrontation on the field is a two-game suspension and $100 fine.
The brawl delayed the game 32 minutes.
Winston-Salem won 10-8. |
There is growing outrage in a community near Cornwall, Ont., after a police officer was awarded a Medal of Bravery for an incident in which the high-speed pursuit of a suspect ended in the death of three people.
Gov. Gen. David Johnston handed Akwesasne Mohawk police Const. Michael Biron the medal last Friday for putting his own life at risk to attempt to rescue an elderly couple after a van collided with their car on Nov. 14, 2008.
Edward and Eileen Kassian, both from Massena, N.Y., died on Nov. 14, 2008, after a van struck their car while they were driving on Cornwall Island. (CBC)
The award is contentious because Biron had been the driver of a police vehicle in pursuit of the driver of the van, who was suspected of smuggling cigarettes. At the height of the chase, Biron's vehicle was pursuing at speeds reaching 160 km/h.
Equally troubling for residents in the community is that six months ago, Biron was involved in a second police chase that ended with the death of a young couple.
Officer attempted to rescue elderly couple
In the 2008 incident, Biron was in pursuit of the suspected cigarette smuggler when the suspect's van collided with a car. Both vehicles burst into flames.
Canada Border Services officer Yves Soumillon also responded to the crash from the Canadian port of entry on Cornwall Island, just metres from the crash site.
Biron and Soumillon rushed to the car and tried to open its damaged doors and save Edward and Eileen Kassian, both from Massena, N.Y. They were unable to rescue the 77-year-old couple before flames engulfed the vehicle. The driver of the van also died.
Michael Kassian, the couple's son, called the award an injustice for his family and their friends.
"I don't think he did anything to save their lives," said Kassian. "I think he did more using poor judgment based on the fact that he ensued this chase."
Const. Michael Biron was charged with criminal negligence and dangerous driving causing death in relation to a 2008 crash where three people died. But those charges were later dismissed. (CBC)
After the collision, Biron was charged with criminal negligence and dangerous driving causing death, but those charges were later dismissed.
New York State Democratic congressman Bill Owens said that based on the Kassian family concerns, he is contacting Ottawa to find out why the award was given to Biron.
Timmy Currier, the chief of police for Massena and a neighbour of the Kassians, said he believes Biron stepped over the line.
"We're not going to pursue for minor violations. and most particularly, we're not going to pursue when people's lives are in danger … either the person being pursued, or the officer or innocent bystanders. In the Kassians case, their death was avoidable," said Currier.
Young friends killed last year
In the 2011 incident, 19-year-old Amber Aliff was driving her car with two passengers when they ran a stop sign. Biron set off in a brief pursuit from the Mohawk territory and into New York State but broke off the pursuit at an intersection.
A few hundred metres from the intersection, the car crashed into a tree, killing Aliff and 22-year-old passenger Dakota Benedict.
"I just believe that if he had stopped chasing them at the border then they'd be here today," said Benedict's mother, Michelle Sawatis.
Residents of Akwesasne have started a petition to remove Biron from the police force.
Akwesasne police not involved in nomination
In a joint statement released Thursday, the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Commission and the Akwesasne police said Biron was nominated for the award without their knowledge or involvement.
They said they would not be providing comment on "a process in which they did not participate."
A spokeswoman with the Office of the Secretary of the Governor General said the award was given in recognition of Biron putting his own life in danger to attempt to rescue another person.
"It is not related to any other incident that might have taken place following this event," said Marie-Pierre Bélanger in a statement.
Bélanger said witnesses, investigators and police officers are contacted as part of the research process, but not family members of the victims of the crash.
Michael Kassian said he was never contacted about the award, and said if he had been, he would not have endorsed any award for Biron.
"It's a slap in the face," said Kassian. |
Few crimes attract more public opprobrium than assaults on older people in their homes. Physical injuries inflicted on vulnerable people during the course of burglaries is bad enough, but the long-term effects on these victims can be horrendous as they find it difficult, or even impossible, to return to their homes and feel safe again. Such crimes are relatively rare but they have a corrosive effect on society in general and on the quality of life of people living alone in urban and in isolated rural areas.
The murder of 78-year-old Rose Hanrahan during a break-in at her home in Limerick city last week was an extreme event and is currently being investigated by the Garda Síochána. A successful prosecution in the case may, however, do little to reduce the fear generated among her neighbours by the realisation that an individual or individuals in the community could do such as thing. During the past year, a number of older people have been subjected to serious assaults and extreme verbal threats during the course of burglaries. In spite of alarmist publicity, most of these have occurred in urban areas.
During the last general election campaign, rural crime and the closure of more than 300 Garda stations in 2013/2014 became a major issue. Negotiations on a programme for government brought a commitment to reopen six stations. Subsequently, crime rates in those areas were shown to have fallen. Similarly, political talk about soaring crime rates and an upsurge in violent rural burglaries proved to be unfounded. Research by the Waterford Institute of Technology showed that violent crime was not a “significant feature” and that most offences involved vandalism and the theft of machinery, livestock and agricultural diesel.
The notion of city criminals using motorways and high-speed vehicles to target the occupants of isolated farmhouses has grabbed the public’s attention on both sides of the Border because of extensive thefts of machinery and livestock. It has led to demands for the installation of CCTV cameras on motorways to automatically record vehicle plate numbers and for the electronic tagging of repeat offenders. A Government pledge to make €1 million available for community CCTV schemes here is at present being examined on grounds of legality by the Data Protection Commissioner.
A fall in the number of gardaí and changes in society have contributed to greater anxiety in rural areas and amongst older people. But exaggerated claims concerning their vulnerability and crime rates causes further damage. The statistical reality is that, in spite of recent dreadful events, the incidence of burglaries has fallen dramatically. There is certainly room for more efficient, effective police work. But a climate of fear is in nobody’s interests. |
By Alex Tarrant
They’ve been dubbed KiwiBuild and KiwiBuild-lite.
But even that description of the difference between Labour's and National’s state-led private house building plans might imply the gap is too wide.
Particularly when it comes to Auckland.
New Zealand’s two main parties are each promising to build tens of thousands of houses on Crown land in Auckland to sell into the private 'affordable' market over the next decade.
Both will use the threat of government building as leverage to try and force private land bankers to get a move on with residential development.
And both are proposing at least some level of central government funding for Auckland housing infrastructure, be it roads, water or sewerage.
So what difference is there to vote for? It’s all looking pretty purple when it comes to government-led Auckland private housing supply efforts.
National set to announce big Auckland housing plan
Prime Minister Bill English in February welcomed approval of Auckland’s Unitary Plan. He said it would allow for an increase in the amount of housing on Crown land in the city from 27,000 to 69,000 over the next decade.
He even outlined that extra building should be expected in Avondale, Mt Roskill and South Auckland alongside existing projects in Hobsonville, Northcote and Tamaki.
Further details have been short on the ground. But National is gearing up for a big Auckland housing announcement in the next month or so – potentially ahead of the 25 May Budget. We’ll get a better idea of where these houses will be, when they’ll be there, and how you’ll be able to get to them.
It is an election year. A lot will be said of policy differences between Left and Right on issues such as immigration, tax settings and expected interest rate tracks (on Interest.co.nz at least). Let’s park demand to one side – perhaps until we get Labour’s immigration policy – and focus on supply.
A brief overview:
Labour is promising to build half of its 100,000 house KiwiBuild target in Auckland over the next ten years.
National is promising to increase the numbers of houses on Crown land in Auckland from 27,000 to 69,000, or “slightly more” than that, over the next ten years.
Labour says KiwiBuild is a ‘counter-cyclical’ policy. Government will fill gaps left by the private sector. Another way to interpret that is the policy can be used as leverage: the threat of mass-building on Crown land as an incentive to get private land owners moving ahead of the government.
National says competitive land markets are the key to addressing Auckland’s housing problem and that government is a Very Large Auckland Landowner. As leverage, they will use the threat of mass-building on Crown land as an incentive to get private land owners moving ahead of the government.
If you don’t, we will
The Crown has owned its land for a long time. Valuation movements (think potential falls) won’t matter as much to the government as they might to private land bankers. The message from both National and Labour is: if you don’t develop your land, we’ll develop ours, and the value of yours will fall.
One response from land owners has been that they would develop but need to be able to connect to the Auckland Council infrastructure grid.
Both National and Labour have recognised a need for government intervention to help the Auckland Council sort this out.
Labour is proposing Treasury’s Debt Management Office borrows funds at the central government level to pay for infrastructure such as new/improved transport links and three-waters. This will allow for development of greenfields land and more densification.
Targeted rates will allow for the borrowing to be repaid over the lifetime of the asset. Having the debt sit at central government level will mean the Auckland Council’s balance sheet won’t be overburdened.
National is offering funding to councils with its $1bn Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF). We’re still yet to hear which council plans will be blessed with the funding, but think of projects like the Penlink road in Auckland, or a couple of new bridges over to vacant land in Hamilton.
This will allow for development of greenfields land and more densification. Projects could be developed and refunded within Special Purpose Vehicles, so the Auckland Council’s balance sheet won’t be overburdened.
Now, $1bn isn’t going to be enough. We will be seeing extra policy from National on this front. A starting point will be gentle pressure on making sure the Auckland Council has its priorities straight.
But if the HIF projects go to plan – let’s say Penlink is funded and helps the future residential areas north of Auckland be developed quicker than expected – then these things will be all the rage. Targeted rates, anyone?
Where's the difference? Funding those houses
It all sounds very similar. More so, at least, than the traditional ‘let the market sort itself out’ versus ‘government intervention is required’.
This isn’t necessarily bad. But for those worried that we’re going to have an ideology-free, centrist general election when it comes to the supply of private Auckland housing spurred on by the government, do not despair.
One difference that might just emerge regards how a National or Labour-led government will fund the tens of thousands of homes each is aiming to build.
Labour’s KiwiBuild is set to get an initial $2bn government injection. This is expected to be recycled as houses are sold, and returned to the Crown when KiwiBuild is complete.
National is leaning more towards requiring and allowing Housing New Zealand to seek its own funding. Private sector funding for the building of houses on Crown land that will then be sold to the private sector.
The mantra is that borrowing at the government’s risk-free rate should not be used to fund riskier asset classes such as property.
There has been plenty of debate at the top of government about this – including a look at whether there should at least be some central government funding kick-start for National’s grand ambitions for Housing NZ.
But that could be the difference. We’ll know soon enough. |
WNT
CHICAGO (February 8, 2017) – U.S. Women’s National Team head coach Jill Ellis has named 25 players to a training camp roster prior to the 2017 SheBelieves Cup that will feature the USA, Germany, France and England playing in three doubleheader events at three different venues over a seven-day period in what promises to be highly competitive and entertaining matches.
“January gave us a chance to see some new faces in with the veterans, and get some quality time on the training field,” Ellis said. “A player’s performance in that camp and positional depth guided our selection for this pre-camp, and from here we will select our SheBelieves Cup roster. There will be no better test than opening against Germany, so we will need to have a laser focus as soon as we land in Orlando. As our players have not yet returned to their clubs, they have been training in their independent environments, so playing as much 11v11 situations will again be critical during these few days,” Ellis added.
U.S. Women’s National Team Roster by Position:
GOALKEEPERS (3): Jane Campbell (Houston Dash), Ashlyn Harris (Orlando Pride), Alyssa Naeher (Chicago Red Stars)
DEFENDERS (7): Julie Johnston (Chicago Red Stars), Meghan Klingenberg (Portland Thorns FC), Ali Krieger (Orlando Pride), Kelley O’Hara (Sky Blue FC), Becky Sauerbrunn (FC Kansas City), Casey Short (Chicago Red Stars), Emily Sonnett (Portland Thorns FC)
MIDFIELDERS (9): Morgan Brian (Houston Dash), Tobin Heath (Portland Thorns FC), Lindsey Horan (Portland Thorns FC), Sarah Killion (Sky Blue FC), Rose Lavelle (Boston Breakers), Carli Lloyd (Houston Dash), Allie Long (Portland Thorns FC), Samantha Mewis (NC Courage), Brianna Pinto (CASL)
FORWARDS (6): Crystal Dunn (Chelsea Ladies FC), Alex Morgan (Olympique Lyonnais), Christen Press (Chicago Red Stars), Mallory Pugh (UCLA), Amy Rodriguez (FC Kansas City), Lynn Williams (NC Courage)
Breaking Down the SheBelieves Cup Schedule
The U.S. team will convene in Orlando, Florida on Feb. 20 for a week of training before heading to Philadelphia to kick off the 2nd annual edition of the tournament on Wednesday, March 1 at Talen Energy Stadium. England will open against France in Chester, Pa. (4 p.m. ET) followed by the USA against Germany (7 p.m. ET on FS1).
All the teams will then travel to New Jersey where France will face Germany on Saturday, March 4 (2:15 p.m. ET) followed by the USA taking on England (5 p.m. ET on FOX) at Red Bull Arena in Harrison. The tournament will finish on Tuesday, March 7, at the historic RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. as Germany takes on England (4 p.m. ET) and the USA faces France (7 p.m. ET on FS1).
SheBelieves Cup Tickets
Tickets for all three doubleheaders are on sale through ussoccer.com. Tickets can also be purchased by phone at 1-800-298-4200 for the event in Pennsylvania and 1-800-745-3000 for the matchups in New Jersey and Washington. Ticket office hours at Talen Energy Stadium are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., while the Red Bull Arena ticket office is open Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. [Note: Tickets are not sold at RFK Stadium except on the day of the event.] Groups of 20 or more can be ordered at ussoccer.com.
#SheBelievesHero Contest
The U.S. Women’s National Team announced the launch of the SheBelieves Hero contest ahead of the 2017 SheBelieves Cup. The contest, which runs from Feb. 7-10, aims to find a girl between the ages of 13-17 who embodies the SheBelieves spirit.
Conceived and developed by the U.S. Women’s National Team players, SheBelieves is a movement to inspire young girls and women and encourage them to accomplish their goals and dreams, athletic or otherwise. The campaign was originally launched in the run-up to the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup but has since evolved and grown into a special bond between the team and its fans, taking its powerful message of empowerment and that of believing in yourself into communities across the nation.
Additional Notes: |
SunPower hit a home run with its latest earnings report, announcing record-setting revenue of $937.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, a 69 percent rise from the $550.6 million it did in the third quarter and an even bigger jump – 71 percent – from the $547.9 million it did in the fourth quarter of 2009.
For the full year, revenue climbed to $2.22 billion from $1.52 billion, and net income shot up to $178.7 million from $32.5 million in 2009.
In announcing the impressive earnings, the San Jose-based company also ratcheted up guidance for 2011, saying it anticipates revenues of $2.8 billion. “Given our strong 2010 performance, robust downstream demand and strong visibility, we are confident in our ability to deliver on our improved 2011 plan,” said Tom Werner, SunPower CEO. The company noted that it had achieved a record North American commercial backlog, with 2011 already 90 percent booked.
SunPower has a significant residential arm, but increasingly is seen doing large-scale solar power projects, such as the 20-megawatt (MW) Copper Crossing plant in Arizona, and California’s biggest school installation ever, an 11.2-MW deal with the Mount Diablo Unified Schools. |
Time is running out for Kevin Rudd to reclaim the prime ministership. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen As this scene fades to the next tale of suburban frustration and family disappointment, a female voice-over is heard: "More and more, the demands of business are eating away at the basic rights unions have won for all of us." But where the earlier ACTU campaign was aimed squarely at the Howard government, this ad has no partisan target. Tony Abbott and the Liberals are not mentioned. Nor does it advocate for the Gillard government, also unmentioned. Instead, the punchline is: "Australian unions. Join. For a better life." This does not seem to be about the short-term power struggle of the federal election but the longer run of union membership. The secretary of the ACTU, Dave Oliver, confirms that we're not missing anything: "When I was elected at congress it was on a mandate of making the ACTU an independent, high-profile campaigning organisation," he says.
Illustration: Rocco Fazzari "Unfortunately, these aren't made-up scenarios. It's holding a mirror up to what's going on in workplaces. It's about the basic power imbalance in the workplace, and a very clear call to join a union." But they're obviously timed for the September 14 election, no? Yes and no, says Oliver. "These ads will run for at least two months and, budget permitting, we hope to continue running them regardless of who wins the election." In other words, the ads are not about the interests of the Labor Party in the short run so much as the interests of the labour movement in the longer run. The ACTU is looking to transcend the election. The ACTU's Your Rights at Work Campaign was central to the Labor push to win power in 2007. This time, however, the ads are deliberately aloof from the immediate fight.
Rudd was reminding the Labor caucus that he is still available. Has even the union movement given up on Julia Gillard? It certainly seems so. The ads don't explicitly endorse her - and nor does the implicit message. If these workplace injustices are already occurring, the Rudd-Gillard government must be to blame, surely? It's been in power for six years. Oliver resists this conclusion: "It hasn't happened overnight. It's over the last few decades. Our concern is what a Tony Abbott government would look like, especially around penalty rates, casualisation, loadings and rosters. Individual flexibility is used to undermine collective agreements." If that's the ACTU's concern, why not hit it directly? Oliver reserves the right to run ads that try to influence the election but says the ACTU has "not yet decided". Abbott's opposition deliberately made itself a small target for the ACTU. In fact, the Coalition's workplace policy was written to present the least threatening face possible. While it will attack the unions, it carefully leaves in place all the existing worker protections.
This is immensely frustrating to business and has drawn howls from Peter Reith - but Abbott is taking no chances. He has said he will call for a Productivity Commission inquiry and, if he intends any changes to workplace laws, to take them to the following election to give the people a say. This week two Gillard government MPs packed up their offices. Two others openly ridiculed the Prime Minister's office and its "messaging" efforts. Labor headquarters is proceeding to the election on the assumption that the party will win 32 per cent of the primary vote, implicitly conceding a loss of 6 percentage points since the 2010 election. And Labor didn't exactly win that one. Party veterans from former leader Simon Crean to former pollster Rod Cameron publicly predict electoral disaster. So why wouldn't the unions give up on the Gillard government? They have a duty to their members to husband scarce resources prudently. If the ACTU is letting go of the Gillard government, the Gillard government isn't letting go of the ACTU. This week it was busy in the Parliament delivering some of the key agenda items for the unions. Even unto its last breath. And who better to deliver for the unions than Bill Shorten, a former union boss.
On Thursday night Shorten took to the House the Fair Work Amendment Bill to allow union delegates greater rights of access to workplaces. It allows unions into the lunchrooms of businesses, even ones that have no union members. It passed the House and next goes to the Senate, where it will be enshrined into law before the election. The least ideological of the big business lobby organisations, the Australian Industry Group, said through its chief executive, Innes Willox: "With only 100 days to go until the federal election, major changes to workplace relations laws which will have negative effects on competitiveness and jobs should not be entertained." At the same time, the government moved to tighten the rules on 457 visas that cover temporary foreign workers. Although the Labor government had presided quite contentedly over the system for the past six years, it claimed to have discovered rampant scamming and rushed through an urgent review. As the government prepared its members in a confidential note this week, this measure is strongly supported by the unions and strongly opposed by business. The two MPs who have packed up their offices are Daryl Melham and Alan Griffin. They are plainly resigned to losing, though both insist they haven't given up. And while Melham is in the marginal south-western Sydney seat of Banks, which includes Hurstville and part of Bankstown, hanging on by an eminently losable 1.5 per cent, Griffin is another story.
Griffin's seat of Bruce in Victoria has a margin of 7.7 per cent. In the olden days - pre-2010 - that was considered safe. If there were a uniform swing that big, it would take 33 more marginal Labor MPs before it got to him. Not only that, Griffin is one of the most loyal of the Kevin Rudd fan club. So by signalling despair, he is not only implicitly giving up on Gillard, he's giving up on a Rudd return too. Yet Rudd was on the ABC's program 7.30 on Thursday night urging MPs not to run up the white flag. Rudd was reminding the Labor caucus that he is still available if they should want to draft him into the leadership. It's getting desperate for Rudd. There are only two more parliamentary sitting weeks before the election, only two more caucus meetings, a vanishingly small opportunity for him to return to the prime ministership. Is anything happening behind the scenes? No. "If there is anything," says a former Rudd lieutenant who, like almost all of them, have given up on him, "it would have to come from Gillard's side - Rudd doesn't have the numbers."
One of the reasons Gillard is safe is that the big right-affiliated unions have fought staunchly to keep her in place. When Crean pressed Gillard to call a leadership spill and it seemed Rudd might challenge, two of the key union bosses lobbied their affiliated MPs to stick with Gillard. She has delivered for us, and we have to be loyal to her, was the message from the Australian Workers' Union's Paul Howes and the Transport Workers Union's Tony Sheldon. She continues to deliver for the unions, even if they're giving up on her, and that's why Rudd's case is close to being terminal. Would Gillard consider stepping aside for the good of the party? In the last tableau in the new ACTU ad, a grown son asks his put-upon father to demand better treatment from the boss. ''Why don't you say something?'' he urges his dad. "Have you met my boss?" rejoins the father. Some bosses are immovable. Gillard is one of them. Peter Hartcher is the political editor. |
The Coalition government's proposals to extend surveillance powers would vastly expand the amount of data that communications companies must keep on record.
Phone companies are already required to hold information for up to twelve months; in the future this information - as well as similar information collected form email and social networking sites - could be accessed in real time, and without a warrant.
I accessed my own data from my mobile phone company Vodafone, using data protection laws, to demonstrate what information is already stored and how this data already creates a revealing profile of the individual.
Use the graphic above to browse the location data logged by Vodafone every time my phone made a connection with the phone masts - when I made a call, received or sent a text message, or checked my emails.
Further data - recording what I was using the phone for in each instance, and the numbers I dialled - was also released.
Together this data creates a very effective profile of my life: who I called, where I worked, where I lived and what I got up to.
My phone calls, messages and internet browsing has been recorded to the second. My location to within a few hundred metres.
Browsing the data for only a few minutes is enough to acquaint you with my daily routine.
Most mornings show my phone 'clocking in' with the mast nearest to my home in south London before I leave the house. This phone mast is perhaps 300m from my front door.
On weekdays, the next activity tends to be linked to a Vodafone mast labelled '3 Thomas Moore Street, E1' - a mast apparently attached to or neighbouring the News International offices, where I worked as a reporter for The Sunday Times all of last year.
(A very close reading of my records actually reveals a trip to the Telegraph offices for an interview.)
Unless I'm out of the office on a story, my signal tended to hover around Wapping until evening, when I might meet some friends - maybe at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, where I was recorded several times - before travelling back to Brixton and bed.
But it's not all work and no play.
On July 3, I am in Hyde Park for the entire day. Quickly googling "July 3 2011" and "Hyde Park" provides a bit of insight: it was the last day of Wireless festival.
My Twitter feed confirms it:
<noframe>Twitter: Cal Flyn - Crosslegged in the mud at very front. Been here for 2 hours plus, Jarvis this is dedication <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=doyourememberthefirsttime" target="_blank">#doyourememberthefirsttime</a> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/pulp2011" target="_blank">@pulp2011</a> <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=wireless" target="_blank">#wireless</a></noframe>
I make several trips to the north of Scotland to see my parents. Indeed, can watch me travel north on the train, through York, Newcastle, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Edinburgh, Kingussie, and Inverness.
On the afternoon of 20 December I am at Gatwick airport (North terminal). I must have caught the 17:50 flight to Inverness, because by the next day I am in the Highlands again (a quick check of my emails confirm this was the case).
And even from my relatively remote family home - half an hour's drive from the nearest town - my activity is being carefully and closely recorded. The Vodafone mast I clock in with is within a few hundred metres from my rural house - easily within eyeshot.
On one occasion, I spend two days there before the signal goes dead - "No Cell Info Available" on the 24th or 25th of May, 2011.
This two day period is the longest period during the entire year when my location goes unlogged. An email explains why I have gone off radar: "In the Highlands," I tell a friend on the 24th. "But my phone charger is in London. It'll be dead until I get back tomorrow night."
And right enough, there I am - appearing suddenly back in London late on 25 May.
Every row of data adds another pixel to this portrait of my life.
The records display my daily routine down to the minute, my regular haunts, the location of my childhood home, even my taste in music.
All of this activity is from when I have actively used my phone.
If you have set your phone to automatically check for new emails - which I don't - you are leaving a trail of digital breadcrumbs only minutes apart.
I am not suspected of any crime. I have no criminal record. I don't even have points on my driving license. There is no clear motive or explanation why my phone company - like yours - is required under law to record the minutiae of my life, and store it for a year.
And under the Coalition's proposals, these rules would be rolled out to all email services, social networks, internet providers and even game companies, who would be required to offer access on demand and in real time and without a warrant.
The proposals would allow officials or police to see not only when I was in Hyde Park, but when I went online to book the tickets, and who I emailed immediately after to let them know I had done so.
And where there is such a wealth of information, there is an element of risk that it will not be used correctly.
Emma Draper of Privacy International said: "Information, once collected and stored, will always be vulnerable to exposure by human error or corruption. The only answer to this problem is to collect only the bare minimum of information, and to delete or destroy information the moment it becomes superfluous to requirements."
Already there are claims that UK phone data has been accessed illegally.
During the Leveson inquiry, Simon Hughes MP claimed that reporters from The Sun gained access to phone records showing him to have used gay phonelines.
I know that I have not been living a secret second life, nor masterminding any criminal activity. I don't have a lot to hide from the government.
But that doesn't mean that I am happy for my life to be written up and ready to read.
NB. Note on safety: My routine has significantly changed since January 2012. |
Neuroscientists have successfully linked three monkeys’ brains using implanted electrodes and coaxed them to cooperatively control a robotic arm. Oh, and they also performed a similar experiment that directly linked the brains of four rats to test their capacity for synchronicity. (I, for one, welcome our new hive-minded, mammalian overlords.) That monkeys can coordinate using nothing but brain-waves isn’t particularly new. This new work builds on earlier experiments that linked animals’ brains, both one at a time and in tandem, to prosthetic limbs, but it is far more sophisticated. No one has ever yoked more than two brains in such a way to accomplish a task. What’s more, the trio of mind-melded monkeys frequently did a better job at controlling the robotic arm than one monkey working alone.
Miguel Nicolelis, director of the Center for Neuroengineering at Duke University and principle investigator for the study, calls the merged minds “brainets.” Nicolelis and his colleagues started with four electrode-implanted rats, linking them both in parallel and in series, to test whether brains could coordinate signals. For the parallel experiment, they sent two types of signals to the four linked rats. When one signal was sent, the rats were rewarded for synchronizing. When they received the other, they were rewarded for not coordinating their brain waves. Quickly, they were able to react appropriately a majority of the time. Then the neuroscientists linked the rats in series, training the first rat on the signals. Once that rat had properly learned them, they hooked up a second to learn from the first, and so on up to four. Again, the rats quickly passed the test. Then came the monkeys. First, the team tested two monkeys each linked to a computer. The computer then translated their signals to control a robotic arm. The monkeys were rewarded when they successfully moved a ball. In a second experiment, they had each monkey specialize in a different freedom of movement—one vertical, the other horizontal. In a final test, they hooked up three monkeys to the computer that controlled the arm and let them loose.
Support Provided By Learn More
Needless to say, other scientists are impressed. Here’s Jessica Hamzelou, reporting for New Scientist:
“This is incredible,” says Andrea Stocco at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not involved in the project. “We are sampling different neurons from different animals and putting them together to create a superorganism.”
Neuroscientists are still many, many years away from linking human brains, but the research points to some tantalizing possibilities. First, such research requires sophisticated brain-computer interfaces, which, once perfected, could allow people to deftly control advanced prosthetic limbs. Further in the future, it could also allow a group to coordinate on a difficult task without using language and its inherent barriers. By that point, we may not even need implanted electrodes to tap into a massive brainet—we may only have to slip on a simple headset to contribute our mind’s computing power.
Recieve emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Email Address Zip Code Subscribe |
Share. A new report out of Japan outlines what Nintendo's approach to mobile could be. A new report out of Japan outlines what Nintendo's approach to mobile could be.
For years, there have been calls for Nintendo to bring its games to smartphones -- calls which have only intensified in light of its recent adjustments to sales projections for both Wii U and 3DS. According to a new report, Nintendo will soon announce plans to leverage mobile devices, but not in the manner some believe it should.
According to a Japanese consulting firm, Japanese publication Nikkei reports Nintendo will release videos and playable mini-games on mobile devices intended to promote its games. In other words, it would release content meant to encourage people to buy Nintendo hardware, which will remain the only place to play the full versions of its software. These mobile releases wouldn't be full or free-to-play games; they would simply be limited demos released free of charge. (Nintendo subsidiary The Pokemon Company already has an iOS app -- the official Pokédex app -- available for download).
Exit Theatre Mode
The plans for this initiative could be announced as soon as this week's quarterly financial briefing, which is scheduled for this Wednesday.
The company has already stated more than once that it doesn't believe the proliferation of smartphones and tablets means there is no longer a market for console and handheld games. Just recently, CEO Satoru Iwata said this "doesn't mean that we should put Mario on smartphones." That statement doesn't preclude the possibility of using mobile devices in some way, but this new report hardly satisfies the many questions it raises. For instance, it's unclear just how Nintendo would create demo versions of its games on platforms lacking physical buttons or the second screens that distinguish 3DS and Wii U from other platforms.
Earlier this month, Nintendo slashed its forecast for the current fiscal year, which runs through March 31, 2014. The 3DS is now expected to sell 13.5 million units (down from the previous projection of 18 million), and the Wii U is expected to sell only 2.8 million units (down from a projection of 9 million). This announcement resulted in a hit to Nintendo's stock price. Iwata, who has been CEO since 2002, has stated he will not resign.
Stay tuned to IGN this week for the latest news regarding Nintendo's plans for the future.
Chris Pereira is a freelance writer who spends his spare time agonizing over the final seasons of The X-Files. Check out what he's saying on Twitter and follow him on IGN. |
We've expressed our passions for the sharing economy at length in the past, and now we're undertaking another radical experiment in bringing it to life at Element Urban Village. (Phase II currently under construction—presales available.)
Are you ready? Here it is, summarized in the four cleanest, greenest words ever written: SOLAR POWERED ELECTRIC CARSHARE.
(Plus, there's another wild idea we've got brewing that we haven't talked about yet... Read on for more on that.)
The Element project provides the perfect petrie dish for a solar-powered experiment in sustainability and carsharing. Its ideal location allows people the opportunity to live an urban lifestyle with very minimal dependence on a vehicle. Walking and biking are a natural choice—a second (or even first) car is rarely needed. However, an existing carshare program in Riversdale for us to integrate with was lacking, so instead of waiting for it to happen (it's inevitable), we decided to make it happen ourselves.
Speaking of inevitable, electric vehicles are without a doubt part of all of our futures. There is immense potential for EV uptake in Saskatoon, and we saw this as a great opportunity for us to kill two birds with one sustainable stone. We're offering a group of people the chance to experience the benefits of EVs firsthand without the burden of buying one themselves. Join the Village, ditch your second car, and feel good about being part of the solution.
Here's the rundown. Shift has recently acquired an electric BMW i3 as the new company car. Its current home, our parking stall behind The Two Twenty, is equipped with a high-speed electric vehicle (EV) charging station courtesy of Sun Country Highway. Our aim is to test out the shared electric car idea internally at the company before bestowing the car and the concept onto the Element Urban Village condo board in 2018.
This ain't your grandma's Prius, either. There's a reason we chose the i3. It's not a great car despite being electric—it's a great car because it's electric. It's the BMW of electric vehicles.
Not only is it a zippy, responsive, solid pleasure to drive, but the build quality is remarkably green as well. BMW's own estimate is that up to 95% of the car is constructed from recyclable materials. From carbon fibre to bamboo to recycled interior finishes, this surprising little vehicle is likely among the most environmentally responsible in history.
We're absolutely stoked about this car. And we can't wait to show you why. Wanna go for a ride? Call us up. It's got to be experienced to be believed.
Here are the numbers for you stats nerds out there:
Model: 2015 BMW i3, white
Range: 125 km
Recharge: 1 hr 45 min to full
0-100km/h: 7.3 seconds
Charger: 60A Level 2 charger
When the car is moved to Element, its new permanent home will be a common parking stall just off the shared courtyard, equipped with the same high-speed EV charging station. Its energy—12,000 km/yr of it, to be exact—will come from a 2 kW peak power solar panel system from Roots Rock Solar installed on the roof of the Phase II Courtyard building.
The car will be available for sharing among all Element owners through a digital scheduling/calendar system. Terms and conditions of the car share program will be included in the condo bylaws. We're structuring it as a 3-year experiment, with an estimated cost to owners of $11 per month. No per-mile costs of any kind. That's the benefit of electric.
This brings us to the next major announcement we'd like to make:
Shift is exploring the possibility of developing an electric carshare program based out of Riversdale, Saskatoon and shared between key local businesses and organizations, such as The Two Twenty. We envision a small fleet of electric cars under a single carshare banner but available to the public and members of Riversdale-based organizations. The Element Urban Village carshare program we've got underway will be the seed from which this exciting larger project will grow.
If you would be interested in taking part in or making use of an electric carshare program based out of Riversdale, please sign up using the form below. We're working on this behind the scenes and we'll be in touch. |
So, I heard of this thing called “Taco Tuesday.”
Apparently, some people designate one day a week, Tuesdays, for eating tacos. How genius is that? I can’t necessarily make those kinds of rules in my life because if a taco craving comes on, I need to be able to have them immediately, regardless of the day is Tuesday or not. I really, really, really like this concept, though, and I am going to designate today as Taco Tuesday.
The Chickpea really digs this concept too. We brainstormed for about 6 minutes hours for ways to put chickpeas in a taco, something I’ve done and loved in the past. We came up with a lot of great ideas but finally settled on one idea: Falafel Tacos. I have never been more excited for any other Tuesday in history.
Falafel wraps and/or sandwiches are one of those things I love with a passion but don’t eat nearly enough. I usually order them at restaurants but about six years have passed since I last made falafel at home. Once I made the little falafel ball/patties for these tacos, I had no idea why I hadn’t been doing this the whole time. Like, every Friday. For Falafel Friday (do I smell a new trend?). Because they’re baked, they’re extremely easy and healthy, and because they can’t help themselves, they are unbelievably delicious.
Putting the falafel ball/patties in taco shells and drizzling them with a Sriracha Tahini Sauce might be the best idea I’ve had since The Philly Reuben (I guess I’m a sucker for fusion). The Sriracha Tahini Sauce has the heat of a normal hot sauce that one would add to their tacos, but the tangy creaminess of a tahini sauce one would drizzle on their falafel. The falafel have a crisp outer coating but are soft and chewy on the inside, a perfect filler for crisp taco shells. The combination of flavors and textures in these falafel tacos is pretty spectacular.
These Falafel Tacos are a perfect choice for your Taco Tuesday or your Falafel Friday. Or your I-Like-To-Eat-Amazing-Vegan-Food-On-Days-That-End-In-“Y” Days. Your choice.
Print Falafel Tacos with Sriracha Tahini Sauce Yield: 6 tacos Ingredients for the falafel 1 ½ cups cooked chickpeas or 1 15oz can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained
½ cup loosely packed fresh cilantro (or mixture of fresh parsley and cilantro)
¼ red onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic
juice from ½ a lemon
1 ½ teaspoons dried dill
1 ½ teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
several dashes of black pepper
salt to taste (I used about 3/4 tsp)
3 tablespoon chickpea flour
1 teaspoon nutritional yeast (optional, but adds a little extra oomph)
for the tacos 6 taco shells
1-2 cups lettuce
tomato slices
other taco fillings
for the sriracha tahini sauce ¼ cup tahini sauce
¼ cup water
1-2 tablespoon Sriracha
juice from 1 lemon
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried dill Instructions for the sriracha tahini sauce Combine all ingredients in a food processor or if using an immersion blender, a small bowl. Blend the ingredients until smooth. Chill until ready to use. for the tacos Preheat the oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside. Combine all falafel ingredients (chickpeas through nutritional yeast) in a food processor and process until you have a mostly smooth ball of “dough.” Use a tablespoon to scoop the dough and use your hands to roll the scoop into a ball. Flatten it slightly and place on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat until there is no more dough left. You should have about 18-20 falafel Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, flipping halfway through to ensure even cooking. Remove from oven. Stuff a little lettuce in each taco shell, then stuff about 3 patties into each taco shell. Top with tomato slices and any other taco fillings you would like to use (cucumber, avocado, bell pepper, etc.). Drizzle the taco with the Sriracha Tahini Sauce (recipe below) and serve warm. Enjoy! 3.1
First time here? Check out the rest of my Chickpea Love Affair Vegan MoFo Entries!
Keepin’ It Kind is participating in the Walk for Farm Animals to give hope to millions of abused and neglected farm animals! Please support me by making a Donation today. Together we can make the world a more compassionate place for animals! Learn more about Why I am Walking for Farm Animals and join our team!
Photography by Chris Miller |
Game Update 2.10: Forged Alliances is here, concluding the story arc that will lead us to the end-of-year expansion. In our discussion, we talk about some misconceptions that (hopefully very few) players have about SWTOR’s game mechanics.
1. Introduction
The guide authored by Teo is his GSH unlock comparison for building your Conquest bonus.
2. Tip of the week
Congratulations to this week’s winner, Cabsav of The Harbinger! Thanks to Brian of the Bad Feeling Podcast, Christopher, GasGuy and Caligari for entering.
Please send your tips to [email protected] by next Wednesday for a chance to win an M8-R3 code, courtesy of BioWare, and an OotiniCast-provided Cartel Market pack from the latest shipment.
3. Holofeed
4. Community
Thanks to Spencer, Scotthomas and Grim for their donations!
Details about our Ootini Holdings lottery can be found here.
5. Force Feedback
It seems that @DurtaDurta has found us on the airwaves:
Chong sent us this screenshot of the game announcing an obvious truism:
6. Sarlacc Digest
We discuss some (hopefully uncommon) player misconceptions about game mechanics, based upon this thread from the SWTOR sub-Reddit.
7. Outro
Thanks to Spencer (@Da_Dirty_Spoons) and Redna (@R3DN4, twitch.tv/r3dn4) for joining us this week.
Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.
You can email questions and comments about the show to [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, and listen to us on Stitcher and Spreaker. We record the show live every Wednesday at 4:30pm Pacific, goto ootinicast.com/live to find out how to join in! |
Looks like North West really DOES take after her famously ill-tempered dad Kanye West! Lashing out at paps in a hilarious episode outside LA’s Museum of Ice Cream, the 3-year-old repeatedly yelled, ‘No pictures’ at cameras, and she did NOT look happy. Eeek, like father, like daughter!
The selfie queen’s daughter apparently doesn’t like to have her picture taken! While leaving the Museum of Ice Cream in Los Angeles on May 11, Kim Kardashian, 36, and Kanye West‘s, 39, daughter North West, 3, proved she’s not into the family business as she screamed at photographers to stop taking photos! But although slightly startling — and also slightly hilarious — we def need to remember that this little girl is only three years old! “No pictures,” Nori yelled multiple times at the pack of paparazzi flocking around her mom’s car. Of course the shutterbugs continued to snap away anyways! CLICK HERE TO WATCH NORTH SCREAM AT PHOTOGRAPHERS.
“Come on Boo Boo, no more pictures, Ok,” Kim says to her daughter as she shuffles her into the van. “We’re going to get you into the car.” At least Kim’s a good sport about it all! Kim and North left the popular attraction with family members Kourtney Kardashian, 38, Mason Disick, 7, and Penelope Disick, 4. And while outside, Nori didn’t seem to be in the best mood, INSIDE the museum was apparently a different story! After all, Kim made sure to snap while exploring all the museum had to offer, and in one pic she’s sweetly posing next to a pink wall with her daughter in her arms — aw!
But while Kim may love the spotlight, North’s not the only one in the fam who DOESN’T. In fact, even the reality star admitted that her eldest takes after her husband. “She’s really, really smart, actually. She knows how to outsmart us, or thinks she does,” Kim explained to Ellen DeGeneres just last month. “She is Kanye’s twin. Same personality, says the same wild things. She’ll just sit looking at me right here, and be like, ‘Mommy, I don’t like Ellen,’ or whoever it is. And I’m like, ‘Not now,’ and she’s like, ‘Why, mom? I’m just being honest.’” Yep, that’s def Kanye’s daughter right there.
Tell us, HollywoodLifers — what do you think of this vid? Should the paparazzi just leave the little girl alone? |
Get the biggest Arsenal FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
The Robin van Persie transfer saga has been raging for almost as long as we can remember but at long last it's over, after his move to Manchester United was confirmed on Wednesday evening.
Earlier this year the Dutchman was every Arsenal fan's hero after a quite superb season in which he bagged a ridiculous 37 goals and won a hat-full of personal awards including the PFA Players' and Fans' Player of the Year and the Football Writers' Footballer of the Year gongs.
But then reports began to emerge that the former Feyenoord flyer was not happy at the Emirates and was thinking of leaving.
At the beginning of July, he confirmed the news that Gooners everywhere had been dreading when he revealed he would not be signing a new contract with the club.
To remind you how the story has unfolded, we've got all the stories, blogs and columns charting the saga.
September 2011 - The saga begins: It all started back at the beginning of last season. No sooner had Arsenal finally sold Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri - the former had wanted out for some time while the latter had just a year left on his deal like van Persie - the whole thing kicked off again with Dutchman RvP, when he revealed he was in no hurry to sign a new deal.
April 2012 - Enter Juve: MirrorFootball reveals van Persie's agent has been in touch with Juventus, who are keen to take the striker to Italy, though Arsene Wenger says he's "confident" van Persie will sign new Arsenal deal.
May 3 - "I'll always be a Gunner": As van Persie picks up the Football Writers' Footballer of the year award, he offers Arsenal fans hope that he will stay when he declares: "I'll always be a Gunner."
(Image: Reuters)
In his weekly column John Cross says Arsenal's transfer dealings in the summer are as much about keeping van Persie as bringing in new talent.
May 4 - Silence is deafening: In what will become a recurring theme for Arsenal press conferences, Arsene Wenger again insists that his skipper is committed to the club, but just two days later the man himself refused to speak after a 3-3 draw with Norwich, sparking further speculation about his future.
May 9 - Italian job: Italian giants Juventus are again linked with a move for van Persie after general director Giuseppe Marotta says the Dutchman would be the "icing on the cake" for his team - however it is believed the player himself is only interest in a move to Barcelona or Real Madrid.
May 12 - Girl power: Van Persie's wife and mum are quoted saying they both hope their man sticks with Arsenal because they love living in London. "As a family, we love it here... We don’t want to upset things at home either. Our kids, Shaqueel and Dina, go to school here in London. And they are just as happy as we are," says Mrs RvP.
(Image: Getty)
May 14 - Manchester City join the party: The super-rich Citizens are linked with a £25million move for van Persie, with £250k a week wages, though Wenger and the Arsenal board are ready to make their wantaway skipper stick to the terms of his contract and stay for another year.
John Cross spells out the reality for van Persie in his weekly column, telling the Dutchman if you move abroad you'll still be an Arsenal legend... go to Manchester and you'll be hated as a traitor.
May 16 - Game changer: John Cross reveals van Persie has told club chiefs he is unhappy at the club and is ready to quit.
May 26 - Form an orderly queue: Manchester City emerge as leaders in the chase for the Dutchman, but Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Juventus and super-rich Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala are not far behind, as RvP tells Arsenal he is not interested in signing a new £130,000 a week deal.
(Image: Michael Regan)
June 4 - A nod and a wink: RvP breaks his silence. He says he won't discuss his future until after the Euros... but tells Italian press Juventus are a "great team".
June 9 - Word from the top: Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood has his say on the issue, and tells his captain he'll have to leave the club if he wants to earn £200,000 plus.
June 15 - Chocs away: Van Persie scoops the PFA fans' Player of the Year award to add to his PFA players' and Writers' gongs, while Wenger wagers a chocolate bar the Dutchman won't leave for Juventus. "If he moves there I will buy you a Caramello."
July 2 - Juve got to be joking: Arsenal reject an £8million offer from Juventus.
July 4 - The thunderbolt: Van Persie reveals he will not sign a new deal with Arsenal and says he disagrees with the direction of the club, in a scathing statement on his personal website. It now appears there's no way back for the Dutchman and it is simply a case of where he will move to.
July 17 - Grinning Gunner: Robin van Persie is all smiles as he returns to training with Arsenal as AC Milan join the chase.
(Image: Getty)
John Cross takes stock of the situation from Arsenal's point of view in his weekly column:
July 20 - Fergie gets in the game: Alex Ferguson confirms Manchester United have made a bid for the Arsenal striker, as Wenger orders his captain NOT to join the club's pre-season tour of Asia.
July 25 - Getting shirty: Arsenal announce their squad numbers for the 2012-13 season and although Robin van Persie has retained his No.10 shirt, new signing Lukas Podolski has yet to receive a number - fuelling speculation he will take RvP's shirt when the Dutchman leaves.
July 27 - Angry Arsene: Furious Arsene Wenger loses his cool when asked about van Persie in a post-match press conference. “I have talked about Van Persie and I’m not talking about that question anymore. Do you understand?” he said.
(Image: Steve Bardens)
August 2 - Juve got to be kidding! RvP's camp appear to be going cold on Juventus amid fears their manager Antonio Conte will be caught up in a match-fixing row. John Cross' column looks at the striker's shrinking options and asks whether he could go back to Arsenal?
August 4 and 5 - Shock u-turn: Steve Stammers reveals van Persie now wants to stay at Arsenal, while John Cross says the striker has been impressed by the ambition shown by the club in the transfer market after the signed Lukas Podolski, Olivier Giroud and close in on a deal for Santi Cazorla.
Meanwhile, Roberto Mancini throws in the towel and admits van Persie won't be joining Manchester City after all.
August 7 - Sanit arrives: Arsenal finally complete their protracted deal for Malaga star Santi Cazorla, and Arsene Wenger promises there's more to come. But will it be enough to tempt van Persie to stay?
August 8 - Come fly with me: Amid (erroneous) rumours that RvP left Arsenal's Cologne training base to fly in to Manchester, John Cross revealed that Manchester United were preparing an improved offer for the Dutchman. Meanwhile Steve Stammers used his weekly column to praise van Persie's attitude, comparing him favourably to the stropping Luka Modric over at Spurs.
August 9 - The price is £20m - to you, £25m: John Cross revealed that while Arsenal are looking for £20m for van Persie, they actually want Manchester United to pay £25m, as they consider them to be rivals. He then used his weekly Arsenal column to lift the lid on the tension between Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson and revealed why not selling RvP to United has become a point of principle for the Gunners boss.
August 13 - Your call Arsene: After getting fed up with the saga dragging on, John Cross revealed Sir Alex Ferguson has gone direct to Arsene Wenger to try to get the deal done.
August 15 - done deal! Arsenal and Manchester United confirm they have reached agreement for van Persie's move to Old Trafford. It's now all over bar the shouting, which in this case is a medical and personal terms discussions. |
Though Socrates’ discovery marked the beginning of philosophy as we know it, and is the origin of analytic philosophy in particular, the method of counter-examples hasn’t been hugely important in the history of philosophy. Plato himself turned to reductios (for example in the Parmenides) and Aristotle’s methods are largely constructive. When Descartes wanted to prove the dualism of mind and matter, he didn’t do so by counter-exampling identity theory; similarly Hume and the rationalist theory of causation. The last two authors proceeded from first principles, and this was the dominant method of philosophy even in the heyday of analysis. What are Frege’s great counter-examples? Russell’s?
That example, in the Republic, showed a plausible theory false, but this was not the only use to which Socrates put counter-examples. He used them positively as well: the very fact that the method of counter-examples works shows that analysis (or the answering of ‘What is X?’ questions) is a search for property-identities. Analysis cannot rest content with illumination by convincing paradigms. You cannot answer the question, “What is justice?” simply by pointing to the Supreme Court, or the Constitution. You must designate justice (the property) another way, a way that is easier to understand than designating it as justice. And when you do this, you are open to counter-examples.
The method of counter-examples was introduced to philosophy by that under-achieving gadfly, Socrates, and it was one of Plato’s great achievements that he transcribed some of the conversations in which Socrates used this method. Justice is not the repayment of what you owe, Socrates argued, because it is not an exercise of justice when you return a weapon that you owe to a homicidal maniac.
Today, however, counter-examples are even more rampant than in Plato’s Socratic dialogues. And they often take the form of thought experiments. Consider Kripke. When he wanted to refute the Description Theory of Names, he invited you to imagine that Gödel (whose name you understand as equivalent to "the person who proved the incompleteness of arithmetic") had stolen his ideas from a man named Schmidt. If this were so, would the name ‘Gödel’ designate Schmidt in your dialect? When Judith Jarvis Thompson attacked theories concerning the wrongness of abortion, she asked you to think of a person hooked up to a famous violinist, who would die if disconnected. (Is this person obliged to give up all her mobility on account of the violinist?) When David Chalmers wanted to prove the dualism of mind and matter, he invited you to think about zombies: systems that are physically just the same as a conscious being and which yet lack consciousness. The very fact that one can coherently conceive such a system shows that mind cannot be the same as body. It is worth noting that at bottom, Chalmer’s argument is very like Descartes’—but Descartes didn’t boil it all down to a counter-example. Of course, this probably all goes back to Nelson Goodman, whose grue emeralds constituted “the new riddle of induction” in 1953, and Edmund Gettier, whose three page paper in Analysis (1963) spawned 75% of epistemology as it was conducted in the following quarter century.
Unfortunately, counter-examples now take up a large space in contemporary analytic philosophy. Imagine putting forward a theory of justice, or of consciousness, or of knowledge. Very likely, the theory will contain a property identity claim somewhere, and within months of its publication, the schools will be full of counter-examples. The problem with this is that often the counter-examples are unmotivated. They suck sustenance from theories struggling to find their feet. In science, as we know, many theories survive despite apparent counter-examples. Given time, these theories either find ways to address the counter-example, or die away because there are too many such. Rarely do they struggle with a single counter-example.
In philosophy, it seems to me, counter-examples have not proved uniformly healthy. Sometimes, as I just remarked, they result in the premature demise of theoretical approaches. Sometimes this premature demise stems from the mere conceivability of a counter-example—with no serious effort to set standards for conceivability. (Should we say that something is conceivable merely because somebody claims to have conceived it?) Perhaps even more damagingly, the excessive use of counter-examples has led to the undue verbosity of philosophical theorizing, which relies on multiple clauses unequal to each other in theoretical importance. |
A little local price war between two gas stations in South Houston has allowed drivers to fill up for $0.78 a gallon, despite having to wait in line for 20 minutes in some cases.
The war at the pump “raged” between a Texaco station and a Johnny Quick station – the rivals are located across the street from each other at the Old Spanish Trail, off 288. Johnny Quick gained the upper hand, charging a penny less than the competition, motivating drivers to form long lines to fill their tanks for just $11.
This is not the first price war that has seen drivers flock to certain gas stations. Last year saw a three-way fight for clients in a Michigan resort town bring prices per gallon down to $0.47 – pennies above federal and state excise taxes. In that case, police had to be deployed to Houghton Lake to direct traffic, as the locals crowded a B&B Market and a Valero station – the first one known for its undercutting practices and the other just opened under new management that saw fit to take part in a penny-for-penny price-lowering match.
The third participant in that event was a Citgo station, which, however, stuck to a bit higher prices, at $0.95 per gallon, but still much lower than the average for the state. The cost of filling in cheap was waiting in line for up to 45 minutes, which, Oilprice noted at the time, erased a lot of the actual fuel savings.
The fact that this has happened again highlights the shale industry’s revival that was kickstarted at the end of last year, after an OPEC agreement with another 11 producers saw prices jump to the mid-$50s and stay there, although they fell short of reaching the much more desired $60 level.
Related; Oil Steadies Itself Ahead Of Big Week
U.S. crude oil production has already topped 9 million barrels daily and is likely to continue up through the rest of the year. Inventories have been steadily – and substantially – rising for more than two months now, pressuring benchmark prices further and spurring gas stations to offer the lowest rates for their product to stay competitive.
What’s good news for drivers, however, is not such good news for the gas stations themselves: such marketing tricks as the Michigan and Houston price wars can really cut into these businesses’ bottom line as retail gas marketing is the narrowest profit-margin segment of the oil industry.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Andrew Harding was told that even babies got raped
The 22 year old was still sitting inside the makeshift bar in Soweto, when the police came for him. It was a few days before new year.
According to witnesses, the man had just attacked and raped a 17-year-old girl at his table, but apparently considered the incident so trivial that he had not even tried to flee.
Nor had anyone else in the bar, besides the alleged victim, thought of contacting the police.
At a time when Indians are re-examining their society in the light of a single, horrific incident of gang rape, South Africa seems numb - unable to muster much more than a collective shrug in the face of almost unbelievably grim statistics - seemingly far worse than India's.
Rape is in our culture. It's part of the whole patriarchal culture Andy Kawa, Businesswoman and activist
Here almost 60,000 rapes are reported to the police each year - more than double the number in India, in a far smaller country.
Experts believe the true figure is at least 10 times that - 600,000 attacks
It is not that the issue is ignored - far from it.
This week South African newspapers are carrying gruesome stories of what is being described as a new trend - the rape of elderly grandmothers, mostly in rural communities; an 82 year old and a 73 year old attacked on 2 January.
But despite the anger voiced by columnists, and by people calling in to radio stations, there is no sense of a nation being galvanised.
In recent days commentators and campaigners here have looked, almost enviously, towards India, wondering what it might take to provoke a similar sense of outrage - and angrily debating whether outrage itself is enough, and who, or what, to blame.
History, perhaps, or drugs, or poverty…
"No-one can tell me that raping a three-month-old baby or 87-year-old granny or burning a library or vandalising a school is caused by poverty," said trade union federation leader Zwelenzima Vavi, in a recent Tweet exchange.
"Rape is in our culture. It's part of the whole patriarchal culture," businesswoman and activist Andy Kawa, who was herself the victim of a gang rape, told me.
"It's an every day thing. It happens in homes. There's silence because of fear, because the perpetrator, most of the time, has the power," she said.
'Plenty of rapists here'
Image caption Editor Mpumelelo Mkhabela says the people need to do more to fight rape
Mpumelelo Mkhabela, editor of the Sowetan newspaper, said: "The government is doing its best but we also need citizens to take up the fight and take up the campaign instead of being outraged for a moment, only to stop a few days later."
Perhaps the only certainty is that South Africa is a violent society.
It has been so for decades, and people have got used to it.
In many communities young women talk of how they almost expect to be assaulted - and young men grow up with a dangerous sense of entitlement.
So this week there was barely any public reaction, beyond a few brief headlines, when news came in of a 21-year-old woman who was gang-raped on Tuesday on her way to try to enrol at a university outside Pretoria.
We're not protected, we don't feel safe Female student
She was dragged into the bushes by four as yet unidentified men. She survived the attack.
Outside the university gates the next day, I spoke to some of her fellow students.
Most had not heard about the attack, and none seemed remotely surprised.
They were more preoccupied with keeping their places in a very long queue on a very hot day.
"We're not protected, we don't feel safe," said one female student.
A man walking past said: "There's plenty of rapists here."
Then a young woman thought for a moment, looked at her friends, and said quietly, "I don't know what is wrong about men.
"There must be something done about them." |
Leading the charge is Alain Vigneault, the favorite among NHL.com's 13-voter panel to win the Jack Adams Award at the first quarter of the 2016-17 season.
The New York Rangers were in transition during the summer following an early exit from the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs. They became younger, faster and deeper, and that has translated into a first-place standing in the Metropolitan Division.
Vigneault has the Rangers playing at a blistering pace following the acquisitions of forwards Jimmy Vesey (free agent), Mika Zibanejad (trade) and Michael Grabner (free agent). Forward Pavel Buchnevich, New York's third-round pick (No. 75) in the 2013 NHL Draft, signed a three-year, entry-level contract after playing five seasons in his native Russia.
"You bring players in and I think what you try and do is put them into a situation where they can be successful," Vigneault told the Rangers website. "This year we've tried to have maybe a little more balance throughout our lines and I think it has paid dividends. [Grabner] coming in and being able to play with almost anybody and finding a success. That's what we're going to try and continue to do as we move forward."
New York's depth is being tested with Zibanejad (broken fibula) out 6-8 weeks and Buchnevich missing the next 2-3 weeks with a back injury, but what's driving the Rangers is how everyone is contributing. Six players have scored at least seven goals; Grabner leads the team with 12, four more than he had all last season with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Some of their core players, J.T. Miller and Kevin Hayes in particular, have taken their games to new levels while excelling in Vigneault's breakneck system.
"We're playing great as a team, and that's all I can say," Miller told the New York Post. "Pucks are going in, but every line is playing well. It wears on the other team and it gives, maybe whoever it is, more chances. More pucks are going in right now than last year, and that's been a big part of the team's success."
Vigneault earned 49 points (three first-place votes), 18 more than Columbus Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella. Six coaches received at least one first-place vote: Vigneault, Tortorella, Michel Therrien (Montreal Canadiens), John Hynes (New Jersey Devils), Todd McLellan (Edmonton Oilers) and Joel Quenneville (Chicago Blackhawks).
Voting totals (points awarded on 5-4-3-2-1 basis): Alain Vigneault, Rangers, 49 points; John Tortorella, Blue Jackets, 31; Michel Therrien, Canadiens, 26; John Hynes, Devils, 23; Todd McLellan, Oilers, 20; Joel Quenneville, Blackhawks, 14; Claude Julien, Boston Bruins, 12; Jon Cooper, Tampa Bay Lightning, 5; Bruce Boudreau, Minnesota Wild, 4; Guy Boucher, Ottawa Senators, 4; Paul Maurice, Winnipeg Jets, 3; Darryl Sutter, Los Angeles Kings, 2; Mike Babcock, Toronto Maple Leafs, 2. |
This is a guide for any and all vegans or wannabe vegans to abide by. It’s intersectional, meaning it treats racism, sexism, cissexism, classism, ableism and other forms of oppression as the exact same thing.
White veganism:
- Flaunting your vegan diet in front of poor people.
- Buying your groceries at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s or other grocers which cater to white hipsters. This includes all food coops.
- Eating foods of colonized peoples if you’re not one. This includes but isn’t limited to: quinoa, falafel, hummus, tabbouleh, miso soup, seaweed, guacamole, corn tortillas, collards, kale, rice flour, yam flour, Brazilian nuts, spring rolls, bok choy, coconut milk, lemon grass, sticky rice and so on.
- Using a rice cooker. Since rice is a hugely special part of several colonized cultures, it is a slap in the face to these people that white people are using rice cookers.
- Telling colonized peoples they have to stop eating meat or eat meat differently. A very good example is the Eid lamb: yes halal slaughter isn’t nice but intersectionality should make siding with meat-eaters in the ummah over colonial vegans a PRIORITY.
- Telling trans people going through transition that their prescriptions were tested on animals. See above.
- Claiming you are more in need of gluten-free products than people who need gluten-free products due to their celiac disease and/or autism.
- Making a traditional meal of a colonized group but replacing the traditional animal products with vegan ones. In fact white people need to stop cooking their own versions of colonized people’s meals PERIOD.
Decolonized veganism:
Doing nothing I mentioned on the list above. |
Approximately 10,000 Muslims were expected to show up to a “peace march” in Cologne, Germany on Saturday. Guess how many showed up? A couple hundred at most. Organizers hoped that an event featuring slogans like “Together against terror” and “Hatred makes the earth hell” would galvanize the so-called “peaceful Muslims” we’ve all been hearing so much about from the Left. In the wake of a wave of terror attacks across major cities in Europe, one would expect some solidarity with the victims, perhaps a few words of condemnation against violent jihad. Instead, a couple hundred people, many of whom were not Muslim, showed up to an underwhelming event that could hardly be called a “march.”
“The turnout was far fewer than the tens of thousands the organizers expected — Germany’s biggest Islamic association had said earlier in the week that it wouldn’t take part in the march,” reports Euronews.
Rather than standing up for victims, Germany’s Islamic community appears to have been more concerned about its PR image.
“The Turkish-Islamic Union argued it would send the wrong signal by suggesting that international terrorism is mainly a Muslim problem,” notes ABC News. “It also said Muslims observing the Ramadan fast couldn't be expected to march for hours in summer temperatures. That stance drew criticism from the government, which welcomed the march.”
The disturbing lack of solidarity with terror attacks comes as German voters debate the the costs and benefits of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-borders migration.
During Merkel’s reign, Germany has suffered from a series of refugee-initiated attacks, from Berlin to Munich to Bavaria.
In Cologne, where the 10,000-strong “peace march” was supposed to take place, a barbaric attack against the city’s women was perhaps the most visible sign of post-Muslim migration social dysfunction.
On New Year’s Eve 2016, 1,000 young Muslim men targeted and assaulted dozens of German women during the evening’s festivities. “German authorities said on Tuesday that coordinated attacks in which young women were sexually harassed and robbed by hundreds of young men on New Year’s Eve in the western city of Cologne were unprecedented in scale and nature,” reported The New York Times. “The assault, which went largely unreported for days, set off a national outcry after the Cologne police described the attackers as young men ‘who appeared to have a North African or Arabic’ background, based on testimony from victims and witnesses.”
The attack was coordinated and planned. “Around 1,000 young men arrived in large groups, seemingly with the specific intention of carrying out attacks on women,” added the BBC.
As young and maladaptive Muslim men flooded Germany, crime and assault against women soared. The disturbing sexual warfare against the women in Cologne was just the tip of the iceberg. Coming from cultures and religious backgrounds that neither acknowledge nor respect the human rights of women, hordes of Muslim men, fleeing from the war-torn Middle East, have yet to accept European social norms, or worse, stand up against the Islamic community terrorism problem. |
The maintainers of the open BitTorrent protocol for file sharing have fixed a vulnerability that allowed lone attackers with only modest resources to take down large sites using a new form of denial-of-service attack.
The technique was disclosed two weeks ago in a research paper submitted to the 9th Usenix Workshop on Offensive Technologies. By sending vulnerable BitTorrent applications maliciously modified data, attackers could force them to flood a third-party target with data that was 50 to 120 times bigger than the original request. By replacing the attacker's IP address in the malicious user datagram protocol request with the spoofed address of the target, the attacker could cause the data flood to hit the victim's computer.
In a blog post published Thursday, BitTorrent engineers said the vulnerability was the result of a flaw in a reference implementation called libuTP. To fix the weakness, the uTorrent, BitTorrent, and BitTorrent Sync apps will require acknowledgments from connection initiators before providing long responses.
"This means that any packets falling outside of an allowed window will be dropped by a reflector and will never make it to a victim," the BitTorrent blog post stated. "Again referring to the diagram above [which appears immediately below in this Ars post], this means that (3) is dropped and (4), (5) and (6) never make it to the victim. Since the mitigation occurs at the libuTP level, other company protocols that can run over libuTP like Message Stream Encryption (MSE) are also serviced by the mitigation."
Referring to the same diagram, here's a more detailed description of the attack and the way the change announced Thursday is intended to lower the bandwidth amplification factor (BAF) it provides:
After the reflector has received the first packet from an attacker it transitions over to a connected state at (1). At this point the reflector has received the connection packet #209, and is expecting #210 next. It lets the victim, V, know of this fact by sending an acknowledgement packet with the next sequence number available to the reflector, for the example I’ve chosen #31.
Soon after, the attacker needs to send the first data payload, this will be the BitTorrent protocol header. To properly build the packet the attacker will need to provide the reflector with acknowledgement number of the last received packet at (2). The flaw in libµTP would allow the reflector to accept any acknowledgement number at (3) allowing the attack to be carried out. A mitigation relies on the fact that it would be fairly difficult for an attacker to guess the acknowledgement number at (2) for a sufficiently large number of reflectors. The intention of the change is to reduce the BAF to as low a value as possible making attacks like this very high-effort. While the attacker will still be able to initiate a connection to the reflector, by dropping the packet at (3) the victim sees only an acknowledgement packet at (2). The first few exchanges of the connection will now look like this: Attacker sends the following to the reflector: 62 bytes for an initial SYN +
130 bytes for the BitTorrent Handshake And the victim receives: 62 bytes to acknowledge the first SYN
There are no indications the BitTorrent weakness was actively exploited. Still, BitTorrent should be commended for taking it seriously and fixing it quickly. |
The Detroit Lions Drafted Teez Tabor In The Second Round Of The NFL Draft.
If I had told you three months ago that Detroit was going to get a cornerback some considered a top 10 talent – all because of a poor combine showing – would you have been upset? What if I had told you that they would get said player not with their first pick, but with their second? Would you have even believed me? I wouldn’t have.
Alas, truth is stranger than fiction, and that’s exactly what happened last Friday evening. Florida CB Teez Tabor, who prior to the combine had been mocked as highly as ninth overall to Cincinnati, saw his draft stock plummet after running a 4.62s 40-yard dash in Indy. Matters worsened for Tabor when he followed it up with a 4.72s at his pro day in Gainesville. Nevertheless, Bob Quinn stopped his freefall when he took him with the 53rd overall pick. But Tabor’s reunion with Gator teammate Jarrad Davis received mixed reviews from the Lions faithful, who were concerned with his 40 times.
Now more than ever, speed is at a premium in the NFL. The evolution of the modern NFL offense has spawned an arms race, with teams stockpiling speed on the defensive side of the ball in an effort to combat the pass. As a result, the league has begun discarding older, traditional notions of defensive positions. Smaller, faster defenders once shunned as ‘tweeners’ are now en vogue; coveted as hybrids that can be deployed in a variety of roles. This phenomenon has coincided with the commercialization of the combine.
The NFL’s annual event is now less a job fair than it is a nationally televised carnival of sorts. Players who measure well are paraded around as freaks, while those that test poorly are scorned as lepers. The only thing it’s missing is a bearded lady and a Gronkowski version of Siamese twins. But the combine’s meteoric rise in popularity can be attributed to the times we live in. People enjoy the athletic spectacle, but what they really love is easily digestible information.
Most fans don’t have the time, or desire, to watch hours of tape on 300 prospects. I know I don’t. So for many people, the combine is a convenient, albeit inaccurate way to pass judgment on the next crop of NFL players. And today, a slow 40 time can be a death sentence in the court of public opinion.
But like many of the aforementioned traditional defensive positions, the 40-yard dash is a relic of a bygone era. At the time of its conception, it was designed to determine how quickly a player could race downfield to cover a punt. Today, it’s a legacy piece used to quantify speed. It still has its merits, but its importance has outgrown its original purpose. In fact, the NFL has quietly considering doing away with it altogether. Just last February, the league considered drastically overhauling the combine at the convening of its annual meeting.
I digress. The demand for speed on defense isn’t for the sake of speed itself (sorry, Al Davis). It was a natural adaptation necessitated by the emergence of beastly tight ends and the increased incorporation of running backs into the passing game. This is a case study of Darwin’s theory of evolution. In order to survive, NFL teams had to stop looking at what players weren’t and what they couldn’t do. So, they began looking at what they could do.
That’s something Bill Belichick has preached for years in the New England organization, and they’ve won five championships in the new millennium. ‘Tell me what they can do, not what they can’t.’ Tabor may not be able to run a dead sprint in spandex very well, but he can play cornerback, and he’s damn good at it.
This is not to say that athleticism is not important in the NFL. The better athlete one is, the better use they can make of their technique and instincts. There is certainly a correlation between athletic ability and NFL success, as Pride of Detroit’s Kent Lee Platte has widely documented with his RAS (relative athletic score) system. But as Kent would likely acknowledge, athletic ability (or lack thereof) is not a prerequisite for success, and we’ve seen plenty of combine warriors and speed demons flame out in the NFL. Seahawks All-Pro corner Richard Sherman ran a 4.56. Super Bowl 49 hero Malcolm Butler ran a 4.6. There are plenty of precedents.
Not to mention that Ian Rapoport reported that Tabor was bothered by a tweaked hamstring all offseason. In his introductory conference call, Tabor himself declined to blame his poor 40 times on any undisclosed injury. His explanation? He was training to play football, not run the 40. And that’s what the Lions got: a football player, not a track and field star.
http://gty.im/614901880
“Press play, watch the tape.” Those were the words pressed on the shirts of the friends and family members that surrounded him as he got the fortuitous phone call from Bob Quinn. His mother, fed up with her son’s detractors and those that ridiculed his 40-yard dash, made those shirts.
LaVar Ball has recently demonstrated, very loudly, how oblivious and obnoxious the parents of athletes – who are blinded by their love for their children – can be. But, not Mama Tabor. Her coinage of that catchphrase succinctly captured why Quinn made her son the eighth cornerback off the board. In a draft that set the record for most defensive backs taken in the Common Draft Era, that’s not insignificant.
And Quinn liked what he saw. At the conclusion of Day two, this is what he had to say about it:
“The 40 time at the Combine and at the pro day is what it is. I think in Jalen’s case, me personally, I probably watched more film on him than any prospect that I could ever remember watching film on because everyone said, ‘Well, he ran real slow.’ I said, ‘OK, well the games that I watched, I didn’t see him get run by.’…I take playing speed as a more important gauge than timed speed.”
Quinn’s explanation is consistent with the Tabor matriarch’s message. And it’s also consistent with the analytics of Pro Football Focus. Quinn said he didn’t see him get run by, and he didn’t. According to the analytics firm, Tabor allowed just two touchdowns on throws into his coverage at three years in Florida. PFF also noted that, during that time, he recorded a pass breakup or an interception on 26.5% of his targets.
In what’s been hailed as the best defensive back crop of all time, that mark was best in class. They also noted that his allowed passer rating of 41.2% was similar to what the passer rating for “throwing the ball into the dirty every play” would be (39.6%). That mark was better than the respective ratings of all five cornerbacks (Lattimore, Humphrey, Jackson, Conley, White) who went in the first round. His touchdown percentage of 1.4% also bested theirs, and only Tre’davious White (0.72) had a lower yards per route in coverage than Tabor (0.78).
But Pro Football Focus wasn’t the only outlet high on him. Tabor was regarded by some as the crown jewel of the class before his dismal 40 times motivated many to renounce what they saw on film. As I mentioned previously, some analysts mocked him as highly as ninth overall to Cincinnati, back in February. NFL.com draft analyst Lance Zierlein wrote in his prospect profile that he had ‘prototypical size and athleticism,’ a report he penned before Tabor ran poorly.
Interestingly enough, Zierlein also compared him to Darius Slay. And perhaps even more interesting is the fact that Tabor and Slay shared the same defensive coordinator in college, current Temple head coach Geoff Collins.
All that considered, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Tabor projects to fit very well in Detroit’s defensive scheme. He excels in off and zone coverage, which is what Teryl Austin asks his cornerbacks to play. He’s very aware of zone and is highly adept at pattern recognition and closing on the ball to challenge throws.
During his career in Gainesville, he had eight picks (three of which went for TDs) and 28 pass breakups. For a Lions defense that ranked third-to-last in takeaways in 2016, he should provide a much-needed infusion of playmaking ability.
If you still aren’t convinced that Tabor will make a great addition to the team, I’m not sure there’s much else I could tell you to make you reconsider your position. I’m just a lively idiot with a smartphone and a deadline to meet. All that’s left for you to do, is to do what Bob Quinn did.
Press play. Watch the tape. |
The number of D.C. police officers in the District has fallen below 3,800, its lowest level in a decade, breaking a threshold that top District officials once warned would be dangerously thin in a city that continues to grow.
As of Dec. 17, D.C. police had 3,786 officers, according to the mayor’s office, falling from more than 3,929 a year ago. Meanwhile this year, homicides across the District have surged more than 50 percent, and a spike in robberies in some neighborhoods instilled renewed fear of a return to the higher crime rates of the 1990s. Though police say violent crime is at its lowest level in seven years, residents polled put crime at the top of their worries this year.
District police say that they have been unable to keep up with attrition triggered by the retirements of officers who joined the force during a hiring binge in 1989 and 1990. From January 2014 through October, the department lost 764 officers — more than half through retirement — and hired 562.
[Wave of police retirements could shrink force]
D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier did not respond to a request for an interview. But in her last budget memo to the D.C. Council, the chief said that by the end of this year more than half of the command staff, one-third of all lieutenants and detectives and nearly one-third of all sergeants would be eligible to retire. She wrote in a letter to residents posted on the Internet that the departures “present a challenge.”
Kevin Donahue, the deputy mayor for public safety, said the District is not in a crisis and in fact had long planned for the retirement bubble to burst. “Our focus has been less on the golden number, but on working within the resources we have to try and have the most efficient and effective force,” he said.
District officials blame the staffing shortfall almost entirely on retirements, saying attrition rates for officers who leave for other reasons have remained constant for the past decade. But the union representing the rank and file says that the exodus also includes officers and street-level supervisors who are leaving with fewer than 10 years on the force. The union argues that this is evidence officers are fleeing a department and a chief they do not like, as well as a crime plan they say will not make the District safer.
[District’s population continues to grow]
“The only way to stop the hemorrhaging of personnel on this department is to fundamentally change the way it is managed,” Gregg Pemberton, the police union’s treasurer, wrote in a letter to residents posted on the Internet, saying officers are leaving because of erratic scheduling, pay that is not competitive and ineffectual deployment strategies.
Lanier countered with her own Internet bulletin, titled, “Setting the record straight,” saying that most of the departures were anticipated retirements while outlining her strategies for hiring more civilians to push sworn officers out of desk jobs and back onto the streets, implementing new technology to speed up administrative functions and developing incentives to persuade other officers to stay.
Lanier noted that the violent crime rate is at its lowest level since 2007 and has dropped 15 percent between 2009 and 2014. During that same period, the District’s population has grown 10 percent. The chief said serious crime is down 5 percent this year, including sexual assaults and assaults with dangerous weapons, even with the rise in homicides.
In 2011, Lanier warned of trouble if department staffing fell below 3,800, and a year later she told WTOP-FM (103.5) that should the department break that barrier, it would be “harder for me to do what I have to do. I have to be creative, and sacrifice things to make up for other things.”
[How many police the District needs depends on whom you ask]
Lanier’s letter to residents did not address specific complaints about the impact of low staffing that the police union raised in its memo.
The labor group said that it can take hours for a crime-lab technician to respond to a burglary to dust for fingerprints, and officers trained to confront active shooters must work overtime to ensure adequate coverage. Officers interviewed said that they spend shifts racing from call to call, spending less time in the neighborhoods to which they are assigned.
“I tell people the truth,” said 23-year veteran Officer Nicholas Deciutiis , who is assigned to the First District, which includes Capitol Hill, and is a union shop steward. “We do the best we can out here with what we have.”
The police union says that the practice of temporarily pulling detectives and others who work behind the scenes into street duty, called “high visibility patrols,” gives residents a false impression that the department is flooded with officers. Meanwhile, the union says, burglary and other investigations slow or stall. The depleted force, the union said in its letter, “is causing innumerable problems and complications in our ability to keep the streets safe.”
Benjamin Fetting, a master patrol officer in the Third District, which includes Dupont Circle, Adams Morgan, Kalorama and Columbia Heights, said: “We do more with less every day.” The union shop steward said that it is not uncommon for an officer talking with a crime victim to race off to a more urgent call: “We spend more time running around the District instead of spending quality time in our [patrol area].”
He said that any special event, large protest or holiday can cause crippling staff shortages. “We’re starting to feel the pain,” said Fetting, who is trained to use assault weapons and is on an active shooting team. He said that, to keep a sufficient number of teams on the streets, he has needed to work overtime.
The District, with a population of about 672,000, has more than five police officers for every 1,000 residents.
That is one of the highest police staffing levels per capita of any city in the country, exceeding a Justice Department recommendation of two officers for every 1,000 people. Most large cities pass that threshold, including Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, St. Louis and Atlanta.
D.C. officials have long argued that the city’s unique status as the nation’s capital, home of the president and a terrorism target, requires a large police force.
They also note that the District’s population can more than double during the workday as commuters and tourists fill up the Mall and other attractions. Various officials over the years have put the number of officers the District needs at anywhere between 3,600 and 4,200.
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said that there is no personnel crisis. He said discussion four years ago over the 3,800 number was born out of “crisis of the moment” but does not necessarily reflect the city today.
Said Mendelson, who once chaired the council’s public safety committee: “I personally think it would be helpful if the staffing of police were larger.” He added, “At the same time, I really do not think the attrition we’re seeing now is surprising and should set off alarms.”
Mendelson noted a push for civilians to replace desk-bound officers and said that the problem with the amount of crime-scene technicians — a job slowly transitioning from sworn officers to civilians — is being addressed with more hires. “The bottom line for me is, can residents continue to feel safe?” he said, adding that “3,800 is not a magic number.”
Lanier, in her letter, said new funding authorized by the council and mayor means that civilians soon can replace 75 officers now assigned to the forensic science building.
Police also point to several successes in the crime fight, including arrests in several spates of street robberies on Capitol Hill and apprehending two suspects in holdups of multiple taxi drivers. Earlier this month, Lanier announced arrests in 12 homicide cases. She said staffing in the homicide unit never dropped.
Donahue would not say how large a police force Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) thinks is needed. But he said the mayor is authorizing overtime and working to civilianize positions faster — devoting $2.9 million to 48 new positions — and is implementing a $2.5 million officer incentive program “to try to slow the pace of attrition.” |
At some point, the Washington Redskins have to find out how much of the problem is Donovan McNabb. If he isn't the right quarterback for them, they need to know it now so they can figure out what to do next. One way to make a diagnosis is to bench him. McNabb's admirers, both in and out of the locker room, cry that he has been disrespected and scapegoated, but the fact is, scapegoating is part of an NFL quarterback's job description. As Hyman Roth told Michael Corleone, "This is the business we've chosen."
Everybody likes McNabb personally, including Coach Mike Shanahan, who calls him "as classy of a guy that you'll ever meet in your whole life." But where is it written that his job is guaranteed because he's well liked and nice to kids?
The fact is, McNabb has been more classy than good this season. The team has lost five of its last six games, and the offense has been stuck in neutral, and McNabb's responsibility for that has to be assessed. Sometimes, the best way to evaluate is by subtraction. If even Rex Grossman can operate the offense more effectively, then that means the Redskins made a mistake with McNabb. They should shake hands and part with him in the offseason.
Yes, Shanahan could have handled McNabb more gracefully - it's hard to know why he managed the situation so awkwardly, refusing to clarify McNabb's status until late in the week. McNabb's agent Fletcher Smith called it "beyond disrespectful," and there are reports that McNabb's locker room allies are alienated. But that's a secondary issue. Football considerations had to come ahead of public relations, and there is simply no easy way to remove a beloved veteran like McNabb from the lineup.
Shanahan isn't stupid; he knew exactly how big a can of controversy he opened, and he obviously did it because he felt he had to, in order to get some clarity.
"What I'd like to be able to do, is at the end of the season, be able to evaluate where we're at at our quarterback position," Shanahan said. "I told Donovan that there's nothing he could do in the three games that would influence me of what he's done over the last 13 games. . . .
"Right now, I gotta do what I think's in the best interest of this organization. And that's to get a good feel of where we're at at the quarterback position."
The Redskins have to find some explanations for why the offense hasn't performed better. It's a hard thing to analyze. A combination of factors determines whether a play succeeds or fails, and quarterback play is just one of them, but still, it's the most critical.
How much is McNabb contributing - or not contributing? How often does he fail to get the Redskins out of a bad play and into a good one with his reads, his progressions and his decisions? How much of his struggle is due to other failures, such as poor protection, wrong-headed play calls, or an unproductive running game?
We've had 13 games to gather data on McNabb's performance; we have all of his statistics, and he has done nothing to solidify his hold on the position. He has been visibly slow to master the new offense, and made routine plays look hard with his plaguing habit of skipping the ball off the turf. He can be shockingly casual and unfocused. He has made baffling mistakes for a veteran, such as running out of bounds when he needed to keep the clock running, or fumbling the ball on a routine slide. There is something frustratingly sleepy about him, even when he plays well.
It's time to see how the offense operates without him. At a certain point, some things beyond statistics can be examined only in his absence. For instance, McNabb had one of his best statistical performances of the season last week against Tampa Bay, with two touchdown passes and no interceptions, and a strong 75-yard drive in the final 3 minutes 39 seconds of the game. The running game also worked better than it has all year, and the line gave everyone the protection they needed.
Yet the Redskins still lost, 17-16. How much of that was due to what McNabb didn't do? How many points did he leave on the field, when he took a delay-of-game penalty on the 2-yard line to end the first half, or failed to find Chris Cooley in his progressions, or presided over too many three-and-out possessions?
According to some, offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan is not convinced McNabb is a good fit for his schemes. On the other hand, maybe Kyle Shanahan has failed to play to his quarterback's strengths, as McNabb hinted earlier this week.
"I've been in this league long enough where you can tell when you are not yourself, watching [film] later on, 'Okay, that's something I'm used to doing or I'm comfortable doing.' That's part of the communication that we've gotten better with. There were a lot of factors into that."
If so, then the head coach needs to sort that out - even if it means admitting that he made a terrible mistake. Even if it means accepting that trading two draft picks for McNabb was a bad deal. What the Redskins need now is more information. They need some answers - answers McNabb has failed to give them. |
In the 50-plus years Warren Beatty has excelled in the film industry, there's been one long-standing rumor that has continued to follow him — and he finally set the record straight in a new interview.
In 2010, unauthorized biographer Peter Biskind estimated that the Dick Tracy star, now 79, bedded nearly 13,000 women throughout his career. As fans know, the veteran actor famously dated Madonna, Natalie Wood, Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon and Janice Dickinson, among others.
Now, in his first interview in nearly two decades, Beatty says the number is incorrect. "Think about it, sleeping with 12,775 people," he told AARP magazine in his new October/November 2016 cover story. "That would mean not just that there were multiple people a day, but that there was no repetition."
The Bulworth actor didn't downplay his infamous ladies' man reputation, though. "Look, I never mislead anyone," he told the publication. "And … and I'm a nice guy."
Beatty didn't get married until he was in his mid-fifties, tying the knot with Annette Bening in 1992. The couple share four children together — Stephen, 24, Benjamin, 22, Isabel, 19, and Ella, 16.
"I waited a long time to be married," he explained to AARP. "When you don't get married until you're 54 … well, as Arthur Miller said, 'It comes with the territory.'"
Beatty added, "I always knew I wanted to have children. I wanted to do it well, and I wanted to do it with someone who felt the same way. I'm an attentive father, I have to struggle somewhat not to be overly attentive. It's a burden to be the child of not only one famous parent, but two."
In November, the iconic filmmaker's first movie in 18 years, Rules Don't Apply, will hit theaters. Beatty wrote and directed the film in addition to starring alongside his wife and costars Lily Collins, Alden Ehrenreich, Matthew Broderick and Alec Baldwin.
Sign up now for the Us Weekly newsletter to get breaking celebrity news, hot pics and more delivered straight to your inbox!
Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now! |
The small Canadian town of Kensington on Prince Edward Island has found a special way of deterring drunk driving this holiday season — and we can all learn a lesson or two from the process. In a recent Facebook post seen by Consequence of Sound, the town police announced that drivers arrested while intoxicated will be fined, suspended, and forced to listen to Nickelback’s classic 2001 LP Silver Side Up. This is How You Remind them how to not drink and drive.
Here’s the full statement from the Kensington Police Force:
This isn’t so much a warning as a threat, and it’s an effective one. Had a little too much wine at the Christmas party? Chad Kroeger and crew aren’t Far Away. Dipped into the cider before heading home? Too Bad, friend, it’s Good Times Gone for you.
Santa Chad is coming for you
Am I having entirely too much fun with this? Yes! But any longtime reader of The Verge knows by now that the prospect of hapless drunks being Nickelrolled by law enforcement forced to ride the Coca-Cola Rolla Coasta gives me literally all the joy.
The bottom line is, don’t drink and drive this year, because Santa Chad is coming for you. |
Two decades after it started selling books online, Amazon opens a shopping center storefront with books for sale on actual shelves.
Bookstore owners often think of Amazon.com as the enemy.
Now it’s becoming one of them.
At 9:30 Tuesday morning, the online retail giant will open its first-ever brick-and-mortar retail store in its 20-year life, in University Village.
The store, called Amazon Books, looks a lot like bookstores that populate malls across the country. Its wood shelves are stocked with 5,000 to 6,000 titles, best-sellers as well as Amazon.com customer favorites.
Last month, the online book newsletter Shelf Awareness broke a story speculating that Amazon was developing the store in the former Blue C Sushi location.
There is some irony in Amazon’s opening a physical store. For years, it could undercut physical retailers on price because it didn’t have brick-and-mortar locations. But those stores offered something Amazon couldn’t: the instant gratification of owning an item the second it was purchased, as well as the personal touch of a knowledgeable sales clerk.
Amazon is betting that the troves of data it generates from shopping patterns on its website will give it advantages in its retail location that other bookstores can’t match. It will use data to pick titles that will most appeal to Seattle shoppers.
And that could also solve the business problem that has long plagued other bookstores: unsold books that gather dust on shelves and get sent back to publishers. More than most book retailers, Amazon has deep insight into customer buying habits and can stock its store with titles most likely to move.
The company will stock best-sellers, of course. But it will also include books that get the highest ratings from its customers, including little-known titles. The store will also include such categories as “Most Wished-For Cookbooks.” Another section features “Award Winners, 4.5 Stars & Above, Age 6-12.”
Data only goes so far, though. Book lovers often see stores as a piece of their community. And some blame Amazon, and online retail more broadly, for the slow demise of independent booksellers.
Jennifer Cast, vice president of Amazon Books, is careful to say the store won’t be stocked solely on data.
“It’s data with heart,” she said. “We’re taking the data we have and we’re creating physical places with it.”
Some of that data includes reviews from the millions of Amazon customers who have left appraisals of books on the website. Below each book on the shelf is a card with either a review or a rating from the site.
And the company also has included a staff-favorites section that will change from time to time. For the opening, the section includes a few of Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos’ favorite titles, including “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker, “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman and “Traps” by his wife, MacKenzie Bezos.
“A page-turner written by an award-winning novelist, who also happens to be my wife,” Bezos writes.
The review cards are similar to the staff-favorite notes found at many bookstores. But Cast believes that having comments from passionate readers adds a wide range of voices recommending titles.
“The bookstores I love celebrate reading,” Cast said. “What better way to celebrate reading than to have the voices of readers under our books?”
Amazon’s customers help select books for the store in other ways as well. The new store includes, for example, “Bald, Fat & Crazy: How I Beat Cancer While Pregnant with One Daughter and Adopting Another” by Stephanie Hosford, a title that ranks 622,923 in books sold on Amazon. But those who have read it seem to love it. The book has a 5-star rating from all 56 customers who have reviewed it on the site.
One other way the store, with 5,500 square feet of retail space and 2,000 square feet of storage, is distinct from traditional bookstores: Every book will face out, rather than be stacked tightly with only their spines showing. That leaves far less space for books.
But Cast said Amazon wanted to showcase authors and their work, rather than cramming as many titles as possible on shelves.
“We realized that we felt sorry for the books that were spine out,” Cast said.
Amazon will charge the same price for books in the store as it does online.
It had reached out to sales staff at local stores, such as Third Place Books, to work at the new store. It wound up hiring 15 employees, including librarians, retail clerks and even a receptionist from Amazon who loves reading.
Ever since Shelf Awareness broke the story about the possibility of Amazon’s opening a retail store, there have been many rumors and much speculation about what it would be.
The store will not be a location to pick up Amazon orders. It won’t be a showcase for Amazon Publishing imprints, whose titles often aren’t picked up by the company’s retail competitors.
And while the store will showcase some of Amazon’s gadgets, such as its Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets and Fire TV streaming-media devices, it will be first and foremost a bookstore.
“Our goal is to do a great job selling lots of books,” Cast said.
Amazon has opened pop-up stores over the years to sell its Kindle devices. And it’s been replacing bookstores on college campuses with pickup locations, where students can retrieve orders.
The company chose Seattle for its first physical bookstore because it’s close to Amazon’s headquarters and because Seattle is a top market for readers.
Cast declined to detail future plans, including additional locations.
“We’re completely focused on this bookstore,” Cast said. “We hope this is not our only one. But we’ll see.” |
The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) resounding victory over Wyndham Worldwide Corporation in a U.S. District Court paves the way for increasing privacy and data security action by the agency, which over the past decade has asserted itself as the most forceful and well-respected privacy enforcement authority in the world.
In the end, Wyndham resorted to an argument raised by the tobacco industry in Supreme Court litigation against a market regulator. That’s telling, since tobacco, like data, is toxic, and those who fail to implement reasonable, industry-standard protections, including comprehensive privacy and data security programs, can expect to pay dearly in reputation and market valuation, litigation costs and long-term external audits. The court in Wyndham flatly denied the company’s argument that the FTC’s authority to regulate data security is in any way curtailed by the Supreme Court’s decision in FDA v. Brown & Williamson.
The Wyndham decision is a wakeup call to anyone who has doubted the emergence of an FTC privacy and data security jurisprudence, which Dan Solove and Woody Hartzog have called “a new common law of privacy.” The court agreed that Wyndham’s argument—that detailed data security rules are a prerequisite to FTC enforcement—“would undermine 100 years of FTC precedent.” Rejecting Wyndham’s claim that “agencies cannot rely on enforcement actions to make new rules,” the court held Wyndham’s “argument that consent orders do not carry the force of law, therefore, misses the mark.” In doing so, it cited with approval a 1976 decision of the Supreme Court, holding, in another context, that “the rulings, interpretations and opinions of the (regulator) under this act, while not controlling upon the courts by reason of their authority, do constitute a body of experience and informed judgment to which courts and litigants may properly resort for guidance.” These strong words will resonate to provide impetus for future privacy enforcement by the agency.
This trajectory makes projects such as the Westin Research Center’s casebook of FTC privacy and data securityenforcement actions particularly timely for professionals on the ground. Already, practitioners parse FTC decisions and consent orders immediately upon release to look for guidance and insights into industry best practices. Creating a mobile architecture that re-delegates permissions by bypassing the restrictions of an operating system? No one will do that again after the FTC’s settlement with HTC. Uploading contacts to simplify app functionality without asking for explicit consent? The Path settlement put an end to that.
This emerging jurisprudence is a testament to how much can be done with a succinctly phrased legislative mandate, the “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” standard in Section 5 of the FTC Act. Under this language, the FTC has developed a robust data protection body of law, comprising dozens of enforcement actions against the mightiest of companies, including the imposition of stiff fines and comprehensive long-term compliance programs on the likes of Google, Facebook, Choicepoint and Sears.
This track record overshadows the achievements of any other privacy enforcement authority in the world, including regulators that operate under laws spanning thousands of words. As the court pointed out, the FTC’s mandate to implement “reasonable” data security practices was not hollow. It was filled with substance accumulated through a long line of data security cases, enabling the FTC to accuse Wyndham of “failing to employ firewalls; permitting ‘storage of payment card information in clear readable text’; failing to make sure Wyndham-branded hotels ‘implemented adequate information security policies and procedures prior to connecting their local computer networks to (Wyndham’s) computer network’; permitting Wyndham-branded hotels ‘to connect insecure servers to (Wyndham’s) networks, including servers using outdated operating systems that could not receive security updates or patches to address known security vulnerabilities’…” – and (much) more.
Legal experts will no doubt question Wyndham’s strategy in this case. Instead of focusing on the complex issue of privacy harm, which merits discussion and is far from settled, Wyndham’s lawyers chose to challenge the FTC’s authority to enforce in this space in light of the vagueness of its legislative mandate. Yet it is impolitic to argue that law is not detailed enough to be enforced, even as industry lobbies against prescriptive data protection legislation. Indeed, corporations should commend the court’s ruling. A decision to curb FTC activity could create a regulatory vacuum, which would surely be filled by a plethora of activity by state attorneys general, private and class-action litigants and state and federal legislators.
Wyndham fired blanks with some of its other legal arguments, too, such as relying on legalese in its privacy statement to disavow responsibility for its franchisees’ data practices or disclaiming the existence of clear data security guidelines while at the same time announcing compliance with “industry standard practices” in its privacy policies.
The court emphasized that it “does not give the FTC a blank check to sustain a lawsuit against every business that has been hacked.” While the commission will submit a report on its study of data brokers’ collection and use of consumer data as well as on the privacy and security implications of the Internet of Things, at the same time that is continuing its case-by-case enforcement actions, few observers think there is much reason for concern. The FTC, over decades of activity, has been extremely judicious in exercising its power and can be expected to carefully but surely continue to develop privacy and data security law.
Reprinted with permission from Privacy Perspectives blog. |
Conservative Senator Leo Housakos solicited tens of thousands of dollars' worth of questionable construction industry donations for a Quebec provincial party immediately prior to his appointment to the upper house in 2008, according to one of the star witnesses at the Quebec inquiry into municipal and provincial corruption.
Lino Zambito, a construction company owner who was one of the first to tell Quebec's Charbonneau commission about the elaborate kickback schemes set up between municipal and provincial politicians, engineers and construction bosses, now tells CBC News that he also gave money to Leo Housakos, who, Zambito says, approached him for a $30,000 political donation in the fall of 2008.
At the time, Housakos, a businessman and prominent member of Montreal's Greek community, was the head of fundraising for the now defunct Action Démocratique du Québec, the small "c" conservative party then led by Mario Dumont.
In the run-up to the provincial election in December 2008, the fledgling party was doing so well, said Zambito, that construction firms like his took notice and were prepared to pay to win favour.
Send tips or information on this story to [email protected] or [email protected].
Last week, a spokesperson for Housakos relayed to CBC News the senator's previous statement that he had never been involved in illegal fundraising. He declined to be interviewed on what we said were new allegations (without revealing what Zambito had told CBC News), saying through his spokesperson that he "wasn't interested in talking to smear merchants."
In an interview with the Canadian Press, Housakos called CBC’s report "completely defamatory and erroneous" and "absolutely a hatchet job of the worst degree." He claims Zambito approached him and asked to get involved with ADQ financing. Housakos also told CP he had spoken to the Prime Minister's Office to share his version of the facts before the report aired Monday night, and that he has also consulted his attorney about possible legal action.
Since corporate donations are not allowed in Quebec, and the limit for personal donations was then set at $3,000 per contributor per party, Zambito says he had to use the illegal "prête-nom" system to come up with that kind of money. While never explicitly stated, he said he assumed Housakos knew the game.
Former construction boss Lino Zambito testifies before the Charbonneau inquiry probing corruption and collusion in Quebec's construction industry in October 2012. Zambito was the first to explain in detail the common practice of skirting the province's supposedly stringent political donations law. (Canadian Press)
"They all say 'Ah us, we took cheques, they're legal,'" said Zambito, adding he believes fundraisers were well aware of the system: "No one's going to make me believe they didn't know what was happening."
Many witnesses have now come forward to tell Judge France Charbonneau about the system whereby company executives would reimburse their staff, friends or family members for cheques that they would donate to political campaigns.
This "prête-nom" scheme was a way for companies to conceal an illegal corporate donation through a series of much smaller, seemingly legal contributions from different people.
"Could you raise me, from people you know, friends, raise me $30,000 of cheques," Zambito said of the fundraising requests
"Then it's your problem,do what you have to do."
The construction boss said he came up with between $20,000 and $25,000 in cheques for the ADQ that he handed off directly to Housakos on two separate deliveries in the fall of 2008, and then reimbursed his friends and employees.
He didn't make his $30,000 target, but he said Housakos was pleased with the sum.
Housakos denied that he had been involved in the “prête-nom” system.
"Give me one reason I would have any reason to believe that he would have been doing that [reimbursement of cheques]," he told CP.
"At no such time did I participate in any questionable or illegal fundraising, with the ADQ and Mr. Zambito as he claims — or as the report claims, quite frankly."
Fundraising for Conservative
Zambito says he was also willing to pay for influence at the federal level, and says Housakos approached him to solicit funds for Claude Carignan, one of Harper's star candidates in the 2008 federal election.
Zambito recalled Housakos saying: "'Claude's running, he's a close friend of mine, could you help me out?'
"I go listen, how much do you want? He said, 'If you could give $3,000, I'll be happy.' So I asked my father, my mother, they both scratched a cheque for $1,100 each, I scratched a cheque and I gave it to him."
These donations were legal, but Zambito says he is a longtime Liberal. When asked why he would donate to the Tories, Zambito said he only paid because he thought Housakos had influence in Ottawa too, that he was "one of the main guys."
"It's scratch my back, I'll scratch yours," Zambito said.
Carignan lost that election but would later be named to the Senate, where he has recently been named government leader.
Longtime Tory
Housakos is no stranger to controversy. He told the CBC earlier this summer that he is "tired of this witch hunt for the last three, four, five years" — referring to media stories about him dating back to the start of the Harper government seven years ago.
Long-time political allies, Dimitri Soudas and Senator Housakos, shown here at a Commons committee in February 2008. (Canadian Press)
Housakos began making political contacts in the mid-1980s as a young Tory, and even ran for Harper's Alliance party in 2000.
He and a fellow Greek Montrealer, Dimitri Soudas, became involved with the Union Montreal party when Gérald Tremblay ran for mayor in 2001.
Longtime friends, Housakos and Soudas left the city within a year, and when Soudas got a job with the new Tory leader, Stephen Harper, in 2002, Housakos's network with the federal Tories broadened.
Less than three months after Harper became prime minister in January 2006, Housakos had a meeting with Public Works officials where he asked about Michael Rosenberg, a former Tory candidate whose firm RosDev was embroiled in a multi-million dollar lawsuit with the federal department over the management of two office buildings, according to a joint investigation by CBC News and the Globe and Mail in January 2008.
It was reported that Soudas, who was then the prime minister's deputy press secretary, also stepped in to try to resolve the RosDev file, an effort that landed him before Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson. (He was later absolved by her of any ethical breach or inappropriate pressure.)
Housakos told Radio-Canada that his role was to tell the government it would be good to help out a party supporter like Rosenberg. He also claimed he never asked Soudas to intervene on Rosenberg's behalf.
Also in 2006, both Housakos and Soudas met with officials of Alenia, an Italian aeronautics company interested in selling hardware to National Defence, at a Montreal restaurant. But Housakos said it was an innocent happenstance where Soudas was in town and dropped in on a meeting.
Housakos was not registered as a lobbyist, said he was never paid as one, and told the House of Commons committee he did not contravene any lobbying guidelines.
Their names came up again during the 2011 election campaign when news reports said that Tony Accurso, a prominent Montreal construction boss and Bernard Poulin, head of one of the biggest engineering firms in Quebec, wanted Housakos to get Soudas to promote former city official Robert Abdallah to run the Port of Montreal back in 2007.
The port's board members told reporters they were pressured during a dinner in Old Montreal, where Soudas promoted Abdallah as his choice candidate. When this story broke, Harper confirmed Abdallah had been the preferred candidate of the PMO, but said no pressure had been exercised and that their candidate did not get the job in the end. Housakos has denied any role in this matter.
Abdallah was not chosen for the position. He has since been accused, in unproven allegations before Charbonneau, of being involved in a kickback scheme during his time at the City of Montreal (2003-06).
Accurso has been arrested twice in the past two years and charged with a string of offences including tax evasion, fraud, conspiracy, influence-peddling, breach of trust and two counts of defrauding the government. He has gone to court to try to avoid testifying before the Charbonneau commission.
Charbonneau mentions
In testimony before Charbonneau, Housakos's name has been raised twice.
The first mention dealt with his involvement with a Montreal engineering firm that won a federal stimulus contract to study the restoration of the Champlain Bridge.
But the Senate ethics officer had examined the matter back in 2009 and cleared Housakos of any wrongdoing.
His name was also cited on redacted documents outlining the guest list of a private Montreal club because he attended what commission investigators called "events of interest" back in 2007 and 2008.
The inquiry under Justice France Charbonneau has transfixed Quebec with its many revelations between the construction industry, in particular, and provincial parties. (Canadian Press)
Commission investigators say Housakos's name was on the guest list along with people who have since faced allegations of wrongdoing at Charbonneau, including Paolo Catania, who runs a construction company that Charbonneau testimony has linked to the Sicilian mafia, and Bernard Trépanier, the municipal fundraiser dubbed "Mr. 3 Per Cent" for allegedly demanding cuts on city contracts.
Housakos's lawyer, Emmanuelle Saucier, has since written to the CBC to say that the senator's meetings at 357c can in no way whatsoever "be used to link our client to illegal activities."
The inquiry documents also seem to show that Housakos arranged a dinner party for the ADQ at the private club on June 21, 2007, while he was the party's chief of fundraising. Among the dozen guests, the only one whose name has not been redacted is construction boss Joseph Borsellino of Garnier construction, who has been accused at the commission of price-rigging municipal contracts.
"In this context, we see an entrepreneur who has been invited to a cocktail for the ADQ and we've seen the profile of Mr. Housakos," said Sgt. Erick Roy, one of the commission investigators, justifying why Housakos's name was included. "So we see links between business people and political financing that fall directly into the framework of our investigation."
Housakos took exception to this allegation, calling the event "a networking event to meet the business community."
"So that to me is false — it's erroneous," Housakos told reporters in June when this issue first arose.
"I don't know if he was at the club while I was at that event, but at no such time did I ever come across Joe Borsellino in 2007 and I have no reason to believe that Mr. Borsellino would have been present at any of my meetings or events."
As for the other meetings, Housakos protested: "How was I supposed to know [four years before] that some of those individuals would be charged with serious criminal offences and their names would appear on countless occasions being accused of doing very unsavoury things."
Housakos says he supports the Charbonneau commission, but told reporters he resents the idea that reporting on those meetings makes him guilty by association.
"Not everybody in the construction industry and engineering industry are crooked," Housakos said. "Not everybody in the fundraising processes of the political system break the rules."
The CBC requested an interview with Housakos on three separate occasions recently. Housakos declined our requests, while insisting he had not participated in any questionable fundraising.
His lawyer Saucier sent a letter cautioning the CBC to "respect its code of ethics" and "ensure the veracity of the facts and the accuracy of your sources (anonymous or not), and that the evidence can support the conclusions and judgments."
Send tips or information on this story to [email protected] or [email protected]. |
2011 United States listeriosis outbreak The outbreak was from cantaloupes from Colorado Location United States Date July 31, 2011 – August 27, 2012 Deaths 33 confirmed[1] Non-fatal injuries 147 cases confirmed[1]
The 2011 United States listeriosis outbreak was a widespread outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes food poisoning across 28 US states that resulted from contaminated cantaloupes linked to Jensen Farms of Holly, Colorado. As of the final report on August 27, 2012, there were 33 deaths and 147 total confirmed cases since the beginning of the first recorded case on July 31, 2011.[2] It was the worst foodborne illness outbreak in the United States, measured by the number of deaths, since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began tracking outbreaks in the 1970s, or tied with the worst, an outbreak of listeria from cheese in 1985, depending on which CDC report is used.[3]
Origin and spread [ edit ]
Listeria monocytogenes, the bacterium responsible for , the bacterium responsible for listeriosis
Listeriosis is an infection caused by the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes. The outbreak was determined to originate from Jensen Farms in Holly, Colorado after Listeria monocytogenes was found in cantaloupe samples at a Jensen Farms store in Denver, Colorado and at the farm's packaging plant. The batch of cantaloupes had been shipped out over a period from July 29 through September 10 to twenty-five states, including Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming.[4]
The outbreak was first reported by the Centers for Disease Control on September 12, where they stated that "fifteen people in four states had been infected".[5] On September 21, a new report was released by the CDC, bringing the number of deaths to 13 and the number of confirmed cases to 72. The report also stated that further deaths were being investigated to determine if they had also been caused by Listeria infection. The CDC report also stated that, as Listeria "only sickens the elderly, pregnant women and others with compromised immune systems", the median age of all the people that had been infected was 78.[6] On September 30, an update was released by the CDC, reporting that as of 11 am (EDT) Sep 29, 2011 the number of confirmed cases was 84, number of deaths was 15 and the number of states involved was 19.[7] On October 4, the CDC updated their report to 100 infected individuals in 20 states and a total of 18 deaths from the outbreak.[8] The outbreak was shown to have continued to spread to new states, with the CDC update on October 7 stating that the number of cases had risen to 109 in 23 states and that three more people had died to bring the death toll to 21.[9] The CDC update on October 12 put the number of cases at 116 with 23 deaths.[10][11] An update on October 18 increased the number of cases to 123 and the number of deaths to 25.[12] The October 25 update raised the number of cases to 133, with three more people dying to raise the total to 28.[13] A final update on August 27 confirmed 147 cases and 33 deaths. Fatalities occurred in Colorado (9), Indiana (1), Kansas (3), Louisiana (2), Maryland (1), Missouri (3), Montana (1) Nebraska (1), New Mexico (5), New York (2), Oklahoma (1), Texas (2), and Wyoming (2). Among persons who died, ages ranged from <1 to 96 years, with a median age of 78 years.[2] In addition, one woman pregnant at the time of illness had a miscarriage.[1]
Listeria infections can cause pregnant women to miscarry; the first miscarriage attributed to the 2011 outbreak was reported in early October, in a woman living in Iowa. Pregnant women often are advised to avoid foods, such as unpasteurized cheese and hot dogs, that are known to have the potential to carry Listeria, but fruits such as cantaloupe had not previously been identified as sources of concern.[14]
No list of retailers selling the infected cantaloupes was released by either the government or Jensen Farms. Although the last shipment was September 10 and the fruit had a two-week shelf life, as of September 29, the number of illnesses and deaths were expected to continue rising, because the incubation period could exceed one month.[15]
Recalls by retailers which had sold the Jensen Farms cantaloupes included Kroger (September 15),[16] Safeway (September 15),[17] Aldi (September 16),[18] and US Foods (September 16).[19]
FDA investigation [ edit ]
An investigation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that the contaminated cantaloupe harvest contained four separate Listeria monocytogenes strains, which the governmental agency found to be "unusual", but was still trying to determine the reason.[20] On October 20, it was reported that the FDA officials had found listeria on dirty, corroded equipment used by Jensen Farms, which had been bought used and was previously utilized for potato farming. It was stated by the government that the "equipment's past use may have played a role in the contamination".[21] Water contaminated with listeria was also found on the floor of the packing plant and it was determined that the workers moving around the plant had spread it, as the contaminated water was also found on the cantaloupe conveyor belt. It was noted by officials that Jensen Farms had "passed a food safety audit by an outside contractor" six days before the outbreak.[22]
The method of how the listeria bacteria first came to be in the plant remains unknown, as the soil on the farm was determined to be clear of the bacteria. It is suspected, however, that a "dump truck used to take culled melons to a cattle farm...could have brought bacteria to the facility".[22][23] Furthermore, Bacteria growth may have been caused by condensation stemming from the lack of a pre-cooling step to remove field heat from the cantaloupe before cold storage.[24]
House Energy and Commerce Committee investigation [ edit ]
On October 21, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a committee panel of the United States House of Representatives, began its own investigation into the outbreak. The Committee "requested a staff briefing from Jensen Farms" and all of the documents they had on the incident. They also requested information from the FDA, CDC, and other governmental groups.[25]
Jensen Farms response [ edit ]
In response to the initial reports by the CDC on the contaminated cantaloupe, Jensen Farms issued a voluntary recall on September 15 of the entire harvest crop of 300,000 cantaloupe that it had distributed to its chain stores. The FDA made the public announcement for the recall after Listeria infection was confirmed by Jensen Farms at its main Colorado branch.[26] Jensen Farms was also forced to temporarily shut down its processing plant while the recall is ongoing.[27] Government officials have been investigating the company's main facility in Colorado to determine if there was "animal or water contamination", but there have been no results from the investigation thus far.[20] Holly, Colorado residents were described as being left "reeling and in fear" because of the disaster for its local producer.[28]
Political responses [ edit ]
The FDA has stated in response to the extensive bacterial outbreak that it is "yet another reason to fully implement the Food Safety Modernization Act." Sherri McGarry, a senior adviser for the FDA, stated that, "We're going to take these lessons learned, share that with our partners and industries, CDC and the states, and what we want to do is we want to really prevent this from happening in the future."[20]
Also, in response to an auditor passing Jensen Farms food safety methods and failing to notice the listeria bacteria in the plant, the deputy commissioner of foods, Michael R. Taylor, had stated that he intended to "establish standards for how auditors should be trained and how audits should be conducted."[22]
Lawsuit [ edit ]
On September 15, a lawsuit was filed against Jensen Farms by the first victim of the contaminated cantaloupe crop, who had fallen ill and been kept in the hospital for several weeks. He and his wife were involved in the legal proceedings.[27] In addition to Jensen Farms, the couple also sued a Walmart branch in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where they had bought the cantaloupe, for selling unsafe food.[29] |
Spare me any more reverential coverage about Pope Benedict XVI and his decision to give up his office. On a personal level, I wish him well. At the age of eighty-five and increasingly infirm, he surely deserves a rest. But as far as his record goes, he can’t leave office a moment too soon. His lengthy tenure at the Vatican, which included more than twenty years as the Catholic Church’s chief theological enforcer before he became Pope, in 2005, has been little short of disastrous. By setting its face against the modern world in general, and by dragging its feet in response to one of the worst scandals since the Reformation, Benedict’s Vatican has called the Church’s future into question, needlessly alienating countless people around the world who were brought up in its teachings.
Not that it matters much, but you can count me among them. When I was a boy, in Leeds, West Yorkshire, the nuns at Sacred Heart Primary School taught my classmates and me the New Testament from slim paperbacks with embossed navy-blue covers. We each got four of them: “The Good News According to Luke,” The Good News According to Matthew,” “The Good News According to Mark,” and “The Good News According to John.” Of the four gospels, the most thumbed, by far, were those of Luke, which contains many of Jesus’s parables, and Matthew, which features the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth…”
It was the early seventies, an era of hope and optimism for many Catholics. Following the lengthy Second Vatican Council, called by Pope John XXIII in 1959, the Church had made a determined effort to modernize some of its doctrines and practices. Masses, which for many centuries had been confined to Latin, were now celebrated in other languages. Priests, who traditionally faced the altar during services, had been instructed to face their congregations and invite them to participate. In place of a stultifying focus on ancient dogmas and ceremonies, there was a return to the actual teachings of Jesus, which were being interpreted in increasingly liberal and egalitarian ways, as evidenced by the words of a popular folk hymn we used to sing, a few lines of which I recount from memory:
He sent me to give the Good News to the poor.
Tell prisoners that they are prisoners no more.
Tell blind people that they can see,
And set the downtrodden free.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the church’s concern with bread-and-butter issues had been expressed from the top. In 1967, Pope Paul VI, John XXIII’s successor, issued “Populorum Progressio,” an encyclical on “the development of peoples,” which asserted that the global economy should serve the many, not just the few. Updating the Church’s teachings to take account of widespread poverty and inequality, the Pontiff recognized the right to a just wage, security of employment, and decent working conditions. He even recognized the right to join a union.
Not everybody shared the vision of Catholicism as an urgent and uplifting force for social justice, though many people in South America and other developing areas of the world did. (In some places, it became known as “liberation theology,” a phrase coined by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez.) Many older priests, including the venerable Canon Flynn, who oversaw my local church, Our Lady of Lourdes, had little time for innovations. They were content to celebrate the sacraments as they always had, saying Mass every day, issuing the last rites to stricken parishioners, and doling out “three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys” to penitents, such as my young self, who came to confess their sins. But the energy and the future of the church appeared to rest with the modernizers.
This was despite the fact that Paul VI also reaffirmed many of the Vatican’s traditional teachings on social issues, such as extramarital sex, birth control, homosexuality, and enforced celibacy for priests and nuns. Paul was hardly a revolutionary. He wasn’t willing to challenge the harsh, self-denying ordinances that a series of Roman popes had foisted on Christianity during the Middle Ages. But in calling for peace and social justice, in reaching out to other faiths, in traveling extensively—he was known as “the Pilgrim Pope”—and in making some reforms at the Vatican, such as surrendering his tiara (the papal crown) and barring cardinals over the age of eighty from voting in papal elections, he seemed interested in reconciling the Church to modern reality.
With the arrival of Pope John Paul II, in 1979, all that started to change. In many ways, Karol Wojtyla was an admirable man: a part of the Polish resistance against the Nazis; a vocal opponent of wars and militarism (in 2003, he criticized the invasion of Iraq); a supporter of canceling debts in the developing world; and a massively charismatic leader. In theological and practical terms, though, he was a dreadful throwback. With the Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI, at his side, as the Vatican’s chief theologian, he set about unmaking much of the modernization project of the previous twenty years. He issued lengthy and emphatic rulings condemning abortion, birth control, and homosexuality. He dismissed calls for the relaxation of the celibacy rules for priests, and for the ordination of women. He criticized liberation theology and surrounded himself with dyed-in-the-wool conservatives like Ratzinger. Within the hierarchy of the Church, questioning traditional teachings, even gently, became a potential career-ender.
After John Paul died, in 2005, and Ratzinger took over, the conservative counter-offensive continued. Indeed, it intensified. The Vatican eased restrictions on the Latin Mass and invited back into the Church some excommunicated members of the Society of Saint Pius X, an ultra-conservative group dedicated to reversing the Second Vatican Council. (One member of the group, an English bishop called Richard Williamson, turned out to be a Holocaust denier. Last year, belatedly, the Society expelled him.) In criticizing the “culture of relativism” in modern societies, and “the anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom,” Benedict made clear that he saw his primary mission not as extending and enlarging the Catholic Church but as purifying it, by which he didn’t just mean dealing with the child-abuse scandal. He meant casting off extraneous growths and getting the Church back to what he saw as its proper roots. If this process alienated some current and former members of the faith, so be it. Benedict said numerous times that the Church might well be healthier if it was smaller.
In a 2011 interview with the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Hans Küng, a dissident Swiss theologian who knew Pope Benedict when they were both young priests in Germany, made a telling comparison between him and Vladimir Putin, pointing out that the two leaders had inherited a series of democratic reforms they set out to reverse. Putin and Benedict both “placed their former associates in key positions and sidelined those they didn’t like,” Küng said. He added:
One could draw other parallels: the disempowerment of the Russian parliament and the Vatican Synod of Bishops, the degradation of Russian provincial governors and of Catholic bishops to make them nothing but recipients of orders; a conformist ‘nomenclature’; and a resistance to real reforms.… Under the German pope, a small, primarily Italian clique of yes-men, people with no sympathy for the calls to reform, were allowed to come into power. They are partly responsible for the stagnation that stifles every attempt at modernization of the church system.
The strategy of circling the wagons and seeking to defy the world was displayed, to terrible effect, in the Church’s reaction to the child-abuse scandal. As the Vatican official that John Paul II asked to deal with the crisis when it broke, Benedict was presented with extensive evidence that sexual abuse was widespread and tolerated by church authorities. But it wasn’t until many years later, when tremendous damage had already been done and many further crimes had been committed, that Benedict, as Pope, apologized for the acts of pedophiles in cassocks, adopted a zero-tolerance policy for the Church, and met with some of the victims. Even then, though, say some critics, he and his colleagues in the Vatican resisted efforts to find and punish the perpetrators.
“His record was terrible,” David Clohessy, executive director of the twelve-thousand-strong Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests, told The Guardian. “He knows more about clergy sex crimes and cover-ups than anyone else in the Church, yet he has done precious little to protect children.” From Ireland, where investigations are continuing into extensive abuse at church-run orphanages and schools, John Kelly, one of the founders of the country’s Survivors of Child Abuse group, said, “I’m afraid to say Pope Benedict won’t be missed, as the Vatican continued to block proper investigations into the abuse scandals during his term in office.… For us, he broke his word.”
As a result of the sex scandals and the Vatican’s futile attempt to turn back the clock, Pope Benedict’s Church is in increasingly perilous shape. Throughout much of the developed world, the number of people attending services is declining steadily, and yet there is a tremendous shortage of priests. In places like Ireland and Benedict’s own Germany, young people are deserting the Church in droves. Even in developing countries like Brazil, the Church is facing challenges from other creeds.
Of course, in a religion of more than a billion, there are some bright spots and some inspiring individuals. When I went home to Leeds not so long ago, I found that an enthusiastic young Polish priest had taken over my childhood church and was trying to save it from closure. To do some good, and raise some money, he was planning to turn the rectory into a halfway house for young offenders. Listening to him celebrating Mass like a man possessed, I was reminded of the Catholicism of the Sermon on the Mount and of St. Francis of Assisi—the Catholicism that the nuns had tried to drill into me decades before.
In Rome, however, the conservative theologians and placeholders are still running the show. Sadly, that is likely to continue. “During [Benedict’s] time in office,” Küng noted, “he has ordained so many conservative cardinals, that amongst them is hardly a single person to be found who could lead the Church out of its multifaceted crisis.”
Photograph: Stefano Dal Pozzolo/Getty. |
Over the past two seasons, Lloyd Sam has emerged as one of the foremost attacking threats on the New York Red Bulls' roster. After RBNY's 3-2 win over the Chicago Fire on September 11, 2015, he has the statistical basis of a candidacy for being one of the club's greatest all-round attacking players of all time.
The moment that advanced his claim arrived in the 38th minute, when Sam squeezed a deflected cross through traffic to Mike Grella, and the two-time winner of OaM's Goal of the Month competition found the net with a quick turn-and-shoot maneuver.
That was Sam's seventh assist in all competitions for RBNY this season. More pertinently, it was his 20th assist in all competitions for the club. He is the 12th player in history to record 20 career assists for this team.
In the match preceding the Chicago game - against D.C. United - Sam became the 12th player in history to score 20 career goals for the club.
Not many players have scored 20 for RBNY (and the MetroStars) and not many have recorded 20 assists. How many have hit both landmarks in a career for the club? Five. Lloyd Sam is the fifth player of all time to tally 20 goals and 20 assists (in all competitions) for the New York Red Bulls. (With thanks to MetroFanatic.com's stats archive.)
Name Games Played Games Started Minutes Goals Assists Thierry Henry 135 130 11510 52 49 Amado Guevara 117 114 10284 39 39 Clint Mathis 110 99 8839 45 26 Dane Richards 176 148 13413 23 30 Lloyd Sam 97 77 6627 20 20
Congratulations, Lloyd! Welcome to the 20/20 club. Looking forward to the next milestone in your RBNY career. |
The Raiders were beaten badly by the Broncos, 35-6. It left many fans thinking the bye week may have come at a perfect time as it allowed the team to seek to make some major changes. And to make those changes, it would probably have to come in the way of personnel. Dennis Allen said today that not only have there not been any additions, but the team didn't even have any players in for a workout.
"I wouldn't expect a bunch of wholesale changes," added Allen. "We've put a lot of time into the guys out there that we have on the field but we're gonna continue to evaluate that as we go through and whatever lineup changes that we feel are necessary to maybe give us a boost and help us play a bit better, we'll make those changes."
This suggests there could be some scheme and lineup changes but whatever those changes, there will be no additional players with which to work. The only addition will be Andre Carter who was signed two weeks ago and has yet to take the field for the team.
So, if you were hoping for blockbuster trades during the bye week, this will be a disappointment. On the anniversary of the death of Al Davis, here is another reminder that this isn't the same Raiders. |
The Baltimore dream pop band Beach House comes out with its fifth studio album, "Depression Cherry," later this month. Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson speaks with both members of the duo - Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand - about their new album, their collection of organs, their friendship and why it can be hard to figure out how to end a song.
Interview Highlights: Victoria Legrand & Alex Scally
On the album's meaning and how it's different from past work
Victoria Legrand: "I think at this point, this album continues to change meaning for me on a daily basis. But if anything, it's full of many things. Love, pain, getting older, dealing with loss, letting go. It's really ultimately whatever the listener feels in response to it."
On the formation of the band
Alex Scally: "We were both just kind of knocking around Baltimore right in our early 20s, and met doing a different musical project, and then this kind of grew out of it over 10 years ago now, which is crazy."
Legrand: "Before Beach House, I was a student, I was into theater, I was writing music on my own. It's just that once I met Alex, life changes and I think life changes fast sometimes, you know, when you meet somebody and it's like, it feels like fate is playing its hand. The rest is kind of history at this point."
On the band's unique sound
Scally: "I think it's probably complicated, because part of it is just the actual instruments we use. Guitar, we play with guitar and organs and drum machines and reverb and stuff. But I think part of it I think is also just intrinsic to our own musical personalities that are like fingerprints to us, just kind of like, 'What do our brains make when we make something?' |
Watch The Civil Wars Live Up To Their Name In A Behind-The-Scenes Video
Enlarge this image toggle caption Allister Ann/Courtesy of the artist Allister Ann/Courtesy of the artist
The Civil Wars are a duo whose interchanges, onstage and on the 2010 debut album Barton Hollow, fascinated fans with their magnetic pull and expressiveness. Joy Williams and John Paul White, singer-songwriters whose own separate careers had stalled at different crossroads, came together by accident and quickly became soul mates. Produced by Nashville veteran Charlie Peacock, Barton Hollow rocketed up the iTunes and Billboard charts on the strength of Internet fandom and the pair's spellbinding live performances. Barton Hollow went gold and won two Grammy Awards, for Best Country Duo/Group Performance and Best Folk Album.
Continued success seemed inevitable for The Civil Wars, especially after Taylor Swift took them up as collaborators on a song for the Hunger Games soundtrack. (That song, "Safe & Sound," also won a Grammy.) Many more accolades followed, but in the midst of a European tour, long-simmering problems erupted between Williams and White, and the band went on indefinite hiatus.
Before that tour, they'd started to make their second album, partnering with Peacock again. Latent differences, kept at bay by the force of their musical connection and the excitement of their rapid rise, soon emerged. "I picked up on the tension right from the start of the recording in September 2012," Peacock wrote in an email. (While in the studio, the duo made a behind-the-scenes video, viewable here for the first time, which documents that tension.) "I wrote it off as lingering fatigue, and a widening gap between a northerner worker bee full of analysis, inspiration and work ethic (Joy), and the poster child for southern rock mythology (JP) — where it's always thought best to wait on the inspiration with the least amount of talking about music.
"Given the tension, I became the interpreter, helping to navigate the differing styles of working, and also taking on the needed role of ordering the work at hand," he continued. "And, most importantly, I like to think I was encouraging to both of them in their very different ways of working. I feel like I'm rambling a bit, so maybe in short, this record revealed much more of what they did NOT have in common, in spite of their incredible symbiotic musicality. I felt like my job was to always be in record, capture everything, and pray to recognize greatness when I heard it."
Despite dissolving The Civil Wars (for now, at least), Williams and White diligently worked to complete the album. Now it's about to be released eponymously. Promotion is tricky when a project's two main players aren't talking to each other — a situation Williams revealed in an Associated Press interview this week. One thing the no-longer-perfect partners did was make a music video for the song, "The One That Got Away," which includes shots that also appear in the behind-the-scenes video.
YouTube
Working with the Southern production company 1504 Pictures, Williams and White (and their new major-label partner, Columbia Records) have shaped a document that speaks as much in song fragments and glimpses of downtime as it does in the abbreviated interviews Williams and White separately provide. Williams is more forthcoming, focusing on the idea that great art can arise from conflict. White, a cooler character, talks about enjoying playing his guitar and deliberately keeping the songs' meanings vague. Fans can draw their own conclusions from scenes that show the singers barely acknowledging each other most of the time — but then locking into that undeniable empathetic groove when the music takes over.
"There were moments when John Paul would pick up a guitar and he and Joy would transport to a different place," director Mark Slagle of 1504 Pictures said in an email. "You can see it when John Paul plays [the new song] 'I Had Me A Girl' in the control room and Joy starts moving with the melody. There was definitely a creative push and pull, but watching them grow a song from nothing, giving and taking, was incredibly inspiring."
The duo's in-studio process made for an album that's somehow both raw and carefully modulated, a kind of musical Rashomon that reflects on devastating events from varied perspectives that both intertwine and contradict each other. Williams says that the story of the band is all there in the recording. It's easy to sink into gossip from that point — "I wish you were the one that got away" is certainly a suggestive lyric — but the music, partially revealed here, demands more.
"Honestly, me connecting the lyrics to the situation happened over time and not immediately," says Peacock, who's only behind the scenes in the behind-the-scenes video. "It really wasn't until they'd finished the bulk of their recording and gone off to Europe, and I was sitting with the tracks alone that I realized, 'Oh my, it's all here — they really aren't getting along!' In some sort of incredibly ironic twist, I suppose creating the music together was the best way to deal with it. They mostly kept their cool though. I co-wrote 'The One That Got Away' with them in the studio and I never had any sense that they were anything but respectful as co-creators, and from my perspective, really at the top of their game. Inside the process, I think they were both all about the art and nothing else."
Slagle and 1504 also put the art first, filming ways that complement the clear-as-a-mountain-river directness of The Civil Wars sound. "A lot of the emotion comes from the music itself, and we didn't want any tensions to overshadow the music. That said, we shot the interviews in a first-person format to create as direct a connection as possible between Joy, JP and fans."
Like The Civil Wars album itself, which will be released August 6, this short trip inside a troubled process leaves room for speculation, but steers the listener (or viewer) to put the powerful, rewarding music first. As for the duo's future, Peacock holds out hope.
"No question, people are going to be listening to this new music, and the two of them will go on to make more worthy music, even if they're apart," he wrote. "That said, my number one hope is forgiveness and reconciliation for the two of them. One of the most satisfying and uniquely human actions is the ability to forgive and receive forgiveness. It's sets the stage for a thousand do-overs. Like a lot of people, the two of them singing together is one do-over I'd pay big money to hear and see." |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.