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Iconic Super-Villains of the DC Universe Take Over Movie Theaters this Summer on August 5, 2016
Burbank, Calif. – June 8, 2016 – This summer, Super-Villains will take over in the highly anticipated big screen action adventure Suicide Squad, marking the theatrical debut of some of the most beloved bad guys in the DC Universe, including Deadshot™, Harley Quinn™, Killer Croc™, Katana™ and Enchantress™, and bringing back to the big screen one of the most dangerous villains of all time, The Joker™. The Super-Villains will unite in an action-packed adventure that will have moviegoers on the edge of their seats, and Warner Bros. Consumer Products (WBCP) has done some teaming up of its own, partnering with its licensees around the world for its global licensing and merchandising program in support of the film. Written and directed by David Ayer and from Warner Bros. Pictures, Suicide Squad hits theaters August 5, 2016.
“Suicide Squad marks the theatrical debut of several of the most recognized, fan-favorite DC Super-Villains, and these iconic characters offer WBCP a unique opportunity to create a robust merchandising program aimed at the adult collector via partnerships with the some of the most renowned licensees in the industry,” said Pam Lifford, President, Warner Bros. Consumer Products.
In support of the electrifying film’s motley crew, Suicide Squad fans can show off in a variety of unique Suicide Squad-inspired apparel and accessories collections by Hot Topic and Bioworld Merchandising; fashion tops and t-shirts from Junk Food Clothing and Trevco; athletic wear by Under Armour; a high-end leather assortment by Matchless London; fan-favorite footwear from Converse; and timepieces from Accutime Watch Corp. Fans can also become their favorite character with role-play outfits and accessories from Rubie’s Costume Co. and Party City.
Collectors can look forward to a number of intricately detailed toys and figures highlighted by a line of Multiverse figures from Mattel; stylized figures from Funko; vehicle replicas from Jada Toys; in addition to “as-seen-on” prop replicas from eFX; and toys and accessories from JLA Direct. Truly devoted fans will be able to show their allegiance to the Squad with electronic accessories and mobile skins from Skinit Acquisition.
HarperCollins Publishers and Titan Publishing will support Suicide Squad with a number of print-published works, and Hallmark, Huckleberry Toys, Trend Setters, Fashion Accessory Bazaar and Underground Toys offer various paper products.
Suicide Squad-inspired décor, accessories and novelty items from top brands including Noble Collection, Franco Manufacturing, Trends International, and more, will round out any fan’s home.
Suicide Squad merchandise tailored to local markets will also be available across Europe, the Middle East and Asia (EMEA), Latin America and Asia-Pacific, with many partners supporting the action film around the world with robust programs including apparel from Mauritius, Primark, and United Labels, accessories, novelty items from Groovy UK, Forbidden Planet, GB Eye and more; as well as Suicide Squad-inspired programs from Movis and Industrias Darks.
Products inspired by Suicide Squad will roll out worldwide in June and are available online at www.ShopDCEntertainment.com/SuicideSquad.
About Suicide Squad
From director David Ayer (Fury, End of Watch) comes Suicide Squad, starring Oscar nominee Will Smith (Ali, The Pursuit of Happyness), Oscar winner Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club), Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street, Focus), Joel Kinnaman (Netflix’s House of Cards) and Oscar nominee Viola Davis (The Help, Doubt).
It feels good to be bad… Assemble a team of the world’s most dangerous, incarcerated Supervillains, provide them with the most powerful arsenal at the government’s disposal, and send them off on a mission to defeat an enigmatic, insuperable entity. U.S. intelligence officer Amanda Waller has determined only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to lose will do. However, once they realize they weren’t picked to succeed but chosen for their patent culpability when they inevitably fail, will the Suicide Squad resolve to die trying, or decide it’s every man for himself?
Written and directed by Ayer based on the characters from DC, the film also stars Jai Courtney (Insurgent), Jay Hernandez (Takers), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Thor: The Dark World), Ike Barinholtz (Neighbors), Scott Eastwood (Fury), Cara Delevingne (Paper Towns), Adam Beach (Cowboys & Aliens), and Karen Fukuhara in her feature film debut. It is produced by Charles Roven and Richard Suckle, with Zack Snyder, Deborah Snyder, Colin Wilson and Geoff Johns serving as executive producers.
Warner Bros. Pictures presents, an Atlas Entertainment production, a film by David Ayer, Suicide Squad. The film will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company. The film opens worldwide in 3D, and in 2D, and in select IMAX 3D theaters beginning August 5, 2016.
Click to enlarge: |
'The Session may be shifted to southern part of our nation so that our northern friends can come to South India and enjoy food and climate which is free from pollution', the MP said
New Delhi’s alarming pollution levels appears to be suffocating the political class. AIADMK’s Rajya Sabha MP Navaneethkrishnan on Thursday demanded that Parliament session be shifted to the south, declaring the capital is not fit for human inhabitation.
“Everyone is living in fear in Delhi. It has become a gas chamber and is no longer fit for human inhabitation,” said Navaneethakrishnan.
The AIADMK MP’s statement was made during a debate in the Rajya Sabha on New Delhi’s pollution levels.
Stating that it is a Constitutional right to have a life free of pollution, Navaneethakrishnan said, “Article 48A of the Constitution says that the state shall endeavour to protect and improve the environment, and safeguard the forests and wildlife of the country. Though it is in a chapter of directive principles, thanks to the recent Supreme Court judgment, it is an enforceable right.”
He urged his fellow parliamentarians to shift the session to the south, noting, “To save Delhi, subject to correction and approval by this House, the Session may be shifted to southern part of our nation so that our northern friends can come to South India and enjoy food and climate which is free from pollution. So, I welcome all the northern friends to South India and have a good, peaceful and effective Session."
Besides being good for their overall health, the AIADMK MP pointed out that it would be good for national integration, arguing, “Delhi is not good for inhabitation. Definitely, it cannot be. Everybody is making use of it, polluting it and going back to their native places. So, my humble submission is that any one of the Sessions may be held in Nagpur, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, or anywhere else. It is also very useful for national integration. I hope that our Central Government is doing all the work, or, taking all the steps to prevent the air pollution, but changing the venue of Session may also be considered as one of the plans to prevent air pollution in Delhi.”
Navaneethakrishnan also pointed out that AIADMK founder and former CM MG Ramachandran had in the past demanded that the Supreme Court be shifted to Nagpur to allow make it more accessible for those across the country. "Once our leader, Puratchi Thalaivar M.G. Ramachandran, vehemently argued for shifting our Supreme Court of India to Nagpur or any other central place of India. His point was that poor people cannot be made to travel such a long distance to Delhi and it was rebutted by Mr. Ram Jethmalani. I attended that meeting. That is only for the sake of convenience that I am making this point," he said.
New Delhi has been blanketed in thick smog for several weeks, with pollution levels skyrocketing to alarmingly dangerous levels. On Thursday, Delhi’s air pollution was reported to be “very poor”, with the air quality index at 378. |
CUDA/Ada is an Ada binding to NVIDIA’s CUDA parallel computing platform and programming model. This project was developed during the course of the master seminar "Program Analysis and Transformation" at the University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil. Licence Copyright (C) 2011, 2012 Reto Buerki <[email protected]> Copyright (C) 2011, 2012 Adrian-Ken Rueegsegger <[email protected]> University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. Documentation The paper about CUDA/Ada can be found here: http://www.codelabs.ch/cuda-ada/cuda-ada-article.pdf. Download Release version The current release version of CUDA/Ada is available at http://www.codelabs.ch/download/. Verify a Release To verify the integrity and authenticity of the distribution tarball, import the key http://www.codelabs.ch/keys/0xBB793815pub.asc and type the following command: $ gpg --verify libcudaada-{version}.tar.bz2.sig The key fingerprint of the public key (0xBB793815) is: Key fingerprint = A2FB FF56 83FB 67D8 017B C50C F8C5 F8B5 BB79 3815 Development version The current development version of CUDA/Ada is available through its git repository: $ git clone http://git.codelabs.ch/git/cuda-ada.git A browsable version of the repository is also available here: http://git.codelabs.ch/?p=cuda-ada.git. Build To compile CUDA/Ada on your system, you need to have the following software installed: GNAT compiler: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnat/gnat.html
Ahven (Test-Framework): http://ahven.stronglytyped.org/
CUDA Toolkit for Linux 10.10: http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads
NVIDIA Developer Drivers for Linux: http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads
Template parser module from AWS project: http://libre.adacore.com/tools/aws/ Testing CUDA/Ada contains an unit test suite which can be run by entering the following command: $ make tests Of course, you need a CUDA aware GPU for this to work. Benchmarks CUDA/Ada provides benchmarking code that measures matrix addition and multiplication in Ada, CUDA/Ada and native CUDA C. The benchmarks can be run by issuing the following command: $ make perf COUNT=20 This will print the cumulated execution times of twenty successive matrix operations for the different implementations. The chart shows the cumulated execution times (in seconds) of performing a matrix multiplication operation on a 512 by 512 matrix 20 times. All CUDA implementations used the same kernel, a grid size of 32 and a block size of 16. Slides The slides of the presentation about CUDA/Ada held on January 12, 2012 as part of the master seminar at the University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil can be downloaded here. Example -- -- Copyright (C) 2011 Reto Buerki <[email protected]> -- Copyright (C) 2011 Adrian-Ken Rueegsegger <[email protected]> -- University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil -- -- This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify -- it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by -- the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or -- (at your option) any later version. -- -- This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, -- but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of -- MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the -- GNU General Public License for more details. -- -- You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License -- along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. -- with Ada . Text_IO ; with Ada . Numerics . Real_Arrays ; with CUDA . Autoinit ; with CUDA . Compiler ; pragma Unreferenced ( CUDA . Autoinit ); procedure Add is use CUDA ; package Real_Vector_Args is new Compiler . Arg_Creators ( Data_Type => Ada . Numerics . Real_Arrays . Real_Vector ); use Real_Vector_Args ; N : constant := 32 * 1024 ; A : Ada . Numerics . Real_Arrays . Real_Vector := ( 1 .. N => 2.0 ); B : Ada . Numerics . Real_Arrays . Real_Vector := ( 1 .. N => 2.0 ); C : aliased Ada . Numerics . Real_Arrays . Real_Vector := ( 1 .. N => 0.0 ); Src : Compiler . Source_Module_Type ; Func : Compiler . Function_Type ; Module : Compiler . Module_Type ; begin Src := Compiler . Create ( Preamble => "#define N" & N'Img , Operation => "__global__ void add( float *a, float *b, float *c ) {" & " int tid = blockIdx.x;" & " while (tid < N) {" & " c[tid] = a[tid] + b[tid];" & " tid += gridDim.x;" & "}}" ); Module := Compiler . Compile ( Source => Src ); Func := Compiler . Get_Function ( Module => Module , Name => "add" ); Func . Call ( Args => ( 1 => In_Arg ( Data => A ), 2 => In_Arg ( Data => B ), 3 => Out_Arg ( Data => C' Access ))); for I in C' Range loop if C ( I ) /= A ( I ) + B ( I ) then raise Program_Error with "Results mismatch" ; end if ; end loop ; Ada . Text_IO . Put_Line ( "Calculation successful" ); end Add ; |
First, we discovered that the fish in our sushi isn’t what it claims to be; then, that 30% of U.S. shrimp is making fools of us. Now, a new report from the conservation group Oceana finds that your tasty Maryland crab cake isn’t safe from seafood fraud, either. A full 38% of Maryland crab cakes the group tested contained imported crab from places as far away as Indonesia and Thailand instead of Maryland blue crab.
“Local rare delicacies in seafood are frequently mislabeled because they’re not widely available,” says Dr. Kimberly Warner, report author and senior scientist at Oceana. “Once you take off the shell of the blue crab and mix it into a patty, it’s hard to tell what it is you’re eating.”
Warner and her colleagues went to restaurants in the Maryland and Washington DC area and collected 90 crab cakes. The researchers sent them to a lab for DNA testing to determine the species of the crab in the cakes. 38% of the crab cakes sold as local blue crab didn’t contain any local blue crab at all; instead, they were stuffed with imported canned swimming crab, mostly from the Indo-Pacific region. The scientists identified eight species, besides blue crabs, in the supposedly blue crab cakes.
MORE: 2,500 Tons of the Food We Eat Is Fake
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The researchers found fraud regardless of a venue’s price point. And all that fraud is economically motivated, Warner says. When menus described jumbo lump crab cakes as coming from Maryland, they were $2.12 higher than those that didn’t specify a region.
Your chances of getting actual Maryland blue crab varied depending on where geographically you dined in or around Maryland. Nearly half of crab cakes found in Annapolis and Baltimore were mislabeled. Ocean City and Washington, D.C., had “fraud” levels of about 38%. Your best chance of getting a real Maryland crab cake is on the Eastern Shore, the researchers found, where only one crab cake out of 11 was mislabeled.
“This is kind of a not-so-secret secret in this area,” says Steve Vilnit, Director of Fisheries Marketing director for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and a contributor to the report. “Maryland does not produce enough crabmeat to supply all the restaurants in the region…but many consumers—tourists and even locals—come to this area and think they’re buying local crab meat because we’re simply in Maryland.” The sad fact, he says, is that not many restaurants use local crab meat.
Maryland blue crab is considered a “best choice” or “good alternative” according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch 2015 recommendations. Ironically, though, it’s often substituted with crab the same regulations mark “avoid”, due to the use of destructive fishing gear like bottom trawling, an industrial fishing method that ensnares any kind of marine species caught in its path.
In March, a presidential task force released an action plan to combat seafood mislabeling and illegal and unregulated fishing, including starting a traceability program and getting rid of harmful fishery subsidies that fuel overfishing by 2020.
In the meantime, however, steering clear of seafood fraud is largely up to you.”We always say to ask more questions from whoever you’re buying your seafood from, whether a restaurant or grocery store or market,” says report author Warner. “If the people who sell us seafood don’t understand that we care about that information, then they’re not going to provide it.”
Buy traceable seafood, the study authors say, which follows fish from where it’s caught or farmed up until it arrives on your plate, when you can, she says.
Write to Mandy Oaklander at [email protected]. |
Mr. Chávez told the police that he had been informed that Ms. Enriquez would be traveling in a white sport utility vehicle, so the hitmen opened fire on her vehicle and a similar one returning from the same party. The Mexican husband of another consular employee, riding in the second car, was also killed.
Mr. Chávez’s story — that Ms. Enriquez’s killing had been ordered because she helped members of a rival gang obtain visas — contradicts both her official job description and the motive offered by another suspect.
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American officials have said that Ms. Enriquez worked in the office that helps United States citizens and had no authority over visas.
Another suspect arrested shortly after the killings, Ricardo Valles de la Rosa, said the target of the shooting was Ms. Enriquez’s husband, Mr. Redelfs. Newspapers in El Paso and Juárez reported that gang leaders wanted to kill him because they said he had tormented a gang member in the El Paso County Jail.
Both Mr. Chávez and Mr. de la Rosa belong to Los Aztecas, a cross-border gang that works for La Linea. Mr. Chávez, whom the police described as a leader of the gang, was arrested with six other suspects, also believed to be members of the gang, in a raid in Ciudad Juárez on Thursday.
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Mr. Chávez had served five years in prison in Louisiana on a drug charge, the police said. He was arrested in April 2008 by the Mexican Army on drug charges and later released. He also confessed that he was part of a group of gunmen that attacked a teenagers’ party at the end of January, killing 15 people. Mr. Chávez told the police that his group had mistakenly believed the people at the party were members of a rival gang, known as the Artists Assassins, or Double-A.
Andrea Simmons, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in El Paso, said she had no additional information about the arrest. “We’re working with Mexican authorities as part of a joint investigation,” she said.
The gun battle that killed 21 people took place about 4 a.m. Thursday about 12 miles from the Arizona border in a remote area often used for smuggling drugs and migrants. The authorities said they captured nine suspects, six of them wounded, plus eight vehicles and seven weapons.
Farther east, near the Texas border, gunmen shot at a sport utility vehicle late Wednesday night that was carrying the Chihuahua State prosecutor, Sandra Salas García, and her two bodyguards. Ms. García, 38, who was in charge of highly delicate internal investigations in Ciudad Juárez, was killed. One of the bodyguards was also killed and the other was seriously wounded.
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More than 23,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderón came to office vowing to stem the rising power of the drug trafficking organizations. The violence has spiked in recent months, according to tallies compiled by the Mexican news media, with the killing of a gubernatorial candidate in Tamaulipas on Monday provoking particular outrage. |
The Coalition government’s new citizenship test appears to include talking points that might have been prepared by the coal industry in defending their role in climate change.
Details of the extraordinarily complex reading material that new citizens are being asked to comprehend, in preparation for their citizenship tests, have been revealed in The Australian newspaper, which was concerned by the level of complexity in the language.
What struck us at RenewEconomy from the examples used by The Australian was the nature of the content. It looked like marketing spiel from the coal industry, so we checked it out further.
Take this, for example:
“The worldwide coal industry allocates extensive resources to researching and developing new technologies and ways of capturing greenhouse gases. Efficiencies are likely to be improved dramatically, and hence CO2 emissions reduced, through combustion and gasification techniques which are now at pilot and demonstration stages.”
And then there is this:
“Clean coal is another avenue for improving fuel conversion efficiency. Investigations are under way into super-clean coal (35 per cent ash) and ultraclean coal (less than 1 per cent ash). Super-clean coal has the potential to enhance the combustion efficiency of conventional pulverised fuel power plants.” And on it goes. You can read more here. But having absorbed this, the hopeful new citizen is then given some practice multiple choice questions. Such as:
And then:
Now, we wouldn’t want any new citizens to get any fancy ideas about wind and solar, would we? But would anyone care to hazard a guess as to what the correct answers are? The truth or the marketing?
It makes us think if there was a real test about climate change and coal, some of the Coalition’s most prominent climate deniers, as well as the likes of One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, should be thankful that they are already citizens.
In fact, we suspect that Dutton himself might struggle to pass the test. Someone alert passport control!
(Note: We’ve updated the second screenshot). |
These structures have always fascinated me.
They were usually built sometime between the 9th and 12th centuries. They were generally part of monasteries and while they were built to stand alone some have been incorporated into later buildings. They are surprisingly uniform in design with circumferences at the base usually between 14 and 17 m and wall thickness from 0.9m and 1.7m. They also almost all have doors raised above the ground at least 3 m and they have at least four windows at the top, each of which often faces a cardinal point, along with more windows at lower levels in the tower. Most stand at close to 100 feet. There is a possibility that the dimensions were determined by the role of certain numbers in christian theology. They also had several levels connected by ladders. Additionally it is worth noting that the surviving conical tops were often reconstructed in later time periods.
Debate still continues as to their purpose. It is possible that they were simply bell towers, part of the system of the call to prayer with the height made necessary by the size of the ecclesiastical sites. They may have also been symbols reaching towards the glory of God and illustrating the importance of the ecclesiastical site, conveying messages of spiritual and temporal power. There is also an argument, though currently thought of as a little less likely, that they were watch towers and were part of defence systems. They may have been built partly as a response to Viking and other attacks. The monks would have been able to climb in, store their treasures, burn the stairs to the door, keep the raiders out and possibly ring bells from the top of the tower to call for assistance. Essentially no one is absolutely certain as to their purpose. It is also plausible that there were multiple purposes, combinations of the possibilities listed above.
They are immense structures though, the tallest at Kilmacduagh stands at 102 feet and is on a slight lean. They are beautiful and a testament to the ability of their builders as there are over thirty still standing in varying states of repair across Ireland.
Below you can see examples from all around Ireland of these beautiful and truly intriguing buildings.
Glendalough Round Tower built between 900 and 1200.
Glendalough Round Tower.
St Canice’s Cathedral and Round Tower. Built c. 1111.
View from St Canice’s Round Tower.
Interior of St Canice’s Round Tower. It’s one of the only Round Towers you can climb.
Kilmacduagh Round Tower c. 10th century.
Kilmacduagh Round Tower.
The taller of Clonmacnoise’s two Round Towers c. 12th century.
The taller of Clonmacnoise’s two Round Towers.
The shorter of Clonmacnoise’s two Round Towers c. 12th century.
Round Tower at Drumlane Abbey c. 10th- 11th century with c. 15th century additions.
Round Tower at Drumlane Abbey.
Kells high cross and Round Tower. The Round Tower dates to 10th century.
Kells Round Tower.
Monasterboice Round Tower 10th century.
Monasterboise high cross and Round Tower.
Donaghmore church and Round Tower 11th-12th century.
Donaghmore Round Tower
Lusk church and Round Tower c. 11th century.
Lusk Round Tower
Cashel Round Tower c. 11th century.
Cashel Round Tower.
You can see the astounding similarity in all these towers. They truly stand as a testament to the immense skill of their builders and will, I’m sure, continue to fascinate people well into the future.
For more information see
This truly excellent article by Russell Ó Ríagáin which also investigates the possible influences in the building of the round towers.
https://www.academia.edu/399978/The_Round_Towers_of_Ireland_Date_Origins_Functions_and_Symbolism
For some more general information
http://www.roundtowers.org/
http://www.catholicireland.net/irelands-round-towers/
all the photos are mine. |
A few weeks ago I learned that I had been chosen for the inaugural Booktrust Lifetime Achievement Award.
I was, of course, delighted. I told my wife, told my daughter and ran around the house. Then I discovered that the award was sponsored by Amazon and felt obliged to refuse it. The award was to be presented, along with many others, also Amazon- sponsored, at Booktrust’s recent Best Book event.
The Amazon sponsorship deal is a mistake. Amazon’s baleful influence on the British book trade is frequently referred to—see also what’s happening with Hachette in America—but it is its position as “The UK’s No1 Tax Avoider” (Ethical Consumer) that bothers me.
Tax, fairly applied to us all, is a good thing. It pays for schools, hospitals—libraries! When companies like Amazon cheat—paying 0.1% on billions, pretending it is earning money not in the UK, but in Luxembourg— that’s a bad thing. We should surely, at the very least, say that it is bad and on no account give it any support or, by association, respectability.
Booktrust does good work and has a well-deserved reputation. Amazon, via its sponsorship, gets up close to Booktrust and hopes that some of this rubs off. Sadly, I’d say, it also works the other way: Amazon sponsors Booktrust; Booktrust sponsors Amazon, and all of us— writers, illustrators, publishers, judges—get drawn in. For my part, the idea that my “lifetime achievement”— i.e. the books (and all of Janet’s work too)—should have the Amazon tag attached to it is unacceptable.
It’s a miserable business with no easy way out. Amazon’s defence is that it is not breaking any laws, but could Booktrust not have found a more moral sponsor? Could we do without sponsors? “The Shoestring Book Awards”, perhaps, paid for by the book trade itself.
Or something, anything, rather than this unhappy entanglement. |
The boss of one of Scotland’s leading theatres has quit days after a damning article in The Scotsman raised serious concerns over how it is being run.
Nick Parr has resigned after just two years as chief executive of Dundee Rep, which boasts the country’s only full-time company of actors.
He has left with immediate effect less than two months after the Rep’s new artistic director, Andrew Panton, took charge of his first show. He has quit his role, which also saw him in charge of Scottish Dance Theatre, weeks before Dundee bids to become 2023 European Capital of Culture.
Earlier this year Mr Parr had hailed the financial performance of Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre, including rises in turnover and operating profit, and a 17 per cent boost at the box office.
However Kirsty Gunn’s opinion column in The Scotsman last Monday told how the company had been left “devastated and depressed” by cuts in its production department. She raised concerns of a growing culture “replacing creativity with bureaucracy, artists and intellectuals with managers”.
Mr Parr arrived at the Rep, which dates back to 1939, in September 2015 after previously working as commercial director at a trust running the Festival Theatre and King’s Theatre in Edinburgh.
It was the first time Dundee Rep had decided to split the post of chief executive and artistic director. However, the then holder of the latter post, Jemima Levick, announced her departure to another theatre company, Stellar Quines, less than six months later.
Mr Panton, who was allowed to combine his Dundee Rep role with an existing job as artistic director of musical theatre at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, has been appointed interim joint chief excutive of the theatre, along with SDT’s artistic director, Fleur Darkin.
An official statement said: “Nick Parr has left his role as chief executive of Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre Ltd to pursue other opportunities. Andrew Panton and Fleur Darkin have been appointed interim joint chief executives.”
Ed Troughton, chair of the board, said: “We would like to thank Nick for his hard work and we wish him all the best. Andrew and Fleur will work with a strong and experienced senior management team to lead the organisation, and will report directly to the board.
“The other trustees and I are currently reviewing the structure and governance of the organisation to ensure we are in the strongest possible position for the future.”
Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman’s theatre critic, said: “It was a big shift for Dundee Rep to move away from the way the theatre had traditionally been run and it does not appear to have worked out. There has been unhappiness within the company and problems with productions.” |
WASHINGTON – Apple Inc. will tell a federal judge this week in legal papers that its fight with the FBI over accessing a locked and encrypted iPhone should be kicked to Congress, rather than decided by courts, The Associated Press has learned.
Apple will also argue that the Obama administration’s request to help it hack into an iPhone in a terrorism case is improper under an 18th-century law, the 1789 All Writs Act, which has been used to compel companies to help law enforcement in investigations.
A lead attorney for Apple, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., previewed for the AP some of the company’s upcoming arguments in the case. Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, has also hinted at the company’s courtroom strategy.
Apple’s effort would move the contentious policy debate between digital privacy rights and national security interests to Congress, where Apple wields considerably more influence. Apple spent nearly $5 million lobbying Congress last year, mostly on tax and copyright issues. Key lawmakers have been openly divided about whether the government’s demands in the case go too far.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym in Riverside ordered Apple last week to create specialized software to help the FBI hack into a locked, county-issued iPhone used by a gunman in the Dec. 2 mass shootings in San Bernardino. Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people at an office holiday party in an attack at least partly inspired by Islamic State.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest this week called the government’s request narrow. Earnest said the magistrate judge “came down in favor of our law enforcement” after evaluating arguments by Apple and the FBI. Apple hasn’t yet made any filings in the case because the Justice Department asked the magistrate to rule before Apple had an opportunity to object.
“Sending complicated things to Congress is often not the surest way to get a quick answer,” Earnest said. |
KYLE RUDOLPH - LAROSA'S MVP OF THE WEEK WINNER NAME: Kyle Rudolph
SCHOOL: Elder High School
SPORT(S): Basketball-Football
GRADUATING YR.: 2008
BIRTHDATE: 11-9-89
HEIGHT/WEIGHT: 6'7" – 240 lbs.
RESIDENCE: Green Township
PARENTS: Dan & Jamie
BIGGEST INFLUENCE: "My grandpa."
FUTURE GOAL: "Play in the NFL."
MVP ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Kyle is a 2-sport superstar in basketball and football. In basketball, he is a 2-time GCL Player of the Year, last season helping the Panthers to a 22-3 record while he led the league in points (17.2), rebounds (11) and blocks (1.5). He was named Cincinnati Div. I Player of the Year and 1st team all-Southwest Ohio district. In football, tight end Kyle during the regular season had 37 receptions for 623 yards and 11 touchdowns for the 7-4 Panthers. He was named 1st team all-league, 1st team all-city, 1st team SWO district and 2nd team all-Ohio. Kyle was also selected to play in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio, Texas. A good student and member of National Honor Society, his favorite athlete is Antonio Gates, favorite movie is Rudy and favorite book is Catcher in the Rye. Kyle will play football next season at the University of Notre Dame.
COACH'S QUOTE -- "Kyle is the true definition of what you would want your son to, not only emulate, but also approach and treat others the way he does. He has grown into one of the finest athletes I have ever coached, and one of the finest people I have known." -- Doug Ramsey, Football Coach |
DES MOINES, Iowa – Dramatically highlighting his contrasts with Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders used his speech to the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner Saturday night to make his sharpest and most aggressive critiques of the Democratic front-runner thus far.
The dinner is considered the marquee event of the Democratic presidential campaign circuit, attracting more than 6,600 party activists this year in the state that holds the nation’s first nominating contest. It has a history of shaking up races and knocking front-runners off their perch, as it did to Clinton in 2007 when then-Sen. Barack Obama wowed crowds here.
Clinton came into the event riding a wave of momentum built up after two weeks of non-stop victories and seemed relaxed when she took the stage. While she and challenger Martin O’Malley – who was hoping for a breakout performance – largely stuck to their stump speeches, Sanders threw out his script. It was an especially notable departure for someone who has given roughly the same speech for 40 years.
Without mentioning her by name, Sanders fired off a series of back-to-back jabs clearly aimed at the weakest parts of Clinton’s resume as he portrayed himself as the true progressive in the race who “will govern based on principle not poll numbers.”
On the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Clinton recently opposed, Sanders said he was there first. “I did not support it yesterday. I do not support it today. And I will not support it tomorrow,” he said. “It is not now, nor has it ever been, the gold standard of trade agreements.”
RELATED: Bernie Sanders calls for a ‘political revolution’
Clinton once called the TPP the “gold standard” of trade deals as she helped negotiate it as President Obama’s secretary of state.
On the Keystone XL pipeline, which Clinton seemed to favor as secretary of state but recently opposed, Sanders said he was there first, too. “If you agree with me about the urgent need to address the issue of climate change, then you would know immediately what to do about the Keystone pipeline. Honestly, it wasn’t that complicated,” he said. “To me, that was a no-brainer and that is why I have opposed the Keystone Pipeline from the beginning.”
On the Iraq War vote, where Clinton now says her “yes” vote was a mistake, Sanders said he was right about the conflict from the beginning. “Let me tell you that I listened to what Bush had to say, to what Cheney had to say, to what Rumsfeld had to say. I didn’t believe them and I voted no,” he said.
And on the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law signed by Former President Bill Clinton that banned the federal government from recognizing gay marriages – which Hillary Clinton now opposes – Sanders said he was on the right side of history once again.
“Today, some are trying to rewrite history by saying they voted for one anti-gay law to stop something worse. Let us be clear. That’s just not true,” he said. “There was a small minority opposed to discriminating against our gay brothers and sisters. Not everybody held that position in 1996.”
Clinton told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Friday that her husband supported DOMA as a “defensive action,” since something worse would have been passed in its stead.
On every issue, Sanders said he faced a “fork in the road.”
“I am proud to tell you when I came to that fork in the road I took the right road even though it was not the popular road at the time,” he said.
And one of his biggest applause lines, ostensibly on campaign finance, was also a veiled shot at Clinton. “I am the only Democratic candidate for president who does not have a super PAC and we are going to prove them wrong,” he said. Clinton has two super PACs.
Sanders sought to position himself as the rightful heir to Obama, who stunned observers at this very event in 2007 by delivering an inspiring speech that drew clear contrasts with Clinton. “Eight years ago the experts talked about how another Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama, couldn’t win. How he was unelectable. Well Iowa, I think we’re going to prove the pundits wrong again. I believe we will make history,” he said.
Clinton, meanwhile, drew her own contrast with Sanders on guns, a major weakness for the insurgent, reciting a line she used since last week’s Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. ”I’ve been told to stop shouting” about guns, she said. “Sometimes when a woman speaks out some thinks it’s shouting.”
The candidates spoke in the round, surrounded by their supporters, who were sectioned off from each other. Each bloc competed for the loudest cheers, cleverest chants, and biggest shows of strength
Sanders supporters supplemented their official gear with home-made signs and T-shirts, and chants often arose organically. Clinton’s supporters, meanwhile, appeared as a blue army dressed in campaign T-shirts and armed with double-fisted glowing foam wands.
Earlier in the day, the campaigns held pep rallies across the Des Moines River from each other. Sanders’ featured an eclectic mix of musicians, including black gospel singers. Clinton’s campaign flew in pop star Katy Perry, who delighted 4,000 fans and donned a dress decked out with red and blue “H” logos for the campaign. Later, she sat at a table with Clinton volunteers near the stage.
Clinton had another special guest up her sleeve too – her husband. Bill Clinton made his debut on the campaign trail for his wife’s second presidential bid, joking that it was time for a first gentleman. ”I want you to support Hillary for me too because I want to break a ceiling. I am tired of the stranglehold that women have had on the job of presidential spouse and I want you to help me deal with that,” he said. |
One of the more horrifying aspects of recent events was the realisation that the balance sheets of some major financial institutions were wholly misleading. As Chris Patten puts it in his recent book, What Next?, one week, a single mother in St Louis takes out a mortgage. The next week, the mortgage is a triple-a rated security in London. The week after that, it is a supposedly reliable asset in a German municipality's pension fund.
This is not only a moral and intellectual problem. It is also a financial one. The international banking system will remain unstable until the so-called toxic assets are properly evaluated. As that is a much less glamorous task than the grand-standing which went on last week, it has not received nearly enough attention, though there has been useful work in London, both in the Treasury and at Credit Suisse.
But even if the G20 Heads of Government could not have been expected to bring about the transvaluation of all toxic values, they could at least have set the banks a good example: honest accounting. Under Gordon Brown's malign tutelage, they did the opposite. The fanfare figures in the final communique were as reliable as a Bernie Madoff prospectus. Almost all the billions and trillions turned out to be a re-announcement of sums already committed. That was probably just as well. Otherwise, the consequences for public debt and inflation could have been hideous. Even so, and especially in the context of calls for tighter financial regulation, it was hypocritical.
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One international institution did obtain additional funds: the IMF, and this may prove significant. Over the past few days, both in public and even more explicitly in private, British ministers have been softening up opinion in case the government has to have recourse to the IMF. No disgrace in that, we are told; it would be the same as a socialite with a cash-flow problem buying a dress at a charity shop: a mere trifling temporary expedient.
We should never underrate this government's capacity for sheer effrontery. In return, it should not underrate the public's residual common sense. All the talk of billions and trillions may wash over most voters, but they are looking for a touchstone: some secure foundation from which to make their moral judgments. The IMF would provide one. Mr Brown has shown unexpected powers of bouncing back, but there are limits. If he had to resort to the IMF, any remaining credibility would be shattered. Not even Lord Mandelson's silvered serpentine tongue could talk him out of that one.
Yet a begging visit to the IMF would not necessarily prevent a partial recovery, starting with the stock market. It might seem absurdly temerous to predict that the market has now stabilised. There is a wise old stockbrokers' adage: "Never try to catch a falling knife." Even so, one or two shrewd City chaps of my acquaintance are inclined to think that the knife has reached the tiles and are investing money on that basis.
For the past 18 months or so, there has been a lot of talk about "vulture funds": cash-rich investors ready to buy distressed assets at fire-sale prices. Up to now, the vultures have sat on their perches, waiting for the carrion to ripen, but one is beginning to hear the odd wing flapping. There are technical obstacles in the way of a sustained rally. A lot of people are still strapped for cash and it is much easier to sell shares than most other assets, especially houses. So a recovery could be disrupted by profit-taking, or rather loss-minimising. Yet it would not take much to move the FTSE back towards 5,000.
Desperate to claim that his strategy is working, Gordon Brown will want to highlight any improvements. But the housing market and the jobs market will be harder. It would be amusing to hear a Labour Prime Minister boasting about a stock-market revival while the jobless figures were rising. Unemployment has always been a lagging indicator, and matters have been made worse by the Government's enthusiasm for EU regulations plus other means of increasing employers' costs.
This is one of the most bewildering phenomena in contemporary politics. Everyone knows that globalisation will lead to increased competition and therefore to pressure on domestic labour markets. Everyone knows that youth unemployment creates lasting social problems. But most EU governments impose measures which encourage employers to buy machines rather than hire workers. It is not only the UK which is criminally deficient in joined-up government.
The Tories also have a problem, with joined-up opposition. David Cameron could never be accused of panicking. There were those who urged him to find a way of offering a counter-attraction during the G20 in order to interfere with Mr Brown's dominance of the airwaves. Rightly, Mr Cameron saw no point. There are moments when a Prime Minister cannot be prevented from making the news and this was one of them.
David Cameron did at least have his half-hour with Barack Obama and that was by no means an automatic courtesy for a US President to extend to an opposition leader. But Mr Cameron decided that he would wait for the captains and the kings to depart before striking his recessional note. In so doing, he will have a number of narrow and tricky rhetorical paths to negotiate. The Tories must find a way of discussing the present difficulties without appearing to revel in them: of being sombre without being thrown by unexpected signs of recovery. They ought to be bold enough to encourage a degree of medium-term optimism, without sounding glib. Above all, they must capture the voters' confidence.
This requires three things: analysis, phrases and repetition. The Tories ought to provide both an historical account of the degringolade and a sketch of the escape route. In this, while eschewing facile partisanship, they should not be afraid of close reasoning and complex arguments. The aim should to use seriousness to impress the serious-minded.
Needless to say, that is not enough. It never is, in politics. The Tories must also come up with some catchy phrases: their equivalent of "boom and bust". William Hague has made a start. "Gordon Brown promised to abolish boom and bust. He has kept half his promise." Having invented the phrases, it is vital to go on repeating them. Often, it is only when the politicians are sick of repeating themselves that the voters at last begin to notice.
Apart from the state of the economy, the Tories have one advantage. Mr Brown has already proclaimed his strategy for the next election. He will declare that he is the only man who can save Britain; that the Tories are only offering tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor. As this is wholly dishonest, it should be equally ineffective, but Gordon Brown will not go down without a fight. If the Tories lost that fight, they would have only themselves to blame.
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If you are a conscientious Pakistani, or if you don’t live under a rock, it is hard to ever forget or ignore the kind of infuriating discrimination and shameful persecution that members of the Ahmadiyya community suffer in our country.
You console yourself by thinking, “at least I personally don’t discriminate or persecute”.
And, if you’re outspoken, you think, “I won’t and don’t ever let it happen in front of me”.
But then, there is a point in time when you are forced by the lottery of birth, and the Constitution of Pakistan, to become party to the state-sponsored discrimination of Ahmadis.
This is the time when you go to perform a simple act of citizenship: get or renew a passport.
Also read: A guide to growing up Ahmadi in Pakistan
The last time I got a passport back home, I was able to duck the question: you know the one right at the end where you have to sign to attest to the accuracy of all information on your application form — and that Ahmadis are infidels.
Passport application form. —Photo by Manan Ahmed Asif
Somehow, through the miracle of bureaucracy where nobody has enough time to go through your application in minute detail, my little act of defiance went by unnoticed and I was handed my passport.
Even as I write this, I weigh the pros and cons of putting this out there. At the risk of sounding self-important, I don’t want a bigot in the government or with any connections to the government to become aware of this loophole.
This time, I had to apply for a new passport at an embassy of Pakistan. With a far fewer number of applications, the officials did have the time to catch my “mistake”.
Here’s how the conversation went:
Official: “You didn’t sign this attestation.”
Me: “Oh, right. I actually didn’t want to.”
Official: “Then you will have to declare yourself non-Muslim.”
Me: “OK.”
Official: “You will have to have that changed in Nadra records.”
Me: “OK.”
We share an awkward moment of silence as I hope in futility that my one-word answer will halt the conversation and I will walk out of there without having to do this.
Official: “So, please sign it.”
Me: “But I didn’t sign it in Karachi.”
Official: “Madam, please don’t create more issues for us. We are just an embassy.”
I am ashamed to admit, I picked up the pen and I signed it.
My hands shook as I forced myself to go through a motion that would go against every belief I dearly hold, every fibre of my being.
An action that would mean I was declaring myself party to causing the anger and the pain I have heard in my friends’ voices, as I sat across hearing horrific stories of growing up in a country that sounded so alien yet, so real.
Also read: Ahmadis, seared to the wall
I did grow up as a member of an endangered minority too, but at least the state considers us full citizens. For now.
A few months ago, I had argued with one of my close friends — an Ahmadi — who said that every person who signs that declaration to get a Pakistani passport is giving his/her consent to the state-sponsored discrimination enabled by the Second Constitutional Amendment.
I disagreed vehemently; I felt offended.
It is not fair, I shot back, to assume that, because there can be no consent where there is force — the state forces me to sign this declaration because it can, it doesn’t make it optional for me.
This is not to deny that most Pakistanis do believe that Ahmadis are infidels, but signing that declaration isn’t the evidence for it, opinion polls are.
Also read: Keep Hajj out of politics — Notes on the ‘Are you Shia?’ form debacle
That conversation went through my head in the seconds that I prepared myself to sign my name on a declaration that I find perverse, discriminatory, and wholly unjust.
I still believe that because I was forced to sign it, I did not give my consent to it.
But that realisation does little to shake away the feeling of disgust and helplessness I felt in the process of establishing my relationship with my country but giving up my conscience. |
[ The Seralini study has been retracted. Read the letter from the journal editor.]
An intensively promoted and controversial French study claiming to find high tumor rates and early mortality in rats fed genetically modified corn and “safe” levels of the herbicide Roundup has been dismissed in a rare joint statement from France’s six scientific academies. Here’s a link to the statement (in French). [*Here’s an English translation.] Here’s an excerpt from coverage of the academies’ statement by Agence France-Presse:
“This work does not enable any reliable conclusion to be drawn,” they said, adding bluntly that the affair helped “spread fear among the public.” The joint statement—an extremely rare event in French science—was signed by the national academies of agriculture, medicine, pharmacy, sciences, technology and veterinary studies. It was sparked by research published in September that said rats fed with so-called NK603 corn and/or doses of Roundup herbicide developed tumors…. Two fast-track official investigations into the study, ordered by the government, are due to be unveiled on Monday. The academies’ statement said: “Given the numerous gaps in methods and interpretation, the data presented in this article cannot challenge previous studies which have concluded that NK603 corn is harmless from the health point of view, as are, more generally, genetically modified plants that have been authorised for consumption by animals and humans.” In withering terms, it dismissed the study as “a scientific non-event.” “Hyping the reputation of a scientist or a team is a serious misdemeanour when it helps to spread fear among the public that is not based on any firm conclusion,” the academies said.
The academies’ statement is just the latest rejection of the conclusions by the paper’s authors, led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, a scientist at the University of Caen who has long campaigned against genetically modified foods and attracted criticism for flawed science. Earlier this month the European Food Safety Authority concluded that the rat study’s statistical and methodological weaknesses precluded its being used in safety evaluations:
Conclusions cannot be drawn on the difference in tumour incidence between the treatment groups on the basis of the design, the analysis and the results as reported in the Séralini et al. (2012) publication. In particular, Séralini et al. (2012) draw conclusions on the incidence of tumours based on 10 rats per treatment per sex which is an insufficient number of animals to distinguish between specific treatment effects and chance occurrences of tumours in rats. Considering that the study as reported in the Séralini et al. (2012) publication is of inadequate design, analysis and reporting, EFSA finds that it is of insufficient scientific quality for safety assessment.
Of course despite early signals that the work was suspect, that didn’t prevent the work from being swiftly promoted by groups pressing for California’s Proposition 37, which would require the labeling of genetically modified foods (at least those not on the long list of exempted products).
I also don’t imagine that any of the organic-friendly media outlets that uncritically covered the rat results will follow up on these new developments — lending credence to Keith Kloor’s thesis that “Liberals Turn a Blind Eye to Crazy Talk on GMOs.”
This excerpt is from a report by Radio France International:
On Monday, the Higher Biotechnologies Council (HCB) and the National Agency for Food Safety (ANSES) said they saw nothing to challenge existing safety assessments for Monsanto’s NK603 corn or its Roundup weed killer. “The study provides no scientific information regarding the detection of any health risk linked to NK603 corn, whether it was treated with Roundup or not,” said the 66-member HCB, set up in 2009 to provide an independent view in such areas. “The data are insufficient to establish scientifically a causal link… or to support the conclusions or pathways suggested by the authors,” ANSES said separately. But both called for a broader investigation to guide a public left confused by the debate.
I hope that Dr. Mehmet Oz, who featured the rat study on his popular television show, will tell his viewers about the French academies’ statement. In his related blog post, he implied that only “scientists who are in support of genetically modified foods” say the research is flawed. In fact, it’s scientists who support the scientific method who are challenging this work and the hype around it. Whatever your view, pop over to his Facebook page and leave a note. I did.
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A Big Turnout Expected In Boston:
US Senator Bernie Sanders is bringing his surging White House campaign to Massachusetts this weekend, where he could host the largest rally for a presidential primary candidate in recent state history. Sanders, who is from Vermont and running as a Democrat, is scheduled to attend two events in the Bay State on Saturday. More than 1,000 people have said they will attend Sanders’ rally at Springfield’s MassMutual Center at 2 p.m, according to his campaign’s Facebook page. Later that day, Sanders will address a rally at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center at 6 p.m. Also according to Facebook, more than 15,000 people have said they will attend. The anticipated crowd count rivals the region’s recent primary record set by Barack Obama in 2007, when then-Governor Deval Patrick endorsed him on the Boston Common in front of a crowd of 10,000
I.S.A. Feels The Bern:
Over the years, there have been more than a few odd pairings of presidential candidates and popular songs—from Mitt Romney's choice of "Born Free" by Kid Rock (“You can knock me down and watch me bleed / But you can't keep no chains on me”) to Ross Perot's sampling of "Crazy" by Patsy Cline (“I knew you'd love me as long as you wanted / And then someday you'd leave me for somebody new”). But could a Democratic socialist from Vermont join forces with a dirty south rapper? "Why not?" said LaVarry's manager, Wade Lovelace, who goes by the name Moneybag Martucci. He got LaVarry on Twitter recently, "at long last." It’s reasonable to assume LaVarry and Lovelace are trying to take advantage of the current political moment, in which another man named Bernie is imploring people to keep moving forward. Get LaVarry talking about "my man, Bern," though—as he calls Sanders—and you may begin to feel otherwise. "I first heard about him last year," LaVarry said. "I was trying to pull up one of my music videos and his name popped up instead. I was like, What? Who is this really old white dude with the weird hair?” he continued. “But I started reading about him and watching him speak. I think he has a lot of good views. Making women's pay equal: about time! Expanding social security and making college free: that's wonderful! Free healthcare, raising the minimum wage to fifteen dollars: that's remarkable! I've never heard any candidate talk that way for the people. It proves you can't judge a book by its cover." LaVarry's original record deal wasn't a good one for him. ("The message wasn't promoted like it should have been," he said. "I didn't make much money.") But he recently became an independent artist again and he wants to make a mark on his country with his next album. "I'd work with Bern," he said, "if he'd let me. I'm thinking about a new promo song for him right now. My team is trying hard to reach out to his people and see if working with him is a possibility. That'd be lovely!" He paused, before heading back into the studio. "I appreciate all the fans for not giving up on me. They won't be disappointed. They're gonna feel the real 'Bernie Fever' this time."
Robert Reich Corrects A MSM Outlet.. Again:
The Washington Post just ran an attack on Bernie Sanders that distorts not only what he’s saying and seeking but also the basic choices that lie before the nation. Sanders, writes the Post’s David Fahrenthold, “is not just a big-spending liberal. And his agenda is not just about money. It’s also about control.” Fahrenthold claims Sanders’s plan for paying for college with a tax on Wall Street trades would mean “colleges would run by government rules.” Apparently Fahrenthold is unaware that three-quarters of college students today attend public universities financed largely by state governments. And even those who attend elite private universities benefit from federal tax subsidies flowing to wealthy donors. (Meg Whitman’s recent $30 million donation to Princeton, for example, is really $20 million from her plus an estimated $10 million she deducted from her taxable income.) Notwithstanding all this government largesse, colleges aren’t “run by government rules.” The real problem is too many young people still can’t afford a college education. The move toward free public higher education that began in the 1950s with the G.I. Bill and was extended in the 1960s by leading public universities was reversed starting in the 1980s because of shrinking state budgets. Tuition has skyrocketed in recent years as states slashed education spending. It’s time to resurrect that earlier goal. Besides, the biggest threats to academic freedom these days aren’t coming from government. They’re coming as conditions attached to funding from billionaires and big corporations that’s increasing as public funding drops.
.#Bernie2016 supporters took to the streets yesterday in Atlanta to protest the TPP. #feelthebern pic.twitter.com/PVOMGUQuzJ — ToastyPoptart (@LollipopCrumbs) October 3, 2015
Coding The Bern:
Volunteer grass-roots campaigning in 2016 is going beyond knocking doors. For the Bernie Sanders campaign, it means late-night coding sessions. Coders for Sanders is a group of about 200 programmers, developers and designers that are collaborating on the chat application Slack to develop apps for the Bernie Sanders campaign. Many in the group first met in the subreddit Sanders for President and identified problems that their tech talents could solve. Entering the thousands of handwritten email addresses collected at rallies into a database takes precious staff time. Zach Schneider built an app with a simple contact form for rally attendees to fill out. The app works on Google Chromebooks, laptops that retail for about $300. t the South Carolina rally in August, the campaign tested the app with five Chromebooks to record the estimated 2,800 attendees. Bernie Sanders campaign Digital Director Kenneth Pennington says the campaign will be using 15 at Mr. Sanders’s event in Boston on Oct. 3. If it works again, they will buy more. “They are building real tools that are going to have a big impact on how we win votes as a campaign,” said Mr. Pennington, adding that the coders are currently developing 10 different apps for the campaign.
Bernies New Hire:
Democrat Bernie Sanders, who still faces a long road for recognition and support in the Latino community, has hired a Latino Outreach director for the campaign. Sanders, a Vermont senator, hired Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente.org, a Latino advocacy group based in Los Angeles. Carmona also will serve as Southwest political director. The group, which is largely an online group, is considered more left than other more established Latino organizations. As an activist on civil rights, Carmona, 37, said he never saw himself joining a political campaign, but "when I saw the political campaign and Sen. Sanders calling for a political revolution and people from all walks of life joining this movement, I said 'Hey, this is something I've seen that can make a difference.' I decided to join because I see a great need," he said. In a recently released NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 30 percent of Latinos surveyed had a positive view of Sanders versus 12 percent who held a negative view. But 35 percent didn't recognize his name or weren't sure how they felt about him, compared to 2 percent for Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination. "Bernie Sanders is not well known and I see that as a great opportunity and advantage because we have a fresh opportunity to present a remarkable candidate," Carmona said.
SUPER excited to be volunteering for @BernieSanders rally in Boston tomorrow. Boston is going to #FeelTheBern ! — Stanzi (@Stanzijay) October 3, 2015
There's more people VOLUNTEERING for #BernieInBoston than some candidates get to entire rallies. #FeelTheBern https://t.co/... — People For Bernie (@People4Bernie) October 3, 2015
It Seems Sanders Expects Really High Turnouts In Colorado When He Comes:
The University of Colorado almost saw its first visit from Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. University officials say members of the Sanders campaign reached out to them earlier this week to talk about hosting a large-scale event on the Boulder campus Oct. 10. But the university only had outdoor venues available that could accommodate 8,000 to 10,000 people and the campaign staff eventually declined the opportunity, said campus spokesman Ryan Huff. Huff said Folsom Field was already booked that day with a band camp. "Norlin Quad and other places, we can hold about 8,000 to 10,000 and he wanted a larger venue," Huff said.
A Tucson Trip Is Confirmed:
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will be visiting Tucson on Friday, Oct. 9. According to a press release, Sen. Sanders will hold a rally on Friday at 7 p.m. at Reid Park DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center, located 920 South Concert Pl. Gates will open at 6 p.m. The rally is free and open to the public.
15,000+ strong including myself are gathering to see @BernieSanders in Boston tomorrow. Urgency couldnt be higher to make this man President — BMann (@BMann260) October 3, 2015
Not Everyone On Wall Street Hates Bernie Sanders:
The socialist presidential candidate, who wants to break up the big banks and place a tax on every Wall Street trade, has received campaign contributions from at least two financial industry executives, who have contributed $3,700 to Sanders, FOX Business Network has learned. The money is still a fraction of the $25 million Sanders has raised through the first three quarters of the year, and far less than the Wall Street support going to his democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton. But, it is surprising that anyone in financial services would openly support a self-described socialist, who has called for “revolution” against Corporate America through higher taxes and more regulation. Clients of big Wall Street firms would be among the hardest hit by Sanders' economic policies of tax increases he has proposed to pay for a vast expansion of government if he became president. "Wall Street is no different than the rest of New York — lots of Democrats and even a few Bernie Sanders supporters,” says Arthur Schwartz, co-founder of Axium Advisors, a strategic communications and crisis management firm that specializes in the financial services industry. “But going on record in your capacity as a brokerage employee, and supporting a guy that is openly hostile to the financial services industry is probably not a great idea.” |
Image: Ian Birnbaum
This is part of a series around A Smarter Gun, Motherboard's new documentary.
Gunfire rattles steadily around the Austin Rifle Club, a private gun range on the outskirts of Texas' metropolitan capital. Among the pick-up trucks and camo-wearing gun enthusiasts, a young woman in a light plaid top and sandals leans forward with a pistol, her arms and knees bent. She pulls the trigger, steady and confident. As she fires, her target—a poster of a zombie hipster waving an iPhone and a purse dog—perforates with a tight, consistent grouping.
The 28-year-old woman, Reina Mercado, holds fire as her friend and instructor, Sarah Rossig, walks her through reloading the handgun under speed and pressure. It's the kind of work that combat shooters practice constantly, but it's less common at a range full of weekend target-plinkers like this one. It's even less common to see shooters like Mercado at the range. Mercado is a transgender woman who immigrated from the Philippines when she was 6 years old. She went from making toy guns out of scrap on a family farm to Houston, Texas, deep in the heart of gun culture and oil money.
Mercado represents a new and unlikely set of players in the gun culture that dominates America in general and Texas in particular. They're young, liberal, and many are members of the LGBT community. They're not the kind of people you think of when you think of gun rights advocates, but after watching Donald Trump's rise to power during the 2016 election, they're all ready to exercise their second amendment right to bear arms.
"I'm trans, I'm a person of color, I'm more likely to be targeted. I'm more likely to be in a place where everyone is being targeted, just like the Orlando folks. I was just like, damn, I need a gun more than these conservative rednecks do."
With Republicans in control of the White House and Congress, gun sales have dropped and the stock of publicly traded gun manufacturers like Ruger and Smith & Wesson plunged as much as 30 percent. Put simply: "The threat is gone," as a gun store owner in Ohio told USA Today. New, more comprehensive gun control legislation is improbable as long as Republicans control Congress and the White House, and if Hillary or Obama aren't coming for our guns, there's no need to rush out and buy AR15s, extended magazines, and other popular targets of gun control restrictions.
The exception: African Americans, religious minorities, and LGBT people are buying guns and getting licensed to carry to cope with their increasingly hostile surroundings. The exact numbers are unknown—the FBI doesn't release race data for their background checks—but gun store owners anecdotally report a "four-fold" increase in minority customers. Meanwhile, the number of black Americans who saw guns as a source of protection almost doubled from 2012 to 2014. Racial tensions in particular were already high before the election, and an outbreak of swastika graffiti and hate crime incidents immediately after Election Day did nothing to calm things down. A gun store owner in Virginia told NBC that he had noticed "an uptick" in black and minority customers in the weeks after the election.
After being raised as a boy with an affinity for motorcycles, anime, and engineering, Mercado spent her late 20s discovering her new identity as a transgender woman. She gathered up her courage and started to explore new names, pronouns, and the LGBT community she found in Austin. She went to the HR department at the job she loves and asked if she could change genders without being fired—in Texas, there's no employment non-discrimination protection for LGBT workers.
Reina Mercado shoots a custom-painted AR-15, the controversial rifle at the center of many gun-control efforts. Image: Ian Birnbaum
Then, 49 people were killed inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. "After the Orlando shooting I came out, loud. I told my friends and everyone around me that I was trans and that I was here," Mercado had a brand new sense of self and an identity that she had just gotten brave enough to declare, and it was being threatened. "That was when I realized that I'm statistically more likely to be a victim. I'm trans, I'm a person of color, I'm more likely to be targeted. I'm more likely to be in a place where everyone is being targeted, just like the Orlando folks. I was just like, damn, I need a gun more than these conservative rednecks do."
*
Nearby, Jacob Kruse aims down the scope of a custom-painted AR15, his NASA hat turned backward. For Kruse, 33, acknowledging the need for armed protection was more like coming home. Kruse was raised in Fort Davis, Texas (population: 1,201), by doomsday preppers who fled the Austin city limits and the Russian nukes that seemed about to fall in the late '80s. Though he wasn't into guns, the social aspects of gun culture were enjoyed by the rest of his family, whom he calls "a bunch of ammosexuals."
"I never really accepted that I was bi when I was a kid in Alpine," Kruse said, "because out there if you deviated from the square, white norm, you got your ass kicked."
Of all of the people I spoke to for this story, Kruse is the most pragmatic and comfortable around guns. He has the matter-of-fact respect common to people who grew up hiking in the mountains, a shotgun in hand to take out rattlesnakes.
Mercado removes a spent shell after firing the author's shotgun.
"Statistically, going by broad numbers, having a firearm in the home increases the risk of someone getting hurt with a firearm," Kruse said. "That's just common sense. But we have a lot of dangerous things in our lives that are useful, so we accept those risks. Cars are a good example."
Kruse would like to have protection in case of a home invasion or other crisis, but he rejects the "siege mentality" that comes from spending all of your time obsessing over such rare events.
"It has been interesting watching the LGBT and nerd communities get a little militant," Kruse said. "I've had many conversations where people refer to the [Concealed Carry License] as their 'license to carry a wand'—as in Harry Potter."
*
For other people who feel targeted in the new alt-right atmosphere, guns are a long-standing source of discomfort. "I came out in High School when I was 16 to—literally—no fanfare." Duke Lambert, 27, laughs as he describes his drama-free coming out story. "I told everyone and no one cared—they all already knew, and they all said they loved me anyway." He was pleasantly surprised that a gay, mixed-race Texas kid could have a reception so gentile. "I [had] heard the stories, like of Matthew Shepard ... but I just wasn't seeing that where I was at."
When Lambert moved to Norman, Oklahoma, the luck of his circumstances was made very plain. "I got a scholarship to the University of Oklahoma, and I suddenly became hyper-aware of the student population. Everyone was involved in fraternities and sororities—yeah, they were in the news recently for being racist and having chants that have the word 'nigger' in them. That was the climate I went to college in."
Even though his police officer grandfather had a number of guns in the house, Lambert always stayed away from weapons as a kid. Granddad's guns-gone-wrong horror stories and Lambert's innate clumsiness ("I accidentally shot a friend with an airsoft gun") were all the motivation he needed to stay away from anything designed to kill.
"The news is constantly reiterating that everything is bad and everything is getting worse, but it's not really time for a civil war yet."
Recently, though, Lambert agreed to join some co-workers on a trip to a firing range. He attributes this change, in part, to Mercado, whose frequent concealed-carry evangelizing made him decide that he should get over his squeamishness with guns. He said shooting made him feel more comfortable around a gun, and if one suddenly ended up in his hands, he would know how to use it.
"I think of the Republican party as one big frat, and it feels more comfortable for people to say and do [racist or violent] things that they wouldn't feel supported in before," Lambert said. "It's more normal and accepted in that party, and in the country, now."
*
"Three days after Trump got elected, I said, 'fuck this!' and signed up for [a concealed carry license] class," Mercado said. Arriving nervous to the licensing class, Mercado was confronted by an unexpected ally. "[The class was taught at] a locally-owned black business. The instructor was straight-up, he was like: hey, I'm black, and people of color are more likely to be victims of violence." The instructor was tall, broad-shouldered, dark-skinned, and wore an oversize Texas belt buckle at his waist.
Jacob Kruse practices target shooting on the handgun range. Image: Ian Birnbaum
Mercado attended the class "in boy mode," just on the cusp of gender transition and hormone therapy. "What surprised me is when I talked to him, I kind of brought it up in a bit of a shy way like, you know….what if, maybe, I need to perhaps... change my gender marker on my handgun license?" She dragged out the question, reluctant to reach the end of it. Her instructor answered instantly: "Oh, it's super easy! Just let me know and I'll change it for you. If you have any trouble let me know, I've got connections." Mercado was shocked, but her instructor brushed it off: he gets the question every weekend.
"These were people with no interest in guns, not as a hobby, not as cool machines. They're scared of guns, but they feel like they need one."
After a 45-day turnaround, Mercado got her license to carry a concealed handgun shortly after New Year's Day. "It feels better," she said. "It feels good. My friends are like, 'oh you have it on you right now?' They say that they feel better being with me." As Trump's inauguration came and went, tensions rose, and her friends started to talk with a common euphemism. "Everyone always says it the same way, I feel better being with you because of how things are. It's like a code. How things are."
Kruse is also feeling the tension. "It seems like everyone's waiting for the first move to get made right now," he said. "The news is constantly reiterating that everything is bad and everything is getting worse, but it's not really time for a civil war yet."
Lambert was upset by the inauguration and the aftermath of the first executive orders, so he started attending protests, where passions and anxiety run high. "At one of the protests I went to recently, these White Lives Matter guys came to Austin and they were protesting while the city unveiled an African American War Veterans memorial." The local police kept the groups separate and maintained calm, he says, "but there was one moment. I could see the White Lives Matter guys were open-carrying guns, like they do. Behind me were members of the [communist/anarchist group] Austin Red Guard with red head-coverings and a communist flag, and they were open-carrying as well." Lambert laughs. "So I'm sitting there in-between and both sides have guns, and I don't have a gun. It's not like I think more guns would necessarily help this situation, but it made me think: should I be armed? If I keep going to these protests, will having a gun make it worse? I'm still kind of debating it."
Mercado shoots at a zombie hipster paper target with a sox-shot revolver. Image: Ian Birnbaum
Even though Mercado is already licensed, she's still debating how she wants to re-engage with the social aspects of gun culture. "The way America has sold guns to people is not as tools, but the same way that Harley Davidson sells motorcycles," she said. "They're selling an image. That's the problem, the guns themselves are just tools. But the way you sell power fantasies is just gross. Taking a life is a terrible thought. But growing up on those stories where people go out and beat the bad guys and save the people they care about, that's an image that is very seductive to me."
Trump has made things worse, that's clear to all of the people I spoke to. But Mercado bought her gun in July, in the closing months of the Obama administration, back when it seemed all but certain that Hillary Clinton would win the election. "Even if Clinton won, though, bigots were being emboldened," Mercado said. "And it was around that time that I started to hear from my LGBT friends, like, 'oh shit, I need to get a gun.' These were people with no interest in guns, not as a hobby, not as cool machines. They're scared of guns, but they feel like they need one."
Having a gun made Mercado feel safer emotionally, but intellectually she knows that it's mostly a false comfort. "The thing is, I know the statistics about concealed carry weapons. If you can run, run. You're not going to help, trying to be a hero. Get out of there. But if you're in that last-case scenario, where you're trapped and you've already done your running…" Mercado paused for a moment. "I know I'm not a hero. I'm not a cop. I have no delusions where I'm trying to save the day. But if it comes down to a moment where I'm desperate enough to reach for a 2x4 or a pipe, I would rather reach for the gun." |
There has been another delay in the disciplinary proceedings for former Victoria police chief Frank Elsner.
Elsner was scheduled to appear for a disciplinary hearing on Monday on allegations of workplace harassment, but that has now been moved to Nov. 6.
His previous lawyer was appointed to the B.C. Supreme Court. and he has new counsel.
Elsner has another hearing scheduled on Nov. 21 related to allegations that he gave misleading information to an investigator looking into inappropriate Twitter messages sent to the wife of a Victoria police officer.
In May, Elsner resigned as police chief after being suspended with pay in April 2016 for sending sexually charged social media messages to a female of another police force.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge later tossed out two of five allegations against Elsner, but a probe continues into allegations Elsner contacted witnesses related to the complaint and gave misleading information to investigators.
With files from The Canadian Press |
Sestero — who as Johnny's "best friend" Mark is a central cog in the whole storyline of The Room — co-penned the 2013 memoir The Disaster Artist, about his friendship with Wiseau and their most famous collaboration ("a really, really strange film I made when I was in my early 20s”), which is the basis of the A24 movie. And it was very much with a Hollywood adaptation in mind. "From day one, I was like, 'I want this to be a movie like Ed Wood or Sunset Boulevard,' " says Sestero. Once James Franco and his team were on board, Sestero offered up as much material as he could — even digging out his old denim jacket from The Room — to help them capture the spirit of 2003. He also met with James' brother Dave several times. "We just talked about coming to L.A., trying to be an actor and getting these obscure projects, trying to make them good and realizing that they're not," recalls Sestero, who says he's stoked with the results. "James is next level — he brings Tommy to life in a way I didn't think was possible. And Dave carries his role in a way that helps James shine even more." Should Disaster Artist make it to the Oscars, Sestero is hoping he and Wiseau can dust off their old tuxes from The Room. "But I don't think we'd bring the football this time," he says. (One memorable scene from The Room features four black-tie-clad guys tossing a pigskin in an alley.) |
“Don’t Sleep with the Sultan,” says the headline on a full-page ad in the current issue of entertainment industry publication Variety.
Bearing the logos of several LGBT and allied organizations, the ad encourages readers to boycott the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Hotel Bel-Air. Both hotels are Dorchester Collection properties. Dorchester is owned by the Brunei Investment Agency. The hotels have faced a protest and a high-profile boycott as a result of its connection with the government of Brunei, where Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has begun implementing a shockingly severe version of Sharia law.
Here’s the text of the ad:
When you stay at The Beverly Hills Hotel, the Hotel Bel-Air, or any of the other Dorchester Collection properties owned by the Sultan of Brunei and his Brunei Investment Agency, you’re funding a regime that could soon start flogging women who exercise the right to choose and stoning LGBT people for being who they are.
Please stand with us and send a message to the Sultan of Brunei that his medieval brand of brutality has no place in the 21st century.
If you’re planning an event at one of the Dorchester hotels, please host it elsewhere. If you’re going out for drinks or a meal, dine at a property whose owner doesn’t support the oppression of women and LGBT people. And please don’t spend a night at any of the Sultan’s Dorchester Collection of hotels. |
We were betrayed by a perfidious ally. a perfidious campaign worker revealed the senator's strategy to his leading rival for the nomination
Recent Examples on the Web
The new heroes are black and white women determined to clean up the mess created by Fowler and his perfidious white financial backer. Tony Adler, Chicago Reader, "There’s a great play to be written about bigotry in Evanston in the early 20th century," 11 May 2018
Some have warned of a perfidious plot to revive the British empire with help from Muslims, particularly Shias, who revere the Prophet’s descendants. The Economist, "Muslims consider Queen Elizabeth’s ties to the Prophet Muhammad," 5 Apr. 2018
This ought to be the primary context for any analysis of Trump’s standoff with the FBI, but instead Dershowitz wishes it away, and reimagines Trump as an innocent man hounded by a perfidious and unethical prosecutor. Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, "Alan Dershowitz’s Audition to Be Trump’s Lawyer Is Not Going Well," 21 Mar. 2018
The problem isn’t that Obama and Clinton and Trump and whoever else are all perfidious backstabbers who have betrayed the anti-intervention movement. Noah Berlatsky, Slate Magazine, "We Need a War Tax," 24 Apr. 2017
Their allegiance was met by this unholy alliance of perfidious greed devolving rapidly into the audacity of vituperative unparalleled predatory rapacity. Fortune, "24 Facts You May Not Know About Warren Buffett," 31 Aug. 2017
Unsurprisingly, many ordinary Americans came to see themselves as victims of perfidious conspiracies, channeling their energies into indignant rebellions like the Anti-Masonic Party. Kevin Baker, New Republic, "Trail of Fears," 13 June 2017
Even by that relatively late date, when the authoritarian nature of the regime was already clear, Jacobin was defending it against its perfidious neoliberal critics. Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, "100 Years After the Bolshevik Revolution, Communism Hasn’t Changed," 28 June 2017
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'perfidious.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback. |
Never separate a man and his best friend. Especially if his best friend has an adorable face like that one!
The soldier in the above photo is Robert Gabbert, who was deployed to Afghanistan in March. Before he left, he put Baxter, his three-year-old Shiba Inu, in the care of his then girlfriend.
Well, between Robert's deployment and now, that girlfriend—sorry, ex-girlfriend, decided to sell his dog on Craigslist. When he found out about Baxter getting a new home, Robert posted a desperate message on Craigslist (that has since been deleted) begging for help:
"I am currently deployed and my ex sold my dog. I just found out and I am trying to find the people (person) who bought him. I will pay anything to get him back. His name is Baxster and he is an Shiba Inu. I do not have my phone with me. You can email me. The phone number is my mom's she is helping me locate him. If you have any information PLEASE give us a call or an email." |
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US Air Force Hilariously Trolls Trump With New California Solar Energy Upgrade
March 14th, 2017 by Tina Casey
The solar-friendly State of California has positioned itself in opposition to Trump Administration policies on energy and climate change, and it looks like the Air Force is in California’s corner. Last week the sprawling Los Angeles Air Force Base — home of the Space and Missile Systems Center — entered into an $11 million energy modernization project with Honeywell that includes rooftop solar arrays on four buildings.
Under the Obama Administration, Los Angeles AFB was an early adopter of renewables, electric vehicles, vehicle-to-grid systems and other low carbon technology. Apparently the Air Force has no intention of slowing down now that a fossil fuel fan has taken up residence in the White House.
Money-Saving Solar Power For Los Angeles Air Force Base
The new $11 million energy project is a soup-to-nuts makeover that will pay for itself within a reasonable amount of time.
It’s a first-of-its-kind project for the US Air Force Civil Engineer Center, which awarded the contract. The Department of Defense pays no money up front for the improvement. All of the costs are covered by energy savings, and then some.
In a press release, Honeywell teased out a statement from Los Angeles Air Force Base that gently reminds the taxpaying public of the benefits of low carbon energy:
As a critical location for the U.S. Air Force, we strive to ensure the services we provide meet the highest standards of excellence, and the same should be said of our building infrastructure…This project is a way for us to keep base facilities operating optimally and in the most environmentally and budget-sound way possible.
According to Honeywell, the project will shave about 17% off the facility’s energy use. The savings will average about $800,000 per year for the life of the contract. That’s a 23-year contract so group hug for all of us taxpayers.
The rooftop solar panels — 3,400 of them spread out over four buildings — will account for about 10% of Los Angeles AFB’s energy use.
The project also includes lighting, AC, and irrigation upgrades.
Meanwhile, Over In New Jersey…
Air Force renewable energy projects that began under the Obama Administration are also continuing to play out under the Trump Administration.
Last December, New Jersey’s Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst broke ground on a new solar array. Clocking in at 50,000 solar panels and 16.5 megawatts, when completed it will be the largest US military solar farm in the Northeast.
In a press release announcing the new project, the Air Force voiced some thoughts on the importance of solar power for national defense:
This is a great example of a cleaner, more resilient project, and we’re going to be doing more of them…This project demonstrates the innovative pathways our Airmen and civilians are taking to strengthen mission assurance through energy assurance.
Did you catch that thing about “more of them?”
Like Los Angeles AFB, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst also emphasized the benefits to taxpayers:
Solar power is one of the most efficient and affordable energy alternatives today…Whether you’re interested in solar power because of its economic or environment impact, during these times of budgetary constraints on the federal side and the state side, I think we can all agree this joint solar project could not happen at a greater time.
…And Then There’s Utah…
The Air Force is also going full speed ahead with construction of a new Innovation Center on the grounds of Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
The Innovation will come under the umbrella of the Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) initiative, with the aim of leveraging Air Force support for technology startups.
Hill AFB is already a job-creating machine for Utah and the new facility is expected to generate even more by forging a “Silicon Hill” identity for growing tech employment in the northern area of the state.
USTAR launched about 10 years ago, when state policymakers charted a new science-based path for economic development, leveraging its academic research assets:
Utah’s economic future is at stake. Without a carefully planned strategy, Utah will certainly grow, but not with high-paying jobs that support a family and that generate sufficient tax revenues to support our large education burden…Low salaries have social consequences: more families needing multiple incomes to survive economically, higher bankruptcy rates, the lowest per-pupil education spending in the nation. We must aspire to be a high-wage state.
[snip]
…In the globally-competitive Knowledge Age, Utah is falling behind, even as science and technology are advancing rapidly, spawning entirely new industries and high-tech businesses.
Ouch! So much for bringing back coal jobs.
Speaking of the Knowledge Age, new EPA chief Scott Pruitt might want to take a refresher course or two at the University of Utah. Here’s a snippet from the school’s Geology department:
As the impacts of climate change become more severe over the coming years and decades, companies, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations will be required to adapt and respond to climate change. Scientifically-based, up-to-date knowledge is essential to formulating adaption and response strategies. A certificate in climate change is marketable evidence of this essential knowledge.
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Photo: via Los Angeles Air Force Base. |
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VIBER RELEASES DESKTOP VERSION – YOU'LL WANT TO SIT DOWN FOR THIS
Leading Free Messaging And VoIP Platform Unveils Windows And Mac Versions With Video Calls; Launches Version 3.0 Of Its Platform, Completely Redesigns Viber for Android, Supports Eight Additional Languages And Announces It Has 200 Million Users
LONDON – May 7, 2013, Viber, the leading mobile communications platform offering free messaging and HD-quality phone calls, announces today the release of Viber Desktop for PC and Mac. The new versions seamlessly integrate with existing mobile versions of the app and provide the same super-simple setup process that uses your phone number as your ID.
You can download Viber Desktop here: www.viber.com
The company also announced today that it has over 200 million users across the various platforms that it supports.
Viber has revolutionized free messaging and VoIP on mobile with its popular app for leading platforms including Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry and others. Now with the release of Viber Desktop, users have one easy-to-use and always available solution for free messages and calls.
One of the strengths of Viber is its easy activation process. The company has replicated the same process with Viber Desktop. As soon as you enter your mobile number and a confirmation code which is sent to your mobile Viber app, you are ready to go! All of your mobile Viber contacts are instantly and continuously synced from your mobile Viber to Viber Desktop.
Viber Desktop and the latest versions of the Viber app were designed from the ground up for individuals using Viber on multiple devices, so you can always use the app that's right for you, whether at home, in school, at the office, or on the go. Viber offers far more flexibility than any similar product. Some of the key combined features include:
Seamlessly transfer calls between Viber Desktop and the Viber app with one click or tap
Received and Sent messages are shown on all devices, but will only "beep" on the device you are currently using
Messages and conversations you delete from one device will be removed from all devices
On top of this, Viber Desktop is Viber's first application to offer video calls. With this new beta feature, users can now make desktop-to-desktop video calls to other Viber users.
"People spend a substantial amount of time on their smartphones," said Talmon Marco, CEO of Viber. "However, a lot of that usage takes place at home or in the office, where they have laptops or desktops close by. With Viber Desktop you always get to use the most convenient device. You can seamlessly switch devices while messaging and even transfer calls between your mobile and desktop."
The release of Viber Desktop is part of the roll out of Viber 3.0, the next major version of the platform. The 3.0 release includes major updates to both the Android and iOS versions of the app, as well as a new version for BlackBerry that ensures voice calling as well as compatibility with Viber Desktop.
Viber for Android now features a completely redesigned "Holo" interface as well as numerous Android specific optimizations.
Both the Android and iOS versions were not only designed to ensure seamless communication with the new desktop version but also include a host of new features.
Key highlights of the new versions include:
Video messages
New stickers
Last online status
Enhanced photo experience
Performance improvements
New voice engine
Android version security fix
On top of this, Viber now speaks your language, with support for eight new languages and 20 languages overall. Supported languages include (new in Bold): Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
About Viber:
Viber is developed by Viber Media, a pioneering mobile messaging and VoIP company. Viber lets everyone in the world connect. Freely. Viber users can send free text messages, photo messages, share locations anywhere in the world, and make free, HD-quality calls on iPhone®, Android,™ Windows Phone, Blackberry®, Windows®, Mac, Symbian, Nokia S40 and Bada devices over 3G/4G or WiFi connections. With more than 200 million users in 193 countries, Viber is constantly innovating by introducing new platforms and adding fun new features including stickers and emoticons. |
Three friends of the late comedian Harris Wittels showed up at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts' annual Encore Luncheon Tuesday at the River Oaks Country Club to talk about their friend, as Wittels was chosen as the event's annual distinguished alumnus.
Scott Aukerman recalled the time Wittels wrote a joke spoken by President Barack Obama.
Aukerman has spent years working in comedy, having launched the popular podcast and TV show "Comedy Bang! Bang!" and also co-created the surreal interview show "Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis." A few years ago "Ferns" was about to welcome its biggest guest, and Aukerman emailed Wittels asking for some additional jokes for the show.
Wittels was on deadline for another project, but after midnight he sent a few pages of ideas like "When you fart, do you give yourself a presidential pardon?" Only one joke made it. Galfianakis asked Obama if he planned to seek a third term. Obama, referencing one of Galiafanakis' film failures, read Wittels' line: "If I ran a third time, it'd be like making a third 'Hangover' movie."
Wittels died of a drug overdose in February 2015, shortly before the final episode of "Parks and Recreation" aired, not even 10 years into a fast-moving comedy career that made fans and then friends of comics like Louis CK, Sarah Silverman and Aziz Ansari.
His most visible work was as a writer and producer on the TV show "Parks and Recreation," though Wittels also found numerous fans through his appearances on various podcasts, where he'd talk about comedy, his struggle with drug addiction and, quite memorably, his affinity for the jam band Phish.
Tuesday's luncheon touched on all phases of Wittels' too-short career, and also referenced his early years in Houston where he started in musical theater, doing a production of "Oliver" at Lanier Middle School. He studied theater at HSPVA before going to college and then moving to Los Angeles, where within two months he made a strong impression with his stand-up comedy. At the urging of a friend, Aukerman booked Wittels sight unseen at the UCB Theatre's "Comedy Death Ray" show.
"He destroyed the first night, he was just great," Aukerman said prior to the luncheon. "Usually the real test is the second time somebody does the show. If they use the exact same material, it means they're not confident in anything but that first material. But he did all new stuff and he destroyed again. He was just that good."
The shows led to Wittels opening for Louis CK and a writing job for Silverman's TV show, which in turn led to his work on "Parks and Recreation," where he collaborated with actor Adam Scott, who also came to Houston for the luncheon.
"Harris was the barometer for whether a joke was good or hacky," Scott said. "He wasn't shy about throwing terrible jokes out there. He prided himself on it. But it was part of finding the true comedy gold. He was the harshest critic. You could depend on Harris for the best, funniest jokes."
Aukerman and Jeff Ullrich started Earwolf, a podcasting network with an emphasis on comedy. There Wittels contributed different material that was often autobiographical.
"He was a great performer, but working as a writer like he did, that doesn't really come with a lot of fans," Aukerman said. "But because of the podcasts he got well known around the world. People tell me about how his work affected them, helped them through tough times. These podcasts, which essentially started as something to do on goof-around days for us, became a document of his personality worldwide."
Scott compared Wittels use of personal content to comedic works by Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor. "That's what the greats did," he said. "A lot of us on something like these podcasts hide a little of ourselves. We don't go into detail about certain aspects of our lives. Harris never had that. Stuff you'd never talk about, you'd worry your parents would hear ... he wasn't afraid of that."
Ullrich said the nature of podcasting changed with an episode of "Analyze Phish," where Harris, the Phish enthusiast, dragged Aukerman (not a fan) to see the band at Madison Square Garden. They found an interesting new way to voice comedic narrative in podcast form. That episode was made available in January 2012 at a time when comedian-centric podcasts - like Marc Maron's popular "WTF" - were finding increasing listenership.
"People do storytelling differently because of that one episode," he said.
Aukerman, Scott and Ullrich shared stories with the gathered crowd at the luncheon, and all three spoke with appreciation for arts-centric public high schools. Aukerman recalled his own experience as an outcast in school - unbeknownst to his parents - until he found an arts school. "My parents asked me, 'Are you going to be OK not seeing your friends anymore?' " he joked.
The Encore Luncheon is a big HSPVA fundraiser. Past distinguished alumni honored include "Grey's Anatomy" star Chandra Wilson and photographer Mark Seliger. Wilson sent a video greeting Tuesday, pledging a hefty donation to the school. She also auctioned off a set visit to "Grey's Anatomy" for the high bidder and three friends that went for $20,000.
The event included HSPVA students performing in a big band setting, and a spirited piece from the musical "Something Rotten."
"It makes perfect sense," Aukerman said, "that's where Harris spent his high school years." |
Image copyright Welsh Government
Welsh Conservatives have pledged to give free bus travel to all 16-24 year olds in Wales, and have urged Labour ministers to do the same.
The Green Card - which the Tories said could cost up to £25m a year - would also give a third off rail tickets.
Education spokesman Darren Millar said young people suffered high car insurance and the lowest wages.
The Welsh Government dismissed the plan as "fantasy economics", saying it would consult on a new discount travel pass.
The current MyTravelPass scheme gives 16-18 year olds a third off bus fares.
Mr Millar said the Welsh Conservatives' "exciting offer for young people" would also protect the environment and help save local bus routes from the axe.
His colleague Russell George, the Tories' economy spokesman, added that travel costs could be a "huge barrier" to education, training and job opportunities.
'Fag packet' economics
"We are committed to building a stronger economy and a fairer society, and we believe that young people should benefit from the same travel concessions offered to Wales' over-60s," he said.
The Conservatives said the scheme would be funded by scrapping the education maintenance allowance (EMA), which they have previously proposed.
A Welsh Government spokesman said: "These Tory proposals have been made up on the back of a fag packet.
"To think you can provide 350,000 people with free bus travel and a third off rail fares for £25m is fantasy economics."
The spokesman added that the Welsh Government would be launching a consultation next week on plans to launch a replacement for MyTravelPass in April.
"It will be a discounted travel scheme grounded in reality, that can encourage more young people onto Welsh buses," he said. |
Sound principles and practices of statecraft
It is an unflattering commentary on our times and on our narrative-manufacturers that it falls to an outsider - a former American President ---to remind us of our collective obligation to involve and include the Muslims in our national story. Our mainstream media industry has since May 2014 unfortunately bought into a new story-line in which the minorities are either demonised as friends and promoters of inimical forces and terror groups or subjected to an elaborate rituals of benign neglect. We are content to write the grammar of a "new India," which ipso facto rejects the old India's accent on plurality, inclusiveness, participation and partnership. It no longer bothers our conscience that even in popular cultural narratives the minorities, particularly the Muslims, are denied a place of respect and appreciation.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is entitled to its political and electoral calculus of majoritarianism. The sober fringe in the ruling conglomerate finds itself completely marginalised after the grand success of Hindu vote bank politics in Uttar Pradesh, especially after the anointment of so-obvious a Hindu face as Yogi Adityanath as the chief minister. The majoritarianism is recognised to have a momentum of popular acceptance behind it. An otherwise sensible political leader like Nitish Kumar too has found it cost-effective to make his peace with the hard-line Hindutva forces. So much so, even the Congress mascot, Rahul Gandhi, deems it necessary to position himself as a 'janudhari Hindu' and feels constrained to visit every big or small temple in Gujarat. And, ludicrously enough, Rahul Gandhi's temple-hopping has prompted the BJP to field its most modern face, Arun Jaitley, to remind everyone that it is the ruling party that had the or intellectual property rights to “Hindutva” platform.
President Obama's observations should jolt us out of our internal preoccupations. We need to keep in mind that the outside world judges us differently by exacting global good practices in governance, geopolitics and economics. Obama was not being preachy; he was simply reminding us of sound principles of statecraft observed, recognised and practised statesman-wisely by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh. |
My Secret Santa gift arrived today! I was ecstatic to get home from work to find the box on my porch. The thoughtfulness of my SS and their SO is remarkable.
The card with a handwritten note inside made this a personal experience that made my wife and I remember just how important it is to give not just this time of the year, but all year long. We received a one-hundred dollar bill (which made my wife and I tear up). We have been making gifts for everyone in our lives this year due to a lack of money. This was incredibly thoughtful of our SS as we are going to pass this thoughtfulness along to some less fortunate members of our families this year and use it to help get groceries/household items that can be useful for them. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much.
We also received a hockey puck bottle opener which will be incredibly useful for the coming New Years Eve party! Finally, we received something that neither my wife and I have ever had, homemade biscotti. It is delicious! SS, your assumption of my enjoyment of spices was correct! You weren't lying about the late heat your cayenne's give off, they're amazing! The rest of my family heard I was doing this and have asked for me to share my biscotti with them, which I guess I can do =)
This is my first gift exchange through Reddit and will not be my last. I have been so excited and happy to see all of the awesome and thoughtful gifts that have been passed around to complete strangers, this is amazing. Thank you again for the kind words and the personal touch to your gift. You have shared the spirit of Christmas with my wife and I. We truly appreciate what you have done. We wish you, your family, and friends a Merry Christmas! Also, stay safe on your journey of moving and we wish you the best moving forward. |
I decided to make an index of my fanfic since it will be long, and all the chapters will be separated into multiple parts.
Here it is! It will be updated when a new part comes out.
The Missing Children Incident - index
Prologue A little girl discovers that it is a very bad idea to talk to strangers in the empty parking.
Part 1 - The Missing Children Incident 1
Part 2 - The Missing Children Incident 2
Chapter 1 - Fazbear's Family Diner Barney (the purple guy) now works at the restaurant and hears about some of the dark secrets of his new workplace from his friend, Scott, the Phone Guy.
Part 1 - The Missing Children Incident 3
Part 2 - The Missing Children Incident 4
Chapter 2 - Pirate Cove
We finally know the five children who are "roleplaying" as pirates.
Part 1 - The Missing Children Incident 5
Part 2 - The Missing Children Incident 6
Part 3 - The Missing Children Incident 7
Chapter 3 - Operation Foxy
The kids discover the new girl in Pirate Cove. They don't like her.
Part 1 - The Missing Children Incident 8
Part 2 - The Missing Children Incident 9
Az eltűnt gyerekek esete - tartalom
Prológus
Egy kislány fölfedezi, hogy nagyon rossz ötlet a kihalt parkolóban idegen férfiakkal beszélgetni.
Első rész - The Missing Children Incident HUN prologue pt1
Második rész - Missing Children HUN prologue 2/2
Első fejezet - Fazbear's Family Diner
Barney ( a "lila csávó") most már a vedéglőnél dolgozik, és telefonos kollégájától megtud pár dolgot a vendéglő sötét múltjából.
Első rész - Missing children 3 HUN
Második rész - Missing children incident 4 HUN
Második fejezet
A Kalóz-öbö l: Végre megismerkedünk a sztori valódi hőseivel, a gyerekekkel, akik kalózosat játszanak.
Első rész - Missing Children HUN 5
Második rész - Missing children 6 hun
Harmadik rész - Missing Children 7 HUN
Harmadik fejezet
A Foxy-hadművelet: Új robot kerül a Kalóz-öbölbe. A gyerekeknek ez nem tetszik.
Első rész - Missing Children Hun 8
Második rész - Missing Children 9 HUN
This is a Five nights at Freddy's fanfiction, based on Scott Cawthon's games. However, it is not heavily game-based, since the game has very hidden story elements (we don't even know the characters names), so I put the pieces together as I like them, as lore-friendly as I could but I changed many things to make them dramaturgically more interesting. There are also lots of added things like the purple guy's past, phone guy's death, the names of the characters etc.If you prefer fanfiction.net, here is the link: www.fanfiction.net/s/11506533/… ----Úgy döntöttem, hogy mivel kevés a magyar Five nights at Freddy's fanfiction (igazából én eggyel sem találkoztam...), felrakom az indexbe a sztorim magyar nyelvű verzióját is, hiszem az sokkal jobb, mint az angol. Olvassátok szeretettel, vigyázat, nem egy aranyos sztori, elég gonosz, de végül is egy perverz gyerekgyilkos agyában kalandozunk. Meg persze a gyerekekében.Amennyiben jobban szeretitek a fanfiction.net-et, itt a link: www.fanfiction.net/s/11544914/… |
Let’s skip the obvious. Leave aside, for instance, the way Donald Trump’s decision to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a Syrian airbase is but another example of what we already know: that acts of war are now the prerogative, and only the prerogative, of the president (or of military commanders whom Trump has given greater authority to act on their own). Checks, balances? I doubt either of them applies anymore when it comes to war, American-style. These days, the only checks written are to the Pentagon and “balance” isn’t a concept outside of gymnastics.
The only checks written are to the Pentagon and “balance” isn’t a concept outside of gymnastics.
While we wait, here’s a suggestion that came to mind as I read “What Does an ‘America-First’ Foreign Policy Really Mean?” ― the latest thoughts of retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Astore on the military-industrial complex in the age of Trump: Isn’t it time to give the corporate sponsorship of war its just due? After all, there’s hardly an object, building, museum, stadium, or event in civilian life these days that doesn’t have corporate sponsorship plastered all over it and built into it. In my hometown, for instance, baseball’s New York Mets play at Citi Field, while football’s Giants and Jets spend their seasons at MetLife Stadium. Given the role that America’s giant weapons makers play in our wars, and the stunningly successful way they spread their wares around the planet, isn’t it time for the growing war powers of the commander-in-chief to be translated into a militarized version of sponsorship? |
One of the best new features of iOS 10 won’t be available for all devices that are compatible with Apple’s jam-packed mobile update.
Raise to Wake is such a simple and transformative new feature in iOS 10 that it feels like iPhones should have had it for years. Turning on the lock screen by just picking up your iPhone makes getting to notifications and apps quicker, but unless you have an iPad or iPhone released in the last year, you won’t get to enjoy it.
iOS 10 will only add the Raise to Wake feature to iOS devices with an M9 processor. The iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus and iPhone SE are the only three devices that support the feature in the first beta build of iOS 10.
Even though both new iPad Pro sizes have an M9 processor, it appears that Apple is not bringing the feature to the tablet lineup yet. Raise to Wake is especially useful on devices with the second-generation Touch ID sensor that unlocks the device almost instantly, so you never even see your notifications.
Apple plans to release iOS 10 to the public this fall, bringing new whiz-bang features like a new Home app, redesigned lock screen, iMessage apps and effects, Rich Notifications and tons of smaller changes that overhaul the iPhone experience.
via: AppleInsider |
Earlier today, Mike Levine of ABC News tweeted the image above showing a blood-soaked page from Ahmad Khan Rahami’s notebook. The US government has accused Rahami of detonating a bomb in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan on Sept. 17 and planting three other explosive devices in New York and New Jersey.
The page above contains the same passages referenced in the Department of Justice’s complaint against Rahami, which was released yesterday.
Curiously, the complaint does not include any reference to the Islamic State.
The journal contains clear references to both “Sheikh Anwar” and “Brother Adnani.” The former is Anwar al Awlaki, an al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) ideologue who was killed in an American drone strike in 2011. The latter is Abu Muhammad al Adnani, who served as the Islamic State’s top spokesman and oversaw the group’s anti-Western plotting until he met his demise in an airstrike in August.
The complaint specifically mentions Awlaki, but does not name Adnani. Here is a screen shot of the language from the complaint:
The complaint cites several lines, which are written in broken English and obscured by blood, including the phrase “back to sham [Syria].” It continues with additional fragments from the notebook: “But [unintelligible] this incident show the risk are [unintelligible] of getting caught under [unintelligible] I looked for guidance and…Guidance came from Sheikh Anwar…Said it clearly attack the Kuffar [non-believers] in their backyard.”
However, it appears that this “guidance” also came from Adnani. The complaint describes these passages as a “reference to the instructions of terrorist leaders that, if travel is infeasible, to attack nonbelievers where they live.”
As The Long War Journal reported when the complaint was published online, this has been a consistent theme in the Islamic State’s messaging. Adnani repeatedly told followers to attack in their home countries if they couldn’t travel to the lands of the so-called caliphate.
In May, for instance, Adnani told followers that if foreign governments “have shut the door of hijrah [migration] in your faces,” then they should “open the door of jihad in theirs,” meaning in the West. “Make your deed a source of their regret,” Adnani continued. “Truly, the smallest act you do in their lands is more beloved to us than the biggest act done here; it is more effective for us and more harmful to them.”
“If one of you wishes and strives to reach the lands of the Islamic State,” Adnani told his audience, “then each of us wishes to be in your place to make examples of the crusaders, day and night, scaring them and terrorizing them, until every neighbor fears his neighbor.”
Adnani told jihadists that they should “not make light of throwing a stone at a crusader in his land,” nor should they “underestimate any deed, as its consequences are great for the mujahideen and its effect is noxious to the disbelievers.”
It appears that at least some of the terrorists who have struck inside Europe in recent months were complying with Adnani’s order.
Immediately underneath Adnani’s name in Rahami’s notebook appears the word “Dawla,” which is another reference to the Islamic State.
It is not clear why these obvious mentions of Adnani and the Islamic State were not included in the complaint, which did include citations to Rahami’s notes on other jihadi figures, such as Anwar al Awlaki and Osama bin Laden.
In June, the FBI released a partial transcript of one of Omar Mateen’s 911 calls. Mateen, who killed 49 people and wounded dozens more during a mass shooting at a LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Fla. on June 12, pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi during those calls. But the FBI’s transcript initially omitted any reference to Baghdadi or the Islamic State, even though Mateen had obviously sworn his fealty to Baghdadi. A subsequent transcript jointly released by the FBI and the Department of Justice filled those references back in. [See LWJ report, Orlando terrorist swore allegiance to Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.]
The Islamic State quickly claimed that Mateen was its “fighter.” But the group has not issued a similar claim in Rahami’s case.
Thus far, no jihadi organization has claimed responsibility for the bombs in New York and New Jersey.
Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. |
The passengers in an SUV driving under the Route 3A overpass in Chelmsford got a nasty surprise when parts of the bridge fell on the car, damaging its windshield and closing two lanes of traffic.
Driver of this vehicle says window smashed when debris fell from 3A overpass while on 495 north. No injuries. #NECN pic.twitter.com/5xzvD99yXa — John Moroney (@JMoNecn) August 19, 2014
The green painted coating of this rusty beam fell on a vehicle on 495 N in Chelmsford pic.twitter.com/yhHsZLPowI — Bernice Corpuz (@BerniceWBZ) August 19, 2014
A family was inside the car when the sky fell, according to 7News’ Nicole Oliverio. They reportedly escaped uninjured except for a few cuts to a child’s hand. Their car, a Ford Escape, was towed away from the scene.
A spokesman for MassDOT told WBZ that paint and other debris broke off a rusted beam supporting the overpass. Two lanes of traffic on the northbound side of I-495 have been closed while MassDOT crews repair and clean the bridge. |
Old Lady Gang's Southern Cuisine will be located at 177 Peters Street Southwest in Castleberry Hill.
Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi Burruss and husband Todd Tucker are working hard on their forthcoming establishment, Old Lady Gang's Southern Cuisine.
According to a commercial alteration permit filed with City of Atlanta Friday, the restaurant will be located at 177 Peters Street SW in Castleberry Hill.
AdvertisementThe permit calls for about $145,000 worth of renovations to the space.
Real Housewife Kandi Burruss comes from a family with many great cooks. Fans of the most successful Bravo Housewives franchise are well-aware of her husband Todd's plans to open a Southern Cuisine restaurant centered around the recipes of the women in her family.
Until now, the exact location of the forthcoming restaurant was unknown, although Burruss had revealed late last year that the restaurant would be located in Castleberry Hill.
What do you think of the concept? Tell us below... |
Late in the afternoon on April 2, 1991, Mt. Pinatubo, a volcano on the Philippine island of Luzon, began to rumble with a series of the powerful steam explosions that typically precede an eruption. Pinatubo had been dormant for more than four centuries, and in the volcanological world the mountain had become little more than a footnote. The tremors continued in a steady crescendo for the next two months, until June 15th, when the mountain exploded with enough force to expel molten lava at the speed of six hundred miles an hour. The lava flooded a two-hundred-and-fifty-square-mile area, requiring the evacuation of two hundred thousand people. Within hours, the plume of gas and ash had penetrated the stratosphere, eventually reaching an altitude of twenty-one miles. Three weeks later, an aerosol cloud had encircled the earth, and it remained for nearly two years. Twenty million metric tons of sulfur dioxide mixed with droplets of water, creating a kind of gaseous mirror, which reflected solar rays back into the sky. Throughout 1992 and 1993, the amount of sunlight that reached the surface of the earth was reduced by more than ten per cent. The heavy industrial activity of the previous hundred years had caused the earth’s climate to warm by roughly three-quarters of a degree Celsius, helping to make the twentieth century the hottest in at least a thousand years. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, however, reduced global temperatures by nearly that much in a single year. It also disrupted patterns of precipitation throughout the planet. It is believed to have influenced events as varied as floods along the Mississippi River in 1993 and, later that year, the drought that devastated the African Sahel. Most people considered the eruption a calamity. For geophysical scientists, though, Mt. Pinatubo provided the best model in at least a century to help us understand what might happen if humans attempted to ameliorate global warming by deliberately altering the climate of the earth. For years, even to entertain the possibility of human intervention on such a scale—geoengineering, as the practice is known—has been denounced as hubris. Predicting long-term climatic behavior by using computer models has proved difficult, and the notion of fiddling with the planet’s climate based on the results generated by those models worries even scientists who are fully engaged in the research. “There will be no easy victories, but at some point we are going to have to take the facts seriously,’’ David Keith, a professor of engineering and public policy at Harvard and one of geoengineering’s most thoughtful supporters, told me. “Nonetheless,’’ he added, “it is hyperbolic to say this, but no less true: when you start to reflect light away from the planet, you can easily imagine a chain of events that would extinguish life on earth.” There is only one reason to consider deploying a scheme with even a tiny chance of causing such a catastrophe: if the risks of not deploying it were clearly higher. No one is yet prepared to make such a calculation, but researchers are moving in that direction. To offer guidance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (I.P.C.C.) has developed a series of scenarios on global warming. The cheeriest assessment predicts that by the end of the century the earth’s average temperature will rise between 1.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius. A more pessimistic projection envisages a rise of between 2.4 and 6.4 degrees—far higher than at any time in recorded history. (There are nearly two degrees Fahrenheit in one degree Celsius. A rise of 2.4 to 6.4 degrees Celsius would equal 4.3 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit.) Until recently, climate scientists believed that a six-degree rise, the effects of which would be an undeniable disaster, was unlikely. But new data have changed the minds of many. Late last year, Fatih Birol, the chief economist for the International Energy Agency, said that current levels of consumption “put the world perfectly on track for a six-degree Celsius rise in temperature. . . . Everybody, even schoolchildren, knows this will have catastrophic implications for all of us.” Tens of thousands of wildfires have already been attributed to warming, as have melting glaciers and rising seas. (The warming of the oceans is particularly worrisome; as Arctic ice melts, water that was below the surface becomes exposed to the sun and absorbs more solar energy, which leads to warmer oceans—a loop that could rapidly spin out of control.) Even a two-degree climb in average global temperatures could cause crop failures in parts of the world that can least afford to lose the nourishment. The size of deserts would increase, along with the frequency and intensity of wildfires. Deliberately modifying the earth’s atmosphere would be a desperate gamble with significant risks. Yet the more likely climate change is to cause devastation, the more attractive even the most perilous attempts to mitigate those changes will become. “We don’t know how bad this is going to be, and we don’t know when it is going to get bad,’’ Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist with the Carnegie Institution, told me. In 2007, Caldeira was a principal contributor to an I.P.C.C. team that won a Nobel Peace Prize. “There are wide variations within the models,’’ he said. “But we had better get ready, because we are running rapidly toward a minefield. We just don’t know where the minefield starts, or how long it will be before we find ourselves in the middle of it.” The Maldives, a string of islands off the coast of India whose highest point above sea level is eight feet, may be the first nation to drown. In Alaska, entire towns have begun to shift in the loosening permafrost. The Florida economy is highly dependent upon coastal weather patterns; the tide station at Miami Beach has registered an increase of seven inches since 1935, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. One Australian study, published this year in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that a two-degree Celsius rise in the earth’s temperature would be accompanied by a significant spike in the number of lives lost just in Brisbane. Many climate scientists say their biggest fear is that warming could melt the Arctic permafrost—which stretches for thousands of miles across Alaska, Canada, and Siberia. There is twice as much CO 2 locked beneath the tundra as there is in the earth’s atmosphere. Melting would release enormous stores of methane, a greenhouse gas nearly thirty times more potent than carbon dioxide. If that happens, as the hydrologist Jane C. S. Long told me when we met recently in her office at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, “it’s game over.”
The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering project, or SPICE, is a British academic consortium that seeks to mimic the actions of volcanoes like Pinatubo by pumping particles of sulfur dioxide, or similar reflective chemicals, into the stratosphere through a twelve-mile-long pipe held aloft by a balloon at one end and tethered, at the other, to a boat anchored at sea. The consortium consists of three groups. At Bristol University, researchers led by Matt Watson, a professor of geophysics, are trying to determine which particles would have the maximum desired impact with the smallest likelihood of unwanted side effects. Sulfur dioxide produces sulfuric acid, which destroys the ozone layer of the atmosphere; there are similar compounds that might work while proving less environmentally toxic—including synthetic particles that could be created specifically for this purpose. At Cambridge, Hugh Hunt and his team are trying to determine the best way to get those particles into the stratosphere. A third group, at Oxford, has been focussing on the effect such an intervention would likely have on the earth’s climate. Hunt and I spoke in Cambridge, at Trinity College, where he is a professor of engineering and the Keeper of the Trinity College clock, a renowned timepiece that gains or loses less than a second a month. In his office, dozens of boomerangs dangle from the wall. When I asked about them, he grabbed one and hurled it at my head. “I teach three-dimensional dynamics,’’ he said, flicking his hand in the air to grab it as it returned. Hunt has devoted his intellectual life to the study of mechanical vibration. His Web page is filled with instructive videos about gyroscopes, rings wobbling down rods, and boomerangs. “I like to demonstrate the way things spin,’’ he said, as he put the boomerang down and picked up an inflated pink balloon attached to a string. “The principle is pretty simple.” Holding the string, Hunt began to bobble the balloon as if it were being tossed by foul weather. “Everything is fine if it is sitting still,’’ he continued, holding the balloon steady. Then he began to wave his arm erratically. “One of the problems is that nothing is going to be still up there. It is going to be moving around. And the question we’ve got is . . . this pipe”—the industrial hose that will convey the particles into the sky—“is going to be under huge stressors.’’ He snapped the string connected to the balloon. “How do you know it’s not going to break? We are really pushing things to the limit in terms of their strength, so it is essential that we get the dynamics of motion right.’’ [cartoon id="a16512"] Most scientists, even those with no interest in personal publicity, are vigorous advocates for their own work. Not this group. “I don’t know how many times I have said this, but the last thing I would ever want is for the project I have been working on to be implemented,’’ Hunt said. “If we have to use these tools, it means something on this planet has gone seriously wrong.’’ Last fall, the SPICE team decided to conduct a brief and uncontroversial pilot study. At least they thought it would be uncontroversial. To demonstrate how they would disperse the sulfur dioxide, they had planned to float a balloon over Norfolk, at an altitude of a kilometre, and send a hundred and fifty litres of water into the air through a hose. After the date and time of the test was announced, in the middle of September, more than fifty organizations signed a petition objecting to the experiment, in part because they fear that even to consider engineering the climate would provide politicians with an excuse for avoiding tough decisions on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Opponents of the water test pointed out the many uncertainties in the research (which is precisely why the team wanted to do the experiment). The British government decided to put it off for at least six months. “When people say we shouldn’t even explore this issue, it scares me,’’ Hunt said. He pointed out that carbon emissions are heavy, and finding a place to deposit them will not be easy. “Roughly speaking, the CO 2 we generate weighs three or four times as much as the fuel it comes from.” That means that a short round-trip journey—say, eight hundred miles—by car, using two tanks of gas, produces three hundred kilograms of CO 2 . “This is ten heavy suitcases from one short trip,’’ Hunt said. “And you have to store it where it can’t evaporate. “So I have three questions, Where are you going to put it? Who are you going to ask to dispose of this for you? And how much are you reasonably willing to pay them to do it?” he continued. “There is nobody on this planet who can answer any of those questions. There is no established place or technique, and nobody has any idea what it would cost. And we need the answers now.” Hunt stood up, walked slowly to the window, and gazed at the manicured Trinity College green. “I know this is all unpleasant,’’ he said. “Nobody wants it, but nobody wants to put high doses of poisonous chemicals into their body, either. That is what chemotherapy is, though, and for people suffering from cancer those poisons are often their only hope. Every day, tens of thousands of people take them willingly—because they are very sick or dying. This is how I prefer to look at the possibility of engineering the climate. It isn’t a cure for anything. But it could very well turn out to be the least bad option we are going to have.’’
The notion of modifying the weather dates back at least to the eighteen-thirties, when the American meteorologist James Pollard Espy became known as the Storm King, for his (prescient but widely ridiculed) proposals to stimulate rain by selectively burning forests. More recently, the U.S. government project Stormfury attempted for decades to lessen the force of hurricanes by seeding them with silver iodide. And in 2008 Chinese soldiers fired more than a thousand rockets filled with chemicals at clouds over Beijing to prevent them from raining on the Olympics. The relationship between carbon emissions and the earth’s temperature has been clear for more than a century: in 1908, the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius suggested that burning fossil fuels might help prevent the coming ice age. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson received a report from his Science Advisory Committee, titled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,” that noted for the first time the potential need to balance increased greenhouse-gas emissions by “raising the albedo, or the reflectivity, of the earth.” The report suggested that such a change could be achieved by spreading small reflective particles over large parts of the ocean. While such tactics could clearly fail, perhaps the greater concern is what might happen if they succeeded in ways nobody had envisioned. Injecting sulfur dioxide, or particles that perform a similar function, would rapidly lower the temperature of the earth, at relatively little expense—most estimates put the cost at less than ten billion dollars a year. But it would do nothing to halt ocean acidification, which threatens to destroy coral reefs and wipe out an enormous number of aquatic species. The risks of reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the atmosphere on that scale would be as obvious—and immediate—as the benefits. If such a program were suddenly to fall apart, the earth would be subjected to extremely rapid warming, with nothing to stop it. And while such an effort would cool the globe, it might do so in ways that disrupt the behavior of the Asian and African monsoons, which provide the water that billions of people need to drink and to grow their food. “Geoengineering” actually refers to two distinct ideas about how to cool the planet. The first, solar-radiation management, focusses on reducing the impact of the sun. Whether by seeding clouds, spreading giant mirrors in the desert, or injecting sulfates into the stratosphere, most such plans seek to replicate the effects of eruptions like Mt. Pinatubo’s. The other approach is less risky, and involves removing carbon directly from the atmosphere and burying it in vast ocean storage beds or deep inside the earth. But without a significant technological advance such projects will be expensive and may take many years to have any significant effect. There are dozens of versions of each scheme, and they range from plausible to absurd. There have been proposals to send mirrors, sunshades, and parasols into space. Recently, the scientific entrepreneur Nathan Myhrvold, whose company Intellectual Ventures has invested in several geoengineering ideas, said that we could cool the earth by stirring the seas. He has proposed deploying a million plastic tubes, each about a hundred metres long, to roil the water, which would help it trap more CO 2 . “The ocean is this giant heat sink,’’ he told me. “But it is very cold. The bottom is nearly freezing. If you just stirred the ocean more, you could absorb the excess CO 2 and keep the planet cold.” (This is not as crazy as it sounds. In the center of the ocean, wind-driven currents bring fresh water to the surface, so stirring the ocean could transform it into a well-organized storage depot. The new water would absorb more carbon while the old water carried the carbon it has already captured into the deep.) The Harvard physicist Russell Seitz wants to create what amounts to a giant oceanic bubble bath: bubbles trap air, which brightens them enough to reflect sunlight away from the surface of the earth. Another tactic would require maintaining a fine spray of seawater—the world’s biggest fountain—which would mix with salt to help clouds block sunlight. The best solution, nearly all scientists agree, would be the simplest: stop burning fossil fuels, which would reduce the amount of carbon we dump into the atmosphere. That fact has been emphasized in virtually every study that addresses the potential effect of climate change on the earth—and there have been many—but none have had a discernible impact on human behavior or government policy. Some climate scientists believe we can accommodate an atmosphere with concentrations of carbon dioxide that are twice the levels of the preindustrial era—about five hundred and fifty parts per million. Others have long claimed that global warming would become dangerous when atmospheric concentrations of carbon rose above three hundred and fifty parts per million. We passed that number years ago. After a decline in 2009, which coincided with the harsh global recession, carbon emissions soared by six per cent in 2010—the largest increase ever recorded. On average, in the past decade, fossil-fuel emissions grew at about three times the rate of growth in the nineteen-nineties. Although the I.P.C.C., along with scores of other scientific bodies, has declared that the warming of the earth is unequivocal, few countries have demonstrated the political will required to act—perhaps least of all the United States, which consumes more energy than any nation other than China, and, last year, more than it ever had before. The Obama Administration has failed to pass any meaningful climate legislation. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, has yet to settle on a clear position. Last year, he said he believed the world was getting warmer—and humans were a cause. By October, he had retreated. “My view is that we don’t know what is causing climate change on this planet,” he said, adding that spending huge sums to try to reduce CO 2 emissions “is not the right course for us.” China, which became the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases several years ago, constructs a new coal-burning power plant nearly every week. With each passing year, goals become exponentially harder to reach, and global reductions along the lines suggested by the I.P.C.C. seem more like a “pious wish,” to use the words of the Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, who in 1995 received a Nobel Prize for his work on ozone depletion. “Most nations now recognize the need to shift to a low-carbon economy, and nothing should divert us from the main priority of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions,’’ Lord Rees of Ludlow wrote in his 2009 forward to a highly influential report on geoengineering released by the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of sciences. “But if such reductions achieve too little, too late, there will surely be pressure to consider a ‘plan B’—to seek ways to counteract climatic effects of green-house gas emissions.’’ [cartoon id="a16537"] While that pressure is building rapidly, some climate activists oppose even holding discussions about a possible Plan B, arguing, as the Norfolk protesters did in September, that it would be perceived as indirect permission to abandon serious efforts to cut emissions. Many people see geoengineering as a false solution to an existential crisis—akin to encouraging a heart-attack patient to avoid exercise and continue to gobble fatty food while simply doubling his dose of Lipitor. “The scientist’s focus on tinkering with our entire planetary system is not a dynamic new technological and scientific frontier, but an expression of political despair,” Doug Parr, the chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, has written.
During the 1974 Mideast oil crisis, the American engineer Hewitt Crane, then working at S.R.I. International, realized that standard measurements for sources of energy—barrels of oil, tons of coal, gallons of gas, British thermal units—were nearly impossible to compare. At a time when these commodities were being rationed, Crane wondered how people could conserve resources if they couldn’t even measure them. The world was burning through twenty-three thousand gallons of oil every second. It was an astonishing figure, but one that Crane had trouble placing into any useful context. Crane devised a new measure of energy consumption: a three-dimensional unit he called a cubic mile of oil. One cubic mile of oil would fill a pool that was a mile long, a mile wide, and a mile deep. Today, it takes three cubic miles’ worth of fossil fuels to power the world for a year. That’s a trillion gallons of gas. To replace just one of those cubic miles with a source of energy that will not add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere—nuclear power, for instance—would require the construction of a new atomic plant every week for fifty years; to switch to wind power would mean erecting thousands of windmills each month. It is hard to conceive of a way to replace that much energy with less dramatic alternatives. It is also impossible to talk seriously about climate change without talking about economic development. Climate experts have argued that we ought to stop emitting greenhouse gases within fifty years, but by then the demand for energy could easily be three times what it is today: nine cubic miles of oil. The planet is getting richer as well as more crowded, and the pressure to produce more energy will become acute long before the end of the century. Predilections of the rich world—constant travel, industrial activity, increasing reliance on meat for protein—require enormous physical resources. Yet many people still hope to solve the problem of climate change just by eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions. “When people talk about bringing emissions to zero, they are talking about something that will never happen,’’ Ken Caldeira told me. “Because that would require a complete alteration in the way humans are built.” Caldeira began researching geoengineering almost by accident. For much of his career, he has focussed on the implications of ocean acidification. During the nineteen-nineties, he spent a year in the Soviet Union, at the Leningrad lab of Mikhail Budyko, who is considered the founder of physical climatology. It was Budyko, in the nineteen-sixties, who first suggested cooling the earth by putting sulfur particles in the sky. “In the nineteen-nineties, when I was working at Livermore, we had a meeting in Aspen to discuss the scale of the energy-system transformation needed in order to address the climate problem,’’ Caldeira said. “Among the people who attended was Lowell Wood, a protégé of Edward Teller. Wood is a brilliant but sometimes erratic man . . . lots of ideas, some better than others.” At Aspen, Wood delivered a talk on geoengineering. In the presentation, he explained, as he has many times since, that shielding the earth properly could deflect one or two per cent of the sunlight that reaches the atmosphere. That, he said, would be all it would take to counter the worst effects of warming. David Keith was in the audience with Caldeira that day in Aspen. Keith now splits his time between Harvard and Calgary, where he runs Carbon Engineering, a company that is developing new technology to capture CO 2 from the atmosphere—at a cost that he believes would make it sensible to do so. At the time, though, both men considered Wood’s idea ridiculous. “We said this will never happen,’’ Caldeira recalled. “We were so certain Wood was nuts, because we assumed you can change the global mean temperature, but you will still get seasonal and regional patterns you can’t correct. We were in the back of the room, and neither of us could believe it.” Caldeira decided to prove his point by running a computer simulation of Wood’s approach. Scenarios for future climate change are almost always developed using powerful three-dimensional models of the earth and its atmosphere. They tend to be most accurate when estimating large numbers, like average global temperatures. Local and regional weather patterns are more difficult to predict, as anyone who has relied on a five-day weather forecast can understand. Still, in 1998 Caldeira tested the idea, and, “much to my surprise, it seemed to work and work well,” he told me. It turned out that reducing sunlight offset the effect of CO 2 both regionally and seasonally. Since then, his results have been confirmed by several other groups. Recently, Caldeira and colleagues at Carnegie and Stanford set out to examine whether the techniques of solar-radiation management would disrupt the sensitive agricultural balance on which the earth depends. Using two models, they simulated climates with carbon-dioxide levels similar to those which exist today. They then doubled those concentrations to reflect levels that would be likely in several decades if current trends continue unabated. Finally, in a third set of simulations, they doubled the CO 2 in the atmosphere, but added a layer of sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere, which would deflect about two per cent of incoming sunlight from the earth. The data were then applied to crop models that are commonly used to project future yields. Again, the results were unexpected. Farm productivity, on average, went up. The models suggested that precipitation would increase in the northern and middle latitudes, and crop yields would grow. In the tropics, though, the results were significantly different. There heat stress would increase, and yields would decline. “Climate change is not so much a reduction in productivity as a redistribution,’’ Caldeira said. “And it is one in which the poorest people on earth get hit the hardest and the rich world benefits”—a phenomenon, he added, that is not new. “I have two perspectives on what this might mean,’’ he said. “One says: humans are like rats or cockroaches. We are already living from the equator to the Arctic Circle. The weather has already become .7 degrees warmer, and barely anyone has noticed or cares. And, yes, the coral reefs might become extinct, and people from the Seychelles might go hungry. But they have gone hungry in the past, and nobody cared. So basically we will live in our gated communities, and we will have our TV shows and Chicken McNuggets, and we will be O.K. The people who would suffer are the people who always suffer. “There is another way to look at this, though,’’ he said. “And that is to compare it to the subprime-mortgage crisis, where you saw that a few million bad mortgages led to a five-per-cent drop in gross domestic product throughout the world. Something that was a relatively small knock to the financial system led to a global crisis. And that could certainly be the case with climate change. But five per cent is an interesting figure, because in the Stern Report’’—an often cited review led by the British economist Nicholas Stern, which signalled the alarm about greenhouse-gas emissions by focussing on economics—“they estimated climate change would cost the world five per cent of its G.D.P. Most economists say that solving this problem is one or two per cent of G.D.P. The Clean Water and Clean Air Acts each cost about one per cent of G.D.P.,” Caldeira continued. “We just had a much worse shock to our banking system. And it didn’t even get us to reform the economy in any significant way. So why is the threat of a five-per-cent hit from climate change going to get us to transform the energy system?”
Solar-radiation management, which most reports have agreed is technologically feasible, would provide, at best, a temporary solution to rapid warming—a treatment but not a cure. There are only two ways to genuinely solve the problem: by drastically reducing emissions or by removing the CO 2 from the atmosphere. Trees do that every day. They “capture” carbon dioxide in their leaves, metabolize it in the branch system, and store it in their roots. But to do so on a global scale would require turning trillions of tons of greenhouse-gas emissions into a substance that could be stored cheaply and easily underground or in ocean beds. Until recently, the costs of removing carbon from the atmosphere on that scale have been regarded by economists as prohibitive. CO 2 needs to be heated in order to be separated out; using current technology, the expense would rival that of creating an entirely new energy system. Typically, power plants release CO 2 into the atmosphere through exhaust systems referred to as flues. The most efficient way we have now to capture CO 2 is to remove it from flue gas as the emissions escape. Over the past five years, several research groups—one of which includes David Keith’s company, Carbon Engineering, in Calgary—have developed new techniques to extract carbon from the atmosphere, at costs that may make it economically feasible on a larger scale. [cartoon id="a16513"] Early this winter, I visited a demonstration project on the campus of S.R.I. International, the Menlo Park institution that is a combination think tank and technological incubator. The project, built by Global Thermostat, looked like a very high-tech elevator or an awfully expensive math problem. “When I called chemical engineers and said I want to do this on a planetary scale, they laughed,’’ Peter Eisenberger, Global Thermostat’s president, told me. In 1996, Eisenberger was appointed the founding director of the Earth Institute, at Columbia University, where he remains a professor of earth and environmental sciences. Before that, he spent a decade running the materials research institute at Princeton University, and nearly as much time at Exxon, in charge of research and development. He believes he has developed a system to capture CO 2 from the atmosphere at low heat and potentially at low cost. The trial project is essentially a five-story brick edifice specially constructed to function like a honeycomb. Global Thermostat coats the bricks with chemicals called amines to draw CO 2 from the air and bind with it. The carbon dioxide is then separated with a proprietary method that uses low-temperature heat—something readily available for free, since it is a waste product of many power plants. “Using low-temperature heat changes the equation,’’ Eisenberger said. He is an excitable man with the enthusiasm of a graduate student and the manic gestures of an orchestra conductor. He went on to explain that the amine coating on the bricks binds the CO 2 at the molecular level, and the amount it can capture depends on the surface area; honeycombs provide the most surface space possible per square metre. There are two groups of honey-combs that sit on top of each other. As Eisenberger pointed out, “You can only absorb so much CO 2 at once, so when the honeycomb is full it drops into a lower section.” Steam heats and releases the CO 2 —and the honeycomb rises again. (Currently, carbon dioxide is used commercially in carbonated beverages, brewing, and pneumatic drying systems for packaged food. It is also used in welding. Eisenberger argues that, ideally, carbon waste would be recycled to create an industrial form of photosynthesis, which would help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.) Unlike some other scientists engaged in geoengineering, Eisenberger is not bothered by the notion of tinkering with nature. “We have devised a system that introduces no additional threats into the environment,’’ he told me. “And the idea of interfering with benign nature is ridiculous. The Bambi view of nature is totally false. Nature is violent, amoral, and nihilistic. If you look at the history of this planet, you will see cycles of creation and destruction that would offend our morality as human beings. But somehow, because it’s ‘nature,’ it’s supposed to be fine.’’ Eisenberger founded and runs Global Thermostat with Graciela Chichilnisky, an Argentine economist who wrote the plan, adopted in 2005, for the international carbon market that emerged from the Kyoto Climate talks. Edgar Bronfman, Jr., an heir to the Seagram fortune, is Global Thermostat’s biggest investor. (The company is one of the finalists for Richard Branson’s Virgin Earth Challenge prize. In 2007, Branson offered a cash prize of twenty-five million dollars to anyone who could devise a process that would drain large quantities of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.) “What is fascinating for me is the way the innovation process has changed,’’ Eisenberger said. “In the past, somebody would make a discovery in a laboratory and say, ‘What can I do with this?’ And now we ask, ‘What do we want to design?,’ because we believe there is powerful enough knowledge to do it. That is what my partner and I did.” The pilot, which began running last year, works on a very small scale, capturing about seven hundred tons of CO 2 a year. (By comparison, an automobile puts out about six tons a year.) Eisenberger says that it is important to remember that it took more than a century to assemble the current energy system: coal and gas plants, factories, and the worldwide transportation network that has been responsible for depositing trillions of tons of CO 2 into the atmosphere. “We are not going to get it all out of the atmosphere in twenty years,’’ he said. “It will take at least thirty years to do this, but if we start now that is plenty of time. You would just need a source of low-temperature heat—factories anywhere in the world are ideal.” He envisions a network of twenty thousand such devices scattered across the planet. Each would cost about a hundred million dollars—a two-trillion-dollar investment spread out over three decades. “There is a strong history of the system refusing to accept something new,” Eisenberger said. “People say I am nuts. But it would be surprising if people didn’t call me crazy. Look at the history of innovation! If people don’t call you nuts, then you are doing something wrong.” |
Jeremy Hammond is a member of the hacktivist network Anonymous and a gifted computer programer whose case has attracted the attention of activists, civil libertarians and those concerned about the rights of whistleblowers. He is currently spending a decade in prison for allegedly disclosing information about the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), revealing that they had been spying on human rights defenders at the behest of corporations and governments. WikiLeaks published these files in partnership with 29 media organisations worldwide as the Global Intelligence Files.
After being threatened with 40 years to life in prison for his brave actions and suffering numerous injustices at the hands of the legal system, Jeremy accepted a non-cooperating plea deal to one count of violating the arcane and draconian Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Despite lodging nearly 265 letters of support calling for leniency, Jeremy was sentenced to the maximum allowed under his plea agreement and is currently serving his ten-year sentence at a medium-security federal prison in Manchester, Kentucky.
Since his arrest in March of 2012, Jeremy has been frequently cut off from his friends and family, and punished with extensive stays in solitary confinement – treatment normally reserved for the most egregious offences. Jeremy did nothing for personal gain and everything in hope of making the world a better place. Scheduled for release 22 February 2020, Jeremy needs our support now more than ever. |
Photo: The flogging of Raif Badawi has sparked public outcry around the world. © Aleksandra Zielińska
Tomorrow marks eight weeks since the Saudi Arabian authorities publicly flogged the blogger and activist Raif Badawi, sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for “insulting Islam” and founding an online forum for political debate.
After his first session of 50 lashes in front of a mosque in Jeddah on 9 January, a doctor advised prison authorities that his wounds had not healed sufficiently for him to undergo the second round of this brutal punishment.
The following Friday, while a medical committee had advised that Raif Badawi should not be flogged because of high blood pressure, another prison doctor insisted that there was nothing wrong with him and that he should be flogged. Then, for five consecutive weeks the Friday floggings were not carried out for reasons that remain unknown. It is anybody’s guess whether the next part of his sentence will be carried out tomorrow.
Raif Badawi has made headlines around the world. But his case is just the tip of the iceberg for the Gulf Kingdom’s appalling human rights record. Here are 10 sobering facts from Amnesty International’s research:
Cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments Saudi Arabia’s courts continue to impose sentences of flogging as punishment for many offences, often following unfair trials. Besides Raif Badawi, in the past two years the human rights defenders Mikhlif bin Daham al-Shammari and Omar al-Sa’id were sentenced to 200 and 300 lashes, respectively, and Filipino domestic worker Ruth Cosrojas was sentenced to 300. Amputations and cross-amputations are also carried out as punishment for some crimes. Spike in executions Saudi Arabia is among the world’s top executioners, with dozens of people being put to death annually, many in public beheadings. So far this year 40 people have been executed – almost four times the equivalent number for this time last year. Crackdown on activists Besides Raif Badawi, dozens more outspoken activists remain behind bars, simply for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. The authorities have targeted the small but vocal community of human rights defenders, including by using anti-terrorism laws to suppress their peaceful actions to expose and address human rights violations. No space for dissent All public gatherings, including demonstrations, remain prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those who defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as “inciting people against the authorities”. Systematic discrimination against women Women and girls remain subject to discrimination in law and practice, with laws that subordinate their status to men, particularly in relation to family matters such as marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance. Women who supported a campaign against a de facto ban on women drivers face the threat of arrest and other harassment and intimidation. Routine torture in custody Former detainees, trial defendants and others have told Amnesty International that the security forces’ use of torture and other ill-treatment remains common and widespread, and that those responsible are never brought to justice. Arbitrary arrests and detentions Scores of people have been arrested and detained in pre-trial detention for six months or more, which breaches the Kingdom’s own criminal codes. Detainees are frequently held incommunicado during their interrogation and denied access to their lawyers. Some human rights activists have been detained without charge or trial for more than two years. Entrenched religious discrimination Members of the Kingdom’s Shi’a minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face entrenched discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Shi’a activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Mass deportation of migrant workers According to the Interior Ministry, a crackdown on irregular foreign migrant workers in November 2013 led to the deportation of more than 370,000 people. Some 18,000 were still being detained last March. Thousands of people were summarily returned to Somalia, Yemen or other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses. What happens in the Kingdom, stays in the Kingdom The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organizations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact us.
Take Action: Five ways you can help Raif Badawi |
GETTY Sead Kolasinac attended Schalke's final game of the season as a fan
Sead Kolasinac is out of contract with Schalke this summer and has reportedly agreed a deal to join Arsenal. The left-back is said to have signed a five-year contract with the Gunners and will link up with his new team in July. However, Kolasinac, who was banned for Schalke's final game of the season on Saturday against Ingolstadt, did not want to miss the opportunity to bid farewell to the club. And the 23-year-old did so in style, attending the match as a fan, dressed head-to-toe in Schalke colours and sitting among the travelling supporters.
The Bundesliga's official twitter account posted a picture of the defender with the fans, writing: "Kolasinac is suspended for Schalke's last game. "He's there with the fans. Class gesture, and an ace retro shirt!" Kolasinac is expected to link up with Arsenal in the summer as a long-term replacement for the ageing Nacho Monreal. Kieran Gibbs' future at the Emirates is also in doubt, having hardly featured this term for the Gunners.
Paper gossip: Neymar to Man United, Arsenal board torn, Mourinho chases Chelsea ace Sun, May 21, 2017 Express Sport brings you the best from today's back pages Play slideshow Sunday Express 1 of 8 Sunday Express |
'Recently, on TV, we saw how the Paul McGann Doctor died - now it's time to find out he lived.' Steven Moffat
The Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) is an enthusiastic figure who explores the universe for the sheer love of it: though always ready to tackle problems when they arise, he relies on brilliant improvisation rather than elaborate plans.
He is passionate, direct, sympathetic and emotionally accessible, yet this is balanced by occasional feelings of self-doubt and weariness of his endless battles against evil.
After the shocking end of The Eighth Doctor Adventures: To the Death, he's a man dealing with loss and hunting for new meaning in his life. He found some solace in the company of Molly O'Sullivan, a voluntary aid detachment First World War nurse, but where will his travels take him next, who will he meet, and what enemies will he be facing? |
Man 'locked in cubbyhouse, forced to clean'
Updated
Police have charged a couple with holding a man captive for six months and forcing him to clean their house in the central western New South Wales town of Bathurst.
It is believed the 26-year-old man moved in with the couple at their home on the outskirts of Bathurst as a lodger in February.
He has told officers he was locked inside a cubbyhouse in the lounge room and denied food or medical treatment.
Police say he had his mobile phone confiscated and was repeatedly assaulted, at times with a baseball bat.
He was found in an emaciated and dehydrated state, suffering rib and spinal fractures, a punctured lung and a fractured jaw, and weighing just 40 kilograms.
The man, whose normal body weight was 70 kilograms, was rushed to Bathurst Base Hospital and later transferred to Westmead Hospital.
A 41-year-old man and 46-year-old woman were arrested yesterday and refused bail.
They will face court in October on 27 charges of kidnapping, assault and grievous bodily harm.
Topics: assault, law-crime-and-justice, crime, bathurst-2795, australia, nsw
First posted |
Nevada Divorce Laws Residency and Filing Requirements: In order to file for a divorce in Nevada, residency requirements must be met for the court to accept the case. If the court discovers it does not have jurisdictional rights to hear the case it will not be accepted or it will eventually be dismissed. The requirements are as follows:
Divorce from the bonds of matrimony may be obtained by verified complaint to the district court of any county: (a) In which the cause therefor accrued; (b) In which the defendant resides or may be found; (c) In which the plaintiff resides; (d) In which the parties last cohabited; or (e) If plaintiff resided 6 weeks in the State before suit was brought.
Unless the cause of action accrued within the county while the plaintiff and defendant were actually domiciled therein, no court has jurisdiction to grant a divorce unless either the plaintiff or defendant has been resident of the State for a period of not less than 6 weeks preceding the commencement of the action. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 020) Start Your Nevada Divorce Online - we deliver you options. Grounds for Filing: The Complaint for Divorce must declare the appropriate Nevada grounds upon which the divorce is being sought. The appropriate lawful ground will be that which the parties agree upon and can substantiate, or that which the filing spouse desires to prove to the court. The divorce grounds are as follows:
Divorce from the bonds of matrimony may be obtained for any of the following causes:
No Fault:
1. When the husband and wife have lived separate and apart for 1 year without cohabitation the court may, in its discretion, grant an absolute decree of divorce at the suit of either party. 2. Incompatibility.
Fault:
1. Insanity existing for 2 years prior to the commencement of the action. Upon this cause of action the court, before granting a divorce, shall require corroborative evidence of the insanity of the defendant at that time. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 010)
Filing Spouse Title: Plaintiff. The Plaintiff is the spouse who initiates the filing procedure with the family law or domestic relations court.
Non-Filing Spouse Title: Defendant. The Defendant is the spouse who does not file the initial divorce papers, but rather receives them by service.
Court Name: In the District Court for __________ County, Nevada. This is the Nevada court where the divorce will be filed. The court will assign a case number and have jurisdictional rights to facilitate and grant the orders concerning, but not limited to: property and debt division, support, custody, and visitation. The name of the court is clearly represented at the top of all documents that are filed.
Primary Documents: Complaint for Divorce and Decree of Divorce. These are the essential documents needed to start and finalize a divorce according to Nevada law. There are anywhere from ten to twenty other documents that may be required throughout the filing process. A few other documents that are typically filed during the process are: Civil Cover Sheet, Family Court Cover Sheet, Marital Settlement Agreement, Affidavit of Resident Witness Form, and Certificate of Mailing. Read more about Nevada divorce forms
Court Clerk's Title: District Clerk's Office. The clerk or the clerk's assistants will be the people managing your paperwork with the court. The clerk's office will keep the parties and the lawyers informed throughout the process in regards to additional paperwork that is needed, further requirements, and hearing dates and times.
Property Distribution: Nevada is a "Community Property" state. Community property is all property that was acquired during the marriage. This property will be divided equally (50-50) by the court if the parties are not able to come to an agreement.
In granting a divorce, the court shall dispose of any property held in joint tenancy (community property). If a party has made a contribution of separate property to the acquisition or improvement of property held in joint tenancy, the court may provide for the reimbursement of that party for his or her contribution. The amount of reimbursement must not exceed the amount of the contribution of separate property that can be traced to the acquisition or improvement of property held in joint tenancy, without interest or any adjustment because of an increase in the value of the property held in joint tenancy. The amount of reimbursement must not exceed the value, at the time of the disposition, of the property held in joint tenancy for which the contribution of separate property was made.
In determining whether to provide for the reimbursement, in whole or in part, of a party who has contributed separate property, the court shall consider: (a) The intention of the parties in placing the property in joint tenancy; (b) The length of the marriage; and (c) Any other factor which the court deems relevant in making a just and equitable disposition of that property. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 150) Read more about Nevada property division
Restoration or Name Change: In all suits for divorce, if a divorce is granted, the court may, for just and reasonable cause and by an appropriate order embodied in its decree, change the name of the wife to any former name which she has legally borne. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 130)
Spousal Support: Not all cases involve support from one spouse to the other. The obligation of one spouse to support the other financially for a temporary or permanent basis is decided on a case-by-case basis as agreed to by the parties or at the court's discretion.
In granting a divorce the court shall consider; The respective merits of the spouses; the post divorce financial condition of each spouse; which spouse actually acquired the property being used for support; and the need to grant alimony to a spouse for the purpose of obtaining training or education relating to a job, career or profession.
In addition to any other factors the court considers relevant in determining whether such alimony should be granted, the court shall consider: (a) Whether the spouse who would pay such alimony has obtained greater job skills or education during the marriage; and (b) Whether the spouse who would receive such alimony provided financial support while the other spouse obtained job skills or education. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 150) Read more about Nevada alimony/spousal support
Child Custody: When minor children are involved in a divorce, the Nevada courts will do everything possible to help lessen the emotional trauma the children may be experiencing. If the parents cannot come to an agreement regarding the issues involving the children, the court will establish the custody order at its discretion.
In determining custody of a minor child in an action, the sole consideration of the court is the best interest of the child. If it appears to the court that joint custody would be in the best interest of the child, the court may grant custody to the parties jointly.
Preference must not be given to either parent for the sole reason that the parent is the mother or the father of the child.
In determining the best interest of the child, the court shall consider, among other things: (a) The wishes of the child if the child is of sufficient age and capacity to form an intelligent preference as to his custody; (b) Any nomination by a parent or a guardian for the child; and (c) Whether either parent or any other person seeking custody has engaged in an act of domestic violence against the child, a parent of the child or any other person residing with the child. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 480, 490)
Read more about Nevada child custody
Child Support: Nevada child support guidelines uses the Percentage of Income Formula which calculates the support obligation as a percentage of the income of the non-custodial parent who is obligated to support the child. This method simply applies a percentage to the income of the parent according to the number of children requiring support.
The state of Nevada has child support guidelines devised for determining the appropriate child support amount. These guidelines will be applied to any case in which the parents can not agree on a reasonable month obligation. When applying the guidelines, the court will also consider several other factors that will help determine whether or not it is appropriate to deviate form the amount proposed by the use of the guidelines worksheet.
The court shall consider the following factors when adjusting the amount of support of a child upon specific findings of fact: (a) The cost of health insurance; (b) The cost of child care; (c) Any special educational needs of the child; (d) The age of the child; (e) The responsibility of the parents for the support of others; (f) The value of services contributed by either parent; (g) Any public assistance paid to support the child; (h) Any expenses reasonably related to the mother's pregnancy and confinement; (i) The cost of transportation of the child to and from visitation if the custodial parent moved with the child from the jurisdiction of the court which ordered the support and the noncustodial parent remained; (j) The amount of time the child spends with each parent; (k) Any other necessary expenses for the benefit of the child; and (l) The relative income of both parents. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 230, 070, 080, 090) Read more about Nevada child support
Copyright Notice:The above synopsis of Nevada divorce laws is original material which is owned and copyrighted by Divorce Source, Inc. This material has been adapted from applicable state laws and unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. Violation of this notice will result in immediate legal action.
In order to file for a divorce in Nevada, residency requirements must be met for the court to accept the case. If the court discovers it does not have jurisdictional rights to hear the case it will not be accepted or it will eventually be dismissed. The requirements are as follows:Divorce from the bonds of matrimony may be obtained by verified complaint to the district court of any county: (a) In which the cause therefor accrued; (b) In which the defendant resides or may be found; (c) In which the plaintiff resides; (d) In which the parties last cohabited; or (e) If plaintiff resided 6 weeks in the State before suit was brought.Unless the cause of action accrued within the county while the plaintiff and defendant were actually domiciled therein, no court has jurisdiction to grant a divorce unless either the plaintiff or defendant has been resident of the State for a period of not less than 6 weeks preceding the commencement of the action. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 020)The Complaint for Divorce must declare the appropriate Nevada grounds upon which the divorce is being sought. The appropriate lawful ground will be that which the parties agree upon and can substantiate, or that which the filing spouse desires to prove to the court. The divorce grounds are as follows:Divorce from the bonds of matrimony may be obtained for any of the following causes:No Fault:1. When the husband and wife have lived separate and apart for 1 year without cohabitation the court may, in its discretion, grant an absolute decree of divorce at the suit of either party. 2. Incompatibility.Fault:1. Insanity existing for 2 years prior to the commencement of the action. Upon this cause of action the court, before granting a divorce, shall require corroborative evidence of the insanity of the defendant at that time. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 010)Plaintiff. The Plaintiff is the spouse who initiates the filing procedure with the family law or domestic relations court.Defendant. The Defendant is the spouse who does not file the initial divorce papers, but rather receives them by service.In the District Court for __________ County, Nevada. This is the Nevada court where the divorce will be filed. The court will assign a case number and have jurisdictional rights to facilitate and grant the orders concerning, but not limited to: property and debt division, support, custody, and visitation. The name of the court is clearly represented at the top of all documents that are filed.Complaint for Divorce and Decree of Divorce. These are the essential documents needed to start and finalize a divorce according to Nevada law. There are anywhere from ten to twenty other documents that may be required throughout the filing process. A few other documents that are typically filed during the process are: Civil Cover Sheet, Family Court Cover Sheet, Marital Settlement Agreement, Affidavit of Resident Witness Form, and Certificate of Mailing.District Clerk's Office. The clerk or the clerk's assistants will be the people managing your paperwork with the court. The clerk's office will keep the parties and the lawyers informed throughout the process in regards to additional paperwork that is needed, further requirements, and hearing dates and times.Nevada is a "Community Property" state. Community property is all property that was acquired during the marriage. This property will be divided equally (50-50) by the court if the parties are not able to come to an agreement.In granting a divorce, the court shall dispose of any property held in joint tenancy (community property). If a party has made a contribution of separate property to the acquisition or improvement of property held in joint tenancy, the court may provide for the reimbursement of that party for his or her contribution. The amount of reimbursement must not exceed the amount of the contribution of separate property that can be traced to the acquisition or improvement of property held in joint tenancy, without interest or any adjustment because of an increase in the value of the property held in joint tenancy. The amount of reimbursement must not exceed the value, at the time of the disposition, of the property held in joint tenancy for which the contribution of separate property was made.In determining whether to provide for the reimbursement, in whole or in part, of a party who has contributed separate property, the court shall consider: (a) The intention of the parties in placing the property in joint tenancy; (b) The length of the marriage; and (c) Any other factor which the court deems relevant in making a just and equitable disposition of that property. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 150)In all suits for divorce, if a divorce is granted, the court may, for just and reasonable cause and by an appropriate order embodied in its decree, change the name of the wife to any former name which she has legally borne. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 130)Not all cases involve support from one spouse to the other. The obligation of one spouse to support the other financially for a temporary or permanent basis is decided on a case-by-case basis as agreed to by the parties or at the court's discretion.In granting a divorce the court shall consider; The respective merits of the spouses; the post divorce financial condition of each spouse; which spouse actually acquired the property being used for support; and the need to grant alimony to a spouse for the purpose of obtaining training or education relating to a job, career or profession.In addition to any other factors the court considers relevant in determining whether such alimony should be granted, the court shall consider: (a) Whether the spouse who would pay such alimony has obtained greater job skills or education during the marriage; and (b) Whether the spouse who would receive such alimony provided financial support while the other spouse obtained job skills or education. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 150)When minor children are involved in a divorce, the Nevada courts will do everything possible to help lessen the emotional trauma the children may be experiencing. If the parents cannot come to an agreement regarding the issues involving the children, the court will establish the custody order at its discretion.In determining custody of a minor child in an action, the sole consideration of the court is the best interest of the child. If it appears to the court that joint custody would be in the best interest of the child, the court may grant custody to the parties jointly.Preference must not be given to either parent for the sole reason that the parent is the mother or the father of the child.In determining the best interest of the child, the court shall consider, among other things: (a) The wishes of the child if the child is of sufficient age and capacity to form an intelligent preference as to his custody; (b) Any nomination by a parent or a guardian for the child; and (c) Whether either parent or any other person seeking custody has engaged in an act of domestic violence against the child, a parent of the child or any other person residing with the child. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 480, 490)Nevada child support guidelines uses the Percentage of Income Formula which calculates the support obligation as a percentage of the income of the non-custodial parent who is obligated to support the child. This method simply applies a percentage to the income of the parent according to the number of children requiring support.The state of Nevada has child support guidelines devised for determining the appropriate child support amount. These guidelines will be applied to any case in which the parents can not agree on a reasonable month obligation. When applying the guidelines, the court will also consider several other factors that will help determine whether or not it is appropriate to deviate form the amount proposed by the use of the guidelines worksheet.The court shall consider the following factors when adjusting the amount of support of a child upon specific findings of fact: (a) The cost of health insurance; (b) The cost of child care; (c) Any special educational needs of the child; (d) The age of the child; (e) The responsibility of the parents for the support of others; (f) The value of services contributed by either parent; (g) Any public assistance paid to support the child; (h) Any expenses reasonably related to the mother's pregnancy and confinement; (i) The cost of transportation of the child to and from visitation if the custodial parent moved with the child from the jurisdiction of the court which ordered the support and the noncustodial parent remained; (j) The amount of time the child spends with each parent; (k) Any other necessary expenses for the benefit of the child; and (l) The relative income of both parents. (Nevada Statutes - Chapter 125 - Sections: 230, 070, 080, 090) Start Your Nevada Online Divorce Today
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Your Guide to Get Organized and Put Everything in Writing. Nevada is a community property state, which means that unless the spouses agree to divide the marital property differently, the court will split it 50/50 between them. |
The auction was held on July 10th in Biasco in the canton of Ticino and was poorly advertised, online news site Le Matin reported.
Lucia Filippi, the new owner of the La Claustra hotel, said he attended the auction without any intention of purchasing the property. When the auction had eventually kicked off with a call for an opening bid of 1,000 francs ($1,023), he timidly put up his hand and was entirely amazed when no further bids followed.
There were several blunders at the auction. First, another party who wanted to make an initial bid of 100,000 francs ($102,294), suddenly realized he had no money or cheque book with him. Then, because of a procedural mistake, the auction had to be started once again.
“I do not understand why the hotel has gone so cheaply,” Paolo Minotti, secretary of the Ticino section of the Swiss Heritage Society told the website.
The unique hotel is a conversion of an underground artillery fort at the heart of the Gotthard. Some 250 metres underground, the stunningly situated luxury hotel consists of 17 rooms, a restaurant, library, spa and swimming pool, as well as 4,000 square metres of conference space, Le Matin reported.
The hotel, designed by Jean Odermatt as a kind of meditative post-modern monastery, was opened in 2004 after private investors and the Swiss state invested 4 million francs ($4,092,400) to carry out the necessary works.
The hotel was declared bankrupt in 2010 due to insufficient visitors and high operating costs. The electricity bill alone came to 60,000 francs ($61,373) a year.
Filippi has confirmed that he has already had several offers for the hotel. It is not yet clear what he intends to do with it. |
If you ask around about the all time great Challenge seasons, one of them that comes up between people of the older, middle, and new generation of Challenge fans is Cutthroat. I’m personally against big team formats, it allows players to hide, and it’s more a game of dropping dead-weight before the final than actually winning any challenges.
Cutthroat had those dead-weight shedding elements, but the 20k daily missions meant something for the competitors, and by the end, making sure you did not run out of guys also mattered. For Cutthroat, they made all the competitors run to the Gulag where the final 3 people to make it would be the team captains. Dumb twist, making the worst 3 people pick, however it added an element of random that helped the game.
These people were Camila, Shauvon, and Emilee,they drafted in that order, with Camila being on the Red Team, Shauvon being on the Grey Team, and Emilee being on the Blue Team.
The draft went as such:
Atrocious, right? Well, I’m going to fix it today.
Round 1:
Camila selects Derrick K first overall, he is coming off of three straight Challenge victories, and is the smart choice for veteran leadership.
Shauvon selects Johnny second overall, he is coming off of two straight Challenge victories.
Emilee selects Abram third overall, he is a beast, and has already won 2 Challenges.
Round 2:
Camila selects Laurel fourth overall, coming off one of the great rookie seasons all time on Fresh Meat 2.
Shauvon selects Jenn fifth overall, because she had a good reputation as a solid competitor, I guess?
Emilee selects Paula sixth overall, banking on Paula’s endurance for a final.
Round 3:
Camila selects Brad seventh overall, he is a hungry for a win, and has always been a good competitor.
Shauvon selects Dunbar eight overall, people think he was a good competitor for some reason. Not as egregious as picking him first overall.
Emilee selects Tyler ninth overall, after being told to do so by Paula, her Key West cast-mate.
Round 4:
Camila selects Tori tenth overall, thinking she should keep together the married couple, a dumb decision repeated! At least this time Tori was not the first female pick.
Shauvon selects Sarah eleventh overall, knowing Sarah did very well on the Ruins.
Emilee selects Emily twelfth overall, remember this was Emily’s rookie season, and I don’t think anyone had seen DC yet.
Round 5:
Camila selects Dan thirteenth overall, as recommendation by Derrick K.
Shauvon selects Vinny fourteenth overall, due to her attraction.
Emilee select Ty fifteenth overall, just basing on his overall outer physique.
Round 6:
Camila selects Melinda sixteenth overall, with Tori urging her to as Melinda’s good friend.
Shauvon selects Theresa seventeenth overall, for Theresa’s athletic look.
Emilee selects Ayiiia eighteenth overall, Cancun friends.
Round 7:
Camila selects Chet nineteenth overall. Chet has not given them a reason to not pick him, and Brad did a season with him (The Ruins).
Shauvon selects Brandon twentieth overall. Not much is known of him from his Fresh Meat season.
Emilee selects Derek twenty-first overall, another Cancun friend.
Round 8:
Camila selects Cara Maria twenty-second overall, hoping she shows the same potential she did on the Fresh Meat tryout.
Shauvon selects Mandi twenty-third overall, wants another blonde on her team.
Emilee selects Katie twenty-fourth overall, Katie is Katie.
Round 9:
Camila selects Luke twenty-fifth overall, he is not Big Easy.
Shauvon selects JD twenty-sixth overall, he is not Big Easy.
Emilee selects Big Easy twenty-seventh overall, Gauntlet 3.
The New Teams
New Red Team: Derrick K, Brad, Dan, Chet, Luke, Camila, Laurel, Tori, Melinda, Cara Maria
New Grey Team: Johnny, Dunbar, Vinny, Brandon, JD, Shau,von, Jenn, Sarah, Theresa, Mandi
New Blue Team: Abram, Tyler, Ty, Derek, Big Easy, Emilee, Paula, Emily, Ayiiia, Katie
What is obvious here? It’s that the Red Team is far and away the best. Abram captained an amazing Grey Team on the original Cutthroat, but having Laurel made it really easy whenever there were female portions of the competitions. Having solid guys like Derrick K and Brad who can combine to make 1 Abram, gives the Red Team a lot of strength. They also get two solid females in Camila and Tori who I believe are better than the 2010 versions of Sarah and Cara Maria.
The Red Team should be the the best team though! It was a pick up basketball style of draft instead of a snake draft format. Bunim-Murray is lucky that these people are dumb enough to mess up the draft with every other selection, but if you had legitimate good players picking, then this would have been a completely unfair format.
The New Grey Team looks decent on paper, except they have no brains and no leadership, due to this they will falter in all daily missions, and rely on eliminations to form a strong team for the final.
The New Blue Team is hopeless, except for the fact that they have Tyler, Paula, Abram, and Emily S. If they can hold onto that nucleus for the final, we could see them win. All they need to do is shed their dead weight.
Conclusion: The original Cutthroat was incredible season with a ton of fun, an amazing Grey team, and a disappoint finish in the final. The moral story is:
DON’T PICK DUNBAR FIRST OVERALL IN ANYTHING EVER |
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Posted on November 15, 2013, Mike Sharkey Secondary CPU Found in PlayStation 4 Teardown
The original PlayStation 3 included a second CPU, Sony’s Emotion Engine chip, to enable backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 2. Turns out Sony has included a second CPU in the PlayStation 4, too, but at this point it’s unclear precisely why it’s in there.
The folks over at NeoGaf were quick to discover something buried in the iFixit PlayStation 4 teardown: a “Secondary/Low Power Processor for Network Tasks.” The processor is labeled as SCEI (Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.) and it even includes 256 MB of its own Samsung DDR3 SDRAM. (In the picture above of the PS4 motherboard, the primary CPU is outlined in red, the second in yellow.)
The PlayStation 4′s primary CPU is an 8-core AMD Jaguar, so it’s interesting that Sony opted to throw “network tasks” to an entirely different CPU instead of relying on one of the primary CPU’s cores. The folks on NeoGaf are speculating this secondary chip is what enables the PS4 to cache 15 minutes of video recording. That’s significant when you consider the Xbox One is limited to five minutes of video capture.
It’s also possible this secondary chip is linked to Sony’s PS4 partnership with cloud streaming service Gaikai. While not available at launch, Gaikai will eventually provide instant game demos and PlayStation legacy titles on the PS4.
See what you can discover about Sony’s rather elegant looking system in iFixit’s PlayStation 4 teardown. |
Which awards are up for grabs, and who is shortlisted? The Best Fifa Men's Player
Three players have been nominated for the award from an initial shortlist of 24. Last year’s winner Cristiano Ronaldo, has scored 45 goals in 48 appearances this calendar year, including 34 goals for club and 11 for country. These incredible individual statistics are bolstered by Ronaldo winning the Champions League and La Liga in the 2016/17 campaign. Lionel Messi is another unsurprising feature within the best player award, with 49 goals and 11 assists in 50 appearances in 2017. The most expensive player in the world, Neymar is the outside bet to be crowned the greatest footballer on earth.
The Best Fifa football coach award
The best coach award is separated into male and female categories.
Juventus boss, Massimiliano Allegri, after winning the league and Coppa Italia last season. Chelsea manager, Antonio Conte, who in his first season in English football won the Premier League, setting a new record along the way achieving 30 wins in a single season. Finally Real Madrid’s Zinedine Zidane makes the list after winning the Champions League and Los Blancos' first league title for five years.
In the women's section, the the top three comprise of Denmark’s manager Nils Nielsen, who guided her side to the final against Holland in this year European Championships. Lyon coach Gerard Precheur is nominated after winning the Champions League, the French League Cup and the French Cup, while Sarina Wiegman also features after leading Holland to the 2017 European championships.
The Best FIFA goalkeeper award
Gianluigi Buffon of Juventus is nominated, having gone 600 minutes without conceding in the Champions League, while Keylor Navas of Real Madrid won his second consecutive Champions League along with a La Liga title. Manuel Neuer makes up the three-man short list.
The Puskas Award
The Puskas award is for the best goal of the year. This year the three finalists include Deyna Castellanos of Venezuela women's side, Olivier Giroud for his goal for Arsenal, below, and South African goalkeeper Oscarine Masuluke. |
ST. LOUIS -- For the past few days, players, coaches and team officials on the Milwaukee Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals have been trying to squash the notion that the dislike between these two division rivals is anything extraordinary. The hype, they collectively have said, is mostly a media creation, and somewhat of an affront to how both teams take their jobs seriously, professionally.
"I think it's really a disservice to the competition," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said after Game 1 of their National League Championship Series. "I think there are even some fans, or media, that are going to be disappointed if there isn't some crap flying in this series, and that's a shame. I don't want our players and their players to be egged on, and I don't think they will. We're going to play as hard and good against each other as we can."
And through the first two games, it seems both teams have. But on the eve of Game 3, with the NLCS tied at 1-all, there is no denying that the Cardinals have irked some in Milwaukee's organization over the past few days with a decision that some feel is a potential threat to the safety of their family members.
"I've never seen or heard anything like this before," one veteran player said.
The veteran player is referring to the Cardinals' decision to not give the Brewers a dedicated family section in the stands during the games here in St. Louis this week. On the surface, most fans and media probably don't care about something that happens behind the scenes that doesn't impact the game. But with the tensions (perceived or not) already a bit raised for this series, and after hearing about what happened to some family members of the Texas Rangers in the playoffs last year (when fans at Yankee Stadium spilled beer and spit on some of the players' wives), the players said there is a legitimate concern.
"You know I think it's bush [league]," Brewers center fielder Nyjer Morgan said. "Our families, they've got to be secured. It's kind of garbage. We put their [families] in a secure section and then they want to spread ours out. I don't know why they play the mental games, but that right there, they shouldn't play the games right there because that's our family and our family has got to be secure. But that's just them, that's how they operate right there I guess."
The Brewers allotted tickets to family members of the Cardinals in a section behind the nets behind home plate -- to shield them from foul balls -- for the first two games of the NLCS this week in Milwaukee. The Cardinals, who had the same policy in the first round for the families of the Phillies, are not extending the same courtesy.
Instead the family section of allocated tickets -- roughly 130 to 150 tickets -- will be in three party suites down the right-field line, with indoor and outdoor seating and food and beverage. One of the issues is that the other 200 or so tickets for family members and friends are spread throughout the ballpark. That is a concern for the players.
“ You know I think it's bush [league]. Our families, they've got to be secured. It's kind of garbage. We put their [families] in a secure section and then they want to spread ours out ” -- Brewers center fielder Nyjer Morgan
But is it a form of gamesmanship by St. Louis, which some Brewers believe? Or standard operating procedure, a method to ensure the Cardinals are honoring their season-ticket holders with the best possible seats during the postseason?
"I understand it's a very competitive series," said Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak, who was aware of the Brewers' dissatisfaction. "Obviously we play each other because we're in the same division and things can get heated up. But as far as ticket allocation and things of that nature, I don't think any of this is part of gamesmanship. I think, frankly, is what we were trying to accomplish is providing them with a great atmosphere to watch the game in a protected environment."
It is just another example of a divide. Before this series even started, MLB was on alert about tensions spilling onto the field. Joe Torre, MLB's vice president of baseball operations, had a chat with both managers before Game 1, reminding them to not let it escalate.
While the latest issues with the seats may seem inconsequential, the Brewers were upset enough that they alerted the players' union about it, seeking a way to have the family members sit in one section somewhere behind home plate. During the regular season this is standard practice -- including at Busch Stadium. The benefit? That if there are any problems, there is dedicated security able to assist any family members. While most wives, children and extended family aren't recognizable, there are some instances in which a few are. With alcohol, passion and other factors at play -- especially during the playoffs, when emotions are usually heightened -- the last thing the players want, they said, is to have to worry about a thing like seating charts.
The Brewers had a quiet workout on Tuesday. They hope things go just as smoothly at Busch Stadium on Wednesday for Game 3. AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
"When [I worked for] the Rangers we were told not to wear Rangers' gear, and go in and enjoy the game," Brewers general manager Doug Melvin said. "That's not the way it should be. But you'd like to feel safe at the ballpark. That's more of an MLB issue, more of a players' union issue."
The Brewers consulted with the union this week, and people within the ticketing department at MLB also were made aware of the Brewers' concerns. But the seat allocation is not part of the collective bargaining agreement, instead it is a postseason protocol that clubs must adhere to. The Cardinals say they have been doing this for years and this is the first time a club has complained. Chris Narveson, the Brewers' players' union rep, called it a discrepancy between the two organizations.
"We're there to play baseball and you just want to make sure your family is safe in [the] stands so you don't have to worry about them during the game," Narveson said. "It's a tough situation because you don't want to make it into too big of a deal, but at the same time when you're on the field, you don't want to have to worry about it."
While the calls to the union and MLB will likely not affect any real change, the method by the Cardinals is just another example of the little things behind the scenes that irk other players around the league, multiple Brewers said. But at least one Milwaukee player said he could understand from a financial perspective why the Cardinals would spread the families out.
"I think I'm probably in the minority," he said. "I don't mind it but it would be nice if they had seats for our families behind the net."
Melvin said it would be his recommendation that the families not wear any Brewers clothing, but that he hadn't relayed that to his players. He added it was his understanding the issue had been settled. He was asked whether this was another part of the ongoing narrative between these two teams and their mutual dislike for one another.
"I don't know. There's been a lot of talk about all of that," he said. "I think we're two very professional organizations who are very competitive on the field. I haven't noticed where it's gotten to that point in the stands."
While St. Louis fans have the reputation of being among the best in baseball, Melvin and the players conceded that it is better to err on the side of caution. And while the suites could be seen as an upgrade by some, in this instance, it has the Brewers perturbed that some of their attention was focused on dealing with the logistics about the safety of their families.
"It's a family environment, but knowing it's a rival team and fans are going to be a little bit [rowdy]," Morgan said, "hopefully they figure something out and don't let that try and be a distraction to what we're trying to do."
Amy K. Nelson is a staff writer for ESPN.com. She can be reached at [email protected]. |
With guest host Ray Suarez.
Twenty-three percent of Americans say they have no religious affiliation. What do they believe? And what does it mean for the country?
In this February 15, 2016 photo, residents and community members gather at the Sanctuaries DC, a Washington, D.C. based community gathering space for people of all religious and non-religious backgrounds. (Courtesy the Sanctuaries)
When opinion researchers ask about religious affiliation, they lay out the obvious choices — Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu. If you check “No Affiliation,” or “None,” what do we call you? The n-o-n-e, or “Nones,” are the fastest-growing faith group in the country, and a major Democratic Party constituency. After decades of religiously flavored politics, and culture, how will America change? This hour On Point, the rise of the nones.
-- Ray Suarez
Guests
Phil Zuckerman, professor of sociology at Pitzer College. Author of “Faith No More," “Society Without God" and "Living the Secular Life" (@phil_zuckerman)
Angie Thurston, master’s of divinity student at the Harvard Divinity School and co-author, with Casper ter Kuile, of the report, “How We Gather.” President of the Harvard Divinity School Nones.
Deborah Jian Lee, journalist, radio producer and co-founder of One Book, One Church. Author of "Resucing Jesus: How People of Color, Women and Queer Christians Are Reclaiming Evangelicalism." (@deborahjianlee)
From The Reading List
Washington Post: Meet the ‘Nones,’ the Democratic Party’s biggest faith constituency — "A huge group that skews under 40, white and non-immigrant, the Nones want politicians to tone it down not because they’ve made some final determination about God — the vast majority are believers — but because they are fed up with religious institutions they see as corrupt and discriminatory. And in the process, they are rewriting the country’s political discourse on morality."
Pew Research Center: A closer look at America’s rapidly growing religious ‘nones’ — "Overall, religiously unaffiliated people are more concentrated among young adults than other age groups – 35% of Millennials (those born 1981-1996) are 'nones.' In addition, the unaffiliated as a whole are getting even younger. The median age of unaffiliated adults is now 36, down from 38 in 2007 and significantly younger than the overall median age of U.S. adults in 2014 (46)."
NPR News: 'Religious Nones' Are Growing Quickly. Should Republicans Worry? — "There has never been an avowedly atheist president of the U.S., and only two have been unaffiliated with any religion, according to Pew — Thomas Jefferson, who, while fascinated by Jesus' teachings, was considered a deist, and Abraham Lincoln, whose religious beliefs remain a topic of debate. And, as of January, only one member of the current Congress reported being religiously unaffiliated." |
Is it also believable?
That's what some are beginning to wonder on Friday morning, well after the story posted to Facebook by Tu, an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota, had gone viral. Originally posted Wednesday night, Tu's post had been shared more than 20,000 times within a couple days.
It also has more than 5,000 comments, and counting; many of the most recent ones are not supporting Tu's tale of heroism, but ridiculing her and those who shared a story that's now being called into question.
According to Tu, she was walking across the Washington Avenue bridge on the University of Minnesota campus Wednesday when she was accosted by a white man, who was accompanied by a group of friends.
Tu says the man yelled that she should "go back to Asia." Tu was "shocked," and tried to walk away from the man, who she says pursued her, telling her she was being disrespectful.
Tu says the man's call for her to leave the country was especially insulting to her, since she's an American citizen. She also wrote that he blamed "affirmative action" for her getting into the University of Minnesota.
Tu writes she again tried walking away from the man, who grabbed her by the wrist. She told him to let her go, and he refused, despite Tu warning that he would be "injured" if he didn't.
She writes:
"He took my warning as a joke, and said " okay, lets fight then, you can't beat me anyways look at how small and shrimpy you are", and he actually dared to punch me ( more than once). Things got serious really quick cause kathy doesn't mess around with that stuff. Before he could attack me again I used my self defense skills and got out of the hold he had on my wrist and punched him straight up in the throat ( Which honestly I am not apologetic for what so ever)."
Tu then says the man's friends rushed to his aid, accused Tu of "assaulting" her bully, and called the police on her. (Tu's story doesn't specify which police department was called to the scene.) When said cops arrived, they initially took the side of the man and his friends, Tu writes, and she was placed in handcuffs while waiting for them to "check [her] information."
She writes she was eventually taken out of handcuffs, and after hearing a warning delivered in "police jargon" was allowed to leave on her own volition.
It's this last part, about Tu's troubling interaction with the police, that's tripping people up this morning. Neither the University of Minnesota Police Department nor the Minneapolis Police Department has any record of responding to a call on the Washington Avenue Bridge.
"Many people have contacted us about a social media posting about an incident with a female on the Washington Avenue Bridge yesterday," reads a post from the Minneapolis Police Department's Facebook account. "At this time we have not been able to find a record of a police call relating to this incident. If anyone has information please contact us, we would like to talk to the person who posted this on social media."
Likewise, campus police used social media to put out a call for more information about an alleged incident they claim to be unaware of.
We heard complaint from student related 2 Wash bridge yestdy, UMPD didnt respond to bridge or make an arrest — U of MN Police Dept (@UMPDGopher) November 10, 2016
We would like to talk to this individual involved. Please contact 624-COPS so we can look into it — U of MN Police Dept (@UMPDGopher) November 10, 2016
Sorry we don't have many details other than a female said she was assaulted on the Wash bridge and then handcuffed by officers. — U of MN Police Dept (@UMPDGopher) November 10, 2016
Again, UMPD was not involved but want to talk to the female who posted this on social media — U of MN Police Dept (@UMPDGopher) November 10, 2016
City Pages attempted to reach Tu on Thursday and again on Friday. She has not responded.
UPDATE: As of mid-Friday morning, Tu has deleted the Facebook post telling the story of her fight on the Washington Avenue bridge. |
Estland + FÖLJ
Här är Crowns ”nya hem”
avTomas Ros
HOCKEY 2 mars 2017 19:18
Här är Crowns-gängets nya huvudspår.
Ett KHL-lag i Tallinn.
Flera möten i Estland har ägt rum under senvintern.
– Från den dagen vi fick nej från Svenska ishockeyförbundet har vi jobbat varje dag med att hitta andra alternativ. Det behöver jag inte dölja, säger Leif R Carlsson.
Foto: ANDREAS L ERIKSSON / BILDBYRÅN
Ni minns säkert bomben som slog ned i svensk ishockey för ett år sedan.
Svenska Crowns ville in i KHL.
Man hade för avsikt att spela hemmamatcherna i olika arenor i Sverige och delta i världens näst bästa liga.
Det blev inget, hittills i alla fall.
Svenska Ishockeyförbundet sa nej, bland annat. Och projektet, och programförklaringen, fick en del kritik.
Nu har det gått ett år och Crown-gänget, med Leif R Carlsson som ambassadör, jobbar vidare.
Nu är huvudspåret att starta ett KHL-lag i Estlands huvudstad Tallinn.
”Andra alternativ”
Carlsson är inte lika utåtriktad som vid presskonferensen för ett år sedan på Lidingö och vill inte ge några detaljer om planerna.
– Från den dagen vi fick nej från Svenska ishockeyförbundet har vi jobbat varje dag med att hitta andra alternativ. Det behöver jag inte dölja. Men vilka alternativ det är vill jag inte gå in på. Jag kan varken bekräfta eller dementera några detaljer i dagsläget, säger han.
Som ny kedjekamrat till Leif R Carlsson har Per-Erik Holmström tillkommit. Han var initiativtagare till Nordic Wikings som 2005–2006 spelade i Asia League Ice Hockey med nordiska spelare.
Och han har bra kontakter i det kinesiska KHL-laget Kunlun Red Star samt brinner för bandyns utveckling öster om Ryssland. Han lade också ett bud, tillsammans med andra investerare, på NHL-klubben New York Islanders för 15 år.
Bygga upp hockeyn
Tanken är att göra en helhet den här gången.
Bygga upp den estländska ishockeyn och starta både ett seniorlag i KHL samt ett juniorlag, där det kan ingå svenska spelare.
Basen ska vara i Estland och matcherna kan spelas i Tondiraba Jäähall, med en kapacitet på 5900 åskådare. Dinamo Riga har redan spelat två KHL-matcher där inför en utsåld arena i december.
Har ni förhoppningar om att kunna sjösätta ett lag nästa KHL-säsong?
– Det vet jag inte. Det är en sak att få saker muntligt, en annan sak att ha det på papper. Så länge vi inte har något på papper vågar inte jag ha några förväntningar. Det är inget som är säkert, säger Leif R Carlsson.
Enligt uppgift till Sportbladet har Crowns-gänget varit i Tallinn flera gånger den senaste tiden för förhandlingar.
2 mars 2017 19:18 |
Power plants are guzzling water across the United States and increasing the risk of blackouts in the Southeast, where the precious resource is drying up.
"Burning Our Rivers," a new report by the River Network, found that it takes about 40,000 gallons of water to meet the average American household's energy needs, which is five times more than the amount of water used directly in that home.
Of the various modes of power production, hydropower has the biggest water footprint. Each day, enough water evaporates from behind hydroelectric dam reservoirs to meet the demands of more than 50 million people.
Coal-, nuclear- and natural gas- powered plants are also thirsty, in need of water to cool their generators. These energy facilities are the fastest-growing users of freshwater resources and already account for more than half of all fresh surface water withdrawals from rivers. That is more than any other economic sector, including agriculture, write the authors.
More than a quarter of the water fossil-fuel plants take in is turned into steam. The remaining liquid is contaminated with pollutants and excess heat and returned to waterways, where it can kill wildlife and create toxic algae blooms.
"What we are seeing now is the way we produce electricity can threaten our water supplies, and it's already compromising our water quality across the nation," said Wendy Wilson, director of River Network's energy and climate program and author of the new report.
The results found in "Burning Our Rivers" echo a report released last fall by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which also found that conventional power plants are stressing U.S. lakes and rivers by removing too much water or discharging it at extremely warm temperatures, to the detriment of surrounding ecosystems (ClimateWire, Nov. 15, 2011).
In the Southeast, which has been battling a drought for more than a year, the impact of power plants is especially worrisome and could lead to brownouts and blackouts throughout the summer and beyond.
"The conflicts between energy and water needs are ones we've seen before ... and will only worsen as the frequency of drought increases and water temperatures rise driven in part by climate change," said Ulla Reeves, regional program director at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
'Disasters in slow motion'Alabama and Georgia have been particularly hard hit this year, with the drought reaching exceptional levels that are predicted to continue and even worsen through September. Todd Rasmussen, a hydrology professor at the University of Georgia, says that taking strong energy conservation measures may be the only way to avoid losing electricity.
"Worst-case scenario for energy and water shortages later this summer can be avoided if we take time now to prepare," he said. "Unlike a hurricane, tornado or earthquake that strikes quickly, these droughts are disasters in slow motion. It's something that we could prepare for."
The River Network report says the long-term solution to reducing water consumption for power production is to switch from conventional energy sources to wind and photovoltaic solar power, which have almost no water footprint.
Alabama is currently looking at all options for managing its fragile water-energy nexus and to meet Republican Gov. Robert Bentley's call for a comprehensive water plan by 2013. According to Mitch Reid, program director at the Alabama Rivers Alliance, the state has no official water management plan to ensure that users get the water they need while enough is left over to protect the river network itself.
"Efficiency in our water use and making sure that we're not wasting water or wasting electricity, which in turn uses more water, has got to be addressed in part of a comprehensive plan," he said.
The nation needs a plan, too, said Wilson, if it is going to weather the existing and expected water shortages.
"It's not clear that the water and energy agencies are in a process where they are talking about these scenarios and building the resilience that we need to face these kinds of challenges," she said. "Is someone managing the farm here on integrating our water and energy needs? Or are we just praying for rain?"
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500 |
When a local TV host gets into a car accident with an electrician, she didn’t count on one thing: that he would be the two time state champion who had also defended the interstate trophy in the ancient art of Kendo Swords. Because honestly, why would you count on that? It’s patently absurd, clearly some sort of horrible plot contrivance. What the hell is a kendo sword anyways? Certainly nothing a grown man should be messing around with.
The point is, those two end up as Prisoners in the Lost Universe, which looks a heck of a lot like Earth except that there is a kind of tree that grows dinner plates, and another kind that grows pods of orange berries. Just try to wrap your little head around that, and also how a film this derivative and cheap looking came out the same year as Return of the Jedi. One thing it did have in common with that film, however, is the presence of horrible little sidekicks. Return of the Jedi had the Ewoks, and Prisoners has Malachi, who makes the Ewoks look like Martini sipping, bon mot spewing embodiments of class and dignity. Malachi...Damn, now we’re thinking about Malachi again. He’s...He’s just the worst. Ugh.
He’s also joined on the quest by the Green Man, who’s called that because he’s the same shade of blue as a Na’vi, a giant killer baby in a diaper, and a talking vulture. Grab your finest kendo sword and get ready to defend the interstate trophy with Prisoners of the Lost Universe! |
Shaw Capital Management Headlines : Shaw Capital Management August Newsletter: Financial Markets Focusing Europe
April 04,2014 | United States | Business
Factory output expanded at a record pace in April, helped by investment spending associated with the export effort, and overseas demand for European capital equipment, and the trend appears to be cont
United States, April 04,2014/Free-Press-Release.com/ -- http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/sbwire-77603.htm Posted Thursday, February 28 2011 at 7:45 PM CST “ Permalink Factory output expanded at a record pace in April, helped by investment spending associated with the export effort, and overseas demand for European capital equipment, and the trend appears to be continuing. Seoul, South Korea ” (SBWIRE) ” 02/08/2011 ” The big fall in the euro in recent months is clearly having a significant impact on the performance of the euro-zone economy. Shaw Capital Management, Korea “ Investment Innovation & Excellence. We provide the information, insight and expertise that you need to make the right investment choices. Shaw Capital Management Korea typically offers its clients such services as asset allocation and portfolio design; traditional and non-traditional manager review and selection; portfolio implementation; portfolio monitoring and consolidated performance reporting; and other wealth management services, including estate, tax, trust and insurance planning, asset custody, closely held business issues associated with the establishment or expansion of a family office, the formation of family investment partnerships or LLCs, philanthropy, family dynamics and inter-generation issues, etc. Factory output expanded at a record pace in April, helped by investment spending associated with the export effort, and overseas demand for European capital equipment, and the trend appears to be continuing. The major beneficiary has been Germany, but other northern member countries are also involved. However the situation is much less encouraging in Greece, Spain, and Portugal, because they are less competitive in export markets, and are being forced to introduce austerity measures to reduce their fiscal deficits. Domestic demand across the entire euro-zone remains weak, and so, despite the export performance of some member countries, it seems unlikely that the overall growth rate for the zone this year will reach 2%. The European Central Bank remains reasonably optimistic about prospects; but fortunately it has not moved towards an œexit strategy that might involve reversing the measures that were introduced to counter the recession. Short-term interest rates have been left unchanged and close to zero, the programme to provide unlimited three-month loans to the banking system is continuing, and the bank is also still intervening in the markets to buy the bonds of weaker member countries that had been sold heavily because of fears about debt defaults. The bank is therefore continuing to provide support for the system; but it is not really doing enough to offset the concerns about the debt crisis. Greece remains in the eye of the storm; but there have been increasing concerns about the situation in Spain; and the situation has been made worse by the latest warning from the Fitch Ratings agency that it may take further massive asset purchases by the European Central Bank to prevent the sovereign debt crisis in the area escalating out of control. Shaw Capital Management August 2010: Financial Markets Focusing Europe “ There are fears that Spain will need to follow Greece in requesting help from other member countries and the IMF to enable it to avoid a default, and that Portugal, and perhaps even Italy, may also need to be rescued. The pressures on the euro will therefore be intense; and whilst there may well be further support from the Swiss National Bank and others, the future of the single currency system clearly remains very uncertain. The latest modest rally in the euro must therefore be treated with great care. Sterling has recovered from the weakness that developed in May, and is ending the month higher. The economic background in the UK has not provided any real support, and the Bank of England is clearly intending to maintain short-term interest rates at very low levels; but there has been some movement of funds out of the euro into sterling, and the new coalition government in the UK has introduced measures to reduce the massive fiscal deficit that have been well received in the markets and led to an improvement in sentiment. There is clearly a risk that these latest measures in the Budget will depress the level of activity still further, and fail to solve the fiscal problems; but for the moment it seems that the new government is being given the benefit of the doubt. The evidence on the performance of the economy ahead of the Budget announcement was still pointing to a very slow recovery in activity. The manufacturing sector is reasonably buoyant, with exports expanding rapidly; and retail sales also increased more quickly than expected. But unemployment rose again to 2.47 million, and the latest survey from the CBI indicated that the value and volume of business in the services sector fell, and that further weakness was expected in the second half of the ye
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Earlier this week, Amber Coffman released a statement detailing her unfortunate departure from Dirty Projectors and how the end of her relationship with that band’s frontman, David Longstreth, factored into the situation. With that cleared up, she’s now giving us a deeper look into her forthcoming solo album, City of No Reply.
Last year, we heard her sweet, uplifting breakup song “All to Myself”, and now she’s released another song that exudes romantic yearning in “No Coffee”, a soulful dose of rousing folk-pop. Coffman’s breathy vocals do the heavy lifting, with spare electric strums and twinkling keys underscoring a robust chorus: “Baby, I need you in a serious way, I can’t give you all this love when you push me away,” Listen to it below.
“I’m really proud of the album I made and my hope is that people will listen to it on its own terms,” she said in the aforementioned statement. “I’ve waited a long time to share it and I’m looking forward to it.”
Columbia Records will release the record later this year, though a specific date has yet to be announced. |
Simply put, election night 2017 was a fantastic night for the Democratic Party.
First off, the party won convincing victories in the two marquee governors’ races. In Virginia, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam quieted pundits by defeating GOP operative Ed Gillespie. And in New Jersey, financier Phil Murphy defeated Chris Christie’s Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno to retake the governor’s mansion for Democrats.
But the good news for the party didn’t end there. In Virginia, Democrats also won sweeping victories down ballot, particularly in the state’s House of Delegates — including in races that weren’t even on the radar of most electoral analysts. All sorts of Democrats picked up seats there, from conventional establishment types to a democratic socialist to someone who will be the first openly transgender state legislator in the United States. The Republican brand was simply toxic.
All of this is dreadful news for the GOP and President Donald Trump. Even in normal times, it’s difficult for an incumbent president’s party to defend seats in midterm elections. These are not normal times. Virginia’s results suggest Democratic voters have grown extraordinarily energized, particularly in the suburbs. And they suggest GOP control of the House of Representatives will be in real danger in 2018.
Winner: the Democratic Party
All year, it has seemed that Democrats were in disarray. The party’s shocking 2016 defeats had reduced it to a smoking ruin. Bitter wounds from that year’s presidential primary still hadn’t healed. The party fell short in several dramatic House special elections. Its leadership appeared out of touch with its voters. People knew they were against Donald Trump, true, but what were they for?
On Tuesday, though, the Democratic brand appeared to be doing just fine.
The “establishment” top-of-the-ticket nominees who were said not to be exciting base voters — like former Goldman Sachs executive Phil Murphy in New Jersey, and the much-maligned Ralph Northam in Virginia — won their respective races.
But their down-ballot candidates in competitive districts, and even some thought not to be competitive, did extremely well too. At press time, Democrats were within striking distance of retaking the Virginia House of Delegates — a truly stunning result that electoral analysts thought was unthinkable.
These victorious Democratic challengers were diverse — Hala Ayala and Elizabeth Guzman became Virginia’s first Latina state legislators, while Danica Roem will become the entire country’s first openly transgender state legislator. They also varied ideologically — Lee Carter, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, won an underdog victory. All of this goes to show that there’s not necessarily just one path to victory for the party.
Loser: Donald Trump and Republicans
Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for. Don’t forget, Republicans won 4 out of 4 House seats, and with the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2017
It was always clear that 2018 would be an uphill battle for Republicans. The historical trend is unmistakable that once a president is elected, his party almost always has trouble winning off-year elections. Presidents with poor approval ratings, like Donald Trump’s, also tend to see their parties struggle.
Still, the scope of the Republican wipeout in Virginia should strike even more fear into the hearts of GOP incumbents. Control of the state’s House of Delegates was not even thought to be in play, but because of enthusiastic Democratic turnout — which it’s hard to believe wasn’t motivated by backlash against Donald Trump — it may well flip. (Several races hadn’t been called at press time and may head to recounts.)
The GOP came into the night with an enormous 66-34 majority in the statehouse. Many of their incumbents had been around for years and had grown complacent, never expecting a serious challenge.
The same is true in the US House of Representatives. Nearly two-thirds of Republican House members were first elected in 2010, and most have never even run for Congress in a world without Barack Obama in the White House. Now the world has changed. More Republican incumbents are seeing a tough challenge ahead, and many are announcing that they’ll retire to avoid it.
As for Trump himself, the Virginia debacle should be a major warning that he needs to change his political approach — or Democrats could very well retake the House, which would be a disaster for his presidency. Yet he has already become so toxically unpopular to so many voters that it could be too late.
Winner: Ralph Northam, Loser: pundits’ guts
The last 3 weeks of the VA governor's race has been all bad for Dems. https://t.co/7VpSw1nbW7 — Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) November 7, 2017
No Democratic candidate was second-guessed in recent weeks more than Ralph Northam. His campaign was called uninspiring. He was deemed to have no charisma. Liberals excoriated him for hedging in response to Ed Gillespie’s anti-immigrant attacks. Pundits assumed that, like Hillary Clinton, he was about to blow it.
But Northam didn’t just win — he romped. At press time, he led Gillespie by more than 8 points, and some analysts estimated his lead would likely grow further as more votes were counted. It was already clear, though, that he’d outperformed Clinton’s 5-point win in Virginia in 2016 and what polling averages were showing for this race. Turns out the Army doctor wasn’t such a weak and incompetent candidate after all.
Loser: Ed Gillespie’s demagogic campaign
Ed Gillespie was a longtime Republican and lobbyist who hoped to begin a political career in his own right. In 2014, he ran an under-the-radar campaign for US Senate in Virginia, and came shockingly close to upsetting incumbent Mark Warner (he was less than a point away from winning). So in 2016, he started putting things into motion for a run for governor the following year, and the GOP establishment enthusiastically backed him.
Then he found himself in a world where Donald Trump was the president of the United States.
What’s more, the party coalitions were changing — working-class white voters were increasingly drawn to the party by Trump, while educated suburban voters who demographically resembled Ed Gillespie were deserting the party.
So Gillespie made a bet. He thought that he could mobilize Trump voters through an ad campaign emphasizing hot-button culture war issues, but also keep the educated suburbanites on his side with his establishment credentials and an economic pitch.
To many political analysts, it seemed like a promising strategy. But it proved enormously controversial, as Gillespie was heavily criticized for ads stoking fears of criminal immigrant gangs and “sanctuary cities” (which Virginia doesn’t even have).
And in the end, it appears to have backfired spectacularly. Educated suburban voters abandoned Gillespie in droves and overwhelmingly backed Democrats. It’s not clear how much of that was due to a general anti-Trump backlash or Northam’s strength, and how much was due to disgust with Gillespie’s demagogic tactics.
But if Gillespie won, his victory would have sent a message that the Trumpist playbook was the most effective path to Republican victory across the nation. His defeat makes clear that’s not necessarily the case.
Winner: lower-income people in Maine (and maybe Virginia) who soon could be eligible for Medicaid
Obamacare appeared to be on the ropes at the beginning of the year, and most of the Republican bills to repeal it wiped out its expansion of Medicaid. But the GOP efforts to repeal the program derailed, meaning it’s still possible for more states to opt in to the expansion (which the Supreme Court made optional).
Up in Maine, the state legislature has been trying to opt in to the expansion for some time — but five separate efforts to do so have been vetoed by the state’s conservative governor, Paul LePage.
Finally, proponents of the idea decided to go over LePage’s head and take the question directly to voters. On Tuesday, they won overwhelmingly.
That’s not the end of the story — as Sarah Kliff writes, there are ways LePage could still throw a wrench into the process. But the vote is an unmistakable win for Medicaid expansion and indeed Obamacare itself. If implemented, estimates indicate this will result in 80,000 more Maine residents getting health insurance — and other states may look to copy Maine’s playbook. |
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[207.46.100.67]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id t10si8900923wiw.95.2015.05.01.11.09.41 for <[email protected]> (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA bits=128/128); Fri, 01 May 2015 11:09:42 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 207.46.100.67 is neither permitted nor denied by domain of [email protected]) client-ip=207.46.100.67; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 207.46.100.67 is neither permitted nor denied by domain of [email protected]) [email protected] Received: from BL2PR03MB114.namprd03.prod.outlook.com (10.255.230.14) by BL2PR03MB562.namprd03.prod.outlook.com (10.141.91.27) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id 15.1.154.19; Fri, 1 May 2015 18:09:38 +0000 Received: from BL2PR03MB116.namprd03.prod.outlook.com (10.255.230.28) by BL2PR03MB114.namprd03.prod.outlook.com (10.255.230.14) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id 15.1.154.19; Fri, 1 May 2015 18:09:37 +0000 Received: from BL2PR03MB116.namprd03.prod.outlook.com ([169.254.14.25]) by BL2PR03MB116.namprd03.prod.outlook.com ([169.254.14.25]) with mapi id 15.01.0148.019; Fri, 1 May 2015 18:09:37 +0000 From: Huma Abedin <[email protected]> To: Joel Benenson <[email protected]>, Jennifer Palmieri <[email protected]> CC: John Podesta <[email protected]>, Jake Sullivan <[email protected]>, Mandy Grunwald <[email protected]>, Teddy Goff <[email protected]>, Jim Margolis <[email protected]>, =?iso-8859-1?Q?Kristina=0D=0A_Schake?= <[email protected]>, Robby Mook <[email protected]>, Dan Schwerin <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Heads up for call with HRC Thread-Topic: Heads up for call with HRC Thread-Index: AQHQhDZlvmlXz5jVg0mKLAPjL+AzWZ1nZfUAgAAAVYCAAADNgIAAAk/v Date: Fri, 1 May 2015 18:09:36 +0000 Message-ID: <[email protected]> References: <-4969604421429860801@unknownmsgid> <1A484C9C32B526468802B7C2E6FD1BCEB36F6086@mbx031-w1-co-6.exch031.domain.local> <8102991335281125619@unknownmsgid>,<1A484C9C32B526468802B7C2E6FD1BCEB36F61DE@mbx031-w1-co-6.exch031.domain.local> In-Reply-To: <1A484C9C32B526468802B7C2E6FD1BCEB36F61DE@mbx031-w1-co-6.exch031.domain.local> Accept-Language: en-US Content-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: authentication-results: gmail.com; dkim=none (message not signed) header.d=none; x-originating-ip: [104.247.47.194] x-microsoft-antispam: UriScan:;BCL:0;PCL:0;RULEID:;SRVR:BL2PR03MB114;UriScan:;BCL:0;PCL:0;RULEID:;SRVR:BL2PR03MB562; x-microsoft-antispam-prvs: <BL2PR03MB114E7C73148F36E37C37AF0DDD50@BL2PR03MB114.namprd03.prod.outlook.com> x-exchange-antispam-report-test: UriScan:; x-exchange-antispam-report-cfa-test: BCL:0;PCL:0;RULEID:(601004)(5005006)(3002001);SRVR:BL2PR03MB114;BCL:0;PCL:0;RULEID:;SRVR:BL2PR03MB114; x-forefront-prvs: 0563F2E8B7 x-forefront-antispam-report: SFV:NSPM;SFS:(10009020)(6009001)(24454002)(13464003)(51694002)(377454003)(51704005)(122556002)(77156002)(86362001)(50986999)(54356999)(76176999)(40100003)(2950100001)(102836002)(62966003)(92566002)(5001770100001)(36756003)(93886004)(5001920100001)(5001960100002)(66066001)(2656002)(87936001)(46102003)(19580405001)(19580395003)(106116001)(99286002)(117636001);DIR:OUT;SFP:1101;SCL:1;SRVR:BL2PR03MB114;H:BL2PR03MB116.namprd03.prod.outlook.com;FPR:;SPF:None;MLV:sfv;LANG:en; Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable MIME-Version: 1.0 X-MS-Exchange-CrossTenant-originalarrivaltime: 01 May 2015 18:09:36.4490 (UTC) X-MS-Exchange-CrossTenant-fromentityheader: Hosted X-MS-Exchange-CrossTenant-id: cd8891aa-8599-4062-9818-7b7cb05e1dad X-MS-Exchange-Transport-CrossTenantHeadersStamped: BL2PR03MB114 Return-Path: [email protected] X-OriginatorOrg: hrcoffice.com just to give people background here: 1. She believes she needs to do this video is because her integrity is bein= g attacked and she is the only one who can say she didnt make a decision as= secstate based on a donor. 2. Imp point: The foundation has had little luck getting their surrogates b= ooked on any serious shows. So she feels like it has to be someone at her l= evel or WJC level that engages directly in order for there to be any covera= ge of the defense. 3. She doesnt want to continue to have to have press yell these questions a= t her in Nevada and CA and if she doesnt do the video, that is the situatio= n she will be in=20 ________________________________________ From: Joel Benenson <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, May 01, 2015 1:53 PM To: Jennifer Palmieri Cc: John Podesta; Jake Sullivan; Mandy Grunwald; Huma Abedin; Teddy Goff; J= im Margolis; Kristina Schake; Robby Mook; Dan Schwerin Subject: RE: Heads up for call with HRC For some reason I don't have the morning news round up -- can someone send = that to me. -----Original Message----- From: Jennifer Palmieri [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, May 01, 2015 1:51 PM To: Joel Benenson Cc: John Podesta; Jake Sullivan; Mandy Grunwald; Huma Abedin; Teddy Goff; J= im Margolis; Kristina Schake; Robby Mook; Dan Schwerin Subject: Re: Heads up for call with HRC Given this morning's am shows - which were terrible - that is no longer a g= reat argument. Sent from my iPhone > On May 1, 2015, at 1:49 PM, Joel Benenson <[email protected]> wrote: > > Thanks. > Do we have some analysis of nightly news/front pages etc to make the case= that this is not being covered heavily? Or at least enough based on day= to day observation, i.e. not on front pages, not on nightly news or mornin= g news... > > -----Original Message----- > From: Jennifer Palmieri [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Friday, May 01, 2015 1:44 PM > To: John Podesta; Joel Benenson; Jake Sullivan; Mandy Grunwald; Huma > Abedin; Teddy Goff; Jim Margolis; Kristina Schake; Robby Mook; Dan > Schwerin > Subject: Heads up for call with HRC > > While on the phone on a different topic, HRC raised Clinton Cash convo wi= th Jake and me. It was a difficult conversation. So folks should be ready= to explain why we don't think a video makes sense. > > Moreover, my impression is she wants a much stronger response. Which mea= ns engaging more on details that we have to date not found in our interest = to do so. > > Just wanted to update folks. > > Sent from my iPhone |
And, I mean, I get where he's coming from. Instagram is where we see the photos of the lines, the camping chairs, the iceman pours. It's also where we see almost all of beer culture to some degree. Instagram is where the "lifestyle" aspects of beer drinking shine. And the NE IPA—in all its orb-like, orangey, milkeshakey glory—perhaps shines brighter than most. It's awe-inspiring to some as much as it's confusing to others. That's a pretty rad thing to have happening in beer at all.
"New England IPA is a beer style that can be really tasty when it is well made," Oliver concedes, "but it can’t even sit on a shelf for two weeks. It has no shelf life to it at all."
To borrow some of Oliver's own famous retorts: "C’mon man, give it a rest. You want us off your lawn?"
First, I routinely have good and bad versions of every new branch on the evolutionary tree of beer. There's nothing unique to NE IPA in terms of its hits and misses. Second, how in the world does he think shelf life is the point of any of this?
Yes, it was a passing conversation that was recorded and printed and perhaps lacks Oliver's deeper thoughts on the subject given its brevity and spontaneous nature. But I doubt it. Oliver's statements mirror what most people say who have only had a passing experience with the style. Those folks—even seasoned brewers—tend to write off NE IPA for its lack of shelf stability, its appearance, and its trendiness. They seem unaware that the makers of these beers have no desire for shelf stability. They're often packaged and sold day-of and drank within a week or so anyway. (And some, like Other Half's Sam Richardson, say they loves them best at two months, so who even knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) Meanwhile, the appearance of these beers is wide ranging—from the subtle haze of Hill Farmstead's rustic hoppy beers, to the unsightly yeast suspension of a Heady Topper, to the candle-wax appearance of their decedents. NE IPA is still a spectrum, and everyone's finding their way.
The people making these beers are doing so within a new model for beer making, selling, and drinking that simply didn't exist for Brooklyn Brewery. It's a context that enables this style to exist, and they're taking advantage of it to try new things. Throughout history, the beers that were made didn't come from some platonic ideal of what a beer should be. They were the results of constraints and opportunity. Available ingredients, water profiles, technology. Clear, shelf-stable beer itself replaced murky beer more than a century ago. No one was claiming that sparkling Lager was based around camera obscura culture. It just looked fucking delicious to the drinkers of the time who were excited by something new.
Rather than trying to figure out how to make a declining flagship more shelf stable so it can sit warm in the grocery store for 6-12 months in Florida while it waits for a "Why not?" purchase after the locals hit an out-of-stock gap, NE IPA brewers are making beers that audiences are begging for, and they're doing it directly off their own docks with no concern for its shelf life since they don't need one. For many, the NE IPA is beer at its most immediate, freshest, flavorful peak.
Ever since our panel discussion called "Hazed and Confused" at Beavertown's Extravaganza, I've had a heightened awareness of the misconceptions of the style, especially among well-established brewers. And it's getting a little embarrassing.
Brad Redick, a member of our Fervent few summed it up beautifully: "Brewmasters with decades of experience don't understand the equation of the NE IPA success. They work backwards with their own equations that resulted in success as if you can plug and play with the variables. Then we get these nonsensical opinions."
Oliver also went on to say that it's a passing fad, like the Black IPA: "These things come and go. I have seen a great many fads over my 28 years of brewing; three or four years ago it was black IPA—everyone brewed one. Now it’s hard to find one."
He's right, everyone brewed one, including Brooklyn. It was part of the Brewmaster's Reserve Series.
Oh, and this other notion that one of the world's largest craft brewers doesn't follow trends is ludicrous. "We don’t do bandwagon. We start things and then we wait for other people to come behind it.” Oliver and company certainly do get ahead of the game at times. They did that with their Half Ale, which was a fantastic sessionable Saison at only 3.4%. And in 2014, no less! But it's dying on the vine because being too far ahead of the curve is costly to an operation of Brooklyn's size. It's much better to sit back in the pocket and respond to the mainstream like they did when that whole quick sour thing proved to be more than a fad with Bel Air Sour.
So, is the NE IPA based around Instagram culture? Find me something that's not.
This thread was a magical response: |
Keith Davis Jr.—Shot at 44 Times by Baltimore Police
His Crime? That He Survived
February 22, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
Keith Davis Jr.
On June 7, 2015, Baltimore police chased, cornered in a parking garage, and fired 44 times at Keith Davis Jr. Keith would have joined the more than 1,100 people murdered by police in 2015, except for one thing—he survived and can now tell the truth about what happened.
What has been the response of Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby? To indict the cops who carried it out? No! Keith Davis, the victim of multiple shots to his face and body, is the one in jail.
For over eight months they have denied Davis any kind of bail. For eight months he has been denied medical treatment to remove a bullet fragment lodged in his neck, not far from his spinal cord. When it became clear that somehow Davis would survive, the State’s Attorney’s office hit him with 16 charges. On December 3, the state announced that there would be a new arraignment with additional charges, which gave them a pretext to further postpone his trial far beyond the 180 days allowed by Maryland state law. Davis’ trial is finally scheduled to begin this week, but the State’s Attorney’s office still refuses to share with the Davis legal team the statements from all of the police involved in this shooting spree. What are they hiding?
Anatomy of a Police Cover-up
On June 7, there was a car accident and cops were called to the scene. Then another car, driven by an unlicensed cab driver, Charles Holden, came careening towards the cop car. Holden says someone had gotten in his car and was attempting to rob him. When Holden’s car stopped, the man in the passenger seat leapt from the car and started to run. Keith Davis says he was in the crowd that had gathered on the corner. When the cops started chasing the guy toward them, they all ran. “I wasn’t even the only one that ran in that direction but they ended up chasing me.” The police chased him into a closed parking garage and began to fire at him from two directions.
Keith Davis Jr. in the hospital soon after he was shot by police. He arrived in critical condition and received emergency surgery. While in the hospital, he was chained to his bed. Once out of critical condition, Keith was taken to jail and has been refused medical care for more than seven months. A bullet fragment remains lodged in his neck, not far from his spine.
The police claim that Keith Davis was the man who had been in the cab. Yet the cab driver described that man who attempted to rob him as a light-skinned African-American in his 30s with braids or long hair. “He had good size hair. I think it was plaited,” he told investigators. But Davis is 25 and wears his hair closely cut. Other details given by the cab driver of the person who ran from the cab also do not match those of Davis. Further, it has been reported that a police sergeant tried to “prep” Holden into fingering Davis as the person in his cab by saying to Holden, “We got him and I don’t think he is going to make it.”
Initially, the cops claimed that shooting 44 times at Keith Davis was justified because it was a two-sided shoot-out. But forensic testing of the .22 caliber long gun, which the cops “found” on the scene, shows that it had never been fired. In the midst of this “shoot-out,” Davis called his girlfriend Kelly Holsey. Describing the call, she said there was “a constant pop-pop-pop” while Davis told her, “Babe, I’m gonna die.” The call lasted for one minute and seven seconds. Davis said, “The officer tried to shoot my face off.” And Holsey heard Davis yell, “I don’t have nothing.” Then “one big pop” before the call dropped.
The cops in the poorly lit garage were in two groups on either side of Davis. Some of the cops claim Davis was shooting but admit not actually seeing muzzle fire, only hearing the sound of gunfire. In one preliminary report, a cop admitted that he didn’t know for sure whether shots were “red or blue, friend or foe.” From these preliminary reports that did get out, one can surmise why the state prosecutor has refused to share all the police reports. Their initial plan to railroad Davis has not gone the way they thought. What new ways will they find to justify this grave injustice?
The Police Are STILL Killing People with Impunity
“This is what would have happened to Freddie Gray if he had lived.”
—protester quoted by the Guardian (UK)
Ever since May 1, when Marilyn Mosby indicted six cops for the killing of Freddie Gray, her office, the police commissioners (both old and new), and the media have been saying that it is a “new day” in Baltimore. Dangerous illusions were spread that now people could sit back and “let the system work.” But what is happening to Keith Davis shows just the opposite. The role of the police—and the State’s Attorney’s office—is STILL to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. The police are STILL killing people with impunity.
The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness. Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:24
Here’s some of what’s been happening since last May 1 in Baltimore, in addition to their outrageous actions around Keith Davis:
The State’s Attorney’s office conducted a farce of a trial leading to a mistrial of the first cop involved in the murder of Freddie Gray. Will any of these cops do serious time for their MURDER of Freddie?
The State’s Attorney’s office continues to do NOTHING around the 2013 police murder of Tyrone West despite the outrages of that case now gaining national and international attention—no investigation, no charges, nothing of substance. (See “The Baltimore Police Murder of Tyrone West—and the Hard-Fought Struggle for Justice.”)
Meanwhile, protesters against police terror, like Greg Butler, face huge time in jail, far more serious than the charges made against the cops responsible for breaking Freddie Gray’s neck, making it clear that in the eyes of this system, standing up against the murder of Black people is considered truly unacceptable. (See “Free Greg Butler! A Freedom Fighter in Baltimore Uprising Faces Over 25 Years in Jail.”)
A system like this is completely illegitimate—and the untold suffering it causes completely unnecessary. A system that produces these horrors is a system that needs to be swept away.
Free Keith Davis Jr.—Drop all the charges!
Indict the cops who fired at him 44 times! |
Copyright by WPRI - All rights reserved Shark Bar & Grille on Thayer Street in Providence. (photo: WPRI 12/Walt Buteau)
Copyright by WPRI - All rights reserved Shark Bar & Grille on Thayer Street in Providence. (photo: WPRI 12/Walt Buteau)
Dan McGowan, WPRI.com Reporter & Tim White, Target 12 Investigator - PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Former House Speaker Gordon Fox did legal work for the same Thayer Street restaurant whose owners prosecutors say paid him $52,500 in bribes in order to obtain a liquor license, the Target 12 Investigators have learned.
Fox represented Shark Bar & Grille in front of the Providence Board of Licenses in 2012, when the restaurant was accused of allowing an underage patron to purchase an alcoholic beverage. The restaurant agreed to pay a $350 fine.
Fox was vice-chair of the board in the summer of 2008 when he pushed for the restaurant to receive its liquor license in the face of staunch opposition from Providence police, Brown University and a sitting city councilman. The board voted unanimously to approve the license on Aug. 29, 2008.
What was unknown at the time was that Fox had received $35,000 in four checks and another $17,500 in cash from the owners of the restaurant in exchange for the license. He pleaded guilty on Tuesday to bribery, wire fraud and filing a false tax return and reached a plea deal in exchange for a three-year prison sentence.
"There is nothing to indicate there will be a problem," Fox said in 2008 before he made a motion to approve the liquor license for the restaurant.
But there were problems.
Records reviewed by Target 12 show Shark Bar & Grille has been cited for eight city ordinance violations since 2009, including two for selling alcohol to a minor in 2012 and another for a brawl that occurred inside the restaurant in 2013. All told, the restaurant has paid $1,750 in fines since it opened.
Fox - who left the Board of Licenses in 2009 and became speaker in 2010 - was the restaurant's lawyer following an underage drinking incident that occurred on Oct. 27, 2012.
Acting on an anonymous tip, Providence police sent a 19-year-old male to the restaurant, according to an incident report obtained by Target 12. The door host told the teenager "just don't drink" and allowed him to enter. He proceeded to purchase a rum and coke. Police charged the restaurant with a liquor law violation.
The restaurant agreed to pay a $350 fine during a pre-hearing conference that occurred behind closed doors on Dec. 6, 2012. Fox's signature is on the agreement with the board. The city does not keep transcripts of pre-hearing conferences.
Serving alcohol to minors was exactly the type of incident Shark Bar & Grille's owners pledged to avoid when they made the case to the Board of Licenses that they deserved a liquor license in 2008. John Mancini, a lawyer representing the restaurant, told the board there would a "zero tolerance policy" for underage drinking.
At the time, Providence police, Brown University and former City Councilman Cliff Wood all asked the board not to approve the liquor license, citing the number of license already granted on Thayer Street. A police lieutenant said, "I don't know if we can take another liquor license up there."
"It is not his intention to operate a bar or pub up here, which would attract any type of late night maliciousness," Mancini said, referring to one of the restaurant's owners.
In the early morning hours of Jan. 26, 2013, police responded to Shark Bar & Grille to find "tables, chairs, drink glasses and other debris" on the restaurant's floor following a fight, according to an incident report obtained by Target 12. One patron was found "covered in blood" from a laceration.
The restaurant paid a $1,000 fine following the incident. Fox did not represent the owners in front of the licensing board on that matter.
Prosecutors have not identified the names of the owners they believed bribed Fox. Joseph Dalomba, one of the restaurant's former co-owners, told Target 12 he has spoken to law enforcement, but declined to say if he was involved in paying off Fox. Raymond Hugh, another co-owner, hung up the phone when a reporter asked if he talked to law enforcement.
Mayor Jorge Elorza has said he plans to consult with the city's legal department to see if it can revoke the liquor license for Shark Bar & Grille. Johanna Harris, the current chairwoman of the licensing board, has said the board would need "more concrete information" before making a decision.
If U.S. District Judge Mary Lisi accepts to Fox's plea agreement, he will be sentenced June 11. |
Christians in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province were seen making dozens of crosses to be passed out and worn among fellow believers after the local government removed over 1,000 crosses from church exteriors in a year-long “clean-up movement”.
Wenzhou, known as “China’s Jerusalem”, is home to the country’s largest Christian community.
Photos showing a group of locals creating small crosses and painting them red were posted to Weibo, China’s popular Twitter-like platform, along with a message urging Christian faithful in Zhejiang to hang them up at home and wear them.
Father Chen Kaihua of the Kunming diocese in Yunnan province soon after posted a message to Weibo calling on church-goers across the country to join in the “safe and legal non-violent disobedience movement”, according to Hong Kong Free Press, adding that “Tomorrow you will see crosses everywhere in Zhejiang”.
The protest comes amid a government campaign that has seen around 1,200 church crosses removed in Zhejiang since 2014, according to the online Christian newspaper Gospel Harold. Authorities have also threatened to demolish churches in what’s considered a move to curb the spread of Christianity in China.
“The government has always been suspicious about religions — it tightly controls religious beliefs and expressions and Chinese people can only believe in five official religious. But it’s important to point out that many of the churches with crosses removed by the government are official churches recognized by the government,” Maya Wang, a researcher with the Human Rights Watch, said in the HKFP report.
A Pew report from 2010 estimated that there were around 23 million members of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, China’s officially sanctioned Protestant church which functions under Communist Party oversight.
“The fact that these churches are now under renewed official scrutiny is a sign that authorities’ already-low tolerance for religious activities has fallen to a new low under President Xi,” Wang said.
A picture circulating online in May shows smoke rising from a cross at the Huzhen Church in Lishui city as it was being removed. Officials later denied that they set fire to the cross, saying that it began burning on its own.
Authorities in Wenzhou, however, insist that they are merely “relocating” crosses and demolishing dangerous buildings as part of a “three revise and one demolition” campaign to beautify the city.
“Generally speaking, the church staff and people [religious faithful] are very supportive,” an official from the ethic and religious affairs bureau in Rui’an told the Global Times. “We talked with some people who were not cooperating with the removal in a gentle way.”
[Images: Weibo via HKFP] |
Catholic League's Bill Donohue has a novel idea about why Archbishop John Nienstedt, accused of having sex with men, is under investigation, and why Catholics are calling for him to resign.
The nation was shocked when Minneapolis/St. Paul Archbishop John Nienstedt was accused of having inappropriate contact with a young boy. Nienstedt was cleared of those charges but soon after it was revealed that the 67-year old virulently anti-gay Roman Catholic leader was being investigated -- by his own parish -- for sexual relations with men.
Nienstedt has repeatedly denied the charges, though he was quick to respond to them, touting that the "allegations do not involve minors or lay members of the faithful, and they do not implicate any kind of illegal or criminal behavior."
Now, the Catholic League's Bill Donohue is riding to Nienstedt's rescue -- which he desperately needs in light of all the calls for his resignation -- but with lies.
"It's all about homosexuality," Donohue insists in a press release yesterday. "Ever since Archbishop Nienstedt criticized the pro-gay film, 'Brokeback Mountain,' he has been targeted by homosexual activists all over the nation. So it is hardly surprising to read a story on him in today's New York Times that cites his take on the movie. Had he liked it, and had he been silent on the subject of gay marriage, no one would be calling for his resignation."
Donohue did not point to any particular "homosexual activist," and in fact, all the calls for Nienstedt to resign have come not from any LGBT organization or gay activist but from lay Catholics, the Archdiocese's own chancellor for canonical affairs, and major donors to the Church. And the calls for resignation are not because of the charges of inappropriate sexual activity, but for Archbishop Nienstedt's gross mishandling of sexual abuse cases that were covered up, and his refusal to force priests to step down.
But Donohue chose to point the finger at the LGBT community rather than at his beloved Mother Church.
"Further proof that homosexuality is the real issue driving the foes of Nienstedt can be found in today's Star Tribune and Pioneer Press, two newspapers in the Twin Cities," the divorced head of the Catholic League claimed. "Both asked him yesterday what he does in bed and with whom. He told the former, 'No, I'm not gay. And I'm not anti-gay.' When the latter asked if he had had sex with men since becoming archbishop, he said, 'No. Not even before.'
"We have hit a new low when journalists descend to the level of probing puritans. They would put a camera in his bedroom if they could. If these same reporters spent more time trying to out Nienstedt's anonymous accusers--instead of trying to out his sex life--justice would be served. But that is not their interest, which is why injustice reigns supreme." Asking a man -- even a man of the cloth -- who is under investigation for having same-sex sex if he is gay is called journalism, not "descending to the level of probing puritans." In fact, it would be journalistic malpractice to not ask those valid questions. Donohue is clearly wrong by claiming "homosexuality is the real issue driving the foes of Nienstedt." The Catholic Church has a major sex abuse and accountability problem, and its top warrior is not only not helping the Church, he is harming it. Image: Facebook
See a mistake? Email corrections to: [email protected] |
The BC Humanist Association submitted a brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage today as part of its study of Systemic Racism and Religious Discrimination.
In its brief, the BCHA highlights how religious privilege continues to marginalize the nonreligious and members of minority faith communities in Canada. It explores how the nonreligious in immigrant and indigenous communities are often unseen when the identities of diverse groups of people are reduced to the majority faith of the country they came from. Finally, it provides commentary on debates over terminology that have arisen in the context of this committee.
Ian Bushfield, Executive Director, BC Humanist Association:
This study on religious discrimination provides an important opening to raise the concerns of atheists, agnostics and Humanists. From symbolic issues like god in the anthem to the continued existence of separate Catholic school boards, our country's institutions regularly favour religion over nonreligion. This has major effects on atheists in small communities as well as non-Christians across Canada. Much of the discussion over this committee has been taken up re-litigating motion M-103. While we share the concerns of many ex-Muslims about the problems with the word Islamophobia, it's important that we not miss this opportunity to raise the many broader issues faced by the nonreligious community.
Read the brief
The BCHA is also continuing to collect signatures for its petition to add nonreligion to the Human Rights Code of BC until November 15. That petition will be submitted as part of its brief to the Government of BC's consultation on re-establishing the Human Rights Commission in BC.
Sign up to receive updates from the BC Humanist Association |
Writing isn’t that easy all the time. You not only need a good idea and an interesting headline but also have to find the right words to express your thoughts and arouse the reader‘s interest. Moreover, you have to stay completely focused for a certain time period. Luckily there are a ton of free apps available to help you concentrate on what you really want to do: Writing
IO is an easy to use text editor for your Mac. Its interface is designed to keep writers focused and although it first might seem like a simple Note-taking app, IO grows to a really powerful tool when starting to use Markdown, a markup language which I already covered in one of my previous articles.
“A new way of writing with confidence” — This is how Writefull is described by its creators. The free to use app helps you whenever you are insecure about certain phrases or words. It lets you search for the frequency of use, synonyms and will even find words which fit into a specific context. This way you can make sure all your formulations are correct and will no longer be insecure about things you‘ve written. It really is “a new way of writing with confidence”!
Noisli is a web app I’ve already written on in a single post. Briefly described, it lets you set up a productive sound environment by using ambient sounds and combining them. Therefore Noisli offers a large variety of sounds and different presets which can be customized in any way. Personally, I would recommend adding some Jazz music in order to complete a perfect sound environment.
Bear is my favorite app when it comes to working on less complex projects where you don‘t need to do intensive research. All my Medium articles were written in this app and after several months of using it, I don‘t want to switch anymore. Bear combines the idea of a simple interface like it can be found in most Note-taking apps with a highly functional text editor. Supporting Markdown, Bear is very powerful when it comes to time efficiency. After finishing a text, it can be exported into other file formats like (only Pro-Version — $1.49 monthly, $14.99 annually) *docx* or *pdf*. Bear has a dedicated “Focus Mode” built in which allows you to display nothing but the text you‘re working on. The option of using tags and Cross-Note links extends its many features even further.
When it comes to more complex articles, Notion is an excellent choice. Although it was initially built for teams and companies, it also offers great features for authors. Using blocks and combining them to a page, you can do pretty much everything you want and embed Maps, Tweets, Files, Videos, Images or even InVision Projects. Several authors can work on one project, extend it with lists, headers, dividers, insert Web Bookmarks and start a discussion right where the text is. Especially for larger projects, where you first need to do research, you will learn to love Notion!
The last thing I want to mention in this post is the “Sharethrough Headline Analyzer”. The free Web App is an easy way to check your headlines which get rated on a scale from 0 to 100. It gives you tips what to improve and tells you what you’ve already done well. The headline for this post for example received a score of 69.
Thank you for reading my article! If want to make any additions or have a question, feel free to leave a comment underneath. |
Soldier Brent Grommet was a specialist in the Army and worked with a bomb sniffing canine partner, a German Shepard named Matty, his war dog. They worked together in Afghanistan finding bombs until one fateful day in 2013 a roadside bomb ended both of their careers. Grommet was sent home to Montana to recuperate from his injuries, and during this time, he filed to adopt Matty permanently. His request was granted, however, the dog was mistakenly given up for adoption to someone else, before Grommet could claim her.
Bureaucratic red tape is what happened next, and no matter where the military man turned, no one seemed to be able to help him find out who adopted his dog. He desperately wanted to find the family and explain what Matty means to him, and what they had been through together, in an effort to convince them to give her back. After almost a year, it appeared that Matty was lost to this brave soldier forever, and his last memory of her would be her leaving the New Jersey airstrip in a crate. She was going to get the medical attention she needed much like her soldier, surely neither thinking it would be the last time they would see each other.
Sometimes the media can do great things, as they did in this case. Grommet and his father spent a lot of time trying to track down the dog, and they found record of her having been at the veterinary clinic at Fort Bragg North Carolina. That however was where the trail ended, much to the young man’s chagrin. The story got picked up on national media and Grommets father was interviewed last Thursday. Within 30 minutes of the airing of this interview, things began to happen. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Congressman saw the interview and immediately went to work. He stated that he knew he could use his connections to help reunite this soldier with his war dog.
The congressman worked miracles and did indeed find Matty. Through a little bit of convincing, the family agreed to give her back to her rightful soldier. They chose not to go to the drop off of Matty, preferring to allow a third-party to do so. It speaks to the integrity of this family, as it must have been hard to give back a dog they took care of for almost a year. The exchange took place in Fayetteville North Carolina, and no one was happier than Matty. It is said by the family that Matty ran full speed at Grommet and all but tackled him in her elation to be back with her handler.
The Army has admitted to the mix up and has apologized, as under ‘Robbys Law,’ a federal law, a wounded handler of dogs in the service are to have the last say on the placement of the dog. They say that the dog was not injured but was relieved of duty due to a bone spur, at which point they put her up for civilian adoption. They went on to state that they never received the soldiers papers requesting permanent guardianship of the dog. Grommet spent so much time training and working with Matty that his decision was immediate that he wanted to adopt her and keep her for good.
Opinion by Kristi Cereska
Sources:
Washington Times
AOL |
Omar Rodríguez-López Teams Up with Faust for New 10-inch, Releases Bosnian Rainbows Live Record
Published Oct 31, 2013
While Bosnian Rainbows issued their self-titled debut album earlier this year, it should come as no surprise that the band's always active prog explorer Omar Rodríguez-López has another couple of releases to get him through the year. One is a live set from the outfit, and another finds Rodríguez-López jamming it out with Krautrock pioneers Faust . Both arrive November 8 through German imprint Clouds Hill was recorded live at the Clouds Hill premises in Hamburg in 2012, and the 10-inch release features an improvised performance divided into two parts. The track apparently utilizes, among other things, "a chain saw and a jack hammer." The recording is available as a 10-inch on white vinyl and comes with the, which features full-length performances from Bosnian Rainbows, Faust & Omar Rodríguez-López, Gallon Drunk, the Ape, Léonore Boulanger, the Building and Scams.You can watch some of the session with Faust and Rodríguez-López at the bottom of the page.As for the Bosnian Rainbows record, simply called, it features seven live songs recorded on the same day, though the band had then been going under the banner "the Omar Rodríguez-López Group." It's also being pressed up as a 10-inch on white vinyl and comes with the DVD."These are very much shorter, more to-the-point songs [than the Mars Volta's]," Rodríguez-López had said in a statement of Bosnian Rainbows. "They still have spaces that stretch out, but what I mean to say is that it's all the same influences that have been in most of my writing and all the people in my bands' writing — Can is there, Siouxsie and the Banshees is there, Gang of Four is there, all the Led Zeppelin, whatever... all those things are there, it's just different elements of those things."You can pre-order both releases here and see the tracklistings below.Thanks to Modern Vinyl for the tip.1. This Is Not Music, This Is Not Us And We Are Not Here (Part 1)2. This Is Not Music, This Is Not Us And We Are Not Here (Part 2)1. Worthless2. I Cry For You3. Dig Right In Me4. Torn Maps5. Always On The Run6. Red7. The Eye Fell In Love |
I’m pleased to announce that Cetita Protocol 1.0.0-Alpha2, Cettia JavaScript Client 1.0.0-Alpha2 and Cettia Java Server 1.0.0-Alpha2 have been released. The theme of this release is offline application, which provides a flexible way to deal with disconnection making it highly annoying to build real-time application.
In the real world, losing connection is not uncommon so that it is pretty important to make applications relying on full-duplex connection functional while offline in some way. For example, users lose connection every time they navigate from one page to another page and may lose network while on the move. Even if the time between disconnection and reconnection is very short, it’s true that any message can’t be sent and received after every disconnection and authentication which is a process to verify a user is who they say they are should be done and messages which couldn’t be sent and received meanwhile should be synchronized after every reconnection. Also if reconnection doesn’t occur for a long time, these messages might have to be sent through each user’s email.
To solve such problems, it has been required to design and implement application’s own protocol on top of the full duplex connection. With this feature, you can handle sockets regardless of their online/offline state as well as deal with such issues with ease just by handling some reserved socket events. Moreover, a reference to socket is not affected by disconnection and reconnection at all and doing authentication once is enough for socket. Of course, it applies to every transport not just HTTP based ones.
Let’s take a look at the new feature through code snippet.
JavaScript Client
var socket = cettia . open ( uri , { // 'name' option allows for the socket of the next page to inherit the lifecycle of the socket of the current page // This means the server can cache events which couldn't be sent to the socket of the previous page // due to temporary disconnection during page navigation and send them to the socket of the next page on reconnection // With this option, you don't need to follow single page application model to workaround such issues name : "main" }); // A queue containing events the client couldn't send to the server while disconnection var cache = []; // Fired when the server issues a new id for this socket as the beginning of the new lifecycle and the end of the old lifecycle // The 'open' event always follows this event but not vice versa socket . on ( "new" , function () { // You can reset resources having been used for the old lifecycle for the new lifecycle here cache . length = 0 ; }); // Fired when the underlying transport establishes a connection socket . on ( "open" , function () { // Now that communication is possible, you can flush the cache while ( socket . state () === "opened" && cache . length ) { // Removes the first event from the cache and sends it to the server one by one var args = cache . shift (); socket . send . apply ( socket , args ); } }); // Fired if some event is sent via this socket while there is no connection socket . on ( "cache" , function ( args ) { // You can determine whether or not to cache this arguments used to call the 'send' method // For example, in some cases, you may want to avoid caching to deliver live data in time cache . push ( args ); }); // You don't need to pay attention to socket's online/offline state at all // Internally, it will be delegated to the underlying transport while online and the 'cache' event while offline socket . send ( "event" , data );
Java Server
// Fired when a socket has been created as the beginning of the lifecycle // However the handshake is not performed yet and it is not allowed to exchange events server . onsocket ( new Action < ServerSocket >() { @Override public void on ( final ServerSocket socket ) { // You can authenticate a given socket here e.g. using token-based approach or cookie-based approach final Map < String , String > authentication = new TokenVerifier (). verify ( new Uri ( socket . uri ()). parameter ( "token" )); // Once is enough because this reference is unaffected by disconnection and reconnection socket . tag ( authentication . get ( "username" )); // Then, it's possible to send events to a specific user who may have used multiple devices by username // The given socket represents a specific device like desktop, phone, tablet and so on // e.g. server.byTag("flowersinthesand", socket -> socket.send("directmessage", "Hello there!")); // A queue containing events the server couldn't send to the client while disconnection final Queue < Object []> cache = new ConcurrentLinkedQueue <>(); // Fired when the handshake is performed successfully socket . onopen ( new VoidAction () { @Override public void on () { // Now that communication is possible, you can flush the cache while ( socket . state () == ServerSocket . State . OPENED && ! cache . isEmpty ()) { // Removes the first event from the cache and sends it to the client one by one Object [] args = cache . poll (); socket . send (( String ) args [ 0 ], args [ 1 ], ( Action <?>) args [ 2 ], ( Action <?>) args [ 3 ]); } } }); // Fired if some event is sent via this socket while there is no connection socket . oncache ( new Action < Object []>() { @Override public void on ( Object [] args ) { // You can determine whether or not to cache this arguments used to call the 'send' method // For example, in some cases, you may want to avoid caching to deliver live data in time cache . offer ( args ); } }); // Fired if the socket has been closed for a long time i.e. 1 minute and deleted from the server as the end of the lifecycle // A deleted socket can't be and shouldn't be used socket . ondelete ( new VoidAction () { @Override public void on () { // If the cache is not empty, that is to say, there are still some messages user should receive // you can send an email to notify user or store them to database for user to check on next logging in if (! cache . isEmpty ()) { Account account = Account . findByUsername ( authentication . get ( "username" )); // Assumes this method checks if user have not really received the unread messages // or some of them through other devices or other sockets and sends an email // to notify user of the final unread messages if they exist account . notifyUnreadMessages ( cache ); } } }); } }); // You can pass a socket action to server at any time not paying attention to given socket's online/offline state server . all ( new Action < ServerSocket >() { @Override public void on ( final ServerSocket socket ) { // It will be delegated to the underlying transport while online or the cache event while offline socket . send ( "event" , data ); } });
For your information, TokenVerifier , Uri and Account are imaginary classes to help describe a scenario matching with this feature well. As you can see that the above code snippets are just boilerplate, we have agonized over introducing helper classes to remove these boilerplate but have decided to wait for the community’s feedback. So don’t hesitate to give us your thought about this.
Here’s the full changelog:
Offline application. cettia-protocol#1, cettia-javascript-client#3, cettia-java-server#3
WebSocket transport doesn’t work with URI whose authority has no trailing slash and query is not empty. cettia-protocol#6
A client socket stays in connecting state if an invalid URI is given. cettia-protocol#5
abort request kills the process if it throws an error. cettia-protocol#4
WebSocket transport doesn’t fire close event when a connection fails. cettia-protocol#3
When test transport fires close event it should remove its stop function from socket’s close event. cettia-javascript-client#6
The total number of reconnection attempts to be passed to reconnect option is wrong. cettia-javascript-client#5
Extend socket’s lifecycle over multiple pages. cettia-javascript-client#4
Expose socket state. cettia-java-server#2
As always, please let us, Cettia Groups, know if you have any question or feedback. |
It was not exactly a perfect night in Washington for Fourth of July fireworks this year, when fog and rain blanketed the sky and made the Independence Day show from the National Mall less impressive than usual to those who had staked out a spot nearby.
But if you had tuned in on Monday to watch the fireworks on PBS or watched it on your cellphone, you might have figured the sky was cloudless and the fireworks were crystal clear. You might also have wondered if someone had removed the scaffolding that has been on the Capitol dome for two years.
But many eagle-eyed viewers suspected something was not quite right, and PBS later admitted as much: It had spliced in firework footage from previous years with live shots. |
WATERLOO — Drug investigators in haz-mat suits seized "thousands of pills" during a drug raid Sunday on a home in the Beechwood neighbourhood of Waterloo.
About half a dozen officers were involved in the raid on the detached home at 173 Briarcliffe Cres. , said Staff Sgt. Sloden Lackovic of Waterloo Region Police. He said investigators had been on site since Sunday morning and would likely be there until early evening.
The officers seized "thousands of pills and equipment we believe is used to manufacture pills," Lackovic said.
The officers, who were wearing breathing apparatus and were fully covered with hooded suits, gloves and boots, removed piles of equipment and bagged material from the home, including a portable generator, a mechanical hopper and other equipment. Firefighters hosed officers down to remove any contaminants after they emerged from the house.
Lackovic wouldn't say what the suspected pills were, or provide an estimated street value.
"We won't know what the pills are until we get results from Health Canada," which is testing the seized pills, he said. "We don't have a value because we still have to determine what the pills are."
The raid is part on an ongoing, months-long drug investigation, Lackovic said. The raid came about after the arrest Saturday afternoon of three men and one woman, all in their 20s, and all residents of the Kitchener-Waterloo area, he said. The men were held in jail pending a bail hearing Monday, while the woman was released on a promise to appear in court Monday.
The four face numerous charges, he said, including manufacturing a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking, possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of exporting, and possession of a prohibited weapon, which Lackovic said was a knife.
Neighbours said the house, a single detached home with pale-blue siding and rusty railings, has been empty for the last three or four years, but about two weeks ago a truck pulled up and people appeared to have moved in. |
From fashion to environment, everything is changing drastically. The awareness of environment condition updates reaches us not so often. So, every new update from environment friendly people/organizations increases our concerns towards eco-friendly environment dream. We are wasting countless forest tress for our fashion craze. As these trees are being used in the manufacturing of dissolving pulp to produce fabrics like Viscose, Modal and Lyocell. These are the fabrics which are extensively use by the famous brands for the fashion wears. As per the research findings, More than 120 million trees are cut every year for cellulosic fabric. And, the pulp production will be double by 2050.
From last three and half years, the CanopyStyle campaign, which is partnering with fashion brands, fashion designers and their viscose suppliers to keep the world’s endangered forests out of the rayon/viscose clothing. The Canopystyle’s campaign is with a motto that being stylish doesn’t have to cost the earth. The Canopystyle environmental friendly initiatives become the fastest moving environmental step in apparel industry. And now in such a short time period, the 100 famous fashion and apparel brands (H&M, C&A, M&S, Levi’s, Inditex/Zara, ASOS, VF Corp and many more) who have already signed on to the fastest-pace environmental initiative and became the part of this environment friendly cause.
Forest Sustainability:
The Canopy and the United States Fashion Industry Association (USFIA) have decided to work together to keep the global endangered forests out of the US fashion supply chain. As per the president of USFIA, Julia K Huges, “Several of our members are part of the CanopyStyle initiative already. And we look forward to propelling Canopy’s positive impact in the rayon and viscose supply chain even further in the US marketplace.”
Canopy & USFIA Partnership:
The Canopy (not-for-profit environmental organization) has deep expertise in supply chain management. It collaborates with more than 750 companies around the world to develop innovative solutions to make their supply-chains more sustainable. And it helps to protect the world’s remaining ancient and endangered forests. Whereas, the USFIA has more than 200 members who are doing businesses globally and are champions on global trade issues.
So, everyone from the industry is expecting that this alliance will give the opportunity to the importers to make sure this thing that rayon and viscose fabrics from controversial sources will not be the part of their supply chain. Along with that, this alliance will also support to develop and introduce new products methodologies through innovative technologies. And this will ultimately support the fashion and environment to develop such alternatives like straw and recycled clothing which would recover the environment too.
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Reports coming out of Russia are real cause for concern. As The Independent has reported in the last couple of hours, there appears to be a mass exodus of North Korean workers from Russia's Far East.
The paper quotes the Vladnews agency as saying:
'Traders have left the kiosks and markets, workers have abandoned building sites, and North Korean secret service employees working in the region have joined them and left.'
The news comes as China works to reduce tensions in what VOA News described as a 'flurry of diplomatic activity.' The Chinese effort has been kicking into gear just ahead of joint military exercises between South Korean and US forces that are set to start Sunday.
China is concerned that the planned war games, which will include the USS George Washington, will aggravate tensions further following North Korea's shelling of a South Korean island.
The fact is, though, that North Korea is well aware that these exercises have been planned for some time. The ball is therefore largely in its court. It can choose to escalate this further — it can, in effect, choose to feel threatened — or it can take a step back.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her part has been urging China to send a signal to Pyongyang, with the State Department stating that she had pressed her Chinese counterpart to 'make clear' that North Korea's actions are 'unacceptable'.
There's been a great deal of speculation about possible motivations and who in North Korea stands to benefit from the latest belligerence. If it chooses war though, I'll be hard-pressed to think of anyone that comes out of this well. |
My Alessandra Rich dress, Gianvito Rossi shoes, and veil from New York Vintage. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
Our custom rings by Eric Lundquist were carried in the book I recommended to Brian the weekend we met. Well, a copy of it. Even though we agreed not to do gifts, Brian got me the original he’d had inscribed by Edward P. Jones himself, who put his well wishes for our marriage inside. When we needed a book carved out two days before our wedding, we knew to call our friend Jess Mezei, who practiced on books from the dollar shelf at the Strand. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
We used skeleton keys on our stationery and escort cards, inspired by the key that unlocked my engagement ring. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
Singer Minnie Riperton is a longtime style hero of mine. I always knew I'd wear baby's breath in my hair like her, but the bouquet was a morning-of swap. My skeleton key was tied to the bouquet with a beautiful velvet ribbon. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
I loved Brian’s dahlia. Later he also had a key pinned to his boutonniere. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
My friend manicurist Cassie Lamar does the perfect square nail and has amazing comedic timing. I had such a cocoon of warmth around me as I got ready with my trusted friends. I’ve known them for years from photo shoots so it was natural to be made up by all of them. Poor Grace is trying to get me to sit still. I’m so grateful everyone flew in from Paris Fashion Week, just in time for the day. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
Jawara bestowing his gifts on me. He has such a regal and calming presence. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
I had butterflies but simultaneously felt serenely content. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
Clasping my mom’s vintage bracelet on right before heading downstairs. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
Doing a final read through of my vows, which I’d just scribbled on right before going downstairs. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
My sister, Samira, taking one last look in her Jonathan Simkhai dress. I love the winterberries Jawara put in her hair. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
Here’s our Scottish friend Adam Mitchinson trailed by my brother Cass. Even though Brian didn’t have groomsmen, he invited his closest friends over to our house before the wedding to get ready, and then they all walked together the 15 minutes or so to Akwaaba. They elicited a lot of whoops and compliments in their tuxes and suits and bow ties and top hats and canes and kilts. Here’s our Scottish friend Adam Mitchinson trailed by my brother, Cass. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
We just asked that our guests look sharp and they clearly did not disappoint. Here are my dear friends Jessica Zamora-Turner and Lacey Lennon, who also collaborated to make our invitations. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
My younger nephew, Leo Perrius, was a mischievously sweet ring bearer. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
We rounded the corner to where I could finally see Brian and the chuppah. My mom didn’t lose her cool, but my dad and I let the tears flow. It was very important for me to walk down the aisle with both of my parents. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
We both wrote our vows the morning of our wedding. One of the few old-school wedding traditions we were set on was saying goodnight to each other the night before and not seeing each other again until I walked down the aisle to Nina Simone’s “Seems I’m Never Tired Lovin’ You.” So the morning of, I was at Akwaaba and Brian was in our bedroom at home, and we both got up early and were texting each other notes of encouragement and love as we independently wrote our vows. I was so happy to see him! We’re with Aunt Leslie, our officiant, and my sister and her two sons, Eli and Leo. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
Brian wore a made-to-measure Billy Reid tuxedo. Working with their team was our favorite part of the planning. Christopher Alesevich, the best man, and my brother, Cass, also wore Billy Reid. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
I think this is when my mom was speaking and said she was so thrilled to see “Solange and Cass marry today.” Cass is my brother! She deftly had us cracking up as she quickly caught the gaffe. Photo: Jillian Mitchell
Broom was jumped; glass was broken. Brian was trying to dip me for a dramatic kiss, but I tackled him instead. Photo: Jillian Mitchell |
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One way to make someone’s eyes glaze over is to explain the various relationships in financial matters. Discussions of swaps, equity, options, short-selling and the like quickly become technical and esoteric, and most people instantly tune out what is being said.
Unfortunately, this situation convinces people that finance is complicated and cannot be understood — and so it must be left to the "experts" who are assumed to know better. Thus, the average person — the taxpayer who will be left on the hook — does not really understand why entities like "Freddie Mac" and "Fannie Mae" are in trouble, and why their "bailouts" are a disaster. They only know that the people who are supposed to be "in charge" of these things are declaring success.
First, what are "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac"? They are entities created by the federal government to make mortgage loans and to guarantee those loans. "Fannie Mae" is an acronym for the Federal National Mortgage Association, which was created by the Franklin Roosevelt administration in 1938 to help further home ownership. "Freddie Mac" is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, created by the Nixon administration in 1970 as a "competitor" for the FNMA. Both entities ultimately were "privatized," but nonetheless have operated with the obviously implicit guarantee from the federal government that it would protect them against losses.
In a free market, there would be nothing like these entities, or if something like them existed, there would be no guarantee that losses would be covered by taxpayers, which has created an obvious moral hazard. They exist because the government decided to follow a policy during the Great Depression to encourage home ownership beyond free market levels, which also meant that the entities that would have to finance such endeavors would have to come from the government.
Now, there is nothing wrong with home ownership, as it is an extension of private property rights. However, it should be emphasized that not everyone should be a candidate for home ownership, as owning a home means that the opportunity cost for moving increases greatly.
I will use my family and me as an example. We own a home and about an acre of property in the mountains of western Maryland, and my place of employment is located about five miles away, so it is relatively convenient to where I work. As long as I have my current employment and as long as I can continue to make the payments (and pay the property taxes), we can remain in this house.
However, if an attractive employment opportunity were to come elsewhere, the opportunity cost of moving would be substantially greater than if we were renting. First, we would have to sell the house, and in the current market, selling it at a price that would permit us even to cover what we paid a year ago might be difficult. Second, if we were to move without the house being sold, we would have to continue making payments and pay for a new place, which almost surely would negate any gains from the new employment. What seems like an asset to us right now would become a huge liability in such a situation, so it is clear that home ownership right now truly limits our choices.
The government’s insistence on individual family ownership of homes has a distorting effect upon the housing market, as it invariably creates rental shortages and then perpetuates the very problem. Let me explain. Because the government has created a financial system that encourages (or demands) people buy homes instead of renting them, there is a dearth of single-family housing or other rental housing that would meet the needs of individuals and families.
That situation drives up the price of rentals to the point where buying a home, at least in the short run, seems like the better alternative, as far more homes are available for purchase than for rent. Thus, the incentives that government policies create also continue to widen the gap between what a free market would create and what the government seeks to impose. (One can see that situation clearly in California, as the rash of foreclosures mean that lots of families that have lost their homes now are competing in the rental markets, which drives up rents, but that at the same time, thousands of houses sit empty waiting to be sold.)
The government did not create this market at the point of a gun; instead, it set up a series of financial rewards and punishments. Interest paid on home mortgages is tax deductible, while rent is not, but the series of incentives goes much deeper and extends well beyond the individual homeowner.
How does the financial system work to create the huge numbers of home loans? Why, in a world of scarcity (and that includes the amount of loanable funds available for capital development) would so much of the financial system be directed toward home ownership?
In a free market, capital is directed toward those ends that pay the highest returns, as well as toward investments that pay a good return, but also have better prospects for those loans actually being repaid. Repayment would come because the investments to which the loans were directed are profitable, that is, they bring entrepreneurial rewards that are higher than the sum of the prices paid to the owners of the factors of production.
When done correctly, finance is a wonderful thing, for it permits large numbers of people to pool their resources in order to provide money to entrepreneurs and to firms in order to pay for new projects, purchase of new capital, and for entrepreneurial ventures. An economy cannot grow without it.
However, with finance comes risk. Not all ventures can be successful, and there are times when even with the best of intentions, borrowers find that they cannot repay the loans in a timely manner — or even at all. In a free market, the projected risk would play a role in the determination of the interest rate, as risk and uncertainty are a function of time, and interest rates ultimately are determined by the time preferences of lenders and borrowers.
Free markets have mechanisms to deal with these kinds of issues, including insurance, rating systems, and the like, and the end result is that capital tends to move toward the ends that best reflect the risks and rewards. Such a system would include provisions for people to borrow money for home ownership, but the patterns would not be as pervasive as what we see presently in the United States.
Thus, to encourage more home ownership than would exist in a free market, the government has had to resort to financial manipulation, and that is where the FNMA and the FHLMC come in. Backed originally by government capital, these entities have gone into the secondary markets, purchased loans made by banks and savings and loan institutions at their present value, and then have taken those loans and "bundled" them into what are called mortgage securities.
Lending institutions can put loans (debt) on their balance sheets because those who have borrowed the money have promised to repay it with interest in the future. In a world in which people who have taken out home mortgages have demonstrated the ability to repay those loans in a timely manner, the debt instrument created thus has a market value.
The important role that the FNMA and FHLMC have played has been the fact that they have been a ready market for these debt instruments, which has encouraged lending institutions to make more of such loans than they would otherwise. (I will skip the discussion of the government role in propping up banks and savings and loan institutions, as that would take another series of articles. Suffice it to say that they are not free market institutions, at least in the manner that Austrian economists view free markets.)
The effect here is twofold. First, it encourages more home ownership than would exist in a free market, which distorts the free market in housing. Second, it means that capital that would have gone to more highly-favored uses in a free market now is directed to less-profitable uses. Therefore, the emphasis on home ownership would seem to have a perverse effect upon our economy by diverting scarce capital away from those projects that would bring even more economic growth.
When one combines this situation with the fact that hostile governments have been stifling economic opportunities through taxation, regulation, and property seizures, the situation becomes even more perverse, something that became apparent during the past decade. Investment opportunities in the United States have been declining in large part because of government hostility, and that creates an inwardly destructive effect.
First, less investment means people have fewer opportunities to better their lives, so they turn to government for help. Second, governments that are empowered in these situations tend to be extremely hostile toward private enterprise and, therefore, tend to drive even more business enterprises away.
Third, investors then look for other means to gain a return on their money, and that is where the government-backed housing securities come in. Because such securities traditionally have been seen as relatively "safe" because of the government guarantees, they became attractive places to put money.
As this industry grew, brokerage houses on Wall Street began to use them as collateral for about everything, and these securities were used to prop up other funds or became a financial mainstay. Combine this situation with the Bush administration’s "ownership society" goals and the belief that home ownership is an "opportunity" that should not be denied to anyone, regardless of their ability to pay, the outcome was inevitable.
While more and more loanable funds were diverted toward mortgages, the increased demand for housing forced up home prices, and ultimately they went up to levels which average buyers could not afford with conventional mortgages. Unfortunately, the lending industry — prodded by the Federal Reserve System and the mortgage industry — created new loan packages to entice people to borrow huge sums of money. Things like "interest-only" mortgages, adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), and the like were hawked to would-be homebuyers, who were assured by the mortgage companies that their properties would appreciate quickly and then they could re-negotiate their loans, using their newfound equity to lower their payments.
This entire scheme was on a collision course with reality. The proliferation of mortgage securities ultimately drove down their value, and the constant search to find potential marginal home buyers with marginal means or credit has kept this market alive, but it was a devil’s bargain, as the newcomers into the market were the ones who were least likely to be able to make timely payments.
Austrians can recognize the pattern of malinvestment here, even if most other people cannot. This is not a situation into which the government can ride, guarantee the securities, save homeowners from foreclosure, and generally save the day. Instead, by propping up this sick industry, the government not only extends the malinvestments (and, thus, retarding the recovery), but also does it by creating even more new money, which only encourages people to run to the last game in town: commodities futures.
Most people cannot recognize the relationship between the government’s bailout attempts and the increases in commodity prices, including prices for oil and gasoline. True to form, the political classes, which ultimately are responsible for this mess, blame the speculators and the oil companies, and the mainstream news media provides the amen chorus.
The Best of William L. Anderson |
The European Citizens’ Initiative was introduced with the Treaty of Lisbon with the aim to improve and expand participation in European Union policy-making. Sergiu Gherghina and Adriana Groh argue that its potential is being hampered by poor citizen knowledge of the initiative, and multiple design flaws.
Introduced in April 2012 as the world’s first element of transnational participatory democracy, the European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI) aims to stimulate public participation, to provide a channel for communication between citizens and institutions of the European Union (EU), and to bring citizens closer to the European project. With the ECI citizens can make a proposal on the European Commission’s agenda. To support the initiative at least one million signatures have to be collected in at least 7 of the current 28 EU Member States.
The Commission has to react to this initiative but is not committed to take further action. While the ECI opens the floor to a bottom-up involvement in the EU decision-making process, many people do not know about the ECI and the opportunities it provides. More important, even those who know about the ECI are not eager to use it. This is somewhat peculiar especially at the EU level that was often criticized for its distant towards citizens. One might expect that as soon as people become aware about opportunities for involvement, they may be willing to take advantage of them.
A web survey conducted on 457 respondents from Germany (240) and the UK (211) in November 2014-January 2015 revealed that when it comes to the ECI, many citizens do not wish to take action. The survey was not conducted on a representative probability sample and thus results cannot be generalized to the entire population. However, they remain illustrative and quite important in the context of a heavy presence among the respondents of young and highly educated persons; these are the usual suspects to hear about the ECI due to their exposure to information. In spite of these, only one third of respondents (36% in Germany and 31% in the UK) have heard about the ECI three years after its implementation. Since the survey aimed to capture also the willingness to use the ECI, all those respondents who were not familiar with this tool were provided with a short text that outlined its basic features.
All respondents were then asked whether they would use the ECI and only 10% in Germany and 26% in the UK answered positively. In spite of similarly low levels of knowledge about the EU, in the UK there are three times more respondents willing to use the ECI than in Germany. At a glance this observation is counter-intuitive since the level of Euroscepticism in the UK is considerably higher than in Germany and the interest towards EU politics is arguably lower. A close look may provide an alternative interpretation in which the ECI could serve as an instrument to diminish existing problems and to adjust for the right decisions. Along these lines, the ECI could be also used to hinder EU decision-making processes rather than to support it. Somewhat more surprising is the fact that out of those who declared that they know what the ECI is only 6% in Germany and 20% in the UK declared that they are willing to use it in the future. Consequently, knowledge about the ECI is not associated to further action.
One explanation for this result is that citizens may not see the ECI as an effective instrument. So far it had a low rate of success and very few initiatives gained enough support to get proposed to the Commission. Only three initiatives reached the threshold of one million signatures and none of them ended up in legislation or policies. In essence, the ECI does not appear to deliver the promised involvement and thus citizens do not see the benefit of using it. In this sense, the more people know about it, the more likely they would know about its limitations and thus are demotivated to use it. Another possible explanation is the relatively poor advertisement.
In this case although people heard about the ECI the absence of in-depth knowledge about potential advantages does not trigger an interest to use it. Such an attitude can be seen in a positive light because citizens are not eager to use a tool about which they do not have detailed information. With these mechanisms in mind, there is more pressure on the EU institutions to improve the functioning and visibility of the ECI if they want to perform its initial functions (e.g. addressing a part of the democratic deficit, bringing citizens in).
Existing research based has shown that many European citizens strive for better representation in the EU. One way to go about it is to give them a voice in the decision-making process and the ECI aims, in theory, to provide such means. However, its design flaws, limited impact, and poor visibility are likely to keep citizens away: they have little incentives to learn about the ECI and are not willing to use it. In the particular case of the survey conducted in Germany and the UK, even a very small share among those who knew about the ECI is willing to take action. This raises question marks about how meaningful and ‘useworthy’ such an instrument is in its current form.
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Note: This post represents the views of the authors, and does not give the position of Democratic Audit or the London School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before commenting.
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Sergiu Gherghina is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Science, Goethe University Frankfurt, email: [email protected]
Adriana Groh holds a BA in Political Science and Sociology from Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research interests lie in European politics and the relationships between citizens and institutions.
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LONDON — In the days since Saudi Arabia inflamed tensions with Iran by executing 47 people, including a Shiite cleric, European observers have been quick to condemn the action, reflecting broader concern across the Continent about Saudi policy and its role in the tumult rolling through the Middle East.
Opposition in Europe to the death penalty — and harsh corporal punishment, including the flogging of a Saudi blogger who has become something of a cause célèbre in Europe — is just one element of the criticism of the Saudi monarchy. Even as European governments continue to view Saudi Arabia as a vital if problematic stabilizing force in the region, as well as a rich market for European arms and other products, European opinion has grown increasingly critical of Saudi support and financing for Wahhabist and Salafist preachers who have contributed to the Sunni extremist ideology that has fueled Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
In addition, the European Union and six major world powers reached a deal in Vienna over the summer to contain Iran’s nuclear program, and Iran is seen as essential to ending the five-year-old civil war in Syria, which has fueled a surge of migrants to the Continent, the highest number since World War II.
So for many Europeans, Iran — long a pariah because of its anti-Western rhetoric and its nuclear program — has suddenly become, at least in comparison with Saudi Arabia, an object of sympathy. |
Few of Barack Obama's celebrity supporters at the 2008 US presidential election were as committed to his cause as the Oscar-winning actor Matt Damon. Rather than merely support Mr Obama in an online video, Damon, one of Hollywood's highest-profile liberal activists, campaigned for the Democratic nominee in Florida. Not content with that, he provided one of the most cutting insults of the campaign when he described the Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin as "really terrifying... like something out of a bad Disney movie".
Damon, 40, star of the Bourne spy trilogy and two new films, The Adjustment Bureau and True Grit, is scrupulously polite and mild-mannered when we meet in a Manhattan hotel. But laying bare his disenchantment with the Obama administration, he doesn't hide how let down he feels. President Obama's record on the economy particularly rankles. "I think he's rolled over to Wall Street completely. The economy has huge problems. We still have all these banks that are too big to fail. They're bigger and making more money than ever. Unemployment at 10 per cent? It's terrible."
What has proved to be a challenging time in office for President Obama culminated in significant Democratic reversals to the Republicans at last November's mid-term elections. Many of his star backers have either kept quiet about politics or, as in the case of George Clooney, Damon's close friend and co-star in the Ocean's trilogy, remained steadfastly loyal. Not Damon. He is upset that Mr Obama, who promised to "spread the wealth around", has extended the Bush tax cuts and that the inequality gap has widened.
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"They had a chance that they don't have any more to stand up for things," he says. "They've probably squandered that at this point. They'll probably just make whatever deals they can to try to get elected again."
Damon appears so disillusioned that, playing devil's advocate, I ask whether he is considering voting Republican. "Good God, no! I just got a 3 per cent tax cut. Do you think I'm going to start a small business with that money? You're out of your mind if you think so. I'm going to put it in the bank. So is every other guy that makes the kind of money I make. I don't think that's what's best for the country. I think a stronger middle class makes for a stronger country."
As well as the economy, Mr Obama's record on education repels him. "They have to get people who actually know about educating kids in positions of power. Now they're trying to get business people to come and manage schools like they're factories. It's not going to work."
Damon says that he's excited to be playing a politician for the first time in The Adjustment Bureau, a sci-fi romance. But he has no intention of seeking office. "There's probably a problem with somebody who wants to be a politician in the first place."
That said, he does admire Bill Clinton. Damon based his portrayal of LaBoeuf, the loquacious ranger in True Grit, on the former president. "There's a little bit of Clinton's charm thrown in. I could listen to him talk forever."
A 2007 Forbes magazine study, linking actors' salaries to box office revenue, found Damon to be Hollywood's most profitable actor, but the most extraordinary thing about him in person is how ordinary he is. He brushes aside an attempt by a publicist to serve him coffee, insisting on pouring it himself. Instead of a celebrity actress or model spouse, he is married to Luciana Barroso whom he met while she was bartending in Miami. They live in New York with their four children.
How the big names turned against the President
Robert Redford
Actor and director
"I believe he's a really good person. He's smart. And he does represent what the country needs most now, which is change."
July 2008 "President Obama has certainly done more than any other president to advance clean energy, yet he never seemed to roll up his sleeves, bring lawmakers to the table and work to rally the American public behind it."
July 2010
Angelina Jolie
Actress
"Obama is fighting for international justice, he wants to intervene militarily in genocides abroad, and he wants to close down Guantanamo Bay."
November 2008
"How is Obama's approach to Sudan an evolution of justice? And when the administration says it intends to work to 'improve the lives of the people of Darfur', I would like to know what that means, besides the point that their lives could hardly get worse."
December 2009
Maria Shriver
Journalist
"He is about empowering women, African Americans, Latinos, older people, young people. He's about empowering all of us."
February 2008
"While I am confident that Obama never intended to offend anyone [with a joke about the Special Olympics], the response his comments have caused... demonstrates the need to continue to educate the non-disabled community."
March 2009
Spike Lee
Film director
"Everything's going to be affected by this seismic change in the universe."
June 2008
"Before this [Gulf of Mexico] catastrophe, our President was in favour of offshore drilling. And when this thing happened, he backtracked real quick."
August 2010
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Washington – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated ten current or former Venezuelan government officials pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13692. These individuals are associated with undermining electoral processes, media censorship, or corruption in government-administered food programs in Venezuela. This designation follows October 15, 2017 state elections in Venezuela, which were marked by numerous irregularities that strongly suggest fraud helped the ruling party unexpectedly win a majority of governorships.
Despite calls for an independent audit of the election results, the Venezuelan government proceeded to swear in the winning candidates through an oath of office before the illegitimate Constituent Assembly (Asamblea Constituyente or AC), further illustrating the authoritarian nature of the Maduro regime. In addition, the environment in which these elections were held – including censorship, the abuse of state media, and rampant corruption extending even to the distribution of food to Venezuela's starving population – raises questions concerning the freedom and fairness of the electoral process.
"As the Venezuelan government continues to disregard the will of its people, our message remains clear: the United States will not stand aside while the Maduro regime continues to destroy democratic order and prosperity in Venezuela," said Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin. "We will maintain our vigorous efforts to sanction Venezuelan government officials who are complicit in Maduro's attempts to undermine democracy, violate human rights, inhibit the freedom of expression or peaceful assembly, or engage in public corruption, unless they break from Maduro's dictatorial regime."
Today's designations consist of the following ten current or former officials of the Government of Venezuela. As a result of today's actions, all assets of these individuals subject to U.S. jurisdiction are frozen, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them.
Sandra Oblitas Ruzza is the Vice President and a Rector of Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) and the President of the Civil and Electoral Registry Commission maintained by the CNE. Oblitas Ruzza announced the relocation of polling stations only four days before the election. This activity disrupted the elections, as voters arrived and found that their polling stations had been moved.
is the Vice President and a Rector of Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) and the President of the Civil and Electoral Registry Commission maintained by the CNE. Oblitas Ruzza announced the relocation of polling stations only four days before the election. This activity disrupted the elections, as voters arrived and found that their polling stations had been moved. Socorro Elizabeth Hernandez De Hernandez is a CNE Rector and a member of Venezuela's National Electoral Board. Hernandez de Hernandez was involved in the changes that were made to polling station locations in the days prior to the elections.
is a CNE Rector and a member of Venezuela's National Electoral Board. Hernandez de Hernandez was involved in the changes that were made to polling station locations in the days prior to the elections. Carlos Enrique Quintero Cuevas is an Alternate Rector of the CNE, and a member of Venezuela's National Electoral Board.
is an Alternate Rector of the CNE, and a member of Venezuela's National Electoral Board. Elvis Eduardo Hidrobo Amoroso is the Second Vice President of Venezuela's AC and was previously the First Vice President of the AC. Prior to joining the AC, Hidrobo Amoroso was the Director General of Legal Consulting of the Ministry of the Office of the Presidency, and he is also a former National Assembly deputy for Aragua state. Hidrobo Amoroso has publicly condemned an opposition governor-elect who refused to take the oath of office before the illegitimate AC.
is the Second Vice President of Venezuela's AC and was previously the First Vice President of the AC. Prior to joining the AC, Hidrobo Amoroso was the Director General of Legal Consulting of the Ministry of the Office of the Presidency, and he is also a former National Assembly deputy for Aragua state. Hidrobo Amoroso has publicly condemned an opposition governor-elect who refused to take the oath of office before the illegitimate AC. Julian Isaias Rodriguez Diaz is the Venezuelan Ambassador to Italy and was previously the Second Vice President of the AC. Rodriguez Diaz, along with Hidrobo Amoroso, signed the decree requiring the oath of office before the illegitimate AC for governors elected on October 15.
is the Venezuelan Ambassador to Italy and was previously the Second Vice President of the AC. Rodriguez Diaz, along with Hidrobo Amoroso, signed the decree requiring the oath of office before the illegitimate AC for governors elected on October 15. Ernesto Emilio Villegas Poljak is Venezuela's newly appointed Minister of Culture and the former Minister of Communication and Information, and he has also held the position of President of Venezolana De Television (VTV), a state-run television channel. Under Villegas Poljak, VTV has curtailed freedom of the press and used state control of the media to restrict the democratic electoral process.
is Venezuela's newly appointed Minister of Culture and the former Minister of Communication and Information, and he has also held the position of President of Venezolana De Television (VTV), a state-run television channel. Under Villegas Poljak, VTV has curtailed freedom of the press and used state control of the media to restrict the democratic electoral process. Jorge Elieser Marquez Monsalve is Venezuela's newly appointed Minister of the Office of the Presidency and the former Director General of the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL), a Venezuelan public institution. In August 2017, CONATEL removed two Colombian television channels from the air in Venezuela due to their coverage of former Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz, who fled Venezuela. In February 2017, CONATEL announced the suspension of CNN en Español from Venezuela after the network issued various reports detailing allegations against the government.
is Venezuela's newly appointed Minister of the Office of the Presidency and the former Director General of the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL), a Venezuelan public institution. In August 2017, CONATEL removed two Colombian television channels from the air in Venezuela due to their coverage of former Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz, who fled Venezuela. In February 2017, CONATEL announced the suspension of CNN en Español from Venezuela after the network issued various reports detailing allegations against the government. Manuel Angel Fernandez Melendez is the President of Venezuela's National Telephone Company (CANTV), and the President of Movilnet, C.A., a subsidiary of CANTV. CANTV has drastically increased censorship and blocked multiple websites from the Venezuelan public, including social media websites.
is the President of Venezuela's National Telephone Company (CANTV), and the President of Movilnet, C.A., a subsidiary of CANTV. CANTV has drastically increased censorship and blocked multiple websites from the Venezuelan public, including social media websites. Carlos Alberto Osorio Zambrano is President of Venezuela's Superior Organ of the Transport Mission. He was previously the Minister of the Office of the Presidency, the Vice President of Security and Food Sovereignty, and the Minister of Food. In 2016, Venezuela's National Assembly audit commission alleged that Osorio Zambrano was complicit in swindling the state out of up to $573 million through corruption in Venezuela's food program.
is President of Venezuela's Superior Organ of the Transport Mission. He was previously the Minister of the Office of the Presidency, the Vice President of Security and Food Sovereignty, and the Minister of Food. In 2016, Venezuela's National Assembly audit commission alleged that Osorio Zambrano was complicit in swindling the state out of up to $573 million through corruption in Venezuela's food program. Freddy Alirio Bernal Rosales is Venezuela's Minister of Urban Agriculture and heads the National Command and Control Center for Local Committees of Supply and Production (CLAP), Venezuela's government-run food distribution program. Bernal Rosales was previously designated by OFAC as a Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act on September 8, 2011 for acting for or on behalf of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
View identifying information on the individuals designated today.
View more information about Executive Order 13692.
#### |
News: Become a Champion With New Events!
Unleash your new power with the V: Champions events which focus on celebrating the true heroes of MapleStory, YOU!
To show our appreciation, we’re giving free gifts to everyone who logged into MapleStory between November 30th and January 18th! All you have to do is log in to MapleStory after the V: Champions update goes live and accept the gifts from the in-game notifier. You will receive all kinds of amazing items including Royal Hair and Face coupons, 3x EXP coupons, Selective 8 Slot Coupons, Safety Charms, New Year Coins, and more. You can even get a V Flame Chair!
EVENT ENDS FEBRUARY 7, 2017
Are you a Maple champion? Set world records as you play by performing goals like defeating the highest numbers of monsters, dying the most times, picking up the most items, and more. Keep playing to surpass the current record and set a new one!
Use the Maple World Records Book to keep track of who holds the current records in your world and see what you need to do to beat them! Some records are hidden and you have to solve hints to find out what they are.
Every time you become a record holder, you’ll receive rewards. Earn a special title to show that you’re the current World Record holder. As you keep collecting records, you’ll earn restorative items, Spell Traces, EXP and Drop coupons, effects, potential items, and more!
EVENT ENDS FEBRUARY 7, 2017
UNLEASH YOUR TRUE POTENTIAL AND BECOME THE ELITE MAPLE HERO
YOU ARE MEANT TO BE! |
Gout has been described by the Daily Mail as something, “usually associated with port-swilling, over-fed elderly men of the 19th century”. (1) Recent research carried out at the Boston University School of Medicine, however, has found that the incidence of gout in the US is on the rise. (2) Thus, the condition is clearly not something that only affects this stereotype.
But what actually is gout and why is the incidence of the condition increasing?
What is gout?
Gout is a rheumatic disease, which means it involves inflammation (such as redness, swelling and pain) of the joints, tendons, ligaments and so forth. (3, 4)
Philip Conaghan, Consultant Rheumatologist, Chapel Allerton Hospital, Leeds, explains what gout is, what causes it and how it can be treated. Source: NHS
The condition usually affects the base of the big toe. The toe may swell and cause severe pain in the joint. Symptoms can, however, affect any joint in the body. (5, 8)
Other commonly affected joints include:
Ankles
Knees
Fingers and small joints in the hand
Wrists
Elbows
Heels
Insteps/mid-foot (6, 7, 8)
Gout may come in so-called “attacks”. This is where the symptoms rapidly worsen in 6-24 hours and continue for around 3-10 days. (5)
Is the incidence of gout increasing?
Several researchers have suggested that gout is on the rise in the US.
Most recently, researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine have stated that the incidence of gout has risen significantly in the US over the last 20 years. (2)
The increase may have been going on much longer than this. Earlier research published in the Journal of Rheumatology compared 1995-1996 with 1977-1978 and found that there had been a significant increase over this period. (10)
This increasing trend may not, however, be universal to all countries. For example, research published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases showed that the incidence of gout in the UK seemed to remain stable during the 1990s. (9)
Thus, whether the incidence of gout is increasing seems to be dependent on where you are referring to and over what timescale.
Researchers, publishing work in the Current Rheumatology Reports, did, however, generalise that “taken together, epidemiologic investigations suggest that gout frequency is on the rise worldwide”. (11)
What is responsible for this increase?
Several factors have been suggested as being responsible for the increasing incidence of gout. These include:
Dietary changes
Alcohol consumption
Medications (12)
Dietary changes and incidence of gout
Dietary changes have been suggested to be associated with the increasing incidence of gout. Specifically, consuming large amounts of certain foods have been suggested as being associated with increased risk for gout:
red meat
fructose
beer
In contrast, high levels of consumption of other substances have been suggested as being associated with lower risk of gout. These include:
Coffee
Low-fat dairy products
Vitamin C (13)
Research has been carried out on the incidence of gout and the consumption of fructose in particular. The research was published in the British Medical Journal and states that prospective data suggests that fructose consumption is strongly associated with an increased risk of gout in men. (14)
This means that consumption of sweetened soft drinks, and may even fructose rich fruit juices, may be increasing the risk of gout. The researchers also found that diet soft drinks were not associated with this risk. (14)
Alcohol consumption and incidence of gout
The association of consumption of alcohol and incidence of gout seems to be one that has been engrained in our minds for centuries, but is alcohol really responsible for the increase in the incidence of gout? (15)
According to research published in the American Journal of Medicine, alcohol consumption does trigger recurrent gout attacks. Moreover they found that even light-to-moderate consumption of alcohol can trigger recurrent gout attacks. (16)
Other researchers have found that the type of alcohol drunk also influences your risk of gout. Specifically, they found that beer drinkers are at a heightened risk of gout. In contrast, they said that spirits and wine were not as associated with risk of gout. This means that it may not be the alcohol itself that is associated with gout risk; but the other non-alcoholic components present in the drinks. (17)
Medications and incidence of gout
Certain medications have been associated with an increased risk of gout. These include:
Diuretics, which are prescribed to control high blood pressure
Beta-blockers, which are prescribed for several different conditions such as angina, atrial fibrillation and so forth
Niacin, which is prescribed to treat high cholesterol
Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, which are used to treat hypertension, heart failure and to reduce kidney damage in diabetes patients
Non-losartan angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) also used to treat heart failure (18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
Overall, why is the incidence of gout increasing?
Overall, it seems like we might be able to learn something about the increasing incidence of gout from the stereotypical gout patient after all. Although sufferers may not technically be “port-swillers,” alcohol consumption does seem to be associated with the incidence of gout. Similarly, sufferers may not be described as “over-fed”; yet dietary factors also seem to play a role in the incidence of gout. |
Country: Polynesian & Pacific Islands (Guam and Samoa)
Restaurant: Polynesian Luau (Samoa) & Prubechu (Guam)
The Stew: Caramelized Potato Soup (Prubechu / Guam)
Other Food Ordered: Polynesian Luau: Boiled Taro, Banana, Mulipipi (turkey tail), Po Po Mamoe (coconut lamb), Kale Mamoe (curry lamb); Prubechu: Tuba (coconut wine) Tinaktak (coconut beef with pasta), Red Rice with pork belly and bacon, Coconut Pancakes with tuba butter
Dessert: Bonelos Aga (banana donuts)
Polynesia is an interesting destination because there are so many islands. We decided to mix and match among the only two pacific island restaurants we could find in the bay area: Prubechu which serves high-brow Guamanian cuisine, and Polynesian luau, a Samoan family-owned convenient store that also serves some home made dishes.
Even though they both represent the Pacific Island region, these two restaurants served very different cuisines. We started with Polynesian Luau were the staff were extremely warm and friendly, eager to teach me about their food and culture. After looking curiously at the food for a while (I obviously didn’t know where to begin) the lady behind the counter explained to me that instead of eating their meals with rice, potatoes, or noodles, they generally eat taro and banana. She then suggested I order a combination plate which includes the taro and banana along with three protein dishes. I gladly accepted her suggestion and ordered the turkey tail, coconut lamb, and lamb curry dishes.
I set the table for the rest of the Foxes so we could have our first taste of Polynesia. We all agreed that the food was greasy, sweet, full of coconut, and overall delicious. Full of fat, the turkey tails were different from how turkey is generally consumed in the states. They certainly had much more flavor and a completely different texture than we’re used to. It was almost hard to believe it was turkey at all.
The curry was also a bit different from the spicy curries we’re used to. Samoan curry was sweet with a hint of coconut and a hearty portion of lamb. Lamb must be a popular meat in Samoa because the coconut lamb was also cooked to perfection. In addition to the obvious ingredients, the dish was covered with spinach giving the perfect combination of sweet and savory flavors. Everything tasted delicious, especially when mixed with the mild taro and young banana.
Immediately after this opening Polynesian meal, we hopped over to the nearby Pacific island of Guam via the restaurant Prubechu. With the trendy Mission SF décor and mood lighting, the ambience was a complete 180º and the food was slightly more of an upscale version of Pacific islander cuisine.
We started with a small local drink called Tuba, or fermented coconut wine. Although it smelled quite strong, it didn’t taste at all like alcohol even though it shared a similar alcohol level as wine. After the drink we ordered a few dishes: coconut pancakes with tuba butter (made out of the same alcohol I had tasted earlier), tinaktak or coconut beef with pasta, and red rice with pork belly and bacon. None of these dishes disappointed us.
The coconut beef with pasta had a great mixture of sweet, savory, and familiar flavors. The pancakes were also familiar to us as we’ve seemed to build a pattern of ordering different varieties of savory flatbreads at most of the other restaurants we visit. The tuba butter was a nice touch, adding a Polynesian sweetness to the dish.
The red rice was more exotic for us with its amazing pork belly and bacon, cooked in a way I had never encountered before. It was thickly cut, crispy, and full of flavor.
For our soup we ordered the caramelized potato soup. This was probably one of the most beautiful dishes we’ve been served on our journey. It was delicious and full of colorful garnishes, even small flowers. It was a sweeter and more flavorful version of a typical potato soup. Finally for dessert, we ordered the bonelos aga, or deep fried bananas with (yet again) the tuba sauce. The dish was delicious, tasting mostly as one would expect. Deep fried bananas topped with powdered sugar can never disappoint me!
Overall Polynesia was a great experience and we were able to island hop from Samoa to Guam tasting the Pacific Ocean like we never had before!
Dan’s Favorite: Turkey Tail (Polynesian Luau)
Iraina’s Favorite: Bonelos Aga and Red Rice (Prubechu)
Ned’s Favorite: Coconut Lamb (Polynesian Luau)
Gabi’s Favorite: Coconut Lamb (Polynesian Luau)
Polynesian Luau, 2901 Geneva Ave, Daly City, CA 94014
Prubechu, 2847 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110 |
THE TRADE UNION representing Ireland’s doctors has said the Government is seeking an extra year to fall into line with EU rules on working hours – and end the practice where junior doctors can work shifts of up to 80 hours.
The Irish Medical Organisation, which is currently attending talks at the Labour Relations Commission on a possible replacement for the Croke Park 2 deal, says the Government now wants to bring Ireland in line with the rules by the end of 2014.
Earlier this year, health minister James Reilly had said it was a high HSE priority to bring the rules into place by the end of 2013 – while arguing that consultant doctors would have to take pay cuts in order to allow the recruitment of new junior doctors to fill the gap.
Now, however, the IMO says it expects any revised deals on public sector pay to include a clause under which the Government would sign up to the rules by the end of 2014 – meaning it would have another 18 months to implement the directive.
The directive – which has existed in various forms since 1993, but was most recently updated in 2008 – limits an employee’s working week to a maximum of 48 hours.
The directive has yet to be imposed in Ireland, however, where non-consultant (or ‘junior’) hospital doctors regularly work up to twice as many hours per week, due to staff shortages.
Earlier this year TheJournal.ie revealed that some junior doctors were still being asked to work shifts of up to 36 hours – and regularly being rostered for 32 hours in succession.
The IMO said its talks had also reached an agreement to transfer responsibility for some tasks, such as phlebotomy, to be transferred to nurses as a way of increasing efficiency and reducing pay.
“It is important to state that no agreement has yet been reached on many of the critical issues,” it said. “However progress has been made on some important matters.” |
Cookson’s 100 Days
It might be round number from the decimal system but over the years various political administrations and managerial careers have been reviewed after just 100 days. In this spirit it was 100 days ago that Brian Cookson rode the train from Florence to Aigle to start work as UCI President. What’s happened and what’s next?
Listening to the Eurosport podcast’s review of the year, I was reminded that the election process on the day was a farce. Held in the same building where Niccolò Machiavelli once held office, at times the UCI Congress was more Franz Kafka than power politics, at one moment there was the tautological vote to decide whether they should vote on an issue. Arguably Cookson’s first act of power was standing up to say “We’ve had enough of this. I propose that we go straight to the vote between the two candidates” which delivered him the necessary 24 votes.
Cookson assumed power on the spot and in no time the gumshoes of private security agency Kroll were instructed to secure the UCI’s computer system, apparently taking Pat McQuaid’s laptop. The former President denied this, instead it seems a back-up copy was made of the UCI’s servers.
DNF
If Kroll went in, others got their marching orders. Belgian laywer Philippe Verbiest was never a UCI employee but had been retained as legal counsel and a mastermind behind tactical blunders like suing Paul Kimmage or thwarting USADA’s case against Lance Armstrong and his US Postal colleagues. Cookson needed little time to tell Verbiest his services were no longer required. Another departure was Christophe Hubschmid, the UCI Director General who helped Pat McQuaid’s awkward search for a nomination. Viewed from afar Hubschmid seemed to cross a line, bending the UCI’s Constitution to suit the incumbent rather than upholding the principles and Cookson seemed to take the same view. Less one-sided during the campaign, Devra Pitt Gétaz has also left the UCI’s communications department.
In came Martin Gibbs, Cookson’s policy director at British Cycling, as the new Director General. Tracy Gaudry was a new Vice President and every UCI Commission, jargon for committee, now includes one woman. It’s a start to balancing things but a long way to go: how about abolishing the UCI rule that states the World Championships must have six “maids of honor” to deliver the medals? Meanwhile Swiss lawyer Antonio Rigozzi has been appointed as legal councillor, an ironic choice given he worked for many a cyclist in anti-doping cases brought by the UCI; he’s an expert on sports law and arbitration but one wish for the Cookson’s term is less prominence for lawyers.
Truth and Reconciliation
Cookson’s biggest drive has been the idea of a “Truth and Reconciliation” process. The name is all wrong, conjuring thoughts of a South African process for forgiveness but any plans have to be framed by the WADA rules. For now the international anti-doping agency seems unwilling to bend its rules to suit the UCI’s agenda meaning amnesty looks no more possible tomorrow than it was yesterday, only “substantial assistance” will be considered when mitigating a ban. Think instead of the Independent Commission plan to investigate what went on in the past and we should get an update on its composition in the coming days. It’ll be useful to learn from the past – why wasn’t Armstrong disqualified in the 1999 Tour – but each passing day sees this time look less and less relevant.
Meanwhile with someone high in the UCI seeming to brief the British press about “dynamite” you wonder if there’s added motivation to get back at Pat McQuaid for the torment he created during the campaign last summer? Certainly due process doesn’t include briefing the newspapers.
Franc
Talking of payback of the monthly kind the UCI President’s salary is now public knowledge. The news release was loaded with a reference to Pat McQuaid’s salary and media reports stated Cookson would “take a pay cut”. Only since he’d never had a UCI salary before there was no cut. He’s on a headline salary of 340,000 Swiss Francs (US$375,000 / €275,000). It was a tilt at McQuaid and a sneaky way to say “this is a big number but lower than the past”. It’s a great wage but if you think it’s astronomical, note Switzerland is an enclave of high pay and high prices too, supermarket cashiers earn 48,000 Francs a year ($45,000 / €33,000) and a pizza and coke can cost you more than anywhere else in the world. The headline salary is one part of Cookson’s package, it’s traditional that he gets a house on top of the salary, something of considerable value too.
Calendar Shake-Up
As previously the President of the Road Commission in the UCI, Cookson’s a signed-up member of the plans to shake-up the calendar by 2020 so it’s hard to see much change here. However we’re still waiting to learn the fate of GCP, the UCI’s in-house race promotion arm that loses money faster than the UCI can infuse it with cash. GCP promotes the Tour of Beijing, an event that can’t get a break whether its air pollution, denying teams with Japanese sponsors or fears of contaminated meat. You sense GCP could turn a corner to make profit but will Cookson wait or give up this obvious conflict of interest? All will be revealed by the “International Development Commission”.
Independent anti-doping
An independent anti-doping effort was another campaign pledge. There’s an audit of procedures at the moment prior to creating this. But the Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation (CADF) is UCI agency already with separate legal identity. Someone once told me this was in case the UCI was taken to the cleaners, the CADF could be bankrupted but not bring down the whole governing body, an interesting theory. But the CADF was hardly independent, housed in the UCI and its most senior director was a certain P McQuaid. Cookson’s not a director and it looks like the CADF will be pushed further outside the UCI but it’s all a matter of degree, it’s likely to remain dependent on the UCI for funding but it could be operationally independent. If you see what I mean.
Transparency
President McQuaid had his strengths but dealing with the media wasn’t his best area. As a result interviews were rare and often defensive. By contrast Brian Cookson seems more relaxed in front of the cameras although the UCI’s communications, Its social media efforts look very rigid.
Reports that Greece was offered €25,000 to back Cookson in UCI presidential race. We’ve seen proof that it was indeed the case. — Orla Chennaoui (@SkyOrla) September 27, 2013
And we’ve not seen this allegation cleared up. I gather the proof was an email apparently from one of Cookson’s supporters on the UCI management committee but others have whispered about a fake email account, a possible smear attempt. It would be good to clear up.
Conclusion
Many a politician can flounder in their first 100 days, restrained by the checks and balances of democracy and caught out by their excessive campaign pledges. The UCI President is far more powerful with fewer roadblocks and Brian Cookson didn’t need to promise the earth to win the job either.
So far nothing seems to have gone wrong since September, a point to note given the UCI’s previous propensity for accidents. Since taking the train to Aigle Cookson’s launched a flotilla of audits and initiatives meaning the real decisions are postponed, sensible to review before deciding. But women’s cycling should benefit from increased representation and the goodwill resulting from change is opening doors for the sport as a whole.
Able to shape the sport, improve the UCI’s reputation all whilst being well-paid, this could be the best job in sports administration. The leadership might have changed but many of the UCI’s problems have been institutional, for example the way it handles a conflict of interest shouldn’t depend on the President or whoever they’ve appointed to run the Ethics Committee. So far so good but it’s the next 1,000 days and beyond that count. |
Image copyright Ali Alaswad Image caption The government argues that the Barbagi Mosque encroached on a safety lane and was a hazard to traffic
When an historic Shia Muslim mosque in Bahrain was bulldozed on 17 April 2011 on the orders of the government, it sent shockwaves through the island's majority Shia community.
The Amir Mohammed Mohammed Barbagi Mosque was more than 400 years old. It had a prominent location on Sheikh Salman Highway, which leads to a causeway linking Bahrain to Saudi Arabia.
The mosque was one of at least 30 religious sites, all of them Shia, which were destroyed over a two-month period at the height of anti-government uprising three years ago.
The related unrest left dozens of people dead, hundreds injured, thousands in prison and thousands more without jobs, most of them Shia.
'Violating laws'
In March 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states had rolled down Sheikh Salman Highway and past the Barbagi Mosque to help the Sunni ruling family, the Al Khalifa, to restore order and crush the dissent.
It was after that intervention that the destruction of mosques began.
Image copyright Ali Alaswad Image caption The Shia community wants the mosque to be rebuilt in its original location, but the government disagrees
King Hamad put a halt to further demolitions in May 2011, a few days after US President Barack Obama publically rebuked the Bahraini authorities for using "brute force" to quell "legitimate calls for reform", warning: "Shia must never have their mosques destroyed in Bahrain."
The government had justified the demolitions by saying the religious sites were violating zoning, land-use and planning laws.
It also alleged that they were being used to store weapons, a charge for which little or no evidence was provided.
Image copyright ICD It was collective punishment - a way for the government to show it was willing to go to any lengths to stop the demands for a democratic transition in Bahrain Sheikh Maytham al-Salman, Bahrain Interfaith Centre
A panel of independent human rights experts was subsequently tasked by the king to examine human rights abuses.
An investigation of the destruction of religious sites was part of the remit of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI).
"The government must have been aware of the construction of these structures and that they lacked proper legal permits and did not conform to building regulations," the BICI's report noted. "Nonetheless, the government had not stopped the construction of these structures nor taken action to remove them for a number of years."
"The government should have realised that under the circumstances, in particular the timing, the manner in which demolitions were conducted and the fact that these were primarily Shia religious structures, the demolitions would be perceived as a collective punishment."
The report was critical of the manner of the demolitions.
"General Security and/or riot police forbade the locals from removing Korans and other religious artefacts from the places of worship," it said.
In response the government promised to rebuild the religious sites. To date, according to a report sent to the BBC, 10 of the 30 demolished have been rebuilt, while 17 others are under construction.
"Procedures to regularise the status and location of the remaining three to comply with land use and planning laws are under way," it adds.
Relocation
Sheikh Maytham al-Salman, a spokesman for the Bahrain Interfaith Centre and a prominent critic of the government, told the BBC the demolitions were "not only a crime but cultural genocide".
"It was collective punishment - a way for the government to show it was willing to go to any lengths to stop the demands for a democratic transition in Bahrain," he said.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Shia leaders blamed Bahrain's Justice and Islamic Affairs minister for the demolitions
Sheikh Salman added that he believed that Bahrain's Justice and Islamic Affairs Minister, Sheikh Khalid bin Ali Al Khalifa, bore "a huge responsibility" for the destruction of the mosques.
"We believe he gave the implementation order for the demolitions. He is the minister responsible for Islamic affairs. This could not have happened without him being involved," he explained.
Officials did not respond to a request from the BBC for a comment from the minister.
The Barbagi Mosque has yet to be rebuilt. But worshippers pray on the site where the mosque once stood.
Their presence serves as both a silent protest and a reminder to all who drive along the Sheikh Salman Highway of what happened there three years ago.
The Shia community is insisting that the mosque be rebuilt in its original location. However, the government wants to move it away from the road.
Image copyright Ali Alaswad Image caption Shia have continued to pray at the former site of the Barbagi mosque, beside the Sheikh Salman Highway
Opponents say that is because a Shia mosque in such a prominent location on a road much frequented by members of the ruling family and Saudis visiting Bahrain is an annoyance.
For its part, the government argues that the mosque had encroached on a safety lane and was a hazard to traffic.
But for many Shia, the destruction of the Barbagi Mosque remains a potent symbol of everything that is wrong with the government's treatment of their community.
Sheikh Salman says: "There is pain in the hearts of thousands of Shia and there is a feeling that Shia deserve to have had a word of apology from the regime for this crime."
However, as the dispute drags on and a national dialogue aimed at reconciliation remains stalled few have any hope that Bahrain's wounded society will heal any time soon. |
A WAYWARD Wicklow Labrador found himself at the long paw of the law on Sunday night (August 7), after he was handed into Bray Garda Station.
The full grown adult male dog was handed over to the Bray division of An Garda Síochána at 9pm on Sunday after meandering the Greystones to Bray cliffs.
It's understood he followed cliff walkers from the Greystones harbour area, over Bray Head and into Bray Garda Station.
The official An Garda Síochána Facebook page uploaded pictures of the worn out pooch, sopping wet, and splayed across the station floor and issued a plea in the hopes of returning the Labrador to his owner.
The plea read, "Lost male white Labrador dog currently at Bray Garda station, handed in at 2130hrs 07/08/2016. Possibly from the Greystones area as he followed cliff walkers from the harbour area in Greystones over Bray Head and into Bray Garda Station. Not reported missing locally."
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An Garda Síochána also said that it was their role to "protect life and property."
They continued on to say they were helping this lost dog as, "somebody owns this dog, we want to return the property to the owner. We also have a role under the animals act to prevent cruelty. It would be cruel not to help this lost dog."
Many people praised the Gardaí for their efforts in returning the dog to his owner, and hoped he would have a safe return.
Thankfully, after spending a night in the station the Labrador, whose real name is Bailey, was returned to his waiting family. |
After an improbable 8-game winning streak and a 10-2 start, I have a statement for my fellow Portland Trail Blazer fans: let’s sit back and enjoy the success.
It’s true that sports reporting has come very far since the days of radio and newspapers. Sports journalism, in some areas, is starting to resemble a science.
That makes it very tempting to dig as far as one can into the depths of every game, and it goes several layers. It begins with statements like, “Wesley Matthews had a great game against the Nets.” Then it’s, “he had 24 points and 6 rebounds.” Then it’s “he shot 9 of 13 from the field and 5 of 8 from three.” Then it’s, “his usage rate was 18.2%,” then “his effective field goal percentage was 88.5% and his true shooting was 86.5% and his offensive rating was 175 and his GameScore was 20.8.” PHEW!
I know this is useful, and maybe I’m bitter because I just don’t understand it all, but seriously… how much of this crap do we really need to know that a guy had a damn good game? Besides, stats are inevitably flawed because they can’t possibly take into account everything a player does on the court. It’s like taking a 240p video and yelling ENHANCE, hoping to catch a reflection of someone in a mirror 200 feet away.
Is there a stat for when a defender perfectly funnels his assignment into a trap that leads to someone else picking off a tough pass? Is there a stat for when someone’s playing so hard that their dunk invigorates the crowd, instantly making all of their team play that much better and the other team play that much worse? Can you give a guy 4 points for making a bomb that stops an 11-0 run? Those momentum-changing shots sure as hell mean a lot more than anything a guy does in garbage time.
To that end, we have people doing their best to pick apart the Blazers’ 10-2 start: they play terrible paint defense, they shoot too many threes, players are converting an unsustainable number of shots, their opponents are weak. You even have people who take ONE stat, minutes played, and suggest… in their HEADLINE… that because Blazer starters are playing 72% of the team’s minutes as opposed to, say, the Pacers’ 67%, that they will collapse as they did last season.
OK, fine. Ignore that the Blazers’ bench is about 4 ticks better than lasts’. Ignore that CJ McCollum will be making his way back in the next month or so. Ignore that they’ve been intentionally sticking to a 9-man rotation and leaving off two guys that got significant run last year. Really. It’s a frustrating proposition when a writer with an NBC-backed Internet platform gets to fling platitudes around like so many dinner rolls in a food fight.
More than that, it’s missing the point, at least a very important part of the point, of being a fan of a team.
Now I’m not saying to bathe in ignorance. Stats are fun. And they can be really helpful. But besides connecting with the players, following their ups and downs, and generally sticking through times both good and bad, part of the fun of being a fan is enjoying when they WIN. And for this team, an even bigger part of the fun is to look at the standings every day and see YOUR team right at the top.
And no, it hasn’t been one game, or two games, or three games. It’s been 12. That’s a decent chunk of time. And are there fans that deserve to see their team rattle off 8 in a row more than you Blazer fans? After seeing the face of the franchise deteriorate from one of the game’s best guards in his prime into a hobbling mess in just two short years? To see our other franchise player’s knees explode one after the other? To see the disgusting aftermath of trying to tie everything together when everything and anything went wrong?
Portland: we deserve this. We stuck through a lot of tough times. I wear my black-and-red Oden shirt to the gym without irony. And while the letters may be crumbling, my interest, my passion, my love for the Blazers is not. Now, early in the season, during this brief days-long rest before fighting another battle, they’re 10-2. They’re at the top of the pile. They’re looking down on everyone else from above.
Enjoy it. Relish it. Be like a little kid and brag to your buddies about it. Jump on Twitter and #8inarow about it. Go to the playground and bomb a 6-feet-from-the-line three and shout LILLARD about it. Because after the last few years, it’s really the least we can do to keep ourselves sane. |
President Donald Trump lamented that an Obamacare repeal may take until 2018 in an interview with Bill O’Reilly on Super Bowl Sunday.
“I would like to say by the end of the year, at least the rudiments, but we should have something within the year and the following year,” the president explained.
Republican leaders originally set the Obamacare repeal deadline on January 27th. That deadline was quickly brushed away given increasing disunity regarding Obamacare’s repeal. Secret recordings of the Republican retreat in Philadelphia revealed a deluge of uncertainty from Republican leaders, the rank-and-file. Arguments included whether to repeal and replace Obamacare simultaneously or separately, to maintain Obamacare’s taxes to fund a replacement, and to keep the states Obamacare exchanges.
Since then, Republicans leaders such as House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R.-Ore.) believe that the scope of healthcare reform needs to change from “replace” to “repair.” Speaker Ryan rebuked that rhetoric by called Obamacare a “collapsing law.” He noted, “Somewhere along the line there was confusion that we were going to take the Obamacare architecture and, you know, tinker at the margins and repair it.”
Despite the rhetoric, it is unclear how Republicans plan to repeal Obamacare beyond reconciliation, where any Obamacare repeal will require the support of Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer promised no cooperation from Democrats unless there will be a repeal-and-replace package at the same time, and “So long as it covers as many people as the ACA, so long as it helps bring healthcare costs down, so long as it doesn’t move our healthcare system backward.”
The American Medical Association, the largest association of doctors, wrote a letter to Congress in January providing a roadmap for what “in reasonable detail what will replace current policies.” Vice President Mike Pence speaking with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos said that there will be a smooth transition between repeal and replace, noting, “He’s also made it very clear that at the same time that we repeal Obamacare, we’re going through both executive action and through legislation, set into motion a replacement of Obamacare that will be orderly and will lead the American people.”
Senator Lamar Alexander (R.-Tenn.), Chairman of the Senate Health Committee said argued that Obamacare’s repeal will only take place when there is a practical alternative, saying:
I think of Obamacare like a collapsing bridge. If your local bridge were “very near collapse,” the first thing you would do is send in a rescue crew to repair it temporarily so no one else is hurt. Then you would build a better bridge, or more accurately, many bridges, as states develop their own plans for providing access to truly affordable health care to replace the old bridge. Finally, as the new bridges are finished and safe to drive across, you would close the old bridge.
While Congress will vote to repeal and replace Obamacare this year, the repeal of Obamacare finally will become effective when our reforms are implemented and we have concrete, practical alternatives.
I believe this is what the President means when he says we will repeal and replace Obamacare simultaneously and what Speaker Ryan means when he says we will repeal and replace Obamacare concurrently.
Sen. Alexander is a proponent of repealing and replacing at the same time, an idea that President Donald Trump has signed onto in the past. Any form of repeal would only be effective after there is a practical alternative that includes several of the popular republican reforms to Obamacare, such as shopping insurance plans across state lines, and expansion of health savings accounts.
There are number of plans to replace Obamacare, including from Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a separate plan from Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), as well as from Speaker Ryan. However, there is little consensus from Congress, or the White House on which plan will be implemented to replace Obamacare. There is also little agreement on when the plan will take place, Speaker Ryan has mentioned March or April, but with President Trump’s remarks it seems that Obamacare may stay until even 2018.
President Trump said that Obamacare repeal is “very complicated” but reminds everyone that “Obamacare is a disaster.” |
A high school teacher was arrested Monday in Riverside after allegedly having a monthslong inappropriate relationship with a student, authorities said.According to detectives, a female student's mother had contacted police over the weekend and reported the relationship.Camryn Zelinger, 32, of Corona, was taken into custody Monday at Encore High School for the Arts and booked on suspicion of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor and annoying or molesting a child under 18, the Riverside Police Department said in a statement.The agency's Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit launched an investigation after the 14-year-old girl told officers of her relationship with Zelinger, according to police."The investigation revealed inappropriate physical contact and communications between the teacher and student," the news release said, adding that school officials "fully cooperated" with authorities.Asked if text messages were exchanged, Officer Ryan Railsback said: "It appears so, that that was one of the ways that they communicated. The investigation determined that was a crime along with the physical contact that the teacher made against the student."Zelinger, who posted bail and was released, is no longer employed by the school, according to police. |
I have seen the future, and it is now.
Those words came to mind again as I recently listened to Craig Venter, one of those leading the new areas of synthetic genomics and synthetic biology. Every time I hear a talk on this subject, it seems a new threshold in the artificial manipulation and, ultimately, creation of life has been passed.
Consider just some of the progress associated with the J. Craig Venter Institute. In 2003 its researchers created a synthetic version of the bacteriophage phiX174. In 2007 they successfully transformed one species of bacteria to another by genome transplantation. Most recently, they developed methods for the complete synthetic assembly of the genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium.
The techniques now developed make the feat of sequencing the human genome in 2001 seem prehistoric. Not only have the cost and speed of sequencing evolved faster than those of computer chips, but the ability to use both chemistry and biology to synthesize new complex organisms has undergone a revolution in the past five years. Instructions embedded in synthetic gene sequences can now be implanted in foreign cells and thereby cause those cells to express proteins; those proteins, in turn, build new functioning copies of the life-forms whose instruction manual is in the embedded sequences. Venter calls this cycle “software that creates its own hardware.” I expect to hear news soon of the successful creation of the first completely artificial life-form, built from scratch and not alive until the scientists assembled it.
Semiconductor nanotechnology has been heralded for more than a decade, but I believe it will pale beside the ability of biotechnology to transform life and society. Imagine the impact of piggybacking on nature’s majesty and designing living systems that can perform tasks not found in nature, from microbes that make gasoline or eat carbon dioxide to create nonbiodegradable plastic building materials to organisms designed to surgically and strategically operate on cancer cells. I expect that within 50 years the world’s economy will be driven not by computer-generated information but by biologically generated software.
Of course, as Spiderman would say, with great power comes great responsibility. Hackers now create software viruses that periodically disable huge computer networks. With the ability to make DNA sequences to order has risen the specter of garage-based DNA hackers who might terrorize the world—intentionally or accidentally—by re-creating the Ebola virus or the 1918 flu. Each of those disease organisms has a genetic code far smaller than that of the recently synthesized M. genitalium. One could also imagine producing, again perhaps unwittingly, viruses that are immune to existing vaccines.
Some may fear the existence of new life-forms that might attack all life on earth or at least human life. This fear is probably misplaced. Life has survived for more than three billion years because it is robust, and almost no mutations can easily outwit the defense mechanisms built up through eons of exposure to potential pathogens. Venter’s argument that new naturally emerging diseases are a far greater threat than new artificial diseases seems relatively compelling.
Nevertheless, there have been, until fairly recently, few checks on the unfettered reproduction of genetic information. As the ability to synthesize more complex biological systems has increased, however, the research community has put in place a voluntary system of restrictions, for example, on the fulfillment of commercial orders for genetic sequences that correspond to portions of potentially lethal organisms. At present, the technological know-how associated with developing synthetic biology laboratories with malice aforethought is probably beyond the means of even sophisticated terrorist networks. Moreover, it is important not to let misplaced fears of Armageddon unduly restrict scientific work with great potential to benefit humankind.
I have always felt that, aside from research that violates universal human mores, when it comes to technological applications, that which can be done will be done. What we need to do is rigorously attempt to anticipate what may be possible so that we can minimize the risks and maximize the benefits. We need to walk into the future, no matter how unnerving, with open eyes if society is to keep pace with technology. |
... [M]ight it be fair also to say that the champions of 'no difference' in race or sex, or intelligence ... are the guardians of a greater 'untruth' that allows people to live together in mutual harmony, implying that these critics really deserve to be praised as our protectors even when they are factually wrong? ... it is roughly how the self-appointed guardians choose to present themselves - leaving aside, usually, the step of frankly admitting that they are promoting factual untruths when they know that they are.
The public intellectual forum is being manipulated with intimidation and coercion and you are being lied to. The media is not doing its job, and the scientific community is not playing its proper public role as a beacon of dispassionate truth seeking, as a conduit of knowledge to the public, or in fostering an open and fair intellectual climate. Both are abusing their power and authority to do the opposite of their honor bound social and intellectual roles; facts are being distorted in service of values.This post is a very long and detailed examination of what James Watson said, what the data reveal about James Watson's claims (i.e. are they, or are they not factually accurate), andwhat the data reveal about James Watson's claims.
Labels: general intelligence, human biodiversity, national IQ, race, Watson |
I Cannot Be a Feminist
I will always be pro-woman
Ali Alexander Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 22, 2013
Being the eldest of three boys with a single mom struggling to survive, I know what it means to be for the empowerment of women.
The woman is beautiful and unique. She is powerful. She incubates and delivers life. Her pain, her joy, her emotions are better expressed across the full spectrum that are feelings. She is a fierce protector, a gentle comforter, and even in all her complexity, she shows mankind simplicity.
There can be no doubt that women face structural challenges in all present societies, especially in the workplace. Recognizing this is a first step, but those who don’t, should not be labeled haters.
There are things we can do to make things more fair; more merit-based. That doesn’t mean that every piece of legislation that’s paraded around with lipstick should be supported.
Structural challenges in society also face the black, the yellow, the albino, the fat, the too-skinny, the person of faith, the repented felon, the southerner. Burdens exist because we are human. Burdens should not define our humanity nor our gender. And gender is a very real thing.
Talking to a feminist recently (a friend of many years), she was taken aback when I said to her that “I am pro-women’s empowerment. I am not and will never be a feminist.” She laughed. Of course she did. I simply didn’t understand.
She explained to me what I already knew: the title feminist is gender-neutral. Blah blah blah. A feminist is defined as someone who believes in the equality of the genders. Blah blah blah. Then I laughed. I already knew all of this.
Feminists do not believe in the equality between the genders, not alone anyway. These fringe activists believe in degrading men until they’ve received reparations and only then, can equality be achieved. They’ve mainstreamed their titles so artsy celebrities and coastal elitists adopt the title too. ‘Hi, I’m Dr. John Doe (Feminist-at-large), because… equality.’
See, the feminist believes that in tearing down men, the irreplaceability of fatherhood, male bosses, and the dissolution of any separation (or recognition) between the genders, they’ll somehow establish equality.
Mandela, Ghandi, and King taught reconciliation accomplishes equality. Feminists teach what the communist Chinese regime did: reeducation. If only you knew what I know. Think what I think and everything will be better.
My friend was shocked that I was familiar with all the talking points.
“Education always works. There must be something wrong—some right-wing bias,” she probably thought to herself. Conformity in language, social theories, all seem to surround feminism.
Feminism, as a belief, must stand on its own. And it must be held to account for all of its work. It cannot be supported because it sounds emphatic or has the right definition in the dictionary. Every revolutionary dictator renames his country to something that sounds pretty.
The feminist proudly touts their “slutwalk” protest while shouting to us about their latest gospel, rape culture. Did you know that men are the greatest perpetrators of rape culture? Apparently, according to feminists, explaining the circumstances around a rape or considering measures that would reduce rape actually contribute to more rape.
Rape is evil! Every reasonable person believes this. But not according to the feminist.
This has nothing to do with empowering women. When I think about my mom and growing up, none of this comes to mind. In fact, it’s pretty insulting.
I will still throw my annual party celebrating women in D.C. I will always believe that I was extremely blessed to grow up in a home with a proud single-mother. Everything about the tolerance and perseverance of women will continue to amaze me. In America, women outnumber their male counterparts at the ballot box and in raw population. That’s not a bad thing at all. The woman will continue to be celebrated, without needing to tear down men to do so.
My friend protested when I explained to her that feminists tear down men to make themselves equal, which not only makes the man a legitimate victim but also makes the argument extremely dangerous for women as it implies they are not capable. |
Institute for Historical Review
The 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zündel -- 1988
Editor's Introduction
This book began in the fall of 1987 as a series of witness evidence summaries to be used in the then rapidly approaching second Zündel trial (which commenced on January 18, 1988). Evidence from the second trial was later summarized for use in preparation of the appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1989. The project expanded considerably in 1990 when Ernst Zündel asked me to put the summaries in a form which could be published as a record of the evidence presented in the 1988 trial. This book is the result.
Most of the considerable testimony given at the trial over a period of three months has been condensed into summaries for the reader. The testimonies of important historians, however, have been included almost in their entirety. These historians are Raul Hilberg and Christopher Browning for the prosecution and Robert Faurisson and David Irving for the defence. Every attempt has been made to ensure the accuracy of direct quotes from the transcript and the accuracy of reproductions of exhibits referred to in the trial. It should be noted that the questions and comments made by defence attorney Douglas Christie, Crown Attorney John Pearson and Judge Ron Thomas are not direct quotes unless indicated by quotation marks.
My own involvement in the Zündel case began in early 1985 when I worked part time in the County Courthouse library in Toronto at the time of the first trial. I attended the proceedings during my free mornings and was shocked by what I saw. There can be nothing more disgusting than watching a man being forced to justify his writings, his beliefs and his opinions before a criminal tribunal in a supposedly civilized and "free" country.
Zündel was being portrayed in the media as a man of hatred; but the man I saw in the courtroom was calm and always gracious to everyone he dealt with. When he testified, he did not repudiate his belief in Germans or Germany or Adolf Hitler. He expressed clearly his admiration for their accomplishments and his disbelief that they had committed what is known as the "Holocaust". Perhaps I had never really known what it meant to be courageous before that trial; but I knew what it meant after I watched Ernst Zündel testify to his true beliefs notwithstanding his knowledge that the voicing of those beliefs would almost certainly seal his conviction.
And everyday as I watched defence attorney Douglas Christie, his legal assistant Keltie Zubko and the various defence witnesses make their way through crowds of hostile Jews, some of whom spat on them, as I watched them being savaged by a hysterical media, as I experienced the lynch-mob atmosphere of that trial day after day, I learned again and again what real courage was and what real dedication to the principles of a free society meant. It affected me profoundly. When the second Zündel trial began in 1988, it was no accident that I had also become part of the defence team.
While Jewish organizations and the mass media expressed satisfaction that Zündel had been convicted, many ordinary people in Canada were shocked at the implications of the trial for freedom of speech and thought. In a letter to the Toronto Sun, Lynda Mortl of Toronto wrote:
Why are we Canadians allowing a certain pressure group to act as censors for us? And worse, to have a member of society brought to trial, probably jailed, and/or deported for saying something we will not even be allowed to read. The more I think about the implications of this trial, the more angry and frightened I become. I am one Canadian who does not want Sabina Citron, Alan Shefman or Julian Sher to decide what I will read or what I will call the truth.
Indeed, the purpose of the prosecution of Ernst Zündel was to make sure that ordinary Canadians would not have access to the type of information contained in Did Six Million Really Die?. Even today, Canadians do not realize how far the original "Holocaust" story has disintegrated in the face of ongoing historical research and forensic studies of the alleged Auschwitz execution gas chambers. The tight control of information in this regard is a wonder to behold to those of us involved in this case. Canadians who believe they enjoy a "free" press in North America are sadly mistaken. There is never any attempt in the mass media to analyse why more and more people no longer believe in the "Holocaust"; there is no transferal of any basic information to the average reader to let them decide for themselves whether there is anything to what the revisionists say or whether it is hogwash. Instead, Zündel and anyone else who questions Holocaust claims are simply branded as "evil" and "hatemongers".
This book ensures that both sides of this ethnic dispute are at least available to the general reader. The record of the 1988 trial is unique in that the major historians on both sides of the issue testified and were cross-examined relentlessly on their research methods, bias, sources and findings. It records the only instance where Holocaust historians have been forced to defend their assertion that the Jews of Europe were exterminated (mainly in gas chambers) by the Nazi government during World War II. For the reader it is a rare opportunity to see how in fact history is written, how indeed history has become the tool of politics.
British historian David Irving testified that it is the reader who decides what constitutes a "historical fact"; it is the reader who decides what has been proven to happen in history and what has not. I therefore invite the reader to read the evidence of one of the most significant trials of our century and with respect to the story of what really happened to the Jews of Europe during World War II, to decide for himself.
Barbara Kulaszka
August 1992 |
Same here. My mom was angry more often than not. She didn't talk much but she did get mad and raise her voice frequently. Said mean shit, put people down, just generally was a very unpleasant person and all you could do was stay away because otherwise she was going to make you feel bad. It was never clear what would set her off, she was just prone to rage or something, or felt like it was OK to take out her anger on whoever she could. I spent my teen years avoiding her as much as I could, avoiding talking to her so she wouldn't give me shit about how bad I looked or whatever snarky bullshit she would direct at me about the things I was into. She never hit me or anything like that, she just tried to make me feel like I was ugly, a disappointment, etc. I was really struggling with severe depression and all she ever did was make it worse. She never even noticed I was depressed even though my symptoms were extremely obvious. I moved out as soon as I could and our relationship improved, she stopped being mean to me, stopped talking shit about me (to my face), and for many years we got along fairly well when I called her on the phone or came to visit her. She never really put in any effort, but I tried for many years. Then some shit went on in my life that left me extremely depressed for the first time in years and she showed her true colors again, and now she is no longer a part of my life. No one gets to yell at me or put me down, try to make me feel like shit. That's not family. I haven't seen or talked to my mother in nearly a decade.
OP - please sort your wife out so you don't end up with a child driven from your family like I was. Get her into therapy to deal with her behaviors now while you still can. |
Tech / Help
Deep dive: What makes the Demon so wicked?
by Patrick Rall
At a small Detroit media event, SRT powertrain boss Chris Cowland laid out all of the fine details of the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon.
The 2018 Challenger Demon had two simple guidelines during development – to run a 9-second quarter mile and to lift the front wheels off of the ground on launch, both in street legal trim.
Once the Demon was given the green light, Dodge added a few initial requirements, including an engine power increase of 10% over the Hellcat Hemi, and launch forces at least 20% greater than the standard Hellcat Challenger. At the same time, the Demon had to be emission-legal in all 50 states (meeting LEV160), meet pass-by noise requirements, and pass strict SRT durability testing.
The result is a 4,200 pound muscle car which will run a 9.65 quarter mile and lift the front wheels off of the ground on a hard launch with an 840 horsepower Hemi – which meets all emission and noise requirements set for by the industry and the company. Most importantly, the new Demon is 100% street-friendly, so in addition to being the quickest production car in the world, it can also serve as a comfortable daily driver.
This was achieved by introducing a new version 6.2-liter supercharged Hemi, with 62% of the content changed from the original Hellcat Hemi — including a new block, crankshaft, connecting rods, pistons, and supercharger assembly.
That 840 horsepower Hemi is mated to a new 8-speed automatic transmission which has been heavily upgraded with a new torque convertor and trans brake. From that stronger transmission, the power travels through a stronger driveshaft to a stronger rear differential with a steeper gear ratio and stronger axles – reaching the ground by means of the lightweight 18” wheels and the Demon-branded Nitto NT05R tires.
We knew all of that when the car was introduced back in April, but below, you will find a detailed rundown of how each key component of the drivetrain in the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon differs from the Hellcat Hemi.
Induction system
The Air Grabber Hood is a functional hood scoop system which feeds a high volume of cold air to the airbox, along with dual air catchers in the grille (replacing the fog lights) — all feeding the 14.8 liter air box. A new oiled conical air filter has a 72% increase in filtered air, compared to the standard Hellcat air filter (712 cm2 in the standard Hellcat, 1,224 cm2 in the Demon).
After the air filter, the air passes through a low restriction air intake system, with 25% less resistance than the Hellcat intake setup at full power, and into the new 92mm throttle body. This whole system has been tuned to offer the best flow possible, while meeting all pass-by noise rules.
Supercharger and Drive System
The 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon features a new 2,700cc supercharger housing, with 320cc more air volume than the Hellcat supercharger. This increase in volume was achieved by adding longer rotors, both of which are 28mm longer than the Hellcat blower.
The air being sucked into the 2,700cc IHI supercharger passes through a revised front bearing housing, so the air enters the supercharger more easily while providing some cooling effect for the front bearing assembly. When coupled with the dual integrated charge coolers and the electric bypass valve, the maximum boost pressure rises from 11.6 in the Hellcat to 14.5psi in the Demon, as the 2.36:1 drive ratio leads to a maximum supercharger speed of 15,340rpm (at 6,500 engine rpm).
To get an idea of how much air we are talking about, Dodge points out that on a quarter mile run, the Demon’s Hemi will take in around 173 cubic feet of air – or the lung capacity of 816 human lungs. Also, at the 800-foot mark of a quarter mile run, which takes only 7.35 seconds at wide open throttle, the Demon could effectively suck all of the air out of the 105 cubic foot cabin.
The Cooling Module
The Demon features a high tech cooling module which works with the water-to-air heat exchangers integrated into the supercharger housing. The cooling module includes the “normal” engine coolant radiator (high temp loop), the low supercharger cooling system (low temp loop) and the components of the SRT Chiller system. With the auxiliary cooling pump, the supercharger’s cooling system can move around 45 liters of coolant per minute – allowing the system to reject around 258kW at full power.
In other words, the amount of energy during the cooling process is equivalent to 258kW or heat energy – enough to boil a quart of water in 1.2 seconds. That is about as much thermal power as 250 electric toasters.
The Fuel System
The fuel system of the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon starts with a set of larger fuel injectors with 67g/s flow at full power. These injectors are optimized for a high flow supercharged engine, with 20 degree bent spray and a 17 degree cone. These injectors are fed by a pair of high volume in-tank fuel pumps, which allow a 27% increase in peak pressure compared to the Hellcat.
At full power, the Demon’s fuel system peaks at 510lb/hr, or around 1.36 gallons per minute. The showerhead in your bathroom likely flows around 2 gallons per minute, so the Demon uses almost as much gasoline in one minute as you use water in one minute of showering.
Cylinder Heads and Valve Train
The cylinder heads of the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon are, of course, a hemispherical (Hemi) design, with a 34.5 degree valve angle and M14 spark plugs. These heads are constructed of high strength, high thermal conductivity aluminum alloy (A356) with heat, quench, and solution treatment. They have single groove collets for improved stability, with revised design valve springs and top retainers; 33% more oil cooling for the valve springs and the rocker tips work to keep the system cool at high RPM.
When combined with the high temperature resistant cylinder heads, the two piece valves (hollow intake valves, sodium filled exhaust valves) are good for continuous heat loads of 800°C.
The Demon’s gun-drilled steel camshaft has different profiles from the original Hellcat. The newest supercharged Hemi has intake and exhaust lift of 14.25mm and 14mm, lobe centers of 109° and 137°, and durations of 224° and 240° at 0.050” of lift. This camshaft is paired with hydraulic roller tappets (no MDS) and hydraulic actuated variable valve timing, with a total variation of 17°.
The Engine Block
The Demon’s unique red-painted engine block is constructed of high strength cast iron with 4-bolt steel main caps. The engine has been deck plane honed to minimize engine bore distortion at high RPM while the revised design main bearing cap bolts with increase clamp load and the increased cylinder head clamp load (52kN to 80kN) afford the Demon peak fire pressure in the combustion chamber of 135 bar (1,958psi) when running on race gas.
The Rotating Assembly
The supercharged Hemi of the 2018 Challenger Demon has a heavily revised rotating assembly, including a forged allot steel crankshaft with a 90.9mm stroke and revised balancing which is secured against induction hardened crank bearing surfaces running in high load capacity beatings with individual journal optimized main bearing clearances having as much of a difference as 10 microns compared to the Hellcat.
The Demon’s pistons are comprised of forged high strength alloy with an inclined box wall for added support; piston cooling jets provide 100% more oil flow cooling to each cylinder. The revised connecting rods feature an enlarged big end and enlarged shank with a tapered small end, along with high tensile fasteners on the rods – resulting in a capacity of 210,000psi.
At full power, the rotating assembly faces 11.1 tons of force on compression stroke and 3.2 tons of pressure on the exhaust stroke- each 50 times per second. (For comparison, an assault rifle fires a 25 gram projectile at 2000 G; the pistons in the Demon, which weigh 695 grams, accelerate at around 2,600 G).
The Lubrication Circuit
The Demon’s Hemi is kept oiled by a high flow, 25cc/revolution oil pump driven off of the crankshaft nose. In addition to the normal oiling flow through the engine, the Demon includes 8 high flow piston cooling jets with check valves, with up to double the oil flow of the Hellcat system. The top end flow to the springs and rocker arms arrives with 33% more volume than the Hellcat.
To deal with the 1.8Gs experienced during a hard launch, the Demon has a unique windage system in the oil pan to keep the Pennzoil/SRT 0W-40 oil under control.
Exhaust System
The Demon’s exhaust begins with a set of double wall, insulated, high temp tubular stainless steel exhaust headers which lead to a set of high temperature close-coupled catalysts and a 73mm diameter low restriction dual exhaust system. This system has a custom-engineered exhaust note via the electronic valves, reducing backpressure to just 66kPa at full power.
Transmission
Like the standard Hellcat, the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon has a heavy duty 8-speed automatic transmission with shift paddles; unlike the ordinary Hellcat, the Demon uses an upgraded 151k torque convertor, with an 18% increase in torque multiplication and an 11% increase in stall speed.
When in Drag Mode, the Demon’s transmission moves from gear to gear in just 400 milliseconds while the Track Mode shifts take 200ms. The transmission could actually shift faster and harder in Drag Mode, but to put the most torque to the ground as efficiently as possible, the engineers found that the 400ms shifts has the best performance.
The Demon’s integrated TransBrake locks the output shaft at an engine speed of up to 2,350rpm. This leads to a 110% increase in engine stall torque on launch compared to a simple brake torque launch – yielding 18% more torque at the rear tires when this beast leaves the line.
The Driveline
The entire driveline of the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon has been revised to handle the extreme power and the extreme loads during launch. This begins with an upgraded driveshaft with 20% thicker high strength steel tubes and stronger steel stub shafts. From there, the power heads into the uni-directional, limited slip differential in an upgraded housing which holds a new 230mm ring gear and 3.09 gear set.
Between the differential and the Demon’s lightweight wheels is a set of upgraded half shafts with 8-ball cross glide inner and outer joints, an increased diameter barshaft with 41 end spline count and high alloy steel inner/outer stub shafts.
The culmination of these unique components is a 4,200-plus pound Dodge Challenger which packs 840 horsepower and 770 pound-feet of torque – enough to propel it down the quarter-mile track in just 9.65 seconds. As Dodge pointed out, the Demon makes more horsepower by 4500 rpm and more torque by 2300 rpm than the new Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. It makes more horsepower by 3,800 rpm and more torque by just 1,300 rpm than the Nissan GTR – Japan’s top performance car – and it beats the McLaren 720S by 131 horsepower and 202 pound-feet of torque.
Released today: How they kept the secrets of the Demon • Hear the Demon roar, watch it fly
Dodge Challenger Demon • Demon Reveal • Behind the hints • Colors • Original Demon |
A coalition of trade unions and predominantly European clothing retailers have agreed to a legally binding plan to inspect garment supply factories in Bangladesh within nine months.
The 75 signatories to the accord, unveiled on Monday, will guarantee that in every case where unsafe conditions are found, funds will be made available for necessary safety upgrades.
But only three US retailers have signed up to the plan. American firms are reportedly reluctant to join any industry accord that creates legally binding objectives. The small number of US signatories will disappoint advocates hoping for an end to dangerous conditions in Bangladesh's multi-million pound garment industry, in which 1,200 people have died in the past year.
A push for western retailers to take more responsibility for workers' conditions in Bangladesh came after a series of recent tragedies, such as the Rana Plaza building collapse outside Dhaka in April, which left more than 1,100 dead, and the Tazreen factory fire in November that left 112 garment workers dead. Labels for US and European brands were found in the rubble of the factories.
Some retailers, such as Primark, the British retailer and Loblaw, the Canadian company that makes Joe Fresh, confirmed soon after the tragedies that the Rana Plaza factory made their clothes. Primark and Loblaw have now signed up to the safety accord.
Negotiations between unions and retailers began in May, in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza deaths. Signatories also include H&M, one of Bangladesh's biggest clothing clients, Marks & Spencer, and at least three US companies: Abercrombie and Fitch, PVH, the parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, and Sean John.
To allow for inspections, the western retailers have agreed to make public by 15 July a list of more than 1,000 names and addresses of Bangladeshi factories they use. International teams of fire and building safety inspectors, working with inspectors in Bangladesh, will inspect all the signatories supply factories within nine months to identify "grave hazards" and the need for "urgent repairs".
The failure of more US retailers to join the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh has led to criticism from unions and human rights groups. They say the European-led plan will make factories safer.
However, leading North American retailers, including Walmart, will come together on Wednesday to announce details of a rival plan: the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. Documents found in the rubble of the Tazreen factory showed that garment users supplying goods to Walmart and Sears were using the plant at the time of the fire. However, Walmart and Sears said they had no idea their clothes were being made at the factory.
The North American initiative was developed through a process facilitated by US senators George Mitchell and Olympia Snowe.
Christy Hoffman, the deputy general of UNI Global Union, said that the brands would require the factories to come up to certain standards and, when they do not, they would help to pay to bring them up to scratch.
Hoffman said it was "unfortunate" that more US brands have not joined. She said: "We have 75 brands signed up to this accord and we will be prepared to move forward without the US."
She said that joining the accord would cause a "very, very small increase" in the price of garments, "something like 2¢ per T-shirt".
"That is what it costs to make things safe in Bangladesh."
Jyrki Raina, the general secretary of the IndustriALL global union, said: "This historic accord will effect tangible change on the ground and help make the Bangladeshi garment industry safe and sustainable. Voluntary initiatives have proved insufficient, as 1,800 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in factory fires and building collapses during the past seven years."
Raina said that a "profound change" needed was only possible with a strong coalition between trade unions, international brands and retailers and Bangladeshi authorities with worker involvement.
A central aspect to the Accord, which is supported by the Workers Rights Consortium and the NGS Clean Clothes Campaign, is that it involved workers and their representatives. It also commits signatories to staying in Bangladesh for at least two years of the accord.
Critics have suggested that US companies were concerned over the cost of the plan.
Kevin Gardner of Walmart told the Guardian, in an email said that it had "taken a number of actions that meet or exceed other factory safety proposals" including strengthening safety standards, a "zero tolerance of unauthorised subcontracting" and "in-depth safety audits and remediations" made to every factory directly making its products.
Gardner said that Walmart was part of an alliance of retailers, industry associations and the Bipartisan Police Center, which was looking a the issue and would release details of their safety plan on Wednesday.
"What happened at the Tazreen and Rana Plaza factories is tragic." he said. "We are saddened by this situation and are working every day to improve worker safety in Bangladesh. Over the past several months we've taken a number of actions that meet or exceed other factory safety proposals and put out a lot of information on our audit process." |
Iraqi Turkomen raise their weapons during an announcement proclaiming the formation of a defense system to protect their own areas at the Iraqi Turkmen Front Headquarters in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. (Photo: AP)
Thiruvananthapuram: Amid anxieties of families of Keralite nurses and students stranded in violence-hit cities in Iraq, Kerala Government on Tuesday said it has been doing all that it could for their safe return.
As the issue figured in the state Assembly, Minister for Non-Resident Keralalites Affairs K C Joseph said Government had information that 44 nurses stranded in trouble-torn Tikrit in Iraq were safe.
We will monitor situation on hourly basis and keep you updated: Syed Akbaruddin, MEA on Iraq crisis pic.twitter.com/XqntQZ97J7 — ANI (@ANI_news) June 17, 2014 According to the Indian Embassy in Iraq they could be evacuated only when the road from their hospital to the nearest airport became risk-free as heavy bombing was going
Crisis Management meeting underway on situation in Iraq and possibilities of assistance to Indian nationals. — Syed Akbaruddin (@MEAIndia) June 17, 2014 on in the area.
The nurses were safe according to a group of officials of International Red Crescent who met them last night,he said. Stating that the situation in Iraq was serious, he said
many places were under the control of ISIL militants.
A 24x7 Helpline has been set up under the state NRK agency Norka to provide updated information on the situation. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had already written to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj seeking urgent steps for the safe evacuation of the Keralites from the violence-hit areas of Iraq.
Out of these stranded nurses, 36 of them were keen to return home immediately, he said.
Shiite tribal fighters raise their weapons and chant slogans against the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) . (Photo: AP)
The state Government had received representations from the parents of students seeking immediate intervention to bring their wards from Iraq.
Meanwhile, father of one of the nurses working in Tikrit said his daugther Merina Jose called him this morning and said she was safe but anxious about the future.
"My daughter called me this morning. She said she and others working in the same hospital are safe but are anxious about what will happen to them," P A Jose from Kottayam told PTI.
Shiite tribal fighters carry a poster of Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. (Photo: AP)
Jose said he and parents of others were praying for the safe return of their children and expected that the Centre would intervene for their evacuation without delay.
Watch Video: Iraq crisis: Video appears to show Iraqi prisoners ridiculed before being shot, courtesy ITN |
Elected to the United States Senate in 2012, Ted Cruz currently represents the Great State of Texas. While one can never fully believe a politician unless their lips aren’t moving, Cruz is arguably the most pro-gun rights Republican presidential candidate we’ve looked at thus far in this series (read our articles on Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Ben Carson to get perspective on some of the others).
Let’s take a look at the details—then you can make your own decision.
What he says
When it comes to official and written policy statements, Cruz is direct about his positions on gun rights. He’s even published a dedicated Second Amendment flyer with which he highlights his positions. Leading off that piece is a quote from Tim Macy, Chairman of Gun Owners of America (GOA).
“Gun Owners of America is proud to endorse Senator Ted Cruz for the office of President of the United States. Cruz has been a strong advocate for Second Amendment rights as a U.S. Senator, and he will continue to defend our gun rights from the Oval Office.”
As GOA has a pretty solid “no compromise” approach when it comes to the defense of gun rights, this is a ringing endorsement.
He also had a pivotal role in the critically important District of Columbia v. Heller case, submitting a pro-Second Amendment amicus brief on behalf of 31 different states in favor of the Heller argument. To be fair, he’s taken some heat over some of the specific content of that brief. Without getting entirely into the deep end of the pool, some arguments therein stated that states would and should have regulation rights on certain types of weapons like the bans then in place in states like New York, California, and Connecticut. Since that time, his public position has been the opposite. Why? Most observers believe that he was making arguments on behalf of his clients (31 states) to serve the best overall interest of that specific case. When speaking personally, he’s not limited to the “speaking on behalf of clients” issue. Legal and political issues are never cut and dry.
Regardless, the NRA seemed happy about his role in Heller. Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice President, also makes an appearance in Cruz’s campaign materials. “Ted Cruz is one of our nation’s leading defenders of the Second Amendment. For over a decade, Ted has fought tirelessly to defend our constitutional right to keep and bear arms, and his leadership was absolutely critical to our major victories before the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Later, in September 2013, Cruz joined 49 other Senators and authored a letter to President Obama indicating some serious displeasure with his stated plans to move toward the adoption of a treaty with the United Nations seeking to bind the United States to international gun control efforts. No matter that only the Senate has the authority to authorize treaties and that the proposed terms were in direct violation to the Constitution of the United States.
Dear President Obama: We write to express our concern and regret at your decision to sign the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty. For the following reasons, we cannot give our advice and consent to this treaty: The treaty violates a 2009 red line laid down by your own administration: “the rule of consensus decision-making.” In April 2013, after the treaty failed to achieve consensus, it was adopted by majority vote in the UN General Assembly. The treaty allows amendments by a 3/4 majority vote. When amended, it will become a source of political and legal pressure on the US to comply in practice with amendments it was unwilling to accept. The treaty includes only a weak, non-binding reference to the lawful ownership and use of firearms, and recognizes none of these activities, much less individual self-defense, as fundamental individual rights. It encourages governments to collect the identities of individual end users of imported firearms at the national level, which would constitute the core of a national gun registry. The State Department has acknowledged that the treaty is “ambiguous.” By becoming party to the treaty, the US would therefore be accepting commitments that are inherently unclear. The criteria at the heart of the treaty are vague and easily politicized. They will steadily subject the US to the influence of internationally-defined norms, a process that would impinge on our national sovereignty. The treaty criteria as established could hinder the US in fulfilling its strategic, legal, and moral commitments to provide arms to key allies such as Taiwan and Israel. We urge you to notify the treaty depository that the US does not intend to ratify the Arms Trade Treaty, and is therefore not bound by its obligations. As members of the Senate, we pledge to oppose the ratification of this treaty, and we give notice that we do not regard the US as bound to uphold its object and purpose.
Earlier this month, Cruz voted “nay” against two Senate bills regarding expanded background checks and closing the “terrorist loophole.” In neither case did Cruz have to step far out of the mainstream. Launched by Senators Manchin, Kirk, and Toomey. The bill would have required background checks and waiting periods on “gun show” sales and was largely symbolic. This is really an issue over the legality of the private sale of property and criminals don’t acquire guns at gun shows anyway. The second was the “no fly, no gun” effort launched by Senator Dianne Feinstein. Intended to deny gun rights to anyone the government decides to put on a secret “suspect” list, this bill angered plenty on both sides of the issue for its flagrant disregard of that pesky little gem we call due process. It’s not often that the NRA and ACLU get upset about the exact same thing. If something like this ever passes on any topic, guns or otherwise, hold on to your shorts and hope that your preferred party stays in charge, else you might find yourself on a secret list.
How he’s voted
Having been in the Senate a few years, Cruz has not only voted, but sponsored his own bills on the topic, so let’s take a look at those first.
In March 2013, he introduced S 729 and S 730, both of which were related to investigation and prosecution of felons and fugitives who illegally purchase firearms through straw purchases and black market activity. Senators Cruz and Grassley also teamed up to reduce restrictions and interstate transfer and sale of firearms. This bill also would have allowed military members to purchase firearms in states where they are stationed, regardless of their state of permanent residence.
The rest of 2013 was a busy year for Candidate Ted. He also was the second to jump on board Senator Rand Paul’s plan to filibuster gun control efforts launched by Harry Reid. “We will oppose the motion to proceed to any legislation that will serve as a vehicle for any additional gun restrictions,” the three conservatives wrote in a copy of the signed letter obtained by POLITICO. The filibuster team ultimately grew to 12 Senators.
Our best guess
Cruz has always been up front and vocal about his support of all constitutional issues, and when you boil out all the rhetoric and hand-wringing, gun rights are, in fact, a pure constitutional discussion. In my view, that adds some backbone to his subject matter talk when it comes to guns, at least more than the other political lemmings that make vague statements like “Sure, I support the Second Amendment…”
He talks the talk, but do you think he walks the walk?
What say you? And don’t forget to check out the other articles in this series on Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, and Ben Carson.
Tom McHale is the author of the Insanely Practical Guides book series that guides new and experienced shooters alike in a fun, approachable, and practical way. His books are available in print and eBook format on Amazon.
Featured image created using Ted Cruz image by Gage Skidmore on the Wikimedia Commons and gun shop wall image from Michael Saechang on flickr
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Before indoor plumbing and hot water heaters became commonplace in American homes, frequent bathing was a bit of an ordeal. Water had to be fetched and heated over a fire before a person could so much as dip a toe into the bathtub. The process was inconvenient (and still is in many developing nations), and all the members of a family generally used the same water to bathe and carry out other chores, like washing laundry, before it was tossed out.
We have Norwegian engineer Edwin Ruud to thank for inventing the home water heater in 1889. In Ruud's design, a switch ignited the gas heaters when a faucet was turned on in the house, producing hot water on demand [source: Ruud]. The same era saw the introduction of a slew of shower designs. A number of competing showers offered a variety of spray settings and directions, but most had unfortunate closed-system designs; the water that came from the showerhead went into the drain to be recirculated back up to the showerhead once more.
The advent of indoor plumbing would tie these inventions together. The Tremont in Boston became the first hotel in the world to feature indoor plumbing in 1829. Architect Isaiah Rogers would design the prototype for all indoor plumbing schemes to follow [source: Plumbing and Mechanical Magazine]. By the end of World War I, modern bathrooms were common in middle-class homes; by the 1930s, rural Americans had come to know the joy of daily showering [sources: McKendree, Reinhardt and Ganzel].
There's something luxurious about even a mundane morning shower. Anyone who's ever taken a warm shower at the end of a tough day knows the calming influence it exerts. Science backs up these bathers' collective anecdotal evidence. In fact, one Japanese study examined the prevalence of hormones found in saliva that serve as stress indicators. It showed a significant decrease in stress levels following bathing [source: Toda, et al].
Since we have indoor plumbing leading to showers that release hot water onto our stressed shoulders, it seems like a waste not to shower frequently. How much is too much, though, when it comes to the health of your skin? You likely shower every day, but is that more often than you should? |
SXSW, the annual pulled-pork crawl and Frito pie gorge-sesh scored by hundred of bands, is almost upon us! Our bags are packed, our amazing parties are booked, and we’ve called St. David’s South Austin Medical Center who has kindly reminded us that, no, we cannot put Stubb’s BBQ sauce on an IV drip. The final thing missing is a proper soundtrack. To that end, here is a 60-track blowout of the hottest, most anticipated, must-see acts at SXSW. They run the gamut from a recent crop of SPIN Essentials (Caitlin Rose, Waxahatchee) to living legends (Souls of Mischief) to bands we hand-picked to play our incredible parties at Stubb’s (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) and at the SPIN House (Antwon, the Coathangers, Wampire, Bleached).
Download this monster right here or stream it below. And we’ll see you where the stars at night are big and bright.
And don’t miss our roundup of 40 must-see SXSW bands here!
:audio=0:111182:playlist:Austin Power: SPIN’s Best SXSW Acts 2013:
SPIN Presents Austin Power: A SXSW 2013 Mixtape
1. A.Dd+ – “Can’t Come Down”
2. Andrew Cedermark – “Hard Livin'”
3. Antwon – “Automatic”
4. Beach Fossils – “Generational Synthetic”
5. Beacon -” Bring You Back”
6. Bleached – “Next Stop”
7. BLKHRTS – “Bloodlines of that Gangsta Shhhhh”
8. Caitlin Rose – “Waitin'”
9. California X – “Pond Rot”
10. Celestrial Shore – “Valerie”
11. Cheatahs – “The Swan”
12. Chippy Nonstop – “??? BOUNCE ???”
13. The Coathangers – “Merry Go Round”
14. Dent May – “Best Friend”
15. Dizzy Wright feat. Nikkiya – “Fly High”
16. Dog Bite – “Forever, Until”
17. Doldrums – “Anomaly”
18. The Dopplegangaz – “Hark Back”
19. Ducktails – “Letter of Intent”
20. GEMS – “All I Ever”
21. Generationals – “Put A Light On”
22. Hanni El Khatib – “Family”
23. Hot Sugar – “The Girl Who Stole My Tamogatchi”
24. Iamsu! – “Mobbin'”
25. Isaac Delusion – “Transistors”
26. Jacuzzi Boys – “Cool Vapors”
27. Joshua James – “Queen of the City”
28. Keep Shelly in Athens – “Madmen Love”
29. Kisses – “The Hardest Part”
30. Kopecky Family Band – “Heartbeat”
31. Levek – “Black Mold Grow”
32. Lightouts – “Want”
33. Lissie – “In Sleep (Live)”
34. Mac DeMarco – “Freaking Out The Neighborhood”
36. Maria Minerva – “Black Magick”
37. MHz Legacy feat. Slug of Atmosphere – “Satisfied”
38. Moon King – “Appel”
39. Mr. MFN eXquire feat. Gucci Mane – “Telephuck”
40. Nu Sensae – “Swim”
41. PAWS – “Miss American Bookworm”
42. Roach Gigz – “Full Time Job”
43. Ski Lodge – “Just To Be Like You”
44. Sky Ferreira – “Everything Is Embarrassing”
45. The Soft Moon – “Die Life”
46. Souls of Mischief – “’93 ‘Til Infinity”
47. Supreme Cuts – “Lessons of Darkness (Apology)”
48. Toro y Moi – “Say That”
49. Trash Talk – “Exile on Broadway”
50. Unknown Mortal Orchestra – “So Good at Being in Trouble”
51. Wampire – “Spirit Forest”
52. Wavves – “Demon To Lean On”
53. Wax Idols – “Sound of a Void”
54. Waxahatchee – “Peace and Quiet”
55. Weekend – “Sirens”
56. White Lung – “Take the Mirror”
57. WHY? – “Waterlines”
58. Widowspeak – “Thick as Thieves”
59. Youth Lagoon – “Dropla”
60. 100s – “Land of the Laced” |
On May 6th, when Captain America: Civil War is officially released to theaters, fans of the Marvel Universe will get to see new adventures involving many of their favorite superheroes, including Iron Man. The alter-ego of arrogant billionaire tech engineer Tony Stark, Iron Man draws his might from the powerful high-tech exoskeleton which Stark keeps tweaking for added protection and enhanced munitions. Since he first appeared in comic books in March 1963, Tony Stark’s suit of armor has been through many incarnations in comics and film; the Wikipedia page for Iron Man’s armor lists dozens of suits and armor add-ons going back to the 1960s.
After Iron Man’s adventures in last year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, there are at least three suits which are in working order, despite varying degrees of damage. Of these, the most advanced is the Mark XLVI, or Mark 46, which is put into commission after the most recent Avengers film but prior to the upcoming Civil War. The Mark XLVI is a model of armament engineering and Stark’s first to have a fully retractable helmet. A series of arc reactors light up the area around the suit, echoing Iron Man’s Bleeding Edge Armor from the comic book series and giving Stark a 360 degree panoramic view while wearing it. The armor’s weaponry includes the standard repulsors which Iron Man uses to blind or paralyze opponents with light energy from the arms or the chest’s Unibeam. The suit also gives Stark the ability to take on enemies with lasers and mini-missile launchers for a variety of offensive tactical options. Of course, the armor is also fully capable of zipping Stark through the sky at high speeds thanks to the suit’s repulsors, jet boots and flight stabilizers.
The incredible personalities and superhuman abilities of superheroes has inspired us at IPWatchdog to pursue a Superhero Tech series where we look at the intersection between fictional powers and real-world technologies. Beginning with our look at Captain America’s bulletproof shield, we’ll be strolling through both the Marvel and DC universes in the coming months as other major motion pictures like X-Men: Apocalypse or Suicide Squad are shown across the globe.
Perhaps the most important component to any Iron Man suit is the arc reactor core, which provides the energy required to power the suit’s repulsors and other equipment. Although there is no true real world equivalent to the arc reactor, it’s been speculated based on cinematic depictions of the unit that it functions as a multi-isotope radio decay cell for nuclear energy generation using a palladium core. It’s also assumed that the reactor could not be a hot-fusion reactor as it sits within Tony Stark’s chest and would char him from the inside out.
The round donut-shape of the arc reactor of the Iron Man movies resembles that seen in the designs for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Established in 2007, ITER involves research and support from 35 member nations during a 35-year partnership aimed at producing the world’s first nuclear fusion device that will produce a net energy gain. ITER’s round shape comes courtesy of its tokamak design, resulting in a magnetic fusion device weighing 23,000 tons holding a plasma which reaches temperatures of up to 150,000,000°C, 10 times as hot as the sun’s core. This type of fusion device requires heat generation to create steam that produces electricity from turbines, making it a poor choice for use within the human body. The tokamak, first designed by Soviet Union engineers in the 1960s, uses its donut-shaped vacuum chamber to house hydrogen gas which becomes plasma under conditions of extreme heat and pressure.
ITER specifically, and tokamaks in general, theoretically function on principles of magnetic confinement fusion, where magnetic force is applied to charged plasma particles within a fusion reactor in order to maintain a circular path for those particles. Keeping plasma aligned on a circular path throughout the reactor allows the plasma to generate the heat necessary for steam production without contacting whatever material is making up the reactor walls, which could damage the reactor because of the plasma’s incredibly high temperatures.
Last August, reports on a breakthrough in nuclear fusion reactor design from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) could indicate that commercially viable tokamak reactors could be running within five to ten years. MIT’s reactor design, based on essentially the same physics behind ITER and other tokamaks, incorporates the use of superconductors composed of rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) superconducting tapes, which have become commercially available only in recent years. The new superconducting materials enable stronger magnetic fields for even more plasma control, allowing smaller reactors to increase fusion power by a factor of 10. This would allow MIT to build a reactor half the size of ITER which would produce about the same amount of energy at a much lower cost. One working ARC reactor, which is what MIT calls its nuclear reactor design, could produce 200 megawatts (MW) of power delivered to the electric grid from a 50 MW input.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) won’t be outfitting its soldiers with personal nuclear reactors any day soon but we could see powered exoskeletons helping to increase the natural ability of human soldiers in just a few years time. The Tactical Light Operator Suit (TALOS) began development in 2013 to provide additional protection to tactical forces entering potentially dangerous buildings. The battery-powered exoskeleton is designed to weigh about 13 pounds while helping soldiers carry an extra 33 pounds of equipment when worn. TALOS will also help to make soldiers more impervious to bullets and bomb blasts and will have an integrated cooling system involving a pump circulating cool water through a series of tubes between the wearer’s skin and the suit. As of this May, the project was on track for a 2018 completion date.
Tony Stark’s array of futuristic gadgetry also includes incredibly immersive augmented reality (AR) computer interfaces which allow him to interact with computerized models through a series of quick gestures. Although the same type of holographic interface is impossible in our world without a wearable computing device, perhaps today’s strongest candidate for a stand-alone AR solution are the SpaceGlasses developed by American AR tech firm Meta. SpaceGlasses offer two 1280×720 pixel displays on a screen size which is 15 times that offered by Google Glass, providing a 40-degree field of view. Other components include depth sensors, twin RGB cameras, surround sound and a 9-axis integrated motion unit which has a gyroscope, a compass and an accelerometer.
Elon Musk, a man who shares many similarities with the Tony Stark of the Marvel series of films, is also trying to make certain aspects of Stark’s lab a reality. His virtual reality (VR) workspace utilizes a Leap Motion Controller which enables gesture control of computer-aided design (CAD) tools on a monitor without any head-mounted computing device. The use of an Oculus Rift VR headset is coupled with the gesture control technology to provide an immersive interaction experience with products being designed, and Musk demonstrates the use of his system with 3D printing technology to a cryogenic valve housing for use in SpaceX rockets.
Full flight capabilities via jet boots and energy-blasting repulsors are currently beyond our technological capabilities but it’s exciting to see innovations dreamt up decades ago come to fruition. No doubt that the events depicted in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War will add to to the legend of Iron Man, a legend made possible by the engineering prowess of Tony Stark and the powered suits reflecting the strength of the world of high-tech development.
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Eywa- Profile Blog Joined August 2010 Canada 3607 Posts Last Edited: 2012-06-11 04:16:42 #1
Disclaimer
This is entirely the work of LRM)Game, I am merely writing the thread
Stream:
Minus)Eagle, ex-progamer and ISL3 showmatch player is now streaming on Twitch.TV, please do show him the foreign love and support his stream! Welcome him as one of your own and so he shall love you in return! Oh, and you'll get to see some great Brood War in the process.
Hello ladies and Gentlemen,DisclaimerThis is entirely the work of LRM)Game, I am merely writing the threadStream: Minus)Eagle Minus)Eagle, ex-progamer and ISL3 showmatch player is now streaming on Twitch.TV, please do show him the foreign love and support his stream! Welcome him as one of your own and so he shall love you in return! Oh, and you'll get to see some great Brood War in the process. - Player Bio -
Name: Jin Woong
Primary ID: Minus)Eagle
Other Alias: RuaL.Woong, [neox]mini
Ex-Samsung Khan progamer
Max rank: 1800+ On fish Server
Now, minus)Eagle is a semi-progamer who has previously played in the OSL, leaving his group with a 1-2 score. His other accomplishments include the Hodduk and BJ starleagues Ro16 appearances. AND, more important than anything, he played in the ISL3 showmatch!
This guy is good stuff, really gosu and entertaining PvZ for sure, his other match ups are likely to be equally entertaining as he seems to enjoy very amusing styles of play, so don't miss out! Check him out now.
Stream:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=343875 Name: Jin WoongPrimary ID: Minus)EagleOther Alias: RuaL.Woong, [neox]miniEx-Samsung Khan progamerMax rank: 1800+ On fish ServerNow, minus)Eagle is a semi-progamer who has previously played in the OSL, leaving his group with a 1-2 score. His other accomplishments include the Hodduk and BJ starleagues Ro16 appearances. AND, more important than anything, he played in the ISL3 showmatch!This guy is good stuff, really gosu and entertaining PvZ for sure, his other match ups are likely to be equally entertaining as he seems to enjoy very amusing styles of play, so don't miss out! Check him out now.Stream: Minus)Eagle Being mannered is almost as important as winning. Almost...
olabaz Profile Blog Joined April 2009 United States 242 Posts #2 Awesome! Hopefully he streams consistently and doesn't stop after a few days!
gutshot Profile Joined February 2011 United States 426 Posts Last Edited: 2012-06-11 03:46:17 #3 sexyy!!!
this needs to be featured ASAP
Rlentless Profile Joined January 2011 Hong Kong 319 Posts #4 YES!!! (is all i can say)
LightningStrike Profile Joined February 2011 United States 9203 Posts #5 Woot another bw streamer from afreeca :O i hope he continues to stream May the next light shine/Former #1 Alliance LoL fan/ Current Teamliquid LoL Fan
ii.blitzkrieg Profile Blog Joined November 2006 Canada 1099 Posts #6 Thanks!
Will definitely be watching. iloveoov / Flash / Fantasy / Midas / Boxer -BW forever
Messi Profile Joined September 2011 United States 208 Posts Last Edited: 2012-06-11 04:33:21 #7 His alias is [Neox]mini, not rual.woong (currently). And i wont talk about the entire work of someone.
I am not mad at anything. Sorry for misunderstadning there. Blame on my english! sorry!
Eywa- Profile Blog Joined August 2010 Canada 3607 Posts #8 On June 11 2012 13:01 Messi wrote:
His alias is [Neox]mini, not rual.woong. And i wont talk about the entire work of someone.
Your post is introduced in a hostile manner which kind of makes me feel like discarding it entirely, however, if minus)eagle says he has a nickname of "RuaL.Woong", I'm afraid that's far more credible than having you deny it. ^^ Feel free to leave more messages without thinking, I shall dismiss them. Your post is introduced in a hostile manner which kind of makes me feel like discarding it entirely, however, if minus)eagle says he has a nickname of "RuaL.Woong", I'm afraid that's far more credible than having you deny it. ^^ Feel free to leave more messages without thinking, I shall dismiss them. Being mannered is almost as important as winning. Almost...
Jaaaaasper Profile Blog Joined April 2012 United States 5667 Posts Last Edited: 2012-06-11 04:12:27 #9 This is awesome, so cool to see another streamer from afreeca streaming on twitch, in addition i would assume. I hope this stream gets featured quickly.
Also he is speaking with supernovemaniac on skype, so mad props to snm for helping out. <3 you nub. Hey do you want to hear a joke? Chinese production value. | I thought he had a aegis- Ayesee | When did 7ing mad last have a good game, 2012?
kjwcj Profile Joined November 2011 Australia 1061 Posts Last Edited: 2012-06-11 05:03:15 #10
God tier PvT and a funny guy, even through the language barrier. Really cool to see him streaming on TL, hopefully he can make Twitch work for him as well as Afreeca has done. rual.woong was his main ID on Fish for a very long time, I don't see why you'd get mad about having it listed.God tier PvT and a funny guy, even through the language barrier. Really cool to see him streaming on TL, hopefully he can make Twitch work for him as well as Afreeca has done. Writer
Sawamura Profile Blog Joined August 2010 Malaysia 7576 Posts #11 Minus eagle fighting gogogo! BW/KT Forever R.I.P KT.Violet dearly missed ..
FyRe_DragOn Profile Blog Joined November 2006 Canada 1935 Posts #12 fucking nice aka DragOn[NaS]
Zeran Profile Joined April 2012 Bulgaria 7 Posts #13 Why this is not featured
Harem Profile Joined November 2007 United States 10817 Posts #14 It's called everyone that can is currently at MLG or I'd have gotten someone to do it hours ago. Moderator
corumjhaelen Profile Blog Joined October 2009 France 6865 Posts #15 Cocky and hyper agressive, a pleasure to watch =) numquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset
L_Master Profile Blog Joined April 2009 United States 7609 Posts #16 Crazy mode awesome!!
Really hope he sticks around longer than a month or two (not that it wasn't a HUGE treat to see HiyA or Dove owning it up either) EffOrt and Soulkey Hwaiting!
Gao Xi Profile Blog Joined June 2009 Hong Kong 5114 Posts #17 Sick good player, hopefully streams often, really enjoy the play and the music. 龔智禮 _________________________________________________________________________________________________ ＣＪ ＮＡＴＩＯＮ
Stratos Profile Blog Joined July 2010 Czech Republic 6104 Posts #18 Omfg I can't wait to see a 1800+ protoss stream. Gogo Minus)Eagle! Btw. didn't In_Dove had a Rual.____ id? Is there any connection maybe? ^^ Holy frack I'm typing shit here and when I unclick the unfeatered streams it's LIVE> bb En Taro Violet
ImbaTosS Profile Blog Joined January 2009 United Kingdom 1648 Posts #19 Oh yes. OH YES! EleGant[AoV] My TLPD sucks. I'm good though, I swear...
538 Profile Blog Joined November 2008 Hungary 3931 Posts #20 Awesome, thank you! BW fighting!
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In Abandoned, Europe / By Tom / 26 August 2013
(All images by Martin Vaissie Pictures (MartinVaissie.com, MVPrints, Pheizy), all rights reserved)
Standing abandoned on the banks of the Meuse river in Liege, Université du Val Benoît takes its name from a Cistercian abbey that was damaged during the ‘Happy Revolution’ of 1789-1791 and destroyed during World War Two. The decaying modernist buildings that occupy the site today were constructed between 1930 and 1965, part of an institution that once produced some of the finest mathematicians in Belgium. The abandoned university buildings have been a mecca for urban explorers since they were vacated in 2005. But a master-plan is in place to rehabilitate the modernist ruins by 2015. Some buildings have already been overhauled for use as light industry, office and co-working space, while the grounds are set to be transformed into an urban park alongside housing and retail. Want more? Explore 9 Abandoned Schools and Universities here.
(Keep reading – explore 5 Pillars of the Abandoned World & 20 Abandoned Mansions)
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